Page 1 of The Gentlewoman Author

Chapter One

Asoft click behind Rosamond startled her. Turning, she beheld Baron Heifleton wearing only shirtsleeves, unbuttoned, opened to his firmly contoured chest. She gasped, dropped her brush, hands fumbling to close her dressing gown. “My lord, we cannot…”

Candlelight flickered over the words, adding requisite heat to the story. The quill, pressed urgently between Mary Allen’s fingers, flew across the paper.

“Mrs. Allen, the—” A servant’s voice broke the silence of the room.

Mary swallowed her irritation. The pinnacle moment of the romance held vivid in her mind, so clear she was practically in the room with Rosamond and Heifleton. Any interruption and she would have to find her muse later. “No, no. Just a moment.”

She plunged the nib into ink and scribbled on until the scene disappeared from her mind and reemerged in written form. As her characters grew closer, in every sense, Mary felt a familiar yearning in her own heart. To be loved and cherished again—it was a foolish dream. But in fiction, in her stories, anything was possible.

She relished the shush of sand falling onto the completed page, drying the ink, signaling the end of the day’s work and of a rather long novel, which she would tie together and place in the trunk with the others.

“There.” Her neck tingled and ached. She sat back and rotated her head, then looked around. How long had that scene taken? Possibly hours had passed since the maid’s intrusion. She rang the bell. When her servant appeared, she said, “Open the curtains, Nellie. Bring me tea and something with a lot of sugar.”

At the swish of the drawn window, afternoon sun illuminated the room and stabbed Mary’s eyes. She rubbed them, stretched, and organized her writing implements. Even if it were only for herself, the generous stack of ink-covered sheets brought a comfortable expanse to her chest. The feeling was as much relief as joy, for the stories plagued her until she released them. Yet, Mary had no intention of letting anyone read them. Perhaps after she died, her great nieces and nephews would find her love stories bound together in a trunk and wonder about their aunt. Let them make their conjectures—so long as she was not alive to witness their inevitable dismay. Female authors of romances were not respectable, and society often mocked, ridiculed, and shunned them. Mary would not suffer that humiliation.

“Quite a bundle from the estate.” Nellie dropped a package in front of Mary. “Heavy, too. I’ll be back with your tea.” Mary’s late husband had left her with an estate in Ireland, but it had never felt like home. Living there had been her late husband Lord Allen’s dream, not hers, and she’d not visited in nearly two years.

Mary cut the twine and pulled out the first letter. It was from the housekeeper, apologizing for the delayed mail. While cleaning the butler’s pantry, she had found a pile of letters stashed on a shelf.

Penned in a sharp, slanted hand, the return address on the second letter read: Golden Buck Publishing, Fleet Street, London.

Her heart dove into the depths of her stomach, and hot pricks of sweat erupted on her face. She fanned herself with the sealed letter, which must be a response to a long-forgotten accident. Two years past, while still in Ireland, she finished writing a novel, and to express her exuberance at the accomplishment, she pretended that publication was a possibility—was even something she wanted. She had tied the manuscript in twine and addressed it to the Golden Buck. The preparation, however false, felt like an exclamation mark to her secret accomplishment.

Shortly thereafter, she left Ireland for Cornwall at the bequest of an old friend, Agnes, who begged Mary’s aid in a match-making scheme involving Agnes’s son and Mary’s niece. It had ended well, but afterward, she could not bear to leave her sister Charlotte or the home of her youth. Instead of returning to her Ireland property, she used the income from the estate to rent a cottage near her sister. Mary sent word to Nellie, charging her with packing the estate and preparing it for a tenant. When Nellie beheld the manuscript on Mary’s desk, tied and addressed as it was, she’d assumed her mistress intended the bundle for the post, so off it went.

For a full eight months after learning this, Mary’s stomach churned anytime she thought of having her words read by another. And that was one person. Imagine if the whole world had access to the book, to wonder about the author, to speculate upon whatever experiences influenced her writing—the humiliation could not to be borne. Over the course of time and after prolonged silence from the publisher, she was comforted, knowing it an impossibility that her silly manuscript would ever manifest as printed words. Yet, here lay the answer to that prospect. It would change her—either nurture her pride with acceptance or quash her confidence with rejection. Some things were better left unknown. She held it to the still-lit candle until the edge fluttered into flame.

But it would not stand. She had to know.

She yanked it away, smothered the fire with an ink blotter, cracked the seal, and read.

25 April 1754

Dear Lady Mary,

With great pleasure we accept the submission of your manuscript, A Woman Who Loves…

Her heart pounded in slow notes of victory. They liked it! They wanted it. She could be an author. The paper quivered, making it impossible to read. No amount of blinking cleared the blur from her eyes, so she placed the page on her desk and found focus on the sharp discomfort of fingernails cutting into her palms. She read on.

Our apologies for allowing your manuscript to go unread for so many months. We anxiously await your response…

They would be waiting forever. She would never consent to publication. Though she loved that her words were deemed good enough to be bound between canvas and leather, the fear of being known as an author was too great. She would tuck this letter of acceptance into the trunk with her other manuscripts for the next generation to discover upon her death.

…but proceed, with many thanks for your preexisting approval and under the conviction that this provocative novel will be the talk of the country. Even now, our typesetter is fast at work preparing the press. Your romance is set for publication on June 18…

Heavy pressure forced her to swallow her breath, as if a building had toppled over her. This must be what it felt like to die. Mary grasped the locket containing her late husband’s portrait, closed her eyes, and waited for the pain to ease and the tremor in her limbs to subside. Holding the talisman did not have its usual calming effect. Preexisting approval? Publication in June? That was nearly a year ago. How, how, how could this have happened?

“Nellie!” She sprang from her chair and yanked the bell pull repeatedly, calling her lady’s maid, the person responsible for this…this…what was it? A disaster, or a gift?

Nellie burst into the room. “Are you hurt?” Her pink face gleamed with a sheen of sweat.

Wait! There could be no confrontation with Nellie. No one could ever know, except perhaps Charlotte. Mary tossed the letter onto the desk, blocking it from view. Her legs were jelly and would not hold her. She clutched the chair and tried to inhale. “I am fine.” She attempted a laugh. “I am simply desperate for tea.” She was as breathless as Nellie, and the room was spinning. This fantasy, this dream of being published, had become a nightmarish, haunting fact. She, alongside every other writer of her sex, was available for public censure. She would be scorned.

“You look peaked.” Nellie took a step toward Mary.

“No!”