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Chapter 1
“Well? What do you think?”
Douglas Adams smiled at the hopeful enthusiasm on Serenity James’s face. She looked much as she had the very first time he’d met her almost twenty years ago. Only, then she’d been covered in dirt, her dress and stockings torn, while she clutched a shiny apple to her tiny five-year-old chest. An apple she’d climbed high into a tree to claim.
Though her face no longer bore the childhood cherub quality he’d first grown to love, it still held that sparkling romanticism that had prompted her to climb the tree and proclaim herself Helen of Troy clutching the Golden Apple of Venus.
“I think it’s your best story yet,” he said at last, deciding he had kept her long enough in suspense.
His reward was an even brighter smile, one that lit her face and made her eyes glow like indigo fire.
Though far from a stunning beauty, Serenity held her own special quality that set her apart from the other women her age. Even a married man of Douglas’s advanced years couldn’t quite deny her unique charms or appeal.
Serenity leaned over his desk and looked upside down at the sheets of paper he held. “You don’t think the ending is overly dramatic, do you?” She looked up to meet his gaze. “I tried not to make it too dramatic. But you know how I can get sometimes when I—”
“Nay, I don’t think so,” he said with a smile, cutting her off.
That was one thing about Serenity—any time she became nervous or excited she tended to babble off whatever was on her mind. If one didn’t take charge, then one could become blindsided by her chatter. “I think the idea of a far-reaching conspiracy was quite clever.”
Her delight over his praise died and she pulled her spectacles from the bridge of her nose. In her familiar nervous habit, she toyed with the left ear-piece of the spectacles and drew her brows together into a deep frown. “Do you think Father will like it?”
An ache seized Douglas’s heart. How she longed to please her irreconcilable father, but after working for the man these last twenty years, Douglas had come to the realization that nothing would ever please Benjamin James. “I can’t see why he’drefuseto publish it.”
She smiled halfheartedly. All too well, she knew why her father might refuse the story, why he continued to refuse his daughter.
“How I wish I’d been born a man,” she said with the same longing Douglas had heard countless times. “Then I could report real news like you, Father, and Jonathan. I could go down to the docks and interview witnesses, go into taverns and…” She shook her head, sighed, and pushed herself away from his desk. “I know you’re tired of hearing me say that.”
She left his side to walk toward her mahogany desk, the top of which was piled high with the manuscripts she dutifully edited for them. The hem of her plain, practical black dress rustled slightly with her steps as she paced their tiny work area.
She stopped and looked wistfully out the large bay windows, down the busy street that was filled with sailors, fishmongers, filthy children, and businessmen rushing to and from the docks.
How she yearned for things they both knew she could never do. If it were within his power, Douglas thought, he would gladly give her the autonomy she craved.
Unfortunately, all he could offer her was a sympathetic ear, and some encouragement.
“Don’t give up hope, Miss Serenity,” he offered, hoping to cheer her. “One day adventure will come bounding through that very door and you’ll—”
“Run for cover,” she said with a sigh.
Turning to face him, Serenity replaced her spectacles and squared her shoulders into the no-nonsense stance that she wore like a protective mantle.
“We both know what a milch cow I am,” she said. “I shall never be a bold woman who flouts societal rules like my idol, Lady Mary. I’m afraid I’m far too practical for that.”
Crossing the room, Serenity took the pages from his hands and flipped through them. “But at least I can pretend.”
The door to their small printing shop opened, ushering in a crisp autumn breeze that rustled pages of the journals lining the tops of tables set around the room.
Douglas straightened in his chair as his employer, Benjamin James, came into the office, wearing the stern frown that had etched permanent lines in his weathered features. “Good afternoon, sir,” Douglas said quietly.
Benjamin responded with a coolharrumph.
“How did it go, Father?” Serenity asked.
“They wouldn’t tell me anything,” he snapped. “I’ll send Jonathan down there later today. Mayhap your brother can get them to open up. Great Caesar knows, he seems to do better than me most of the time, wastrel mix-nut that he is.” His cold blue eyes focused on the pages in her hands, and he lifted one white bushy brow that made his scowl appear even more ominous.
Douglas sank lower in his chair, wishing he could vanish into the very floor, while Serenity met her father’s stare unflinchingly. Douglas had never understood Serenity’s immunity to her father’s black moods. If only he could learn her secret.
“What’s that?” Benjamin snapped. “Another one of your infernal stories?”
