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“Yes, I just finished it this—”
“I don’t know why you bother,” he grumbled, taking the pages from her and crinkling them.
Douglas clenched his teeth at the visible cringe in Serenity’s shoulders. How could her father treat her hard work so callously?
No, he corrected himself. It wasn’t so much all the work she put into her stories, it was her soul. Those were her dreams she wrote down. Dreams they both knew would never come true.
But he could never tell her that. She heard it enough from her splenetic father. Douglas would never be so cruel as to remind her that childhood dreams should be left behind along with dolls and frilly, smocked dresses.
Reality was just too harsh sometimes to face without them.
Shaking his head, Benjamin waved the pages under her nose. “Blasted waste of time for a girl your age. On the shelf, that’s what you are. You ought to have callers. I should have a grandson or two by now. But no, what do I get? One daughter who runs off in the middle of the night, another daughter who thinks she’s some sort of solicitor, and a son who can’t be trusted to tie his own stock.”
He ran his gaze over her, his eyes flaming with anger. “And if they aren’t enough to drive me mad, then what little sanity I have left is jeopardized by a daughter who thinks she’s Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.”
He rolled his eyes heavenward and implored her mother’s spirit with a litany Serenity had long ago memorized. “Why did you leave me withthem, Abigail? She, like the rest of her wayward siblings, needs your gentling influence. Not mine.” He shook his head again and dropped his gaze back to his daughter. “Never would listen to me.”
His tirade finished, he made his way into the back of the shop to his desk, where he tossed her pages down upon the other pieces that littered his work space.
Serenity crossed her arms over her chest and offered Douglas an encouraging smile. Still, he noted the flush of embarrassment staining her cheeks.
“He’ll publish it, Miss Serenity,” Douglas offered again. And in an effort to restore their usual comradery, he added the same phrase that had become their own private jest. “And one day your adventure shall come.”
Her smile turned genuine, whimsical. She gave a light laugh that made him smile in return. “Just so long as it comes with wavy ebony hair, flashing eyes of danger, and dressed like a pirate.”
Douglas laughed, glad to see her father hadn’t dampened her spirit. “Aye, your pirate shall come on a rainy day like this, with the wind whipping his hair and his hat askew.”
Two days later, Serenity watched once more as the world walked by outside the windows of her father’s printing office.
“Twenty-four years old today,” she breathed to the dozing calico cat sitting in her lap as she reshuffled the pages she was proofreading. “And I’m no closer to being the writer I wanted to be than when I turned five.”
“Writer, bah!” her father’s impatient voice thundered across the office, making her jump.
Though they were alone in the office, she had been sure he was far enough away not to hear her musings. Too bad he had drifted closer while she’d been reading. She should have looked up before she spoke her thoughts aloud.
“You should be minding my grandchildren,” he continued to rail as he came to rest just before her desk. “That’s what would make you happy. Not sitting here doing men’s work!”
He lifted her right hand up to where she could see the ink stains that covered her fingertips and nails. “Look at that mess! Why, I should never have published any of your stories or even let you come near this office.” He dropped her hand and scowled. “All I’ve done is encourage you to be willful and stubborn!”
Serenity refused to cower before her father. Or let him get the last word about this personal matter that they both knew rubbed her raw. “If marriage be such a blessed state, how comes it there are so few happy marriages?”
Her father glared indignation at her and slammed his hand down on the mahogany desk. The loud thump echoed in the room, and several papers fluttered from the force of the gesture. Her cat, Pris, jerked her head up, looked at Benjamin James, then lay back in Serenity’s lap.
“Don’t you be quoting any of that social reform rhetoric to me, girl. Lady Mary—”
“’Tis Mary Astell, Father.”
“I don’t care if it’s the Virgin Mary, I’ll have no more of this disobedience from you. By God, I’ll find you a husband by the end of this week if it kills me.”
Serenity bit her lip to stifle the words that leapt into her mouth. He’d never find a husband for her. They both knew that. Even with the modest fortune her father had, he would be hard pressed to find a man who’d be willing to wed what the town biddies had dubbed that “poor James girl.”
The familiar voices of the town matrons filled her head.That girl should have been given the stick years ago, before it was too late for her father to find her a suitable husband. What man would suffer through one ofherlectures?
That poor James girl. Too old, too drab, and far too opinionated.
The type of man her father thought respectable would never agree to marriage with one such as she. No, those men sought younger brides. Girls with underdeveloped minds who were just waiting for a man to fill them with whatever nonsensehedeemed suitable.
She was cut from a different mold.
