Amanda Scott (16 page)

He looked at her for a moment before he said more gently than she had expected, “There may be a way to accomplish the deed without compromising either your scruples or his. Will you see what you can achieve in the next few days if I will promise faithfully to explain matters to him in the meantime, to tell him frankly what you are attempting to do on his behalf, and discover what his wishes might be?”

Nell’s first impulse was to refuse, but a look of near desperation in Manningford’s eyes stopped her. At first, she had assumed that his only reason for having anything to do with the novel was his apprehension that Sir Mortimer would otherwise refuse him money he required. Despite that assumption, however, and Mr. Lasenby’s hints that he must be longing to get away from Bath, she had seen no sign either of resentment or restlessness. That seeing Sir Mortimer’s book completed had become a personal matter with him was as clear to her now as though the information had been printed upon his countenance. She said quietly, “I will do as you request, sir, but—forgive me—do you think it wise to speak to him so soon after …” Delicately, she allowed her voice to fade into silence.

He smiled at her ruefully. “I do not know the best course, ma’am, but although Borland did not spare me, the doctor said it was more likely the old man’s having attempted to get out of bed that caused his fit, an opinion that would seem to be supported by the fact that the attack did not occur until some hours after either you or I spoke to him. In the event, I will promise you to keep my temper in check, and if it appears that my proposal is distressing him unduly, I will abandon it. Will that suit you?”

Nell had little confidence in his ability to control his temper if Sir Mortimer, as seemed only too likely, were to lose his, but she could not resist the pleading look in his eyes, and she nodded.

He sighed in relief, arose from his chair, and said briskly, “I’ll leave you now to get on with it, for Sep means to depart for Brighton in an hour, and I promised I’d see him on his way. To remind him to go, actually,” he added, smiling wryly at Nell. “Oh, and you need not continue your daily visits to the crescent now. No doubt your great-aunt has been unhappy about them and will be glad to see them curtailed.” He bowed to Lady Flavia.

“As to that, sir,” she said, “Nell is quite her own mistress, and will do as she pleases, and one supposes oneself old enough to cease to heed what the quizzes may say. Do you pull that bell, if you will, and Sudbury will show you out.”

When he had gone, Nell said, “You know, ma’am, I cannot help thinking we are making a grave mistake by fancying I can improve upon Sir Mortimer’s work. I am but the veriest amateur.”

“Nonsense, my dear,” Lady Flavia replied comfortably. “You have only to pretend that Sir Mortimer’s characters are people to whom he has introduced you, and then improve upon their natures as you will. I declare, it would make one feel quite powerful, would it not? But all any novel is, after all, is a few good characters, an interesting setting, and some sort of plot. Only the last bit, surely, can be at all difficult.”

Nell remembered the discussion she had had with Sir Mortimer on the subject of plots. “An innocent heroine,” she murmured, only half aloud, “saved by a properly virtuous hero from an utterly wicked villain.”

“What’s that you say?” Lady Flavia demanded. “Speak up, child. You young people mumble so, and one is not hard of hearing, whatever ill-natured persons might say to the contrary!”

“No, ma’am, certainly not. I was just remembering something Sir Mortimer told me, and my imagination began to stir. If you will excuse me,” she added, gathering the manuscript pages, “I shall go to my bedchamber and see what I can contrive.”

“No, no, stay here. ’Tis far more comfortable for you, and I was, after all, on the point of going out to pay calls when that handsome young man arrived. I had thought to invite you to accompany me, because someone is likely to invite us to dine, but I quite understand that you want to see what you can accomplish before Monday. No doubt, Mr. Manningford will be all agog to see the result.”

Nell agreed vaguely, but her imagination was stirring so that she scarcely paid any heed, other than to bid Lady Flavia to enjoy herself, before sitting back down at the escritoire. For a few moments she sat there, staring into space, thinking. Then, turning to the first page of the manuscript, she began to read and to make notes to herself. A quarter-hour passed, then another, and the longer she worked, the more excited she became, until she could not bear it any longer but simply had to begin again at the beginning, with a fresh sheet of paper.

From the moment her nib touched the paper, the pen seemed to take on a life of its own and fairly flew along with scarcely more than a second’s pause each time she had to dip it into the ink. For the most part she was copying the original, but she found herself adding and deleting words, then altering scenes and characters—some slightly, others more drastically. The writing was no longer frustrating or difficult. Nor was it a matter of simple self-amusement. It flowed now from a sense of urgency to get the words down on the paper before they faded from her mind. The hours passed swiftly, and she did not even look up when Sudbury opened the drawing-room door and looked in to see if she wanted anything.

The butler, noting her abstraction, shut the door softly and went away. The next time it opened, it was to admit Lady Flavia.

“Gracious me, child, are you still at it?” she demanded, startling Nell and causing her to splatter her work.

Reaching automatically for silver sand to sprinkle on the blots, she looked over her shoulder in surprise. “Back so soon, ma’am? I thought you’d be gone for hours.”

“And so I have been,” Lady Flavia declared, shutting the door behind her and going to sit in her chair. “I even stayed longer than usual, for Maria Prudham has been telling me she was set upon by footpads last evening, at the top of Avon Street! If one is not safe in the center of Bath, one is not safe anywhere.”

“How dreadful! Was she hurt?”

“No, for they only took her money, but she was sadly frightened, for she was in her chair and the bearers ran away, which, as you may guess, they are not supposed to do. But do not tell me you have been writing all the while I have been away!”

Noting the time on the mantle clock, Nell exclaimed, “Good gracious, I can scarcely credit it myself, ma’am, but I have not stirred since you left. I feel as though I have been sitting only a few minutes, however, and there is more that I should like to write down before it goes out of my head. Will you be vexed if I continue?”

Lady Flavia looked interested. “I shall endeavor to stay as quiet as a mouse, my dear, if you will allow me to glance through what you have written today.”

Nell hesitated. “I have not read it yet myself, ma’am.”

“Oh, I shall not expect perfection, you know,” Lady Flavia said. “I just thought I might amuse myself so that you could continue with your work.”

Making no further objection, Nell handed her the finished pages and turned back to her work.

If Lady Flavia was surprised, after Nell had watched her so anxiously before as she read, that she did not seem to be paying any heed to her now, she did not say so, and soon the only sounds in the room were the scratch of Nell’s pen, the turning of pages, and the occasional crack of a spark on the hearth, where coals from the morning fire lay dying for lack of attention. In the next hour, these sounds were augmented several times by a gasp or a chuckle from her ladyship, and once by a choke of laughter, but Nell did not hear these, so absorbed was she in her work. And when Sudbury entered to announce dinner, she was startled again, and laid her pen aside with obvious reluctance.

Smiling ruefully at her great-aunt, she said, “’Tis the oddest thing, ma’am, for when I tried to keep everything as I thought Sir Mortimer would want it, I struggled with every word. Now the pen just flies! All at once, I knew how I ought to do the thing, and after that, the hours passed like minutes and a great number of pages got written. Oh dear,” she added, with a look of dismay when her gaze came to light upon the pile of pages by her great-aunt’s chair, “I quite forgot you had been reading.”

Lady Flavia’s eyes twinkled. “You will no doubt be wanting to make a few more alterations, I believe.”

Nell’s face fell. “Is it quite horrid?”

“Not at all, but one fears that some of your characters have grown rather more recognizable than you will desire them to be.”

Bewildered, Nell said, “Recognizable? But how can that be, ma’am? They are entirely fictional. Indeed, they are Sir Mortimer’s own characters, for although, thanks to the example set by our Regent, I have no great opinion of princes and have changed the hero into a more ordinary gentleman, I have kept Elizabeth and the duke as they were. He is related to her now, certainly, but he is still very wicked and she is still perfectly innocent, so there has been no extraordinary change.”

“Oh, my dear, do you not know what you have described here?”

“Well, of course I do,” Nell said, but her voice lacked conviction, for she realized as she said the words that she had small memory of what, precisely, she had written. “I cannot repeat all of it, of course, for I daresay I am a little tired now, but surely I cannot have put anyone I actually know into the story. Indeed, I do not know any dukes or princes, and Elizabeth is quite unlike anyone I have ever met.”

“One is not surprised to hear you say so,” Lady Flavia said with unaccustomed gentleness in her tone. “Do not tax yourself over the matter now, my dear, but come and eat your dinner. Then no doubt you will wish to look over what you have written today. On the whole, I must tell you, the tale is most amusing now, and one is all agog to learn how it will end.”

Nell went along obediently but feared she was not good company at the table, for her mind seemed to occupy itself with her story, making it difficult to attend to Lady Flavia’s gentle flow of polite conversation. The meal was over soon enough, however, and they returned to the drawing room, where she made haste to gather her pages together. Then, lighting a pair of tall working candles, for the light in the room had begun to dim, she sat down and began to read what she had written.

Though she made a few corrections, she found little to explain Lady Flavia’s comment until she had read for some time. Lady Flavia knitted placidly, permitting herself no more than an occasional glance at the reader, until suddenly Nell gasped and looked up with an expression of mingled shock and amusement and exclaimed, “The duke! How can I not have recognized him?”

“An excellent caricature of Jarvis,” Lady Flavia said with a chuckle. “One particularly enjoyed his grace’s arrival with all the servants scurrying to attend to him, fluttering in fear, though he smiled and nodded. Just what Jarvis would like, one expects. ’Tis overdone, of course. Even Jarvis would not dare, one hopes, to kick a footman from his path or to strangle a valet who scorched a cravat. Indeed, one doubts he would exert himself to such an extent. But one has seen him stand, just so, waiting while his cloak is placed about his shoulders and his gloves or cane put into his hand, not to mention the duke’s habit of exclaiming, ‘by my oath,’ just as Jarvis does. And you certainly ought not to leave in that bit about his being a gentleman only by reason of his birth, since it sounds exactly like something you might have said to his face upon at least one occasion.”

“I have,” Nell admitted. “More than once, in fact.”

“And the scene you added at the beginning about the wager and the duel at the gentlemen’s club, my dear. Truly—”

“Oh, ’tis trite, I know, but there is nothing in that, ma’am, for I am sure I have read such stuff myself in any number of books. There can be nothing for anyone else to recognize.”

Lady Flavia looked unconvinced, but she made no further effort to discuss the matter, and Nell returned her attention at once to her manuscript. She made a few more changes, frowning over some of them, but when she had attended to these, her pen began to fly again, and though she murmured a reply when Lady Flavia announced that she was retiring, she scarcely took her eyes from her work until one of her candles guttered and went out. Then glancing up, she was bewildered at first to find herself alone in the room, until she looked at the clock and discovered that it was after eleven.

Taking her work upstairs, she prepared for bed, falling asleep the moment her head touched the pillow, and when she awoke, she found that, although her right arm ached a bit, she wanted to begin writing at once. It was Sunday, however, and her conscience stirred her to dress for church instead and join her great-aunt in the sunny, rather barren little morning room, where they were accustomed to break their fast.

Afterward, they walked the short distance to the Laura Chapel to attend the morning service, lingered afterward to chat with several of Lady Flavia’s friends, and accepted an invitation from one of these to accompany her home for a light luncheon. Lady Flavia, who had changed few of her habits despite Jarvis’s contribution or Nell’s wages, plainly believed the invitation to be a boon. Nell chafed to be back at her work.

It was midafternoon when they returned, and she was wondering if she might simply excuse herself to her work again, when Lady Flavia declared that she thought she should enjoy a comfortable nap in her bedchamber. “Just to settle one’s meal, you understand,” she added airily.

Nell suspected that her great-aunt knew perfectly well that she was aching to write, and desired her to enjoy the comfort of the drawing room, so she did not reveal her awareness that Lady Flavia rarely napped during the day, but only smiled gratefully and bade her enjoy her rest.

For an hour, the writing went well, but then suddenly it was as if she had lost whatever magic it was that had kept her pen speeding along. She found herself dipping the nib into the inkwell, then sitting and staring at the page until the ink had dried on her pen. She read over bits she had already written, searching for inspiration, but none came. She made little sketches in her margins, and though it was fun to imagine them the faces of her characters, the exercise did nothing to take her work forward. At last, she gave it up, throwing down her pen just as Lady Flavia entered the room.