A Novelist and an Earl by Hawthorne Ann

Author:Hawthorne, Ann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2023-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

When Isabella first opened the door and saw the brooding, tall figure of her husband standing over her desk—her thrice-blighted desk—the first thing she felt was utter terror. Her heart in her throat, she rushed forward like a mother seeking to protect her infant. This was an old fear, one from the days before her own family found her secret out. Back then, the fear was not realized. Her first manuscript did not end up in the fireplace. But back then, she was still an unmarried, relatively carefree girl.

And she was dealing with people who loved her.

He did not move. Indeed, far from trying to snatch the pages from her, he was holding his hands clasped behind his back. Nevertheless, Isabella looked into his eyes defiantly. Had this happened on the next day after their wedding, she might have dissolved in stuttering apologies, but she had just given him a triumph, however a modest one. She had exerted herself on his behalf for many weeks. She closed her eyes to his indiscretions. She had very little to apologize for.

‘I wonder’, George Trevelyan started coldly, ‘how long were you going to conceal this from me’.

That was enough of a spur.

‘Perhaps, not for that long, for I was doing nothing reprehensible. My writing did not impinge upon my duties, I have not neglected the keeping of our household, I have not even embarrassed our family by publishing under my own name. I have used a foreign nom de plume just as I did when still an unwed Miss Rivers. I have nothing to be reproached for’.

He stared at her.

‘Published?’ he asked. ‘Good heavens. It seems I know you very little indeed, my lady’.

‘That was why I did not tell you at once. I could not be sure how you would react. Or, rather, I had been almost sure that you were going to disapprove of this perfectly innocent pastime’.

‘It is not this pastime I disapprove of. Or do you think I grudge you the cost of ink and paper? Do you think the expense of candles is going to undo me? No, what I dislike is the fact of your true opinions of my family’.

At this, she blinked.

‘My true opinions?’

‘I am well aware that the names were changed, and the circumstances amended. But I am not the plodding mule of a fool that people take me for sometimes. The noble warlike Signor and his scheming younger brother? It was not a well-disguised imagining’.

Isabella was not sure whether to laugh or cry or storm out. Admittedly, this last option would have made her sleeping arrangements for the night somewhat difficult, seeing as this was her bedroom.

‘My first novel had a villain who poisoned his first wife and then kept her portrait in the secret alcove of his castle. The heroine had to avoid becoming his second. I thank Heavens you did not chance upon that manuscript, my lord. I shudder to think what you would have thought then’.

‘I know that I am not my brother’, the earl continued, as if he hardly had heard.

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