“I shall do my very best.” He hesitated. “How did you do that trick yesterday?”
She reached under her chair to scratch Rufus’s head. “What trick?”
“When you looked at us and knew everything about us. How could you possibly know Marjorie was specifically painting a portrait of one of her brothers, for example?”
“Ah.”
She nodded. Not just any brother. Jacob Wynchester, specifically.
Three disparate flecks of paint on Marjorie’s clothing and person had led Viv to that conclusion. There was a bit of green the exact color of the Wynchesters’ lawn, though that only indicated the painting was likely to be or to contain a landscape scene. The other two smudges were both brown: One, the exact hue of Jacob’s gorgeous skin. The other, a perfect match to his beautiful eyes. If Viv were forced to guess, she would daresay the portrait was of Jacob outside, likely with his animals.
But she would not say so. When she’d voiced her initial conclusions, she hadn’t known the portrait was meant to be a secret. Perhaps the painting was a surprise, and Viv had almost ruined it. Now that she knew, she would not break Marjorie’s confidence, given it hadn’t been granted to Viv to begin with.
“I might have been wrong,” she said, though anyone who knew her well would know this was a lie. Viv was rarely if ever wrong, and even less likely to admit it.
Jacob didn’t particularly look as though he swallowed this explanation, but he did not press further. He glanced over her shoulder at the sideboard against the wall. Then his eyes traveled higher, to the long wooden shelf containing Viv’s most prized possessions. “Are those your books?”
“Most of them,” she said with pride. “A few are borrowed from a lending library and need to be returned.”
“Novels? Poetry?”
“The books I own are novels I enjoy rereading. The items from the lending library tend to be biographies, history tomes, travel guides, or manuals on various fields of study.”
His brows raised. “How many fields do you study?”
“As many as necessary to pen whichever play I’m currently writing, with as much verisimilitude as I can reasonably convey.” Shepaused. “Are you disappointed I am a plebeian who does not read poetry?”
He grinned at her. “Relieved, more like. Please tell me you’ll be the one person who doesn’t constantly opine about what I should do with my poems.”
“I can’t promisethat,” she said with a smile. “I do love telling people what to do.”
He gestured at the letter she’d been writing. “Is that what you’re doing now?”
She shook her head. “I was, but this is personal correspondence. I am friends with a handful of playwrights throughout England, and it is my turn to contribute to our monthly meeting.”
His forehead creased. “You meet… on paper?”
“We each write a letter, explaining what we’ve accomplished, and what our plans are, as well as responding to the same from the four others. Once a month, I receive a packet containing the current letters. I replace my old letter with a new one and send all five to the next in the circle. That way, we each only have to write our news once, and we’re always the first to know the latest happenings of the person before us in the list.”
“You sound like very good friends.”
“We are.” Her eyes narrowed. “Yousound surprised. Or skeptical.”
“These playwrights have never met you?”
“Impractical. They all live several days’ drive away. What is your point?”
“I just wondered if they understand who they’re writing to.”
“Do you mean respectable British playwrights might not wish to associate with a Black female immigrant?”
“I only note that Vivian is often a man’s name. And that most people find it difficult to determine accent and skin color from the shape of one’s handwriting.”
Viv clenched her fists. She did tend to sign her letters “Yours &c, Vivian,” but surely her initial correspondence had clearly stated she wasMissVivian Henry. If her handwriting had been messy that day, or if they’d skimmed her scrawl and assumed that of course she was a mister, well, that was their erroneous conclusion, not Viv’s lie.
“I will be certain to sign this letter as MISS VIVIAN, with all capitals,” she informed him. “And I will mention my personal connection to the themes in my play about Black female suffrage.”
“You may not wish to do that,” Jacob said. “What if they exclude you from the circle?”
