Page 33 of A Lady's Beloved Novelist
“I am not going to fight you.” Cecil chuckled when he took in James’ stance.“I will leave, look, I am walking right now, are I not?” Cecil moved about the room and neared the front door, making sure to grab his various things as he went.
“I will have your things from upstairs sent to your parents’ house, shall I?” James asked as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“If you insist,” Cecil said. James did not like the fact that he was smiling again, as though he was finding a way out of the situation.
“All right, I will have them sent tomorrow,” James said whilst nodding slowly, still unsure of what Cecil was going to do next.
“I want you to stop courting Andrea,” he stated as plainly as though he were talking about the weather.
“I am sorry? I think I must have missed something, when did you become the one giving out demands?”
“You are not going to kick me out and think you can get away with this,” Cecil said.“My parents live only a few miles from here, you should be expecting me to be back.”
James blinked a few times as he realised what this would mean for him. Cecil was not going to be gone any time soon and he was just getting into his demands.
“I am not going to stop courting Andrea,” James spoke in a calm voice. He knew there was no way he could do that now.
“You will, or I will expose that you are the author behind the Dean Morris books. You are the one who has been writing them and I will make sure that everybody who is important knows, including your father,” Cecil warned.
This was exactly what James had wanted to avoid, and yet he was now in the thick of a situation that he did not know how to get out of.
“You are being rash, Cecil,” James said whilst putting his hands up to deescalate the situation.
“I am being rash?” Cecil laughed with a chuckle.“You are the one kicking me out!”
“You cannot be trusted!”
“Then you are going to face my vengeance for this, mark my words,” Cecil said before opening the door and stepping out into the late afternoon light.“You know what to do to stop it from happening.”
No longer courting Andrea was a future he could not even begin to fathom. James wished he had not been quite so angry with Cecil, since he now had the perfect information to blackmail him with.
Cecil appeared to make sure that the door slammed behind him, leaving James in a deafening silence and a big mess of paper to clean up on the table. James looked around the room feeling suddenly terrified that everything would change if the news were to break of his strange hobby.
Whilst many men wrote in their spare time, they were often epic poems or pieces of philosophy that were debated by other men. To openly come out as the author of these adventure novels was almost surely going to look bad on both his and his father’s reputations.
James’ father was a duke, and James knew he was not going to take too kindly to the idea of his son wasting so many years unmarried and writing books about his past travels. He could imagine how his father would rage and be confused, not realizing he had raised that kind of son.
He wanted someone who was strong and ambitious with his title, someone with a good marriage and a guaranteed family to carry on the title. It would be more than just a mark against their name, it would be the disappointment from his father that would hurt James more than anything.
Chapter 15
Lily walked through the house with a relaxed stance. For most of the time, Sudeley felt like her second home because it was where she spent so much of her time. She found herself constantly reassuring her husband that as soon as Andrea was married, she would not be spending as much time as she had been on the grounds. But Lily was not sure that was true.
Andrea had always been her best friend regardless of their family relation. She was the one person Lily could turn to about anything and it was much the same the other way around too. She smiled at the thought of getting to have someone living so close to her who was also so close in terms of their friendship. It was a good feeling indeed.
Laughter from down the hall alerted her that Andrea was in one of the rooms on the ground floor. A male voice was with her. Lily decided to simply poke her head around the door just to make sure that her cousin was doing all right, assuming she was enjoying another visit from Lord Churchill since they both seemed so keen on one another.
However, as she let the door open slightly, it revealed that the man with Andrea was not the Marquess of Blandford at all. It was Sir Cecil Blakewell. Lily could not hide her shock as she looked between them, her shock quickly giving way to confusion.
“Are you well, Lily?” Andrea asked her as she turned around at the interruption.
“I…I, yes I amfine,” Lily said after regathering her composure slightly.
“Sir Cecil here was just telling me of his travels over some tea, would you like to join us?”
“I…no, no thank you, I actually have to go now, but I just thought I would come and check on you,” Lily explained, stumbling over her words. Andrea was slightly confused by her reaction, but it was a conversation they could have later. Instead, she quickly said goodbye and left the room in a hurry.
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