Page 47 of A Lady's Beloved Novelist
James broke out into a wide smile at the small admission. A flame of hope ran through him that he thought had been long extinguished. But now it was renewed, and he was ready to write it all down again for Andrea.
“I promise you that I will do better by her too,” James said as he started to rise from his seat. “I will not be so hesitant and I will make my feelings known. I fear that I have taken your niece for granted, and that is something that will never happen again.”
“That is reassuring,” Bella said with a smile. “Then I look forward to helping you put all of this right.”
Chapter 20
The floor was strewn with paper. James knew that he had to get this letter right and he was not going to compromise on that. He was determined to make sure that Andrea knew how sorry he was for not telling her sooner, but also for letting Cecil get so far with his plan.
He knew that it was going to be a lot to ask for her forgiveness, but it was all he had. He needed her to forgive him at the very least so that he could move on, even if she no longer wanted to be with him.
He was drawing inspiration from the other letter he had almost sent to her. But Cecil had the final copy, and so he was relying on his memory. James wanted to make sure that he included as much detail as he could about everything.
He also wanted to warn her that Cecil was not what he was presenting himself to be, though he was sure that Cecil would be able to do this all on his own. If there was one thing that the man was good at, it was eventually showing his true colours.
James made sure to confess that he had been wanting to tell her the truth for some time, but he had never found the best moment. Then Cecil had come along, and it had all been too late.
*
Andrea could not quite believe the extent of what had been written in the letter that her aunt had delivered to her. For a time, she had thought she would never hear from James again. However, this was not the correspondence that she had been expecting.
The man he was claiming to be was someone she had been thinking about for years. It was someone she had expressed herself to, and she had thought she would never have to meet him and explain herself. But it had been James the entire time, or so he said.
“What have you got there?” Cecil asked from where he was sitting across the room from her. He had been spending a lot more time in their home and even stayed most nights of the week in the guest wing.
Andrea did not mind since it was better than him making the long journey back and forth from his parent’s residence. However, there had been a recent increase in the amount that he had been drinking. Even now as he leaned forward in his seat, Andrea could tell that he was drunk.
“It is just a letter from my aunt.” Andrea shrugged it up and folded up the paper.
If what James was saying was true, she could not let Cecil get his hands on the letter. It was such a risk that James had taken in writing to her in the first place, and she would not betray him like that. It was beginning to make more sense why he had been suddenly unavailable to her, and it was apparently due to the man in her drawing room at that moment.
“Do you want to go and have a lie down before dinner?” Andrea asked carefully. She had already heard comments from her parents about their uninvited guest and his rude table manners. It was always even worse when Cecil had been drinking, which was becoming almost always.
“No,” he grumbled. “I am fine.”
“All right, well I am going to go and read for a time,” she said absentmindedly.
“What are you reading?” he asked without looking up from his lap. Andrea could not tell if he was actually interested or not.
“Just a Francis Griffith adventure novel again.” She shrugged. “Do not tell my mother, she still thinks I am reading the classics.”
“You know, I am the writer behind those stories,” Cecil murmured from his seat. Whilst Andrea had been crossing the room to the door, he had slumped back so that he was slouching. She froze at the door and turned back in confusion.
“What did you just say?”
“It is me, I am the mysterious Dean Morris,” Cecil said, slurring his words slightly. “Those stories are all based on my travels.”
“But…” She thought of the blackmail that Cecil had over James. It did not make sense for the author to actually be Cecil. There was no way. “That is incredible, but why not just write under your name?”
It was the same question that she intended to ask James too.
“I do not know, it is just more mysterious, is it not?” Cecil was chuckling to himself as he spoke. His eyes were darting around the room, and Andrea was not sure what to think of his admittance.
“I will see you later then,” Andrea muttered. “Please do try to sober up before dinner.”
*
She had never rushed up the stairs as quickly as she did. Andrea was eager to send off her response to James as soon as possible. Her heart skipped a beat at the thought of him working with her aunt to get the letter to her. She would not think he would go to such lengths to protect himself if he were not the author of those books.
