Introducing Mattie and Edward, Part 3

As its title suggests, The Spinster's Secret is a novel about a spinster with a secret.

The spinster is Matilda Chapple, and her secret involves paper, ink, and imagination. Can you guess what it is?

Here's a scene from the hero's point of view. The mailbag from Soddy Morton village has fallen in the creek and Edward finds Matilda's elderly uncle, Sir Arthur Strickland, going through the waterlogged letters...

“Look at this!” Strickland thrust a wet letter at him. His thin face was flushed with outrage. “This . . . this is filth!”

Edward took the letter. It was several pages long. The ink was smeared, but still readable.

Dear reader, in answer to your request, here is a further confession from my pen.

Edward raised his eyebrows. What the hell?

Previously, I told of my first encounter with Lord S. Now, if you are willing to be the recipient of another confession, I should like to share some details of my time as Lord S.’s mistress.

“Filth!” Strickland said again, struggling to his feet. “Disgusting filth!”

Edward ignored him. His gaze skipped down the page: For some time we wandered, exchanging fond touches and kisses, until presently we came upon a little folly built in the form of a Roman temple, perfectly round, with a pantiled roof and a colonnade. A pretty wilderness of trees surrounded it, and at its marble feet ran a sparkling brook. Lord S. led me inside the folly, wherein a fine, large divan tossed with pillows stood squarely in a shaft of sunlight.

The page ended. Edward tried to peel the corner up to read the next page. He couldn’t. The sheets of paper were stuck together. He tried the next page.

. . . until finally his passion was spent. We lay entwined, sunlight warm on our skin. From outside came the sound of birdsong and the ripple of running water. After several minutes Lord S. roused himself and suggested that we refresh ourselves with a swim.

Taking me by the hand he led me outside and coaxed me into the brook. We sported in the water for some time, until Lord S.’s passion was manifestly aroused again.

Edward read swiftly to the bottom of the page. “Filth!” he heard Strickland mutter while he paced the study, his cane thudding angrily with each step. “Filth!”

Alas, the next two pages were stuck together. Edward tried to peel them apart, but the limp paper disintegrated into shreds. Only the final sentence was legible: And on that note, dear readers, I shall end this latest confession from my pen.

Chérie.

He set the pages together again, disappointed.

“Here!” A thump of the cane. “In Soddy Morton!” Another thump. “To find such filth!”

Edward nodded his agreement. Soddy Morton was the last place he’d have expected the notorious Chérie to reside. “She’s thought to live in London.”

Strickland swung around and pinned him with a fierce glare. “You’re familiar with the writer?”

“Uh . . . I have heard of her, sir.” And he’d read the last three installments of her confessions. “She claims to be a courtesan by the name of Chérie. Her confessions are quite popular in London.” That was an understatement; Chérie’s Confessions had taken London by storm. Well, half of London, Edward amended. The male half.

“She must be stopped!” Strickland shook his cane at him. His face was mottled with rage. “I won’t have such depravity in Soddy Morton!”

And thus begins a series of events that turn both Mattie's and Edward's lives upside down.