Muse

Lydia Clarke and Percival Turner are not acquainted. At least, not in the way any proper lady should be acquainted to a gentleman rumored to eat people. Now, one might wonder how the perfectly respectable (if rather corpse-like) Earl of Derby wound up at the rather unsavory end of such rumors, but one need only look at his authorial endeavors. You see, Percival Turner is also the wildly popular (and widely feared) author Sir Archibald Fletcher. And Sir Archibald Fletcher's works include such lovely stories as:

My Beloved Walks in Shadows (A man sees his own shadow as that of a beautiful woman's and chases it uselessly throughout his manor, going mad as it disappears/loses shape each time he gets close to catching it. He slowly kills each member of his staff, seeing their shadows either as her and their living bodies are blocking him, or seeing their shadows as competition to winning over his love. Once everyone dies he decides to live in complete darkness so he does not see the shadow anymore.)

A Kiss Through the Mourning Veil (A man dies, but comes back to life as a sentient zombie. He returns to his wife who is still mourning him but was made to marry his brother. He kills his brother and sleeps with his wife in his zombie state while she is dressed entirely in mourning garb so every inch of her skin is covered.)

Of the Body (A man details in graphic detail the feel and taste of each part of his wife in his mouth, a cannibalistic oral allegory that starts with eating her out and progresses to literally eating her insides.)

Surely the man who writes such things is perfectly normal, and surely the woman who shall take an interest in him is also, yes?