Page 13 of My Darling Mr. Darling

“It’s just that—well, I don’t want you to be worried,” Serena said. “And I don’t know if it will help or hurt, but despite his penchant for driving me absolutely mad, Grey would never have done it if he thought it would hurt you, because it would hurtmeif he had.” Serena clasped Violet’s hand in hers, and Violet knew her own fingers were cold and stiff with dread. “I admit that I am not as familiar with John—Mr. Darling—as Grey is, but…I would have judged him a reasonable man. Perhaps even agoodone.”

Violet fought against a flinch, as every lie she had told, every wrong she had committed, every desperate thing she had done careened through her head with the force of a bullet—becausesurelySerena would have assumed the samegoodnessof her. “You always were a terrible judge of character,” she said.

“You keep saying so,” Serena said, “but I don’t believe it is true.” She offered a hesitant smile and reached for another biscuit. “Incidentally,” she added, “would you like to learn how to pick a lock?”

∞∞∞

Midnight had long since passed, and still John lay awake, a slip of paper held in his hand as he reclined in bed, staring at the portrait of Violet that hung upon the wall. Besides the addition of his own personal effects, it was perhaps the one true change he’d made to the townhouse—to have the portrait that had once hung above the mantel of the great room in Townsend’s Kent estate brought up to London.

It was this portrait he had used to have a sketch of her done up for the papers when she had gone missing, but the cheerful sprite rendered in rich oils and sitting in a field of daisies had borne little resemblance to any incarnation of Violet he had ever known. The separate parts of her were there, of course—the rich brown of her hair, the eyes like a stormy sea, the expressive arch of her brows, the pointed little chin—but the girl made of them looked nothing like the terrified girl whom he had wed, nor the incensed termagant who had demanded that he absent himself from her presence.

In this portrait, she had beenhappy, and perhaps that was why it had haunted him all of these years. Why, perhaps, in some lights, the eyes painted in those glowing oils flickered not with merriment, but with righteous condemnation. As if to say,You have done this to me.Youhave made me unrecognizable.

As if he had stolen the very mirth from her face and remade her into another woman entirely.

How very brave—and desperate—she must have been. Townsend had called herwillful, but John had settled ondeterminedinstead, as the years had passed. And the truth was…it had shamed him, her determination. He had thought himself too important, too valuable to be wasted upon a spoiled girl who had been given at birth every luxury, every advantage that John had been denied. He had worked and scraped for everything he had, while Townsend’s daughter had been safely ensconced within the ivory bower of Townsend’s palatial country estate, or else in their London townhouse, running off governess after governess. He hadsacrificed, damn it all, for Townsend, for their shipping company, and then he had been expected to sacrifice himself once again, this time on the altar of marriage in the service of seeing Townsend’s daughter safely settled.

So all-encompassing had been his fury that he had had no room in his head to spare a single thought for the newly-orphaned Violet. The details of Townsend’s will could hardly have been her fault, but he had held her responsible for them regardless. And in the end, she had been the one to suffer for them the most.

His fingers curled around the slip of paper, the note which had been delivered two days ago.Monday afternoon, it read,one o’clock.It had not been signed, but then it hadn’t needed to be. He had in his possession a handful of letters written in Violet’s hand—enough to have learned the loops and flourishes of her handwriting as well as his own.

Brave. As he’d thought. Indomitable. Even out-maneuvered, she had resolved to meet him head-on, a fighter to the last.

He hadn’t mentioned the possibility of obtaining an annulment. It had been sitting there, on the tip of his tongue, throughout their brief exchange, and yet—there it had stayed, unspoken. A dozen times he had replayed that meeting in his mind, turning it over and over again as if by doing so he might uncover something he had previously missed, some tiny, inconsequential detail that would yield up insight into who she had become.

He knew who she had been over the past several years. He had stacks and stacks of witness statements, accounts offered up by the people who had known her in each of her incarnations. But those were just fragments of her, secondhand stories told by the people who had worked alongside her. None of them had knownViolet, not in any way that mattered. They had known Lucy, or Mary, or Maude, or Elizabeth.

And John had precious little experience of her himself. Just a handful of moments—yesterday in the foyer of Serena’s townhouse, and years ago, when a frightened young girl had stood still as a stone at his side in the presence of a reverend. Possibly half an hour on the outside, since the day they had been married.

But a man could not spent the better part of a decade searching for a woman and then not want to know exactly whom he had found. It was chance, or fate, or destiny that had brought her to London, to Serena, when for years he’d been always a few steps behind her.

And he had so many amends to make. For his negligence, for the surfeit of pride that brought about not his fall, but hers. For the things he knew of her already, and the things he hesitated even to speculate upon.

A man could handle only so much guilt at a time.

Chapter Five

Four gentlemen. Four gentlemen—excluding Mr. Darling—were currently seated in the drawing room as Violet lingered fretfully in the doorway in anticipation of the last of their number.

She’d given him the wrong time on purpose, of course. Only by a quarter of an hour. But he seemed the sort to arrive promptly, and she had not wished to endure his company alone for even a handful of seconds, should the other gentlemen prove not to be similarly punctual.

Unfortunately, she had not realized that a mere fifteen minutes could seem quite so dreadfully long, when one was entertaining four gentlemen who rose to their feet like a group of trained animals whenever she entered the room or rose from a chair.

She could, at least, be thankful that she would not have to teach them anything quite so basic as never to remain seated when a lady was standing herself. Still, it had grown excessively wearying to watch them bob up and down at each of her arrivals and departures, and eventually she had simply suggested that they forego that particular ritual of civility until the last of their number had arrived.

She coulddothis. Shecould. The gentlemen ensconced in the drawing room were a bit rough about the edges, but the potential was there. Perhaps they had not been born to this life, but they were young and malleable. Serena had delivered to her dossiers—compiled by her husband, no doubt—on each of them. One, Mr. Green, was the son of a prestigious textile merchant. Mr. Simmons was the only son and heir to a prominent hotelier. Mr. Collins’ father had come into a fortune in copper mining, and the last, Mr. Mitchell, was a shipping magnate whose younger sister had also been enrolled, and whom Serena would be teaching.

Worse yet, Mr. Mitchell was anAmerican. Violet didn’t know from where, exactly, that Grey had sourced him, but she was already certain he was going to present a problem. He smiled too easily and too often, slouched in his seat, and his diction was appalling.

Presently he seemed to be engaged in a staring contest of sorts with Davis, who stood silently in the doorway—and would, for as long as the gentlemen were present—looking disapproving. Of course, Davisgenerallylooked disapproving. It had disconcerted Violet for a full week before she had realized that it was simply how his face settled. But just now he lookedparticularlydisapproving, and the weight of that gaze had fallen full-force upon the American’s—Mr. Mitchell’s—shoddily-knotted cravat.

She could manage four gentlemen, couldn’t she? Men weren’t so very difficult to manage. With the likely exception of Mr. Mitchell, whose indolent posture suggested he hadn’t beenmanagedin a very long time indeed.

Her gaze flicked to the clock, watching the seconds tick down until Mr. Darling was officially late. One o’clock was mere seconds away. Perhaps he had forgotten. Perhaps he had never intended to come at all. Perhaps—

In unison, the clock let out a brief chime as the hour turned, and a sharp knock resounded upon the front door. Davis’ frown deepened into a glower, with which he pinned Mr. Mitchell briefly, as if he suspected the man would cause trouble in the few seconds during which Davis would be occupied by the door.

She heard the rumbles of Davis’ polite request for Mr. Darling’s hat, and then the click of heels upon the foyer floor, leading to the drawing room.