Page 17 of My Darling Mr. Darling

Not when he’d all but invited her.

He slid out of bed, maneuvering carefully across the floor as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the all-encompassing darkness. The curtains were tightly drawn, admitting not even the smallest sliver of moonlight, which was how he preferred it. But a stumble—the slightest sound—might alert her to his presence. Had the hinges of his door been oiled recently? Had they squeaked when he had entered his room? He didn’tthinkso—but as he reached the door, he risked only the tiniest crack, lest he startle her.

This deep into the night, only the dregs of light reached the house from the lamps in the street, and just a fraction of that struggled through the high windows of the foyer to creep into the corridor. He saw her mostly in shadow, kneeling on her skirts before his office door. The scant light flickered off some tools she had laid out to her right, the better to catch the light. Skeleton keys, he realized—the tools of a professional housebreaker.

She mumbled something beneath her breath and shot a glance down the hall—toward the master suite. Of course. She thought herself at least somewhat safe so far from it, and like as not if he had been in it, he would never have heard her.

But he had chosen the room just on the other side of the hallway, and so as she worked her tools one at a time into the lock, she had no idea her husband stood just a few feet away, watching her ply her tools just over her left shoulder.

In profile, he could see her shoulders pull tight in frustration, her teeth worry her bottom lip between them. She hissed an invective; discarded another key and selected a new one, jamming it into the lock and freezing as it produced a shrill squeak. Another suspicious glance down the hallway; she sat still and silent for a long moment, then breathed a silent sigh of relief when it became clear that her fit of temper had not resulted in notice.

Perhaps he ought to have left the door unlocked for her. Certainly it would have resulted in far less drama, less anxiety, less tension—but no; she had gotten it at last. The lock clicked, the door slid open, and Violet pumped her fist in the air in triumph, as if she’d conquered the whole of the world.

Violet liked to work for her successes, he realized. She relished the satisfaction of a job well done, even if that job happened to be outside the bounds of the law.

As he watched, she extracted the key from the door, tucked it into the bodice of her gown—to separate it, he realized, from the rest of the keys that hadnotworked—and collected the rest of them to drop them quietly into her pocket.

She scrambled upright, brushing out her skirts and flinching as the keys in her pocket jingled, and hesitated just briefly outside the open maw of the door which revealed only a thick, enveloping darkness. With a vicious little shudder, she steeled her shoulders and charged decisively inside.

The hushed sounds within the office masked the softclickof John’s door closing. He had notlocked the desk drawer he had indicated to her, so it would likely be only seconds before she made her escape, and he did not want to be caught at spying any more than she likely wished to be caught at housebreaking. Instead he retreated to the window, pulled back the curtain a sliver, and waited. Moments later, the moonlight revealed her slipping through the garden and out into the mews, her skirts hiked up in her hands—leather folio tucked beneath one arm.

He wondered what she would think of it, this hastily-compiled packet of papers. It had been a gift, after all, in a queer sort of way. Hardly the sort of thing that an ordinary husband would give an ordinary wife, but…neither of them wereordinary, strictly speaking.

But it wassomethingat least; something she did not know—because no one knew, and he’d gone to a great deal of effort to keep it that way. And if she were hungry enough for information that she would risk housebreaking to get it, he might as well reward her efforts.

It felt like a step toward honest communication—using his secrets to draw out her own. Luring her with all of the things that could not be said in the midst of her class, which was doubtless the only time she would consent to see him. Of course, it would not be enough. There were a wealth of secrets remaining between them; his and hers.

She would be back. Ofcourseshe would. She wouldhaveto be.

He climbed back into his bed, slid silently beneath the covers, turned his face into his pillow, and closed his eyes. And for once, he descended swiftly into sleep, and was undisturbed by restless dreams. It was perhaps the best night of sleep he had achieved in years.

∞∞∞

“Well?” Serena prompted, as she settled onto the sofa beside Violet. “Did you find what you were seeking?” The blaze of far too many candles illuminated the drawing room, as if it were noon instead of midnight.

Violet swallowed hard and shook her head, one springy curl bouncing off her cheek in the process. “No,” she said. But that wasn’tquitetrue. Shehadfound something. It just hadn’t been what she had been looking for, because she had not even known to look. She had never thought, never expected, neverdreamed—

“It’s nothing to do with Papa,” she said, and her hand shot out, snatched Serena’s glass of brandy, and downed the whole thing at once. “It’s about Mrs. Selkirk’s.”

“Mrs. Selkirk’s?” Serena inquired, craning her head to peek at the folio spread open on Violet’s lap. Her blond brows drew together, her lips pursing. “Letters?” she said. And then, “May I?” as she reached for the top one.

Violet nodded, her gaze shearing away from Serena’s searching look. There weren’t so very many letters, but they were revealing. It had never been intended to be a secret, of course, but in those early days when she had had nothing and no one, she had learned that some things were just…not meant to be shared. Some things were simplyprivate, wounds borne in secret.

Serena draped her arm around the back of the sofa and settled in to read. “This is—” She swallowed audibly, her face pinched and white. “This reads like testimony,” she said at last, her voice coming out like the hoarse croak of a toad. “Who is Julia Chatham?”

“She is—was—a student at Mrs. Selkirk’s,” Violet said, plucking at the tassels of a decorative pillow with fingers that wanted to curl inward, to dig their nails into the soft flesh of her palms until the physical pain distracted from the mental anguish, the emotional upheaval. “She was there two years before I was sent there.” And by then it had been far too late. If Julia had had a shred of spirit before she had been sent to school, it had long since been extinguished.

“Did you know her well, then?” Serena asked, and from the corner of her eye, Violet saw her hand perform an odd little flutter before it landed upon her knee—as if she had wanted to reach out and offer comfort, but uncertain whether or not she ought to.

Violet shook her head. “We shared the same room for six months,” she said. “Us and two other girls—Samantha and Cecily. But…no, we weren’t friends. None of us were.” The truth was something else entirely—that they had never beenpermittedto be friends. That they had largely been expected to be silent, that all the girls’ rooms had been frequently searched for correspondence, for notes that might have been passed between them.Familiarity, Mrs. Selkirk had been fond of saying, with her ever-present sneer,breeds contempt, and personal relationships amongst students had not simply been discouraged, they had beenpunished.

“I don’t understand,” Serena said. “I’ve never heard a word of this. There must be half a dozen letters here—testimony—and yet I’ve never heard a word of it before. Not even a whisper.” She sifted through the stack of papers, her face utterly bloodless as she scanned page after page recounting the horrific experiences of former students. “How…how is it that no one knew? How could this have been permitted to happen? It’s sickening.”

Despite the odd lump in her throat, Violet willed herself to speak calmly. “The families got precisely what they thought they wanted,” she said. “Well-mannered, obedient daughters. Perfect ladies, without fail.” Women who would never dream of raising their voices, or expressing an opinion contrary to what they had been trained to repeat. Wives who would ensure their husbands’ domestic tranquility, raise exceptional children, and never, never diverge from the path that had been laid before them. Women who would never utter a word of the methods used by Mrs. Selkirk and her staff to ensure compliance.

Mrs. Selkirk had excelled in exactly one thing: breaking down the girls in her care and rebuilding them into her model of perfection. For decades her school had been lauded as the premier academy for young ladies for precisely that reason. And she had never failed.

Until Violet.