Page 20 of My Darling Mr. Darling

“Gentlemen,” Violet interjected severely. “If you have some personal business to attend to, I must insist that you do it at some other time.” But for the pinched set of her lips, John might have thought her utterly unmoved. Perhaps the other gentlemen—who had been watching his exchange with Mitchell with avid interest—would write it off as annoyance at having her class disrupted, but John had the unpleasant feeling that she had simply been attempting to defuse the mounting tension in the hopes that John would not be provoked into admitting the truth: that it was not the instruction he had come for at all.

Perhaps she didn’t wish to admit it even to herself.

∞∞∞

Managing men was proving less simple than Violet had expected. It was not that they were so exceptionally ill-mannered, but rather that men seemed to be inordinately fond of hearing themselves talk. With the notable exception of Mr. Darling. Mostly he observed in that cool, assessing manner that he had. As if he had half-expected her to perform a trick.

Perhaps he was accustomed to women vying for his attention. She supposed he was attractive enough—his features were regular and even, and he hadn’t gone to fat like so many gentlemen of leisure tended to do after a certain age, somehow confident that their charms had not waned simply due to their added girth. She supposed women—certain types of women, at least—might find him compelling. If they did not know him. Even if he was unlikely ever to inherit a title, he’d still been raised in the right circles. Even if he would not inherit a fortune, he hadmadeone.

From Violet’s father’s shipping business.

But he did have a regrettable tendency to linger where he was unwanted, and for the second time in as many days, Violet found herself waiting upon her lone straggler to collect his hat and be on his way.

It filled her with a nameless fury. That he should be here now, inherhome—even if it was really Serena’s—foisting his presence upon her as he’d foisted an unwanted marriage upon her. Her skin prickled with her ire as she pretended not to notice him lingering in the foyer. It practically crackled in the air, filled the silence that stretched between them with a high-pitched hum that might well have simply been a ringing in her ears.

“Vi,” he said, and his hand touched her sleeve; a familiar sort of touch that she would have scolded any of the other gentlemen for. She jerked away as if he’d scalded her.

“Don’t call me that. No one calls me that.” Her pulse fluttered; her skin burned beneath her sleeve as if he’d singed her—as if that simple touch had pressed upon that raw and aching wound that had reopened only last evening.

“I meant no offense.” He let his hand fall to his side, but she saw him flex his fingers before they curled in, as if he had to prevent himself from reaching out again. “I meant only—”

“Why did you not have me declared dead?” The question surprised both of them. Violet certainly had not intended to ask it, hadn’t even realized that it had been sitting there at the back of her brain. For months now. But it had given him pause, and he stared at her expectantly, with that maddeningassessingexpression—as if waiting for her to clarify. Which, to her own surprise, she did. “You could have, months ago. It’s seven years, isn’t it? You could have had me declared dead and been free of me.” She wouldn’t have protested. She’d been assuming new identities for years—it would have been all the permission she would have needed to finally make one of them permanent.

Sarah, she thought. She could have been—havekeptbeing—Sarah, and no one would ever have been the wiser. Except for herself. Except forhim.

A muscle tightened in his jaw, and he looked…overwhelmingly human. She had tried so hard to hold onto the image of him as a cold, dispassionate monster—a creature made of nightmares—but he made it impossible when he looked…so very human. He considered the question for a moment, and she imagined she could see the cogs turning in his mind, assembling the ideal answer.

“Because you weren’t dead,” he said at last, “and I did not wish to be free of you.”

“I beg your pardon?” The words came out on a shallow gasp, as if all of the air had been sucked straight out of her lungs.

Mr. Darling’s expression did not change. “Have I been unclear?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “Of course you wished to be free of me! You didn’t wish to wed me to begin with!”Cold, cold eyes. Cruel fingers clasping her hand in his. She thrust herself out of the memory. “You didn’t wish to wed me any more than I wished to wed you.”

“That’s true enough,” he acknowledged, and perversely, Violet found herself somewhat relieved that he hadn’t tried to feed her a ridiculous falsehood. With one hand, he made a casual gesture to the drawing room. “Will you take tea with me?”

“Absolutely not!” she shrilled, and skittered a step away—a move that would certainly make her cringe in mortification later.

“Hm,” he said, and accepted his hat from Davis, who thrust it into his hands with an accompanying glare. “Then I will bid you good day.” And he turned on his heel and headed for the door.

Incredulous, Violet pursued him, all of that latent rage bubbling up in her chest. “You owe me an explanation,” she said. “You—you cannot simply insert yourself into my life! I won’t have it!”

A rough sound scraped out of his throat, and Violet was shocked to realize it was laughter. Not an easy, practiced laugh, nor with any true humor to it. It was dark, and it was dour—as if he had little familiarity with amusement of any sort. “Vi, there is no doubt I owe you several explanations. And when you are ready to hear them, I will make them.” This, with a nod toward the drawing room, as if to remind her of his request of only a few seconds past. “You have only to so inform me.”

“You do not make demands of me in my own home!” Rage lent her voice an odd stridence.

But Mr. Darling was unmoved, his expression placid. “What demands have I made of you, Vi?”

Violet’s jaw worked in an effort to summon his transgressions to cast at him like a stone, but—there was nothing. There was nothing he had demanded of her.

“There you have it,” he said as he crossed the threshold. “Incidentally, I only wanted to thank you for your timely interruption with Mr. Mitchell. You saved me there.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she sneered. “I savedmyself. As I have always done.” And this time it was she, not Davis, who had the pleasure of slamming the door in his face.

Chapter Eight

“Ordinarily, John, I would never accuse you of wearing your heart on your sleeve—but then I have never seen you in such a sulk, either,” Grey said as he waved John into his office. “I take it things are not going particularly well for you?”