Page 21 of My Darling Mr. Darling

“Has Serena mentioned something to that effect?” John inquired as he settled into a chair.

Grey gave a little snort. “Ifshe had, I would be violating her confidence to tell you of it,” he said. “So I’ll carry no tales, if it’s all the same to you.”

Of course it was not all the same; how could it be? First Grey had enacted a ridiculous proposition, and now he refused to be of assistance when John desperately required it of him. “What a fine friend you have turned out to be,” John remarked caustically, reaching for the nearest decanter of spirits. If he could not pick Grey’s brain for information, then he could, at least, do his level best to deplete his liquor.

“And what a fine husband you have turned out to be,” Grey said, and even if the words were light, the barbs still stabbed deep. “Granted, you haven’t had much of a chance to be better than you are—”

“She’s terrified of me,” John bit out. “I touched her sleeve—hersleeve—and she vaulted back like she thought I might drag her out by her hair. She avoids speaking to me beyond what is necessary during her lessons.” He tossed back a measure of whisky and plunked the glass back down upon the sideboard. “Today she asked me why I had not had her declared dead.”

Grey canted his head minutely to the left. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because I knew she bloody wasn’t dead!” Frustration roiled beneath his skin, and he tapped his fingertips on the arm of his chair. “She’ll break into my damned house but she won’t hold a conversation.”

“Is there any reason why she ought?”

John jerked, startled by the advent of a new voice. Serena stood in the doorway, a golden-furred spaniel puppy dozing in her arms. He hadn’t even heard her approach. But then again, he wouldn’t have put it past Serena to eavesdrop if she thought it would serve Violet somehow.

Disconcerted, John muttered, “Sheismywife.”

“Oh, Lord,” Grey said on a groan. “You really ought not to have said that.”

Serena’s face darkened to thundercloud ferocity. “And of course, a wife must be answerable to her husband in all things.”

The scathing timbre of her voice raised the fine hairs at the nape of John’s neck. “That’s not what I—”

Serena’s voice soared over his own. “Even whenthe wife in question has had almost no contact with said husband in nearly a decade, and his last act was to send her away to a finishing school that would have made a sentence served in Newgate seem palatable by comparison.” Jarred to alertness by Serena’s sharp words, the puppy quivered with excitement and landed sloppy licks to the underside of her chin. The fact that Serena could maintain her scowl through all of that canine adoration was a testament to the depths of her ire.

John tried again. “Serena, I—”

“Do youknowhow many years she has spent running, John?Doyou?”

“Of course I do!” John surged to his feet, his shoulder snapping straight with tension. “As many as I’ve spent searching for her!” Unfortunately, shouting had brought Grey to his feet as well, and he gentled his tone lest he force Grey into defending his wife. “I didn’t know about the school,” he said. “It was her disappearance that made me look into it. Once I learned of what had occurred there—what methods were enacted upon the girls in their care to bring them to obedience—I pressed my influence to have it shut down. I would never have sent her there had I known.”

Serena’s expression did not waver. “Six months she was there, John.Six months. Have you any idea what was done to her? Truly?”

“I can imagine,” he said through clenched teeth. “Sometimes, I wish I could not.” Theknowingwhat had occurred there, what the other girls had spoken of—and being powerless to change it, to fix it—had kept him awake at night for years. Knowing that Violet had moved from menial job to menial job while he enjoyed the fruits of her father’s business was equally loathsome. “If I had known, I would have—”

“What?” Serena inquired crossly. “Hidden her away in another school? Perhaps sent her off to the country to rusticate, as husbands have been doing with unwanted wives for centuries? Anywhere, provided you could forget about her?”

“I don’t know,” John ground out. “It’s impossible to say what Imighthave done.” He raked a hand through his hair in aggravation. “By the time I discovered she was missing, it was too late to do anything but follow where she’d been. I took out advertisements, had posters made, offered rewards—I wrote to her through the bloodyTimes, Serena. I asked her to come home.”

The puppy in her arms began to whine, her little paws flailing, as she caught sight of Grey and gave an insistent yip that induced Serena to set her on her feet to go scrabbling across the rug. “Why should she have listened?” Serena asked, her hands freed to fist on her hips. “Whathomehad she to return to? Where should she have gone, when everything was yours? Why should she have gone where she knew herself to be unwanted?”

And John had no response to that, for it was the truth. Violet had been a responsibility, a burden thrust upon him—a wife he had not wanted. If she had answered his summons and come homethen, he likelywouldhave packed her off to the country, or to another—well-vetted—finishing school. It had taken years of learning about her through her vacated positions, through her rare letters, through stories he had begged and bought from those who had known her to appreciate her exactly as she was.

But that current flowed only one way—Violet did not knowhim. Of course she didn’t. She couldn’t. And he—he had upset the relatively even keel of her life once more. How long had it been since she had had anything even approximating safety or security? How long since she had last had afriend?

Too many years at least. These last years, Violet had eschewed entanglements, and the positions she had left had not been gaping wounds left raw by her absence, but places hardly marked by her passage through them. She was remembered, but not mourned, because she was careful to keep a crucial distance between herself and everyone else. It had been that separation that had protected her—but how very lonely it must have been.

Here, shewaswanted. She had carved out a life for herself, and a friend, and a profession. And his very presence had threatened to tear her from it, just as he had torn her away from everything she had known once before.

Dimly, he heard the puppy give several high-pitched whimpers of excitement, heard Grey make soothing noises and murmur something like, “Here, now, Cassandra—Papa’s got you.” And still Serena stared him down with all the outraged femininity she could muster, which happened to be quite a lot. Waiting, it seemed, upon an appropriate response.

A dull flush of embarrassment burned across his face; in vain he looked to Grey for rescue—certainly he must have learned to manage his harpy of a wife well enough by now. But Grey was content to let Serena pick—and fight—her own battles, and he merely shrugged with an expression that could best be classified asWell-what-would-you-have-me-do? And turned his attention back to the pup, who had settled herself across his lap, wriggling on her back in ecstasy to the stroke of his fingers along her soft belly.

John cleared his throat. “She has a home. She has always had a home.” But it reeked of a lie, and Serena was not mollified. Suffocating beneath the weight of her censorious stare, at last he admitted, “Perhaps I have set my expectations too highly.”

“Perhaps you should rethink having expectations at all,” Serena suggested. “Why shouldyourwants carry more weight than Violet’s? Have you ever once simply stopped to consider what she might want?”