Page 22 of My Darling Mr. Darling

That, John thought, was hardly a fair accusation. “Of course I have,” he snapped. “For God’s sake, I practically invited her to break into my damned house—I gave her the evidence I’d collected on the Selkirk school so that she would know that I rectified my mistake because I thought she would wish to know. I would apologize—if she would deign to grant me the opportunity.”

“Herhouse, John. She has just as much right to it as you,” Serena chided, and she heaved an exasperated sigh, shaking her head ruefully, as if he had wearied her. “I’m glad—and I’m certain Violet is glad—that you closed that awful school,” she said slowly, softly. “But you didn’t fix anything, John. You saved those girls—”

Finally, a concession.

“—but you didn’t save Violet. She savedherself, John.”

The very echo of Violet’s words from earlier in the afternoon. His indignation died an abrupt, strangely humiliating death, choking on its own unearned righteousness. Shame churned in his gut, clawed at his throat.

Serena brushed past him toward Grey’s desk, where she laid one hand on the smooth surface of freshly-polished mahogany. A glass inkwell, intricately etched with little climbing vine patterns, rested just before her fingers, and she tapped one fingertip against it. “Suppose I knocked this off the desk,” she suggested. “What do you think would happen?”

“I wish you would not, Mouse,” said Grey. “I’m rather fond of it.” The puppy—Cassandra—had fallen into a doze on his lap, the soft snuffle of her breaths coming evenly.

She slanted her husband a cross look for half a second before she returned her attention to John. “Humor me. What would happen?”

John considered the trajectory of the bottle—to the floor, away from the rug; the fragility of the glass—very thin, extremely fine and delicate. A showpiece; no sturdy, common inkwell this. “It would break. The ink would spill.”

“Precisely. Now tell me what purpose an apology would serve.”

John felt his brow furrow. “You would apologize…to the inkwell?”

“Why should I not? The inkwell would be what has been damaged by my hypothetical carelessness.” She gave a casual shrug of her shoulders, but those queer grey eyes were sharp and shrewd. “What value has an apology to something that has been broken? Now, you might make amends—pick up the shards, clean the ink, perhaps purchase a new inkwell to replace what was broken—but there is no magic in an apology. It does not turn back the clock and restore something broken to new. And sometimes, John,sometimesthe effects of our actions reach further than we can imagine. Perhaps the ink would set into the floor so deeply that it could not be scrubbed out. Always,always, that spot would bear the marks of my transgression. Even if the inkwell couldoffer forgiveness, the evidence of what I had done would remain.”

“Ah,” he said. “Violet is the inkwell.”

“No, Violet isViolet. The inkwell is a damned metaphor. Do try to keep up.”

Grey snickered; that disloyal bastard.

“Thepointis that the damage exists. You cannot erase it with an apology. You cannot erase it atall.” Serena lifted her hand from the desk, let drop her lessons and metaphors. “You saved those girls, John, and I am so, so very proud of you for that. But what have you done for Violet? Is she supposed to be so easily placated? Is she meant to graciously accept your apology, your regrets, your verypresence, when there is no benefit to her?”

Of course there were benefits. Just…none that he had brought to her attention, because she would not speak with him. And here was Serena, insisting that expecting her time and attention was akin to an unpardonable sin.

And perhaps she wasn’twrong. Perhaps he had let his own expectations skew his behavior; perhaps he had given too much weight to his own opinion of what Violet ought to want, whathethought she was owed—barreling right over her in the process. And itwasinexcusable, because he had handed down his judgment of what was best for her once before, with disastrous results.

It was not in his nature to surrender control. He’d had little enough of it in his life, and what he had gained, he guarded ruthlessly. But Violet, too, had been powerless, and she had, against all odds, found something that might constitute a home. Ties that she had eschewed for the better part of a decade at last had seduced her into putting down roots. Loose ones, yes, new and young and far from firmly anchored—but roots nonetheless.

And she did deserve them. To press too hard would be to force her to abandon them, and that would be doubly cruel in the context of their history.

“All right,” he said. “I concede. What would you suggest?”

Serena hesitated. “I mean no insult, but you have not precisely inspired trust,” she said. “But you could build it, if you had a mind to try.” Gnawing on her lower lip, she asked, “What do you hope to gain, John—a wife, or an annulment? I ask because one is significantly more likely than the other.”

Therein lay the problem, because John had not known the answer to that question in years. And so he dissembled with a question of his own. “I think I have learned that it matters less what I hope to gain than what Violet wants. Wouldn’t you agree?”

∞∞∞

Violet lingered over her supper the following day, bored and lonely. She had never suspected she would miss the life of drudgery that she had endured for so many years—and she didn’t. Mostly. But shedidmiss the activity, for without it, there was simply too much time to sit and think. At least when she had been a maid, she had had mountains of linens to wash, or clothes to iron, or dishes to scrub, or any number of tasks to complete and little enough time to complete them in, and if she had come away with burns and scalds and aching muscles, at least she had also come away with a bone-deep exhaustion that took her to her bed and into sleep nearly immediately.

Now she had hours upon hours to sit, to think, to reflect, and she did not know what to do with that time. She could read, she supposed—or play the pianoforte. These were activities she had not indulged in for many years. But she didn’t think she could quiet the buzz of her brain long enough to curl up on the sofa with a novel, and she hesitated to consider whether or not her fingers could still find the proper positions upon the keys if she attempted the pianoforte.

Neither of those held much appeal, anyway. What she would have liked was to spend the evening in Serena’s company, going over the notes she had made of the gentlemen’s class that had concluded for the week and helping Serena prepare for the ladies’ class that was to begin tomorrow.

Alas, Serena had sent round a note begging off, as she and her husband had been invited to dine with the Duke of Davenport and his mother. Which had left Violet alone with her thoughts. Which were much too loud and obnoxious, flittering about her head like gnats.

There was the fact that Mr. Darling hadn’t attempted to hang back after the rest of her students this afternoon, and so she had had no excuse to slam the door in his face, nor to cast aspersions on his character or accusations at his head.

There was Mr. Mitchell’s annoying propensity to disrupt her class with inane commentary on the facets of propriety that he considered beneath him—which was everything. And the fact that despitehis tendency to launch into criticism at every opportunity, Violet suspected he was not ignorant of these social mores. His manner was too cocky, too contrived; his infractions too calculated to be born of ignorance. From what she could glean, his only interest in her class was the pleasure he received from needling Mr. Darling. Why it should be Mr. Darling to bear the brunt of his juvenile antics, Violet could not guess, but she had begun to suspect that perhaps there was some personal history betwixt the two of them.