Page 24 of My Darling Mr. Darling

“My first class begins tomorrow,” Serena chirped, in a noble effort to accommodate Alex. “And to all appearances, Violet’s class is going exceedingly well. Well, except for—” Her eyes flitted to John, widened, and dropped back to her plate. “Mr. Mitchell,” she concluded at last, hastily.

“Oh?” John inquired, slanting a speaking glance to Grey. “And just howdidMr. Mitchell end up there?”

“Same as anyone else,” Grey said, his voice absent any meaningful inflection. “He has family who have a vested interest in him comporting himself as a gentleman. His sister also happens to be enrolled in Serena’s class.”

“John,” the duchess said, “Do you…happen to know this Mr. Mitchell?”

“We have an…acquaintanceship of sort,” John acknowledged.

“Do you, then,” Grey said, although John was certain from the tone of his voice that it had not been a question.

“He’s detestable,” John returned.

“Is he.” Again, not a question, and still Grey's face revealed nothing. “Pity. I suppose that’s what one gets when one is granted afavorof significant difficulty.”

So Greyhadplaced Mitchell deliberately.

“John?” the duchess inquired. “Who is Mr. Mitchell to you?”

“No one in particular,” he said, and it was true—for the most part. “He is a shipping magnate from Boston, looking to expand his business. Some time ago, he offered a merger, which I declined.” And which Mitchell had taken exceptionally poorly. Apparently, his refusal had thrown quite a wrench into Mitchell’s plans.

“Are you certain that was wise?” Alex asked. “It occurs to me that such a merger would have been quite lucrative for you, as well.”

“It would have been,” John acknowledged, spearing a bit of roasted parsnip dredged in a buttery garlic sauce. “But it came part and parcel with his sister’s hand in marriage.” And it went without saying why he could not possibly have accepted that—though Mitchell had expressed no small amount of offense over his tactful, if not particularly explanatory, refusal.

“Thatisrather the way of things,” the duchess said with a sigh.

Unfortunately it was so, even in England.Especiallyin England. Marriage for money or power or social status. Or the business one had helped to revitalize. Or the safety of a deceased father’s beloved only child.

“Yes, well,Mitchell’sway of things is to criminally underpay his employees while simultaneously demanding backbreaking labor of them,” John said. “However lucrative such a merger might have been, I won’t have Mitchell’s grasping hands mucking about inmybusiness.”

By the bland expression Grey wore, John could see that this, too, was not news. But he did not choose to explain himself, or to dignify John’s assertion with a response. Instead, John was left with the impression that the favor he had requested of Grey had been more of a deal with the Devil than anything else—and dealing with Mitchell in the flesh was the due exacted.

“Of course not,” Grey said. “I don’t believe anyone ever implied that you should.”

The duchess’ gaze traveled between them, her brow furrowing in confusion as she sensed the undercurrents of tension pervading her elegant dining room. At last she gave a sigh and rolled her eyes heavenward, breathing out a heartfelt, scornful, “Men,” to the accompaniment of Serena’s sympathetic nod.

Chapter Nine

The letter arrived precisely on schedule, as they always did, at precisely three o’clock on Thursday afternoon. John could not be certain why his grandfather had chosen Thursdays—perhaps because to so illustrious a personage as the Earl of Haverford, there existed no particular time constraints, nothing that even remotely bore resemblance to a working man’s schedule. He sent letters according to his own schedule and no one else’s, and it pleased him to have his letters delivered to John on Thursday afternoons, as if John would have nowhere else better to be and nothing else better to do than to receive it.

It went—unread, along with all of the others—straight into the rubbish bin.

He had not spoken with his grandfather in nearly a dozen years—ever since he had announced his intention to go into business with Townsend. By then he had already been accustomed to the scornful glances his grandfather had seemed to reserve exclusively for him, but he would never forget the disdain in the curled lips, the narrowed eyes.

“Gentlemen,” Grandfather had sneered, “do not sully their hands withtrade.” It had been an immutable truth in his eyes, and it had been the very last time they had spoken. John had not counted it any great loss, given the fact that his grandfather had rarely had a word to speak to him at all, and if he did, it had never once been anything complimentary or in the least charitable.

As a child he had been hurt by this, but he had learned eventually that his grandfather was a cold, unforgiving man. He’d nurtured a grudge against his son, John’s father, and it had not died with John’s parents—he had merely transferred ownership of it to John.

There might’ve been a time that he would have liked nothing better than to have his grandfather’s attention—hislove, even. But he had been a child, then, very young and very stupid, and not yet knowledgeable of the fact that love could hurt just as deeply as neglect. But he had grown since then, and he had stopped seeking such childish, foolish things.

Still, the very fact that his grandfather had started writing to him some months ago was…irksome. Rather like an insect buzzing in his ear. But for the letters, John would long ago have forgotten about the old man. But he devoted no more time to him than it took to receive and then promptly dispose of his missives, and that, as far as he was concerned, was that.

There were far more pressing issues to contend with. How to reach Violet, when she would not deign to speak with him. He had not missed the fleeting expression of relief that had skittered across her face for the space of a second when it had become clear that he would be the first out the door after lessons had concluded yesterday afternoon. And he had known then that Serena had been right.

He had seen their reunion—such as it was—as the culmination of years of work, speculation, and planning, and he had exulted in having at last run Violet to ground, while Violet…Violet was living a nightmare. Performing a fragile and delicate balancing act between who shewasand who she wished to be. He did not know why he had not considered it before, but it had taken Serena’s furious defense of her friend to understand that he might know so much of the minutia of Violet’s life—at least, the life she had lived in the past several years—but he did not know Violetherself. Not really. Not in any way that mattered.

It was a kind of naïveté that occurred to him only in retrospect; that ofcourseViolet would not have experienced a similar relief to be caught at last. She had been the one running, escaping their shared past with each new identity she had donned. Now he had forced her back into it, and he…he had so much more power than did she. It wasn’t something he had ever truly considered; the vast power imbalance between them. It was simply the way of the world for men—masters of their homes, their lives, theirwives.