Page 3 of My Darling Mr. Darling

I am well. Do not look for me.

“Bold of her,” Grey said. “You could have traced the letter.”

“I did,” John said. At least, he had traced it to the office it had been sorted through, but it could have come from any of the surrounding towns. With no return address, he had had little to go on. Determining where, precisely, she had been living when it she had posted it had been a different beast entirely. “It took two weeks to find the tavern she had been working at, only to find she’d left her position the week prior without notice.” He scratched at the nape of his neck. “She’d been calling herself Lucy, then. Lucy Johnstone. Slept in the back room with another serving wench, on a pallet that was practically crawling with fleas.”

Grey heaved a sigh and made a distasteful sound in the back of his throat. “I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.”

But she wasnota beggar. She was a bloodyheiress.

“Lucy’s trail began and ended there, in Kent, not five miles from Mrs. Selkirk’s seminary. She never used the name again.” He clenched his hand into a fist and then extended his fingers one by one, ticking off her identities upon them. “Since then she’s been Mary, Maude, Susan, and Elizabeth, among others. Most recently, as you know, she was Sarah. I always find her—a bit too late. She doesn’t write until she’s ready to move on.” And by then it was always too late. She had too much of a lead, and she cast off identities like soiled frocks.

“She writes?” Alex inquired. “Bit reckless of her. It’s not as if she could expect a letter back.”

John coughed into his hand. “That’s notstrictlytrue,” he said. “I placed the first advertisement inThe Times, so I assumed she must have read it there.”

“Ah,” Grey said. “You wrote back through advertisements, then?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” John sighed. “I had no other recourse—she’d eluded me at every turn. I addressed the first message to her last known alias, Miss Lucy ‘Violet’ Johnstone, which I was certain would get her attention.”

“And did it work?” This, from Alex.

“Three months later, I received another letter. She made reference to the advertisement within it. Of course, she had posted the letter just as she had moved on, so I was once again too late to find her. And it’s gone on that way for years. I post advertisements—using her latest initials—and she responds only when she’s left her latest post.” John rubbed his chin, feeling the growth of new stubble there. “I suspected she was in London—each successive position has brought her closer and closer to the city. But she’s been so many things; a scullery maid, a barmaid, a seamstress, a flower girl—no one has the resources to scour each and every residence, tavern, and shop between Kent and London.”

Grey cleared his throat. “Clearly,” he said, “she didn’t wish to be found.”

But if not for John, she would never have beenlostto begin with. He had been young and bitter and disillusioned, and he had held Violet responsible for the predicament in which he had found himself. Not once had he considered that he had not been the only one trapped in an unwanted marriage.

And Violet had been so young. Alone in the world, working menial jobs to provide for herself, when she ought to have been safe and secure in her own home. Instead, he had cast her from it—a young woman newly orphaned, with no other family. She had lost not only her father, her home, and her security, she had lost the use of even her name, since she had had to take up aliases to avoid detection.

The inciting incident might have been her father’s death, but it had been John who had stolen her life from her. It had taken months for him to learn that Townsend had indeed entrusted with what he had held most precious, and it had never been his company. John had simply been the only man to whom he felt he could entrust his daughter’s future.

If he only knew how badly John had failed in that regard, Townsend would be turning in his grave.

“I suppose if I’d been married and summarily shipped off to a horrible finishing school, I wouldn’t want to be found, either,” John said. “It is an unfortunate fact for women that they lose many of their rights and privileges upon marriage.” All of a sudden, Violet had owned nothing at all—everything she had possessed had become his by right of law. And having escaped one nightmarish seminary, she was likely in no hurry to be sent off to another—or to a country estate, or any number of places it would have been his right to send her.

Grey made a noncommittal sound, grimacing. “Women lose all sorts of things to the machinations of men,” he said. “But Mouse is quite attached to Violet. You can understand the position this places me in, of course. A man’s got a duty to his wife.”

And it went without saying that Grey, never the most scrupulous of men in the best of times and entirely enamored of his wife, would pit himself against the combined forces of Hell if Serena—whom Grey affectionately calledMouse—requested it of him.

“My point exactly,” John said. “A manhasgot a duty to his wife, and I’ve neglected mine too long.” Though not for want of trying.

Alex gave an undignified snort. “A wife in name only,” he said. “Whatduty, precisely, could you have to a woman you don’t even know?”

The duty of a villain to a victim. The duty of a man who had spent years untangling the snarled threads of a life lived in fear and desperation. The irony of it all was that despite their brief acquaintance, there was no other woman in the world John knew as well as he knew Violet. He’d not spent so many years chasing her down only to let her slip through his fingers once more.

But that was not a thought to be voiced aloud, and so he said, “I owe her the opportunity to free herself of an unwanted marriage.”

“An annulment?” Grey suggested.

“If that’s what she wants,” John said. “My solicitors are in agreement that there is a good chance of obtaining one, given the circumstances of our marriage and the fact that we have never lived together as husband and wife.” Along with a healthy bribe, of course.

“Still, it’s an expensive undertaking. And for Violet especially, costlier still.” Grey swirled his whisky in its glass. “I assume you intend to compensate her for the scandal of it all?”

“Naturally. If she wants an annulment, she’ll be provided for.” It was the least of which she was owed. “I’ve had the papers drawn up. We need only come to amicable terms.”

“If?” Alex’s brows lifted. “Ifshe wants an annulment?”

John shrugged. “It would hardly be polite to annul our marriage without so much as aby your leave, now, would it?”