Page 53 of My Darling Mr. Darling

When one lacked the ability to feel deeply about anything, one could easily resist feeling atall. Or so she had thought—but in the Pandora’s box that she had made of her heart, it wasn’thopethat had remained trapped within, butanger. And anger was such a ruinous emotion; to the soul, to the psyche. Even to the heart she had thought long inured to any such thing. Anger could eat a heart away in tiny bites before one was even aware that it existed.

“I confess,” the duchess said, “it has long been my hope that my sweet little boy still lives somewhere inside of him. I want to believe he’s simply…lost in the woods. Just waiting for someone to come and take his hand. Just—” The duchess paused on a sigh, the shreds of a hopeful smile lingering at the edges of her lips. “Just waiting for someone to love him.”

Chapter Twenty

Violet knew she could simply have knocked upon the front door and Wentworth would have happily let her in. She knew also how unlikely it would have been for any particular passersby to take notice of her if she had done exactly that. She did not dress to attract attention; her clothing—while well-made—was unremarkable. It was a disguise of sorts; one that made prying eyes slide right over her as if she did not exist at all.

Once, she had relished the anonymity that it had provided. She had slipped in an out of various positions, countless lives, with such ease that she imagined there was hardly more than a shred of evidence that she had passed through at all. Like the wind, she had been entirely unseen—only the things that she had touched remained as testament to her brief presence.

A ghost, if only in name. And she had lived her life as if she had already died, doing her damnedest to be forgotten, lingering not even in memory.

She hadn’t particularlywishedto find herself resurrected, and she didn’t know what place remained for her in a world she had striven so long to keep herself well-removed from—but for the first time she felt a sense of…freedom in it. How many others took for granted their right toexistin the world, without the burden of having to carve out a place? Violet’s hold on that essential act had been tenuous for far too many years. She suspected that the temptation to loose her grip on it might rear its ugly head from time to time, but—she didn’thaveto let herself fade back into the shadows any longer.

She could give herself permission once more to simplybe. Exactly as she was, progressing toward whom she wished to become with each new day.

This time, when she stepped into the darkened house, the shadows clinging to the walls and congealing along the wainscoting did not threaten to swallow her up. This time,shewas the light that pressed them back. The tearing, twisting fingers of anxiety that had always scraped its sharpened claws through her mind stayed, for once, still and calm. She trailed her own fingers down the smooth papered walls, proceeding toward the front of the house.

Footsteps on the upper floor stilled her progress; the flickering light of a candle slid along the walls, and the stairs gave a quiet creak beneath the strain of feet. For half an instant, her heart gave a vicious pound in her chest—but it was only Wentworth, draped in his night robe, his fluffy white hair in mild disarray.

He started briefly to see her there at the base of the stairs, but recovered quickly. “Good evening, Miss Violet,” he said, his voice hushed, owing to the lateness of the hour. “Sorry to disturb you—I’m off to the kitchen to make some tea. Going to rain, you know,” he said, flexing his arm as if to demonstrate the stiffness of his joints. “Shall I fix you a cup?”

“No,” Violet blurted out. “No, thank you—I’ve just come—I’m only here for—” She cleared her throat and tried again. “Please don’t inform Mr. Darling.”

“Whatever for?” Wentworth asked, his bushy brows drawing together in confusion. “Miss Violet, Mr. Darling was very clear that this is your home, and you’re to come and go freely.”

Home. The word rattled around in her brain, in her heart. She swallowed down the queer lump that rose in her throat and said, “Yes. Well. I’ll just—I’ll be about my business, then.”

“Of course. Good evening, miss.” Wentworth slipped past her down the hall, the candlelight receding until he disappeared round a corner. And Violet was alone once more, free to wander as she pleased.

This time of night, John was almost certainly asleep upstairs. Even as she crept silently toward his office, Violet wondered if she had unconsciously chosen to come when he was sure to be present. She had not forgotten the promises she had made to him, even if they had been made under a sort of duress. All day through she had quibbled with herself over going to him—or not going to him—and finally she had decided that at the very least she ought to continue her search through her father’s things.

Perhaps it had simply been an excuse, even to herself. Shecouldhave sent a note round to Wentworth, or perhaps even Mrs. Nettles, to ask to be informed when John had left for his business office earlier in the day. Instead she had chosen to come in the dead of night, when he was sure to be present. Just in case.

Her heart performed a strange little anticipatory flutter in her chest.Just in caseher curiosity outweighed her caution. Probably it amounted to a personal failing on her part, but she had had little enough pleasure in her life lately, and the promise of more was…tempting.

Extremelytempting.

This time, the office door gave beneath the pressure of her hand with only the slightest creak. Unlocked, opened—as if she was expected. She held her breath as she closed the door behind her and scurried through the clinging darkness within to fling the curtains open, admitting the silky glow of the moonlight, made hazy by the thick clouds blanketing the night sky. It was not the most ideal lighting, perhaps, for sorting through paperwork, but it would have to do.

She began with the desk, sorting through drawers which had also been left unlocked, as if for her perusal. Various folios revealed contracts to be signed or revised, with notes jotted into the margins for corrections. In the faint glow of the moonlight she examined them, surprised by the extent to which her father’s company had grown. It had been an empire of its own, once, a titan of the shipping industry—but John had expanded it tenfold, in ways she had never expected. There was hardly an area of business that it seemed John’s expertise had not collected beneath his purview. He owned interests in mills, mines, and farms, so that his empire did not simply transport products, but manufactured them as well.

In this manner, he could both control for quality, and undercut his competition in various markets, ensuring a stranglehold on exclusive contracts with merchants. Controlling nearly every aspect of production—from manufacture to shipment—provided him an invaluable advantage.

A name leapt out at her from the top of another sheet of paper; this one a proposition for a merger with an American shipping company—signed by a Mr. Lucas Mitchell, of Boston.

Mr. Mitchell. The same Mr. Mitchell who had been causing such a ruckus in her class? Given the tone of the letter—which vacillated between stern and disparaging—Violet concluded it must be so. Apparently, Mr. Mitchell was not well pleased that his suggestion had been summarily declined.

Given what she knew of Mr. Mitchell, Violet could not find fault with John’s refusal to do business with him, despite the fact that the contract itself promised to be quite lucrative. He seemed to like nothing so much as to antagonize John, and she wondered if Serena’s husband had suggested him as a student for precisely that reason.

Carefully she replaced the folios in their drawer, her gaze shearing along the top of the desk, from a half-finished letter to the manager of a fabric mill, past a stack of correspondence, to a single letter perched precariously at the very edge of the desk, as if it had been tossed there by a careless hand.

She picked it up, turning it in her hands to read the sender’s name: the Earl of Haverford. It produced a shred of memory in her mind—John’s grandfather; the one the duchess had spoken so poorly of. Clearly, John felt much the same, as he hadn’t bothered to open it.

The seal remained unbroken, the black wax shining in the faint light of the moon. Violet swallowed hard, resisting the urge to peel it away and read its contents for herself, which would have been a terrible invasion of privacy. The contracts—well, they were all business—but this letter waspersonal, and she certainly did not have the right to pry into it.

Still, she could not quite make herself put it down.

Light pressed in at the doorway, and she jumped, startled.