Page 6 of My Darling Mr. Darling

Serena heaved a weary sigh as her attempts to brush away the dirt that had flown up with the leg of the bench had resulted only in an ugly brown smear across the front of her gown and the palms of her gloves. “Well,” she hedged, “Grey has been teaching me the finer points of lock picking. I was rather clumsy at it, I’ll admit—but I was looking forward to trying out my skills.” She wiggled her wrist, and within the confines of the reticule hanging around it, something made a faint jingling sound.

Violet let out a little snort of amusement; exactly the sort of sound Mrs. Selkirk had tried to crush out of her so many years ago. “I hope that won’t be necessary,” she said, scraping away the dirt from the foot of the bench until at last a key, old and rusted, was revealed beneath it. She rubbed away as much of the dirt as she could upon her skirt and prayed Mr. Darling hadn’t gotten round to changing out the locks.

“This is rather exciting,” Serena murmured as they crept back up the steps onto the terrace. “Do you think we shall be arrested if we are caught?”

“I doubt it,” Violet said, gingerly easing the key into the lock. At least, shehopednot. Most of the staff remained from when she had been a girl, and in all likelihood they would remember her. And of course, Mr. Darling would not wish to arrest the wife of one of his closest friends. But who could say what he would have in mind forher? Or whether the staff that remained would even recognize her?

A frisson of fear slipped down her spine, but she shoved it from her mind and twisted the key resolutely. A softclickheralded her success, and she suppressed a sigh of relief.

The door swung open, silent and smooth, revealing the unlit morning room. As she crossed the threshold into the house proper, it felt like stepping back through time. As if at any moment she might hear Papa’s footsteps on the stairs, see him carrying a candle downstairs to the library for a late night glass of port before bed.

A mist of tears blurred her vision for a moment, which was ridiculous, because she hadn’t cried in years and years.

“Oh, my,” Serena murmured as she, too, stepped inside, the soft soles of her dancing slippers barely more than a whisper over the parquet floors. “It’s lovely. Has it changed much since you last lived here?”

“No,” Violet said, her brows drawing together. “No, it’s—well, the furniture’s been reupholstered, but it’s the same.” She recognized the distinctive, ornate designs. The same furniture, in the same position as it had been placed years ago. Probably Mr. Darling did not spend much time within the morning room, and it made no difference to him how it was arranged. “Come. Let’s not dally. And mind the sixth step on the stairs—it squeaks.”

Carefully they crept through the darkened house, and Violet tried to ignore the pounding of her pulse in her ears, the creeping sense of unease. The house remained the same—exactlythe same, as if it had been lost to time. The art that hung upon the walls was placed exactly as it ought to be, exactly as she remembered. Perhaps some draperies had changed here and there, some things that had needed repair even years ago had been mended or otherwise resurfaced, but nothing substantial had been in any way altered.

As if it were a monument to a time that had long passed.

“Here,” Violet murmured, stopping before a door on the upper level. “Papa’s office.” Now Mr. Darling’s, unless she missed her guess. They ought to be safe on the second level—the servants all slept on the third—but she kept her voice low regardless. She tugged the door handle, but it didn’t give.

Serena made a muted sound of glee. “May I?” Before Violet could respond, she dropped into a crouch and tugged her reticule off of her wrist, pulling the strings to shove her hand inside.

Doubtfully, Violet whispered, “Is there enough light?”

“Oh, I don’t need light,” Serena said back, waving a dismissive hand. “Grey says the feel of the tools is far more important. You’ve got to see with the fingers, not with the eyes.”

It sounded like a load of rubbish to Violet, but she stepped back anyway and let Serena work. For a few moments, there was only the quiet metallic scrape of tools working in the lock, and soft, speculative sounds from Serena.

“Drat,” Serena muttered softly. “I think I’ve—wait a moment—there it is.” At last there was the distinctiveclickof a lock releasing, and Serena uttered a soft squeal of delight as the door opened, spilling pale moonlight into the hallway. “I did it! Oh, Grey will besoproud of—”

“Shh,” Violet hissed. “Wentworth hasincrediblehearing.” Or at least he had ten years ago. “And you absolutely mustnottell his lordship, besides.”

“Oh,” Serena said, her lips pursing in disappointment. “I suppose you’re right. He’d want to know details.” She squinted up at Violet. “I truly can’t tell him?”

Shaking her head, Violet offered Serena her hand to help her back to her feet. “What if he told Mr. Darling?”

“He wouldn’t, not if I asked it of him. Oh, Sarah—I mean, Violet.” Serena winced. “Terribly sorry.”

“It’s quite all right,” Violet said. “Honestly, I haven’t been Violet in so many years that it seems strange to me, as well.” Until just recently, she had been Sarah—but before that, she had been Mary, and Grace, and Kate, and for one miserable winter, Maude. She’d had a dozen or more different names, and she’d used and discarded them as easily as some people discarded outworn slippers. Sarah had only been the most recent of them, but she had felt comfortable with it, at ease with herself and her life in a way she hadn’t felt in years.

It had been so long since she had beenVioletthat she wasn’t certain of who Violet was anymore. Violet had been a lonely, frightened waif of a girl, and every name she had had since then had been another layer of armor, a disguise she had donned to hide herself from the world—but most of all, from her husband.

Now that those layers had been stripped away, she feared that she had lost herself along with them. That she was once more reduced to that girl she had been so many years ago, and she could cobble nothing together from the tatters of the myriad lives she had lived since.

Within each identity she had dawned, she had found something she had liked: a character, an attitude, apersonality. But none of them had been her; not really. They had been just the inventions of a woman who hadn’t known who she was since childhood.

Perhaps Serena would discover that she liked Violet somewhat less than she had liked Sarah. How could shenot, when Violet had lied to her about something so important?

“Violet?” Serena squeezed her fingers gently, and Violet realized she’d been woolgathering—and housebreaking wasnotan appropriate time for such reflections.

“Sorry,” she said, releasing Serena’s fingers with a touch of shame. It would not leave her mind, even as she slipped into the office, that she had done Serena a terrible disservice, and still Serena had come with her on this unbelievably foolish expedition—insistedupon it, even.

Serena closed the door soundlessly behind her as she entered, crossing to the window to draw back the curtains, admitting the moonlight. “I don’t mean to pry,” she said softly, “but it occurs to me that if I knew what we had come for, we could search that much faster.”

Another pang of guilt struck Violet’s already battered conscience, because Serena had never pried—not once. She had simply let Violet keep her secrets, to be revealed when and if Violet chose to disclose them. She had not questioned the nature of Violet’s errand here, into this house that had once belonged to her; she had simplycome.