Page 62 of My Darling Mr. Darling
“Tea?” Serena inquired, with a smooth gesture of her hand toward the silver tea service already prepared and gently steaming upon the low table before the sofa.
Violet shoved her bundled clothing into a corner of the sofa and collapsed upon it with a sigh as Serena busied herself with preparing two cups of tea. “Do you think I am being terribly foolish?” she asked, accepting the cup that Serena placed into her hands.
“Of course not,” Serena said, reaching out to squeeze Violet’s arm, her grey eyes softening in sympathy. “Why ever would you think such a thing?”
“I seem to have developed a habit of getting myself into trouble,” Violet said, looking down into her cup. “Embroiling myself in situations beyond my control.”
“Ah.” Serena placed a teacake on a small saucer. “And how do you generally handle these situations?”
Violet gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Usually I don’t have to. I leave. I always leave, before—before they can catch up to me.” Before the consequences of her actions could crash down around her, she had always simplyleft. Become a new person. Started a new life—created more trouble, and abandoned that, too. As if she were trapped in a vicious cycle, she had made a habit of tearing down any chance for stability, any chance for happiness.Thissituation had been built upon a house of cards, one breath from toppling from the very beginning. And yet—and yet there was a part of her that wanted to hold onto it, even though she knew that it could only slip through her fingers. There was nothing of stability in it. There never had been.
“And now?” Serena prompted, her head tilted in inquiry.
“I want to stay,” Violet heard herself whisper. “I want to stay—but I can’t have that, can I? I have only a marriage that is not a marriage, a husband who is not a husband. I didn’t want any of it.” So why did the thought of it slipping away from her hurt so badly?
“Didn’t?” Serena asked, “Ordon’t?”
“I don’t know.” It was the first time she had admitted as much to herself. She took a swift, shaking breath, and her hands trembled around her teacup. “I don’t know what I want.” She gave a rasping laugh, surprised by the strange lump of emotion that had risen in her throat. “When I was young, I had this—this fantasy of coming to London for my first Season. Of meeting the man who would become my husband. Of falling in love.” Her shoulders rose and fell as she heaved a sigh. “It sounds so foolish now—the silly dream of a silly girl.”
“Not so silly,” Serena said, settling back onto the sofa, drawing up her knees beneath her as she faced Violet. They had become so comfortable, these moments when propriety was abandoned—when they slipped off their shoes and curled up and chatted like old friends. “I would imagine many girls dream of the same.”
But how many of them had had to let go of that dream when a stranger had clasped her hand in his and married her when her father was hardly cold in the ground? How many of them had spent years fleeing the husband they had loathed with every fiber of their being? How many had then had to come to terms with the fact that they mightnotdetest their husbands quite as strenuously as they had once done?
“It was…it was all so unfair,” Violet said. “I just wish I knew why Papa did this to me.” She blinked to banish the sting of tears. “I wish I had…I wish I had been given the opportunity to fall in love. On my own terms, in my own way.”
“Haven’t you?”
“What—what do you mean?” Startled, Violet nearly tipped her tea into her lap.
Serena smothered a laugh in her palm. “Violet, you’ve been carrying on most improperly—or, whatwouldbe improperly, had the gentlemen involved not been your husband. You’ve sneaked him inside the townhouse at a most unsuitable hour, and just this morning I arrived to take breakfast with you only to find that you had spent the night elsewhere. I can only assume that some morning I shall arrive to find thathehas spent the nighthere.”
Shifting uncomfortably, Violet murmured something noncommittal, and hoped that she looked appropriately chastened.
“If there is a better example of how I had imagined you might behave in the grips of a torrid love affair, nothing comes immediately to mind.” Serena braced her cheek in her hand and grinned. “How lucky you are, to be able to fall in love with your own husband.”
Violet’s teacup clattered onto its saucer. “I’m not,” she said, her voice pitched far too high. “I’m not—amI? Oh, God—Ican’tbe! He’s…he’s infuriating!”
“Mm,” Serena murmured, her lips pursing to hold back a smile. “But not quite so infuriating as to preclude a visit to his home after dark? Where you then stayed until well into the afternoon?”
“I was…I was searching Papa’s office.” Violet said defensively. “He caught me, and then—”
“Andthen?”
“Well, I’m not made of stone.” Her cheeks were burning. “Women are just as susceptible to temptation when it is presented.” Especially when it had come equipped with such a broad, warm chest and clever fingers. The thought made her heart pound in her chest, made herterrified. “I can’t love him,” she said on a trembling breath, her heart sinking to her toes. “I can’t.”
“Why is that?” Serena asked.
“Because he doesn’t love me.” Her eyes closed, and she bent her head before the queer expression that she could not quite conceal beneath a veneer of nonchalance revealed her for the coward she was.
“Oh, Violet,” Serena said. “I’m so very sorry to tell you this, but, unfortunately, whether we are loved in return has very little bearing on our own feelings. So you’ll have to ask yourself…is the risk worth the reward?”
∞∞∞
“I don’t think I ever actually asked what your favorite flower was,” John said, trailing a finger down Violet’s spine, enjoying the shiver that followed his path. “Daisies areout, naturally. Do you prefer roses? Violets?”
She made a small sound in the back of her throat, which he took to be consideration. All evening she had been uncharacteristically quiet; reserved, almost. Even in the throes of passion, he had suspected that her attention was perhaps seventy percent engaged at most. Where the rest of her had gone off to, he couldn’t say—but something in him needed to pull her back.
“You’ll laugh,” she said finally, her voice muffled within the crook of her arms, which were folded beneath her head.