Page 7 of My Darling Mr. Darling

And Violet found herself confessing. “I don’t know,” she said. “Something. Something to make it all makesense.” Her gaze drifted over the room, absorbing the antique desk that had belonged to her father. It was a stately piece of furniture; solid mahogany that had been ornately carved and inlaid with brass, as formidable as had been the man who had commissioned it. She had played in this room as a child, on the great sprawling rug before the desk, creating elaborate dramas between her dolls or reading or assembling a tower of blocks. For a moment, between the space of one blink and the next, she could see them there, the two of them—Papa poring over documents at his desk as she lay stretched out on her belly, her nose buried in a book.

Her heart wrenched in a way that it hadn’t in years, and she sucked in a breath and willed the vision away, aware that Serena was once again staring in that interested, inquisitive way she had, without judgment or censure.

Drawing in an unsteady breath, Violet seized on the only thing she could think of. “Papa’s records,” she said. “Surely they must be here somewhere.”

“All right,” Serena said. “You take the desk. I’ll search the shelves.”

Ignoring the queer, curdling sensation in her gut, Violet crouched near the desk, beside the massive chair that had once belonged to her father. The scent of old leather wafted through the air, assailing her nose. It was a familiar smell; comforting in its way—but she did not have time to reminisce. Unfortunately, Mr. Darling was a fierce guardian of his privacy; every drawer had been locked tight, and she doubted time remained for Serena to pick them. Only one drawer yielded to her fingers, and it contained only bits and bobs—spare vials of ink, pen nibs, and sheaves of writing paper, arranged in precise, perfect lines, as if their owner had measured out their dimensions with a ruler. Something wicked and contrary in her wanted to muss them a bit, to—to disorderhisneat and tidy world as he’d disordered hers. The chaos that had ruled her life for the past several years appeared not to have touched his at all, which seemed somehow unfair, unjust, inexcusable.

Serena plucked folios from the shelf one by one, turning in the moonlight to read what lay within them. Her lips pursed into a frown of concentration as she discarded one after another, placing them back in their spaces upon the shelves.

“No luck?” she whispered, her golden brows drawing together as Violet crept across the floor toward her.

Violet shook her head, rubbing her sweating palms upon her skirts, and trying not to look as discouraged as she felt. “Locked up tight.”

A corner of Serena’s lips twitched in wry amusement. “Well, I suppose I could….” Her voice faded into silence, and she chewed her lower lip as her eyes scanned the document contained within the folio that lay open in her hands. “It’s…it’sarecord, at least,” she said, and extended the folio to Violet.

Violet shifted the folio into the light. The ink was still as vivid and dark as the day it had been created, the neatly printed letters slanting across the top of the page:Last Will and Testament of George Phineas Townsend.

Her fingers curled around the edge of the leather folio, and she felt herself sway on her feet, dizzy, as if all of the air had been sucked straight out of the room. It wasn’t what she had been seeking, precisely, but still—she’d never seen it. No one had found it necessary to read it to her; as if its contents could not possibly have mattered to a grieving seventeen-year-old girl. As if its contents hadn’t steered the course of her entire life. She had only been informed of its stipulations, and expected to fulfill them.

Above them, there came the sound of footsteps on the third floor, as of someone slowly moving about the room. Wentworth’s room—she’d forgotten that his joints pained him when it rained, which it had only this morning. Sometimes he roused in the middle of the night to prepare himself a cup of willow bark tea to soothe the ache.

“We need to leave.Now,” Violet said. Wentworth was not swift on his feet, but hewasattentive. And the servants’ stairs would carry him directly past the office. She snapped the folio closed and tucked it beneath her arm, and together they crept silently from the room. There was no way to disguise the fact that it would remain unlocked, but she hoped that would be chalked up to absent-minded servants.

Her heart beating a rapid tattoo in her chest, she and Serena wended their way down the stairs. In her haste, she trod directly upon the sixth step, which shrilled an ominous squeak, deafening in the silence.

Down the corridor, those steady footsteps gained momentum. “I say, is someone there?” Wentworth called, his voice rougher, scratchier than Violet remembered.

“Go.Go,” Violet whispered, and together they sprinted, less concerned about being noticed than beingcaught. Scrambling through the hall and into the morning room, they burst out into the garden just as the skies opened up once again with a massive crack of thunder, startling Serena into a shriek. Violet wrestled with the key in the lock, her fingers slick with water, sliding on the metal until at last she wrenched it with a decisiveclickjust as the light of a candle glowed in the entrance to the morning room.

Wentworth peered out into the dark night, his face slack with shock, one hand clutching his dressing gown at his throat, frozen and silent. Her breath staggering in her throat, Violet stared back.

“Violet,” Serena hissed. “Let’s go!” She tugged at Violet’s arm, nearly dislodging the folio tucked beneath it.

Her shoes sliding on the slick stones, Violet threw herself into flight, sprinting after Serena through the twisting confines of the garden to the gate, out into the street, and toward the waiting carriage. It wasn’t until the carriage had cleared the street that Violet allowed herself a sigh of relief.

∞∞∞

For all her efforts to be stealthy about it, it was impossible for Serena to disguise the soggysquishof her ruined dancing slippers upon the marble floor of the foyer as she slipped past the baffled butler, Simpson, into the townhouse she shared with her husband. Had she been less distracted, she might have noticed that the sounds of merriment that had masked her exit when she had left earlier in the evening no longer pervaded the house. She might also have noticed her husband lying in wait for her in the drawing room just to the right of the foyer.

“Pray don’t disturb his lordship, Simpson,” she was saying as a small puddle of water formed around her feet. “I’ll just go change—”

“Destroying the evidence, Mouse?” Grey suggested from his position on the sofa.

Her head jerked toward him, and for a fraction of a moment surprise overtook her features. But she lifted her chin, smoothed her expression into something close to nonchalance despite the fact that she was so bedraggled and dripping that she looked like a drowned kitten, and announced, “I have no idea what you could be talking about.” Patting casually at the rat’s nest the rain had made of her hair, she added, “Honestly, Grey, you are neglecting our guests.”

Stifling a grin, he tipped his head. “Hear anything, Mouse? No? Suppose I tell you that’s because ourguestsnoted the absence of their scandalous hostess. They’ve all departed, Mouse—every last one.” He shoved himself off the couch. “Now. Suppose you tell me where, exactly, you have been?”

“Suppose I didn’t,” she muttered as he approached, her lower lip thrust out in a sulky pout. Simpson, bless the man, cleared his throat and backed away with a bow, sensing his presence had become superfluous.

“You’ve arrived home past eleven, unescorted, looking like you’ve been dragged through the Thames,” Grey chided as his fingers cupped her cheek, his thumb swiping across the tip of her nose. “How the hell have you ended up with dirt on your nose?”

“Probably,” she said, the inflection of her voice suggesting he was not very bright, “because I had dirt on my hands.” But she sidled closer, pressed her cheek against his shoulder, and batted her damp lashes at him entreatingly. “I shan’t tell you. I made a promise. You would be asking me to violate the sanctity of sisterhood, Grey, and I can’t believe you would be so cruel as that.” She lifted herself onto her toes as her hands landed on his chest, and brushed her lips in a flirtatious kiss just at the corner of his mouth.

It was an admirable effort to distract him, and he let her proceed for a few seconds. And then a few seconds longer. Perhaps a minute or two, before at last he murmured, “Mouse.”

“Hmm?”