Page 78 of My Darling Mr. Darling

“All this time,” he said, reflectively, “she has been my mother. She loved me. She worried for me. Sheraisedme—and I let her think that none of it mattered to me.” In retrospect, he could see everything so clearly, like a haze had lifted from his eyes. “I thought I didn’t know what it was to have a family, because the family I was born into was so sorry an excuse for one. I thought I didn’tneedone. But I’ve had one all along—it has just taken a different shape. The duchess is my family. Alex, Grey, Serena—they’re all my family.” His thumb brushed over the pulse point of her wrist. “You’re my family, Vi.”

Her pulse leapt beneath his thumb, but she simply canted her head to the side. Waiting. Waiting for him to get itrightthis time around, because he had mucked it up so badly before.

“I love you,” he said. “I think I loved you before I had even really met you. I fell in love with all the different pieces of you I discovered while you were running. Every little facet of you that you left behind.” He had collected them, hoarded them jealously—each new piece a brush stroke painting a clearer picture of the woman she had become.

A soft sigh. “You can’t love me in bits and pieces, John,” she whispered, but he heard the subtext as plainly as if she had shouted it:You must love all of me. Ineedyou to love all of me.

“I thought I knew everything about you,” he said. “I thought every tiny bit of information I had collected had prepared me. And then I met you, Vi, and you were so much more than the sum of your parts—or at least, what I had imagined those parts to be.” His thumb glided over her palm, his fingers shifting to encapsulate her hand within his own.

And still she waited.

“I thought,” he said, “that you had all the qualities I considered to be necessary in a wife. I knew I didn’t want an annulment, and I thought I could convince you that we would rub along well together—that we could have a good marriage, create a harmonious household—”

Violet scoffed. “Truly?Harmoniousis a word that comes to mind in reference to me?”

He smothered his own snicker behind his palm. “I’m saying that I find that your particular sort ofdisharmonysuits me quite well. But I had assumed that I could simply—settle you into the life I thought I wanted. Convince you that you would occupy the space marked ‘wife’ and I the space marked ‘husband’ and that it would be good enough for both of us. That agood enoughmarriage would be all either of us would ever need.” Her hand was warm in his, the fingers loose and lax. “The truth was thatanywoman could have filled that spot ably enough—but I didn’twantanyone else. I wanted you. Ionlywanted you, and I couldn’t tell you how much.”

Her hand turned in his, fingers interlacing with his own. “Why?”

For once, he didn’t shy away from acknowledging this. The great tangled mess that had twisted up his brain and his heart for so many years had been unknotted, and when he surveyed the remains of it with an objective eye, it seemed so very…small. Pitiable. So feeble an attempt at safeguarding his heart. “I thought that if I never loved you, then you could never hurt me. That if you left me—as I have been left so many times before—I would be unaffected. Heart-whole.” His hand squeezed hers almost on instinct. “But youdidleave. And itdidhurt—because I always loved you, Vi, even if I thought calling it something else would somehow change it.”

A breeze rustled through tree branches, rattling the leaves, but the silence stretched out still.

“I was such a coward, Vi. But you—you have always been so determined, so brave.” He ignored her snort. “I admire so many things about you, but none so much as that—youpersist. In spite of every obstacle that has ever been thrown into your path, youpersevere. I knew the moment you walked away from me that you would keep going onward just as you always have. That if I could not give you want you wanted, eventually you would find someone who could. And you were right—youdeservesomeone who loves you. I know how little cause you have to believe it, but I swear to you, that man isme.” He swallowed hard, his hand grasping hers almost desperately. “It shames me to admit how little thought I gave to your desires. I forced my way into your life. I drafted a petition for an annulment, and never told you because it was not whatIwanted. I thought I could give youjust enoughand no more, and was arrogant enough to believe you’d accept it. And despite all of that, you were willing to love me anyway. So now I’m asking, Vi—what do you want?”

Silence. So thick he could have sliced it with a knife. Finally she asked, “You love me?”

“Desperately.” The word came out raggedly, as if he’d clenched it between his teeth before it has escaped.

“That’s all I needed.”

“Whuh—” The inelegant sound preceded an incredulous laugh as a wave of relief crashed over him, staggering in its intensity. “You let me babble like an idiot for no reason?”

She gave a shrug, her lips curving into a disarming grin. “Not fornoreason. Silence is a powerful tool. Perhaps I didn’tneedthe rest of it, but there is something undeniably charming about a man struggling with his emotions.”

His bark of laughter split the night, and he was still laughing when she set aside her mother’s portrait and leaned through the window, wrapped her free arm around his neck to anchor herself, and kissed him. She nibbled his lower lip, tilted her head, and he would have sworn he could taste the love on her tongue, felt it in the clasp of her hand in his. In the moment, they were simply two lost people who had somehow found each other—outstretched hands grasping one another in the darkness. A miracle he had had no right to expect, but one for which he would forever be grateful.

“Enough,” he said, when his arm began to develop a cramp at the awkward positioning through the window sill. “Unlock the door for me.”

She disentangled herself slowly, her gaze drifting toward the door. “Mm. No, I don’t think I will.” She pressed one last kiss somewhere in the vicinity of his chin before she withdrew. “Struggle just alittlelonger.” And she snapped the window closed.

John’s mouth hung agape. “Vi,” he said in a fierce whisper. “Violet.”

“Consider it your penance for stealing my mother’s portrait,” she said, her voice muffled, as she collected both it and her candle.

“I brought it back!” John hissed—but she didn’t hear. She was already heading for the stairs, her skirts swishing across the floor in time to the sway of her hips.

With a longsuffering sigh, John climbed to his feet, once more extracting the tools from his pocket, surveying the lock with an accusatory glare.Chaos, he thought—Violet would bring chaos to his life.

And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Chapter Thirty

Half an hour. It had taken Johnhalf an hourto pick the lock. In that time he had developed both a healthy respect for Violet’s efforts in learning the skill and a prickling irritation that she hadactuallyleft him to work out the lock for himself.

Of course she had cozied herself up in bed by the time he managed to gain entry. Her mother’s portrait had been restored to its place of honor, nestled up against the cloth doll that also rested there on the bedside table. Violet lay on her side, a book held in one hand, reading by the light of her candles. Her bare toes peeked out from beneath the covers to toast in the ambient heat of the fading firelight in the hearth. She stretched as he entered the room, as if to underscore the time he’d kept her waiting, arching her back and pointing her little toes in an exaggerated motion. The counterpane slid from her shoulder, and the firelight painted her bare skin a luminous gold.

“I took the portrait for agood reason,” he grumbled.