Chapter Thirty-Two
Violet scrubbed the kitchen table as though it had personally offended her.
The cloth squeaked over already-clean wood. Her jaw ached from clenching; her shoulders burned from tension; her breath came in sharp, uneven pulls she refused to call trembling.
Anger was easier.
Anger kept her standing.
She had sent Lily down the lane to Clara and Samuel’s cottage, having asked the day before if she might play with Alice and Gregory until supper.
She had forced herself to smile, to kiss Lily’s curls, and to say lightly that she had “a great deal of work to do today,” pretending everything was exactly as it should be.
Everything perfectly ordinary.
Everything perfectly false.
Because if William Ashford came knocking on her door—
if he came to speak with her—
if he so much as looked at Lily—
well, she could not be held to account for what might follow.
She scrubbed the same spot again, harder, unable to still her hands.
A knock came.
Firm.
Measured.
The cloth hit the table with a sharp slap before she realized she'd thrown it.
She wasn’t ready.
Not now.
Not ever.
The knock came again, slower this time, more deliberate.
“Violet,” came the low voice through the door.
A voice that curled through her like memory and fire.
“Please—may I speak with you?”
Her fingers curled into her skirts. Of course he would come.
She crossed the small kitchen, her movements brittle, and opened the door only halfway.
William stood on the threshold, hat in hand, his face solemn, not a hint of arrogance about him.
“No,” she said immediately. “You cannot be here.”
His throat bobbed. “I ask only for a moment.”
“No.” She began to push the door shut.
He lifted a hand, stopping it with the lightest touch.
“Violet,” he said softly, “I have truths I came here to share. Things you deserved to hear—even if they are five years late.”
Her jaw locked. “If I allow you in to say whatever you’ve come to say, will you leave? Will you go back to your grand house and your perfect life and the woman you chose over me?”
Pain flickered across his face as he lowered his hand.
“I can’t promise that,” he said quietly.
Outrage flared hot and bright.
“That isn’t fair!” she snapped, not caring that she sounded rather like Lily when her daughter didn’t get her way.
“I know.” His voice broke. “I know it isn’t fair. But I lost you once, Violet, and I do not intend to lose you again. Not without fighting for you. For us.”
Her breath hitched—anger and grief crashing against each other.
“I don’t want your truths,” she hissed.
“You may not,” he said steadily, “but you deserve them. And… I cannot shake the feeling that some part of you wants to hear what I have to say.”
Her hands trembled. She hated that he could still read anything in her at all.
“Five minutes,” she said coldly. “No more.”
The breath he let out sounded dangerously like relief.
She stepped aside. Barely.
He crossed the threshold like a man entering a church.
The sight of him inside her home—her sanctuary—made something in her bristle.
Violet folded her arms across her chest.
“Speak.”
He nodded.
“I learned the truth of what happened that last Season only weeks ago. My mother confessed everything.”
A bitter laugh escaped her. “How convenient.”
“It wasn’t,” he said, pain tightening his features. “It shattered every illusion I had about those months. She admitted she intercepted our letters. Every one of them.”
Violet’s eyes narrowed. He had said as much at Nathaniel’s estate, and she still wasn’t sure she believed him.
“She admitted,” he continued, “that she sent you away without my knowledge. That she chose the Hamilton lands because they were close enough to banish you quickly, and far enough that we should never cross paths. She told me she invented the tale of your being a war widow so the village would ask no questions, and to protect the Ashford name when she purchased this cottage.”
Her crossed arms tightened, pressing hard against her ribs as if she could hold herself together by force alone.
“That last Season,” he went on, “I felt I was being pulled apart. My parents told me our finances were failing. That the estate might be lost. They pressed me—every day—to secure a match with a woman whose dowry could save Ashford.”
He swallowed hard.
“And when nothing came from you—though I wrote constantly—I thought…”
His voice dropped, fraying at the edges.
“…I thought you had changed your mind first.”
Violet’s chest tightened, a sharp inward squeeze she refused to let show.
“I wrote you so often that Season,” she whispered. “I checked the post every day.”
“I know that now,” he said, the regret unmistakable in his voice. “I’ve held your letters in my hands. Read every word. At the time… your silence was all I had to go by. And I—God help me—let myself believe you no longer wanted a life as my countess.”
The words seared, but she kept her face cold. She refused to let him see how much they hurt.
“And so you let me go,” she said.
A flicker of pain crossed his face.
“My parents insisted there was no choice,” he said. “They paraded heiresses before me. Reminded me constantly of the tenants who would suffer. I let myself believe them. I let myself believe you did not want me. And that made what I did… easier to stomach.”
His gaze, heavy with sorrow, held hers.
“It does not excuse it. Nothing ever will. But I want you to understand the full weight of what you could not have known.”
Silence pressed close around them—the tick of the clock, the hum of the cottage.
“I married her,” he said quietly, “because I believed I had no choice. But I told her the truth from the beginning—that I loved another, that my heart was already bound, that she would have my name and my title but never my affection.”
Violet’s breath caught, a small, sharp break in her composure she hated him for noticing.
“She accepted it,” he continued, “though she said she was sure I would change my mind.”
He dragged a hand through his hair.
“After the wedding, when I returned to Ashford Manor, I realized I had not seen you on the grounds. At first I told myself you were avoiding me. But when I finally asked after you, your father told me you had left. That you had written you could not remain and watch me bring home my new bride.”
His voice roughened.
“Violet… I cannot describe what it did to me. The weight of it—of all I had done—fell at once. I was disgusted with myself. I could hardly look at my own reflection.”
“When everything settled—when the truth could no longer be ignored—I could not remain under my parents’ roof.
After Yuletide, I wrote to Her Majesty and requested a diplomatic post. I left for Vienna a few months later, just after my father’s passing.
I have been abroad these past four years—trying and failing to outrun the memory of what I did to you. ”
He paused, then added quietly, “I only returned because… Victoria died.”
Violet blinked. “Victoria?”
He cleared his throat. “My wife.”
“Died?”
He nodded once, tightly.
“She had loved another before our marriage—the third son of a duke. Her family forbade the match, insisting she marry me instead. And she obeyed. He… Edward… did not survive the heartbreak. Shortly after our wedding, grief drove him to take his own life. And when she learned of his death…”
He closed his eyes.
“I was not the only one trapped by duty.”
Violet stared at him, stunned. The truth settled slowly, painfully.
“All this misery,” she whispered, “because it was the expected price of maintaining class and position.”
“Yes,” he said softly.
A long silence followed—heavy, suffocating.
“Why come here?” she asked at last. “Why drag all of this back into the light?”
“Because when I returned home, my mother suffered a fit of conscience. She gave me our letters and revealed that you had been pregnant, as well as the location of this cottage. And because I could not breathe another day knowing what I’d done without trying to set something right.”
He stepped closer, not touching her, but close enough she caught the faint scent of sandalwood she had always, against her will, associated with him.
“I came because I have loved you for most of my life. And if you’ll allow it, Violet… I want to make amends. I would marry you now as I should have then. I would spend the rest of my days repairing what I broke—if you gave me even the smallest chance.”
Her world tilted, a dizzying shift she fought desperately to contain.
She opened her mouth, yet no words came.
“Can you truly tell me,” he whispered, “that you have not missed me? That you have not thought of me in all these years?”
Her throat tightened, stealing any answer before she could form it.
“I know I am to blame for all of it,” he said. “If I had been stronger, none of this would have happened. I have been half-alive since that afternoon in the rose garden. But finding out about Lily…”
He closed his eyes briefly, a shuddering breath escaping him.
“I did not come to take her. I did not come to disturb the life you’ve built. I came because I wronged you—terribly—and I could not live another day without telling you the truth. I want only to be near you and Lily… but only if that is something you would permit.”
Violet stepped back, needing distance. One step. Then another.
“This changes nothing,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said quietly. “But you deserved to hear it.”
“And now?” Her voice quivered despite her best efforts.
“Now…”
His voice was steady.
“I will go. Unless you ask me to stay.”
Her breath shook violently.
“I won’t,” she said.
“I know.”
He turned toward the door. She felt an awful, traitorous pull inside her chest—an urge to call him back. She crushed it.
At the threshold, he paused.
“But Violet,” he said softly, “I am here. And I will prove that I can be better than the man who wronged you. I will show you I am not the man who failed you then.”
He bowed his head once—quiet, respectful—and stepped outside.
The door clicked behind him.
And Violet was left standing in her quiet cottage—shaking, furious, undone.
Her hands curled into fists at her sides, nails biting into her palms.
“Damn you,” she whispered.
But even she didn’t know whether she meant him—
or herself.