8. CHAPTER 8
I t took three days to dismantle seven years of living.
It should not have been so easy. Vivienne—as she had begun to think of herself, because the name settled into her bones the way Grace never had—packed her belongings into a single trunk and a carpetbag.
Two dresses suitable for travel. Her brush and comb.
The lavender sachet she'd made with Mrs. Helier's dried flowers.
A copy of Villette with a cracked spine, and a small watercolor of the harbor that she had once painted.
That was it. Seven years on Guernsey, and the sum of her existence fit into a space smaller than a coffin.
She had stood in the doorway of her little room at the rectory and felt the absence of permanence.
No jewelry box, because she owned nothing worth locking away.
No letters tied with ribbon, because she had no one to write to.
The room was as bare as the day she'd moved in, and the realization that she could vanish from this island without leaving so much as a dent struck her as the loneliest thought she had ever had.
The rector pressed her hand and told her God would light her path.
The parish schoolchildren had made her a card, twenty small signatures in varying degrees of legibility, and she had tucked it into her carpetbag with hands that wouldn't stop trembling.
Margaret embraced her and whispered, I'll be right beside you.
Paul said nothing at all. He picked up her trunk and carried it to the cart, his jaw set like a man bearing a casket.
And now, the sea .
The deep blue of the Channel held the yacht's hull as the vessel cut the water with its sharp prow.
Vivienne stood at the railing, her face lifted to the late summer sun.
The breeze cooled her cheeks and teased the straps of her hat, pulling loose a few tendrils of auburn hair that she tucked back without thinking.
The sea sparkled. The sky was enormous, and the yacht was luxurious beyond anything she could imagine.
Brass fittings polished to a mirror finish.
Teak decks that gleamed honey-gold. A saloon below, with velvet settees and crystal decanters secured against the roll of the sea.
Rather like the duke himself, she thought.
Efficient. Sleek. Opulent. Designed to move through the world with the minimum of friction.
They both produced the same feelings in her.
Awe. Unease. The suspicion that she was out of her depth.
She still thought of him as the duke. He had asked her to call him Valentine. She had nodded, but after that first conversation, she had not done so again. It was not that the name felt wrong. It was that it felt too right. Intimate when she had not earned it.
"We are almost there."
She startled, even though his voice had been low. He always spoke to her as if he feared she might bolt. Not without reason, judging by her flinch.
"It has been a most pleasant crossing, Your Grace."
"Valentine," he corrected.
She offered him a nod and nothing else.
A silence settled between them—not hostile, but watchful.
He stood close enough that she could feel the warmth of his arm through the sleeve of his coat, but he didn't touch her.
She had noticed he was careful about that.
Careful about everything, in fact. Where he stood, how long he held her gaze before looking away first. As though she were a problem he was solving with great patience.
"Is it far from where we dock to your home?" she asked.
"Not at all. The pier is on my land, so from the moment we step off the gangway, we'll be home. "
Home. He said it as though it were a small thing. A cottage with a garden gate and a cat on the step.
"How very convenient," she said. "I assume you also own the sea between here and there."
Something shifted in his face. A crack in the composure, gone before she could be sure of it. Not offense. Surprise. And then the corner of his mouth twitched.
"Only the territorial waters," he said. "I have not yet managed to annex the Channel, though I have a man looking into it."
She stared at him. He gazed out at the horizon with an expression of perfect gravity, as though he had not just made a joke. Had the Duke of Dalton made a joke?
"I feel certain the French would have something to say about that," she managed.
"The French always have something to say. It rarely stops me."
She laughed before she could prevent it—a short, startled sound she had not intended to make. His eyes cut to her, sharp and swift, and the look in them winded her. Hunger. Not for her body, but for the sound she had just made. As if he had been starving for her laughter.
He looked away. The composure returned. But she had seen it, and it had changed something between them.
The coast had been growing clearer by degrees—a smudge of gray-green becoming hedgerows and buildings, fields stitched together with stone walls, a church spire catching the light.
She watched it sharpen, this land that was supposed to be hers, and felt nothing.
No recognition. No sense of homecoming. Only the queasy awareness that every mile the yacht covered was a mile farther from anything she knew and a mile closer to unfamiliar territory.
And then the vessel rounded a steep headland, and she saw it.
The castle rose from the clifftop as though it had grown there.
Seven bays of pale stone, four stories high, blazing white-gold in the afternoon light, towers and battlements sharp against a sky so blue it hurt.
Below it, the sea crashed against black rocks in plumes of spray.
Above it, gulls wheeled and cried. It was enormous and absurd and magnificent, and it looked like something out of a fairy tale.
Her breath stopped.
Not from awe, though awe was part of it.
Something else happened that she could not account for.
Her hands, which had been gripping the railing hard enough to ache, loosened.
Her fingers uncurled. The tension in her shoulders released.
She drew a deeper breath than she had taken in hours, and the salt air filled her lungs with a sweetness that felt like relief.
Her body knew this place. She was certain of it. Even as her mind found no memory, no image, no whisper of recognition, something beneath thought had softened at the sight of it.
She put it aside, with all the other things she didn't understand, in the growing collection of mysteries that made up her former life.
"There it is," the duke said. "Penrose Castle. Our home."
Her head snapped toward him. "That is your home? You live in a castle?"
He smiled, and his brow drew together, as though he could not tell whether she was truly astonished or having him on.
"When I'm in the country, yes," he said. "We have a residence in London as well. And a few other estates throughout England, though I visit those only as needed to oversee their management. They're inhabited by elderly relatives."
"You have several homes besides a castle."
The merchants of Guernsey had fine houses. The rectory was a decent size. But this was wealth on a scale she had no framework for. The distance between the woman she was now and the woman she had apparently been opened beneath her like a chasm.
"Yes," he said. "But take heart. None of the others are quite as large or as freezing as this one. The drawing room alone requires its own weather system."
She searched his face. His expression gave away nothing, and this time she was not sure he was joking.
Despite the dread in her stomach and the castle growing larger with every passing second, she smiled. A small thing, reluctant, but real .
"I shall endeavor to avoid the drawing room," she said.
"A sound strategy."
The lightness could not hold. She watched Penrose grow until it filled her vision. The windows catching fire in the sun, the crenellated walls, the great stone steps leading down to the water where a pier jutted into the cove. Figures moved on the dock. Staff. Waiting.
The dread settled back into her chest.
"It's just the scale of it all," she said, and her voice came out smaller than she intended. "Everything is so grand. So far beyond anything I know. I can't imagine being equal to it. To being a duchess."
"You are a duchess," he said. Not unkindly. "It may feel overwhelming now, but I believe it will come back to you in time."
"But I don't remember any of it. What if I embarrass you? In front of your staff, your family, your…" She trailed off. "I don't even know who lives there. What if I do everything wrong?"
"You could never embarrass me."
She gripped the railing, knuckles whitening. "You cannot know that."
"I can." He turned to face her. His eyes held hers—dark, steady, with an attention that made retreat impossible. "And I won't let you fail. I will never ask more of you than you can give."
"But a duchess must have duties. Responsibilities. People to manage, events to oversee, important guests to entertain—"
"The only thing I need you to do is rest and recover. Nothing more."
"That can't be all you expect from me." The words came out sharper than she intended. "What use am I as a wife or a duchess if resting is the full extent of my contribution? I may not remember who I was, but I know who I am now, and I am not an invalid."
He went still. She watched the recalibration behind his eyes, the adjustment of a man accustomed to command who was meeting, perhaps for the first time in years, resistance.
Good. She might feel lost, but she was not fragile.
And then, to her astonishment, he smiled .
"You are right," he said after a pause. "I expressed that poorly.
What I meant is that there is no obligation, no test you must pass.
Whatever you wish to do, I will support.
Whatever you do not wish to do, I will not demand.
The household runs itself. The staff is competent.
Your only task, if you want to call it that, is to decide what you want. "
That was far more frightening. Decide what she wanted. She had spent seven years letting the current carry her. The idea of wanting something, and choosing it, reaching for it, made her dizzy.
He lifted his hand and brushed a strand of hair that the wind had pulled free. His fingers grazed the curve of her ear as he tucked it back, and the touch sent goosebumps down her neck and along her arm to her fingertips. She could not move. Could not look away.
"If you knew how much I have missed you," he said, his voice rough in a way she had not heard from him before, "how much I cherish your existence, you wouldn't doubt for a single moment that finding you alive is more than I ever dared to hope for.
" His hand dropped. He stepped back. The composure resettled, smooth as a door closing.
"Never doubt it, Vivienne. Your presence is enough. "
The sentence stayed with her as the yacht slid into the cove and the castle's shadow fell across the water.
She savored it as the crew secured the lines and lowered the gangway, and the figures on the dock resolved into servants standing at attention.
She let it sink into her heart and mind as the duke offered his arm, and she took it, her hand trembling against his sleeve, and stepped onto the pier.
Your presence is enough.
She wanted to believe it. She was not certain she did. But she held the words close. Wherever she was going, whatever the future held, there was at least one person glad she was alive.