23. CHAPTER 23
V ivienne sat in the morning room with a cup of tea she had not touched and a diary open on the desk before her. Most of the entries circled the same subject: her husband.
She didn't doubt anymore that was what he was. Just thinking about his hands brought warmth to her face. The way they touched her. The way he knew her. Her pleasure, her pain.
Three days had passed since he had last touched her that way. He had been gentle since — careful, restrained. She appreciated it. She also wished he would stop.
She craved that intimacy that had cracked open something sealed inside her. A trust. A sense of rightness. The knowledge of being safe in his arms.
She closed the diary and turned to the window. Rain dimmed the landscape, and the castle seemed to turn inward. Fires burned in every grate. The house felt suddenly smaller, warmer — as though she and Dalton existed apart from the world.
The sound of carriage wheels on the gravel broke her illusion.
Vivienne stood and crossed to the window. A smart traveling carriage had pulled up before the entrance, its team of matched bays steaming in the drizzle. The door opened, and a woman descended.
She was fashionably dressed and moved like a woman who had never doubted her welcome. Before the footman could reach her, she had already mounted the steps.
Her voice, light and irreverent, carried all the way from the entrance hall .
"Prowse, you look as if you have seen a ghost. Twice, apparently, since I'm told there is already one in residence."
The butler's reply was too muted to hear, but the woman's laugh was not.
It was warm and unguarded and full of affection, and it did something peculiar to Vivienne's chest. She knew that laugh.
Not from memory — she knew better than to trust the phantom tugs of recognition that came and went like shore birds — but from something in her body. A sense of comfort. Of kinship.
Footsteps in the corridor. A knock, perfunctory and already opening.
The woman swept into the morning room and stopped short, her bright dark eyes finding Vivienne by the window.
For the space of three heartbeats, neither spoke.
Then the woman's face crumpled. Not into tears or theatrical grief, but into a raw expression that held joy and pain and relief at the same time.
"Oh," she said. Just that.
"Hello," Vivienne said. "Lady Venus?"
Now the tears came — sudden and fierce, flooding her bright, dark eyes. In a blur of movement, she crossed the room and took Vivienne's hands in hers. Vivienne had the impression she had only just stopped herself from launching into her arms.
Then she straightened, drew a breath, and became herself again.
"Yes, I am Venus," she said. "Do you remember me, then?"
Vivienne shook her head. "I do not. I'm sorry. It was just a guess. I — "
"You have amnesia. Yes. I heard." Venus's hands tightened on hers. "I am your sister. Well, Dalton's sister, which makes me yours by marriage and by choice."
Vivienne smiled despite herself, relaxing into Venus's directness, which cut through the stifling formality of everything else in her new life and made it easier to breathe.
"It is lovely to meet you," she said, and meant it. "Although I understand we have already met. Many times, apparently."
"Hundreds of times. You were my dearest friend.
" Venus's eyes glistened, but she blinked the tears away with a fierceness that reminded Vivienne of Dalton.
"But we shall not dwell on that. You don't remember, and I refuse to weep over what cannot be changed.
Sit down. I want to know everything about the miracle of your survival.
I am looking at you, touching you, and still can scarcely believe it.
Where have you been these past seven years? What has your life been like?"
Vivienne tried to organize her thoughts. Where to begin recounting the past? Her life in Guernsey?
But before she could reply, Dalton's displeased voice made them both turn.
"Venus, what are you doing here?"
"And a good day to you too, brother," Venus said, unfazed. "I'm so glad to see you."
Dalton's lips compressed, but he came forward to kiss his sister's cheek. "It is a pleasure to see you, as always. I would only appreciate it if you did not descend upon us unannounced like a summer storm."
Venus allowed the kiss, then faced him squarely. Her voice trembled a little. "I can't believe you didn't tell me."
"There is a reason I didn't tell you. Nobody knows. Not even Vivienne's parents. She needs time, and I shall give it to her."
"But I am family. I was Vivi's best friend — "
"It was my fault," Vivienne said, not wanting the argument to escalate. "I asked Dalton not to tell anyone. It is overwhelming meeting so many people I don't remember."
"Oh, Vivi, I'm sorry." Venus came to her, her expression softening. "I didn't mean to disturb you. As soon as I heard the news, I had to come and see for myself. I didn't really stop to think how you would feel about it."
"It is all right. You have not disturbed me."
"How did you find out?" Dalton said. "I hope my wife's return has not become the ton's gossip."
"Oh, no. Nothing like that. Stanley told me."
Dalton stiffened. "Damn Stanley. One would expect more discretion from the Foreign Secretary. "
"Don't be cross with Stan. He only mentioned it to me because he thought I already knew."
"Stan?" Dalton raised a brow.
"He is a good friend of mine," Venus said breezily.
Dalton narrowed his eyes but let it go. "I won't have Vivienne's peace disturbed."
"I wouldn't dream of it, brother."
"It is quite all right, Dalton," Vivienne said. "I would like to talk to Venus. I… feel comfortable around her."
Dalton looked between the two of them, his protective instincts clearly at war with her request. In the end, he gave a curt nod. "I will leave you ladies to your conversation, then."
He went, and Vivienne sat. Venus settled into the chair opposite with the natural authority of a woman who had grown up in this castle, tucking her skirts beneath her and accepting the tea Vivienne poured with an appreciative murmur.
"You always did make perfect tea," Venus said, then caught herself. "Sorry. I shall try not to compare you to who you were."
"It is all right. It is useful, actually. Small things like that — the tea, the food, certain scents — seem to stir something. Not full memories, but impressions. Feelings."
"How are you getting on?" Venus gestured around her. "All this could be a great deal to assimilate."
"I am adjusting. It was difficult at the beginning. I feel more settled now."
"And how is he? I don't mean the answer he would give. I mean the real one."
Vivienne hesitated. How was he? He was attentive, controlled, and capable of startling intensity.
"He is… careful with me," she said at last.
Venus made a sound that was half laugh, half sigh.
"Of course he is. He is careful with everything he loves.
It is the most infuriating thing about him.
" She paused, studying Vivienne with those dark eyes that missed nothing — another family trait, apparently.
"Tell me. What has he told you about himself, his life, our parents? "
"Very little. I know your mother died. And your father too. He said they loved each other very much."
"That," Venus said, "is the understatement of the century."
She folded her hands in her lap, and when she spoke again, her voice had changed. The warmth was still there, but beneath it was something harder. A woman telling a story she had carried for a long time.
"Our parents were famous for their love. Papa named us Valentine and Venus because he said we were the products of love itself and should carry love's names."
"Valentine and Venus," Vivienne repeated. "Very romantic." A man who named his children for love. And from that, this controlled, precise, shuttered son who rarely permitted himself to show emotion.
"Valentine used to joke that he was grateful he was not named Cupid," Venus added.
Vivienne laughed. She could hear Dalton saying it — the dry, self-deprecating wit she was beginning to recognize as something intrinsically his.
"They were rarely apart," Venus continued. "When Mama entered a room, Papa's whole bearing changed. He lit up from the inside. And she was the same with him. I was young, but I remember it vividly."
Venus stared into her tea for a moment.
"Then Mama fell pregnant again. I was eight, Val was fifteen. The pregnancy was difficult." Venus paused. "There were whispers among the adults that frightened me, although I did not understand them. Valentine did. He understood everything, even then."
"He must have been terrified," Vivienne said. Not a question. She could see it — the boy already watching too closely, already reading the silences the way the man did now.
"He was terrified. Though he hid it from me." Venus's jaw tightened. "The baby was stillborn. And Mama… "
She stopped. Swallowed. Her hand moved to the chain at her throat, fingers closing around a locket Vivienne had not noticed until now. She held it for a moment.
"Mama did not recover. She died three days after the birth."
Vivienne's hand moved to her own chest without her willing it. "I'm so sorry, Venus."
"Thank you. It was a long time ago." Venus released the locket. "But the memory still hurts."
A silence fell between them. Some things needed space before the next thing could be said.
"What happened afterward?" Vivienne asked.
Venus straightened in her chair. "What happened afterward was worse.
"Papa could not function. He had been the strongest, most vital man I knew, and within a week he was a ghost. He stopped eating. He stopped speaking. He would sit in Mama's room for hours, holding her shawl."
"For how long?"
"He held on for a year." Venus's voice was steadier now. "There was nothing Valentine or I could do to reach him. It was as if his spirit had left with her, leaving only an empty husk. One year after Mama's death, Papa took his own life."
Vivienne gasped. The room went still. Even the rain seemed to pause against the glass.
"Valentine found him," Venus said. "He was seventeen. I was ten. In the space of a year, we lost both our parents."
Vivienne closed her eyes. Pictured a seventeen-year-old boy finding his beloved father dead by his own hand.
"That must have been… devastating."
Venus reached for her teacup. Held it with both hands, as if drawing warmth from it.
"Valentine inherited the dukedom, the estates, the responsibilities, and me." Venus attempted a smile. "A grieving ten-year-old who did not understand why everyone had left."
"He raised you," Vivienne said .
"He did." Venus looked down at her hands around the cup.
"He was little more than a boy himself, but he defied the trustees and kept me close to him.
He refused even to contemplate surrendering me to our extended family.
Valentine did everything. He managed the estates, fought off the creditors Papa had ignored in his final year, attended to my schooling, sat with me when I had nightmares.
" She paused. "He used to read to me. Every night for two years, he sat at the foot of my bed and read aloud until I fell asleep. He never missed a night."
Venus's voice faltered on the last word.
This was the detail that wrecked Vivienne the most. Not the tragedy. The tenderness that had followed it. The seventeen-year-old boy reading to his sister every night while his own grief went unaddressed.
"He offered you the safety and stability he needed himself. But in order to do that, he had to become a fortress."
"Yes," Venus said. "Do you understand him now?"
"I understand he is even more remarkable than I thought."
"He is. He is also the most stubborn, infuriating man alive.
" Venus set down her cup with a decisive click, as if the sound could close the door on whatever had just escaped.
"Because somewhere in those terrible first months, he decided that he would never allow emotion to govern him the way it had governed our father. "
Vivienne's throat tightened. She could very well imagine the boy deciding. Saw him choosing, at seventeen, to become the man she knew now. The composure. The precision. The iron discipline she had mistaken, more than once, for coldness.
"Did he use to laugh… before that?"
Venus gave a watery chuckle. "Yes. He had the warmest, most carefree laugh.
He made himself into what he is now, Vivienne.
The control. The sternness. It was not natural to him.
He built it. Because he believed — believes still — that if he allows himself to feel without discipline, he will end as our father did. "
"But he does feel," Vivienne whispered .
"More than anyone I have ever known." Venus held her gaze. "That is the tragedy of it. He feels everything. He simply does not permit himself to show it."