25. CHAPTER 25
T he following afternoon Vivienne found Venus in the gardens. The rain had finally let up, leaving the air scented with wet grass and turned earth.
She had not slept well. The previous day's revelations had opened a door into her husband's internal world, and behind it she had glimpsed a landscape she had not known existed.
She had not only forgotten her own past; she had forgotten his.
The boy who had become this man, long before she ever met him.
It was a startling realization, and a humbling one.
To know her husband, she would have to learn what had made him.
Not only what had passed between them, but what had passed before her, and what had passed in the years she had been gone.
Dalton would never tell her any of it. He would protect her from the worst of it as long as he drew breath, and protect her with such care that she would not even notice the protection.
So she would have to ask Venus.
She found her on the bench beside the dripping rose hedges. A tea tray sat on the wrought-iron table beside her. Venus looked up, smiled, and poured a second cup without being asked.
"I was hoping you would come and join me," she said.
Vivienne sat. For a moment they were quiet together, and the only sounds were the drip from the hedges and the distant cry of a gull.
"There is more, is there not?" Vivienne asked. "Of his story. Of yours."
"There is always more, Vivi. What do you want to know? "
"What happened after the wreck?"
Venus looked at her. Then she set down her cup.
"I thought you might ask. He has told you he was on the ship."
"Yes. He told me that much."
She drew a careful breath. "I was not there, so what I'm going to tell you, I pieced together from the sailors, and from Val in fragments."
Vivienne nodded.
"The ship went down after lunch. A boiler exploded.
Smoke blinded the deck, and by the time the boats launched, a storm was rising.
A handful of the crew pulled Val into one of the boats.
He had a broken leg, broken ribs, and a gash on his head that would not stop bleeding.
They thought, at first, that they had got everyone they were going to get. "
"But he did not."
"He kept asking for you." Venus's throat worked.
"They told him they had not found you. He demanded that they keep searching.
And the crew did. They searched for hours.
Val with them. They worked the wreckage until there was nothing left to work, until the light was dim and the storm had begun in earnest. At last the crew said no one living remained.
That further delay would endanger everyone, and they had to leave now. "
"So what did he do?"
"He went over the side."
Vivienne gasped.
"The sailors said they had never seen such madness — a man half broken, dragging himself through storm water, calling your name."
Something like a whimper rose in Vivienne's throat. She didn't know she had made it until Venus reached out and took her hand.
"The captain of the boat begged him to come back aboard. Val swore he wouldn't leave without you."
Venus's hand tightened on hers.
"In the end, the sailors decided for him. They had a duke half dead in the water and a storm coming down on them. Another hour would have killed them all. So they pulled him into the boat. He fought them, and one of them knocked him out. It was the only way they could get him home. "
"They had to knock him out," Vivienne whispered. She could see it as if she had been there: the dark water, the smoke, the wind, the man with a broken body refusing to surrender her to the sea. The terrible mercy of the sailors who finally chose his life over his orders.
"He came home delirious," Venus went on. "I won't pretend otherwise. The doctors set his leg and bound his ribs and told us they didn't know whether he would live, and if he lived, whether his mind would come back the way it had been."
"How long was he sick?"
"He was unconscious for four days. The first thing he said upon waking was, Where is she? The second, I'm going back. "
"Oh, Valentine."
"He could not stand, let alone walk. The ribs would not let him breathe deeply enough to sit up for long, but he was planning another search from his sickbed within the hour.
" Venus's voice caught. "It was like watching Papa destroy himself all over again.
And I told him so. It was the cruelest thing I could have said to him. "
"And what did he do?"
"When I forced him to see it, something in him gave way. He stopped speaking for almost a day. Then he sent for a detective, and he handed the search over. He never sailed those waters again. He hired men to do what he could not do himself, and he waited."
Vivienne's vision blurred, the tears hot and insistent behind her eyes.
For the boy who had decided at seventeen that control was the only alternative to destruction, and the man who had thrown that control away in the water, and the sister who had loved him enough to drag him out of it, even if she had to hurt him in the process.
"Venus — "
"I must ask your forgiveness." Venus's voice was very soft. "If I had not stopped him, if I had let him go on, perhaps he would have found you where the detective failed. Perhaps you would have been home years ago."
"No." Vivienne squeezed her hands. They were cold. "If you had not stopped him, he would have died. You gave us the chance to have a future. "
Venus stared at her. Then something in her expression loosened. "Valentine said something similar yesterday when I asked his forgiveness. It is as if the two of you think in similar patterns," she said, her voice thick. "The amnesia has not changed that."
They sat for a while without speaking. Vivienne's mind was working, rewriting every interaction with Dalton.
"Until this moment, I had not been sure that he loved me." The truth left her mouth before she could stop it.
She believed it now. It was clear in his restraint. In the room preserved for seven years. In the way he watched her when he thought she didn't know.
"I wish I could remember," Vivienne said. "You have given me so much, and it has only made me realize how much more I still don't know. And how much it matters."
"Give it time. You can ask me anything, and I will answer to the best of my knowledge.
I will send you the letters you wrote to me throughout the years.
The things you talked about in those letters might give you some sense of your daily life.
The things you cared about." She paused. "And there is also your diary."
She paused again. Not the brief pauses of her storytelling — a longer hesitation, as if she were deciding whether to say the next thing.
"I don't know if it survived," Venus continued.
"But if it did, it might be here, or in the London house.
Perhaps in your writing desk. Although — " she stopped again.
"You may wish to wait before you look for it.
A diary is honest. It will hold things that are joyful, but it will also hold things that are…
difficult. Things he may not have told you yet.
I would not want you to read your own words without the context to understand them. "
Venus was not telling her to avoid the diary. She was telling her to be ready.
"I will be cautious if I find it. But I doubt it is here.
For weeks I have been inhabiting the duchess's chambers.
I use that writing desk daily, and have not come across it.
But I have started a new diary to document my memories and impressions.
I thought it was a good idea. It seems it is a habit I carry from before. "
"Maybe the diary is in the London house, then. You can look for it when you go there."
"London?"
The word alone tightened her chest. She had barely adjusted to Penrose. Society, scrutiny, her parents — people who had mourned her and whom she could not remember. She was not ready.
Venus's hand rested on top of hers. "You need not worry about anything. My brother will protect you and stand by your side. And so will I, no matter the circumstances. You are not alone anymore, Vivi."
She managed a tremulous smile and squeezed Venus's hand. Already, Venus felt like an ally.
Vivienne carried thoughts of Dalton through the rest of the day. They followed her to bed.
She had been so focused on what she needed from him that she had not stopped to consider what he might need from her. And he would never ask.
What could she give him? Tenderness, playfulness. Her presence, certainly. The knowledge that she saw the real him beneath the layers of restraint created by trauma and loss. She might not remember loving him, but she could choose to love the man before her now.
But how to make him accept her love without reservations or fear?
Maybe what he needed was permission to take.
Her dream returned to her now: running. Being chased. And beneath it all, what she had mistaken for fear was really… anticipation. If she made him hunt her, he was more likely to take. That was the relationship between hunter and prey.
He had said it was a game. Tonight, she was in the mood to play.
She stood from the bed, padded to her desk in the corner, and scrawled a note. She looked at the connecting door. A sliver of light bled through the bottom. He was not asleep yet. Drawing her dressing gown around her like armor, she slipped the note under the door.
He would see it, she was sure of it. The man missed nothing.
The only question was: how long before he gave chase?