Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
The streets were terribly congested, and their carriage came to a near standstill near the Strand.
Sebastian lowered the window and leaned out. “It appears there was an accident. It might take a while before we reach home.”
Somehow, Viola did not mind at all. She was enjoying their sparring.
In fact, she realised she was enjoying her husband’s company far too much, and despite their differences, he had made her smile more than once that evening.
It was as though they were finally growing at ease with one another.
The silences no longer felt awkward, and more importantly, she no longer felt the need to present a version of herself that was not truly her.
That was a wonderful realisation indeed.
Something had shifted between them. The air grew languid, charged, and her heartbeat was loud in her ears.
Then Sebastian went and ruined it all.
It began innocently enough with a single question.
“I have been wondering,” he said, hesitating, “whether you would tell me one thing.”
“Anything,” Viola answered promptly.
A pause.
“Why?” he asked quietly.
The word lingered between them.
Viola tilted her head. “Why what?”
Another beat of silence.
“Why…did you stay away?”
She stared at him. “Why…did I stay away?”
“Well, yes.”
“Why did I stay away?” Her voice pitched high on the last word.
“Nine years is a long time, and I have always wondered—”
“Why did I stay away? You are truly asking that? After everything that happened?” She trembled.
He shifted in his seat. “Was it truly that bad?”
“Was it truly that…” Her hand shook as she brought it to rub her forehead. “Do you honestly want me to answer that?”
He stiffened. “By all means.”
“How can you even ask that?” she cried. “After what you wrote in that last letter?” Her voice was shaking. “You made your feelings so brutally clear that there was no other recourse for me. And now you dare to ask why I stayed away? And whether it was that—b-bad?”
“Viola. What are you talking about? Sit down. The carriage is still moving.”
Viola had indeed jumped up in the moving carriage, and as it rounded a curve, she was thrown against the wall. She sat down again, rubbing her shoulder. But she barely felt it. His question had torn open a wound so old, so deep, she thought it had scarred over long ago.
“How can you be so cruel?” she cried. “So unspeakably cold-hearted.” She pounded on the door. “Stop. Let me out!”
The carriage came to a halt.
She tore the door open.
“Viola!”
But she ignored him, jumped down, and started walking, losing herself in the crowd. She kept walking, swiftly, blindly, on and on, for what felt like hours, through the London streets. It had begun to drizzle, but she barely noticed.
Finally, she found herself before St George’s Church. She pushed the door open and entered. It was quiet, lit only by candles, and peaceful.
She sat in a pew, staring at the plaque on the wall.
George.
Yes. At first, it had been because of him.
After an unexpectedly passionate wedding night, with both still reeling from the emotional overwhelm resulting from the events of the previous days, she had been consumed with guilt.
She had panicked. She had been so young, so immature, utterly incapable of handling what had happened between them.
So, she had run all the way back to Scotland, to the far north, far, far away from it all, believing that if she could get as much distance as possible between them, believing if she ran far enough, the guilt would lessen.
It had been a childish response, she supposed, as she rubbed her forehead. Na?ve. Because running solved nothing at all. It had merely exacerbated their problems.
He hadn’t come after her.
He had sent letters instead, stiff and formal at first, then biting and cold, requesting, no, demanding her return.
She had resisted.
Then the devastating news that George had died months before their wedding. Before she’d even arrived at Westwood Hall. Somehow, that had made everything even worse.
She had begged for a divorce. He had categorically refused. Of course he had. It would have meant ruin for his budding political career.
His letters had grown progressively colder, like gusts of Arctic wind.
And then came the last one. The one that made everything else impossible.
She had felt her heart shatter like glass into a million pieces, and the only thing that had kept her sane was writing, writing, writing.
She had poured her fury, her sadness, her heartbreak into her stories.
She had cast him as the antagonist, the enemy, and for a while it had worked. It had helped her forget.
Until Peregrine had found her.
The gauche, lovelorn girl had transformed into the wildly successful Selina Sable, writer of lurid romances.
Love had proved to be fickle, elusive. It betrayed, it hurt, it abandoned. If she could not experience the joy of reciprocated love herself, well, then she would let her imagination run free and write about it. She told herself that it sufficed, that it was all she needed.
Though, of course, her heart had told her a different story.
There were clipped footsteps echoing in the church, approaching, stopping right beside her.
He had come after her this time.
His face was a hard, stony mask. “I should have known you were here. I should have thought of this place first. Of course.”
Her eyes flew up, surprised. “You were looking for me this entire time?”
He did not reply; his eyes never left George’s plaque. Something stirred briefly in its depths.
“Why did you never come to fetch me, then?” She was not talking about now, but then.
He replied likewise with a question. “Would you have gone with me had I come?”
She opened her mouth in a heated retort, then closed it again. Would she?
“You told me not to,” he added. “In every single letter you wrote. And I wanted to respect your decision.”
It was true. She had written that. She had told herself that every day. Although it had been a lie, of course. She twisted her hands in her lap. Deep down, had she not waited? Desperately hoped he would come for her anyway?
Why did she not return to him, he had asked.
Why had she not written again? Insisted?
Deep down, was not that what she’d wanted? To return to him.
Until that last letter of his made it impossible.
Nine years of loneliness. Of yearning. Of waiting. What a ridiculously long time that was.
She’d tried so hard to hate him and failed so miserably at it.
“What did I write in that final letter?” he finally asked heavily.
Viola’s head whipped up in disbelief. Did he really just ask that? How could a man be so obtuse?
Pain coiled around her heart and squeezed it like an iron fist. It was an old, familiar feeling. “You really are incredible. You have forgotten! Let me jog your memory then.
“‘Mr Fane desires no further correspondence on this subject. He advises Lady Viola to proceed as though the recent unfortunate circumstance had not occurred and conduct her life henceforth as she sees fit.’—Does that not sound familiar?” Her words rang coldly through the church.
“But maybe not, for you had your secretary write that infernal letter.” She had never forgotten the words that had burned themselves into her mind.
Sebastian’s eyes flew to her face. “You recall those words?”
“Every single word,” she hissed.
A hand went to his neck. “I did dictate it to my secretary. I was too—I couldn’t—It may not have conveyed precisely what I intended.”
That really was the last straw.
“Oh? Then what, precisely, did you intend?”
He knitted his brow together in a frown. “I wanted to grant you the freedom you demanded, but that did not mean that was what I truly wanted.”
She stared. “You did not?”
He shook his head, clearly frustrated. “I don’t understand. That is what you wanted, was it not? Each letter you wrote demanded it. I could not grant you a divorce. Yet neither did I want you to be trapped in a life with a man you did not choose.”
She shook her head. “That is not what I mean at all.”
“Must I spell it out, truly?” His voice lashed out.
“You loved another man. I was a substitute. You demanded freedom. I gave it to you. I let you go. Why is that not enough?” His voice cracked.
“You choose George, even now. Very well, if that is your wish. Atone and mourn for him as much as you want. I certainly shall not join you in this lifelong quest of self-flagellation. But Viola.” His eyes seared into hers, and for a moment she saw the agony in them that was tearing at him.
“For how much longer must I measure up to a dead war hero? It is a war I cannot win.”
Oh.
She had never seen him like this. Never heard that rawness in his voice. The vulnerability flitting through his eyes, even for a fraction of a second, before he shuttered them and the stiff mask came down, shielding him from everything, the entire world, particularly from herself.
For the first time, she realised how she must have hurt him too. Possibly deeper than she’d ever allowed herself to imagine.
She had abandoned him first.
“I ran because I felt guilty about George, that is true,” she heard herself say, slowly. “But, Sebastian, you felt guilty too, did you not? So maybe that is part of the reason you did not come after me. You stayed away because of George.”
He gave a curt nod. “It certainly was relevant.”
“I think… I think I understand a little better now.” She got up, took a few steps, sat down again, fiddled with the strings of her bonnet, and looked at him with wide eyes.
“You thought this entire time I wanted George.” Even now, he thought she chose George, even when he was dead.
It was as if his ghost were haunting him.
She had not known that had been burdening him all this time, though of course, it would have.
It did not excuse things, but it helped her put everything in perspective.
She’d believed all this time that he’d prioritised his reputation and career, and that he did not want to be tied down emotionally to anyone. Least of all to her.
Was it possible…could she have been wrong?
He frowned and lifted a hand. “I would say the fact that I found you here affirms it. It is the answer to the question I posed earlier.”
George’s shrine. The sweetish smell of gently wilted roses assailed her nose.
Viola’s shoulders sagged. “It’s not true at all.”
Sebastian heaved a sigh and dropped onto the bench next to her.
There was silence. Then, he dragged a hand over his face. “Confound it, Viola. I no longer know what is true.”
Viola’s sigh echoed in the church.
Here they were, a married couple of nearly nine years, grown adults, so entirely different in personality and character, and both so thoroughly clueless. Trying to find their way back to each other, yet not knowing how.
“No,” Viola said ruefully. “What a muddle, don’t you agree?
It is as though every time I say A, you understand B.
Then you say B and I understand A. We are both horrifically bad at communicating with each other.
It is as if we both speak a different language.
” It was as if they were both speaking their truth, yet still not fully meeting.
The irony was that both were masters at wielding words.
She of the written word, he of the spoken.
But when it came to communicating with each other, their talents failed them utterly.
Why was that?
He rubbed his forehead wearily. “Truer words were never spoken. I have been an avid student of Lola’s language ever since I met her. It has been a confounding, intolerably frustrating, yet admittedly also rewarding experience.”
Her heart made a small, treacherous flip. “Rewarding?”
He nodded gravely. “In those rare moments when I do, finally, grasp what you are saying, I find myself uncommonly relieved to be able to conclude that my sense of logic hasn’t deserted me, after all.”
“Oh!” Viola slapped his arm. “You are impossible! Truly!”
That brought an involuntary, pale smile to his face.
The door opened with a creak, and a group of women entered. The sexton stepped forward to light the candles at the altar. There was a service beginning soon.
Sebastian rose. “Let us return home.”
She stared at the hand he held out toward her.
He had changed in those nine years. So had she. She came to understand him marginally better now, even though she doubted she could ever fully understand that complex man.
Did she forgive him?
Truly, she did not know.
She knew this much: running from him back then had solved nothing.
They would have to face them together: the dark shadows that haunted them both.
And she no longer wanted to do this on her own.
She no longer wanted to be lonely. She no longer wanted to yearn.
She refused to wait. Not a single minute longer. Not a single second.
She took his hand, and he gripped it tightly.
He led her out to the carriage waiting in front of the church.
Home.