Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Sebastian was already rifling through his mail when Viola entered the breakfast room the next morning. She had slept through the night at last and awoken brimming with energy.
Her stomach grumbled something fierce. She felt as though she could devour an entire ox.
She told the butler she would have scrambled eggs with bacon, toast, buttered mushrooms, devilled kidneys, and crumpets with marmalade and honey, “and several slices of seed cake, in addition to a pot of tea. No, two.”
Sebastian glanced up. “You appear to be hungry,” he remarked before disappearing behind his correspondence once more.
“Ravenous.” She popped two sugar pieces into her mouth and sucked on them contentedly.
Sebastian murmured something and shook his head. Then he reached for the next letter.
The butler served her eggs, and Viola attacked her meal with enthusiasm.
“What are your plans for the day?” she asked between bites. “Aside from Westminster, naturally.”
But Sebastian did not answer.
He had gone unnaturally still, his face bearing an expression she could not quite read.
“Sebastian?”
He turned the letter over and read it from the beginning. When he finally lowered the letter, his face had taken on the same colour as the parchment. “Is this meant to be some sort of joke?”
Viola set down her fork. “I beg your pardon?”
He handed her the paper wordlessly.
She took it, confused. Then her eyes fell on the handwriting.
It was her own.
“What is this?” Her gaze dropped to the date.
Nine years ago.
The room tilted.
She knew this letter. Knew every word. She had written it with a bruised soul and a bleeding heart and had wept over every line.
“Why do you have this?” Her voice came out strangled.
“Is it yours?”
She nodded mutely, turning it over in trembling hands. There was her signature. “But how? Why now?”
His face had gone from pale to ashen. He shot to his feet, paced to the window and back, raked both hands through his hair. He seized the letter from her and read it again. His mouth opened. Closed. His jaw worked.
“Is it true?” The words finally tore from him.
“I don’t understand.” Viola pressed her fingers to her temples. They had begun to throb. “This letter is nine years old.”
He stared at her as though she were speaking a foreign tongue. Then he strode to the door and yanked the bell pull so violently that she thought it might tear.
The butler appeared within moments.
“This letter.” Sebastian’s voice was clipped. “Was it delivered just now?”
“Indeed, sir. It arrived with the morning post.”
“That’s impossible.” Viola rose from her chair, gripping the table edge, for the room swayed slightly. “I wrote this nine years ago. Scottish post cannot be that slow.” She turned to Sebastian. “You answered it. I have never forgotten your reply.”
Confusion flickered across his face. “I have never seen this letter before in my life. I could not have answered what I never received.”
“But you did.” Her voice turned hard.
The butler cleared his throat delicately.
“If I may, my lady. Yesterday’s papers reported several mailbags were discovered in a postmaster’s cellar in Edinburgh after his death.
Some accident years ago, it seems. The bags were never delivered.
The letters have only now been sent on.” He paused.
“It appears you were among those affected.”
There was silence as they processed that information.
“Thank you, Falks.”
The butler withdrew with a quiet click of the door.
The silence that fell was absolute.
Viola stared at the letter. At the date. At her own desperate handwriting. A lost, undelivered letter.
All this time. He had never known.
Surely, fate could not be that cruel?
Sebastian sank into his chair. When he looked up, his eyes burned into hers.
“You were with child.”
The words hung between them.
Viola’s heart twisted. “Yes.” Her voice was barely audible. “Yes, I was.”
Something crumpled in his expression. His hands gripped the arms of his chair until his knuckles turned white.
“A child,” he repeated, dazed. “We had a child.”
“Almost.” The word caught in her throat. “Only for a little while. I lost it before I even understood what I was losing.”
A long moment passed. The clock on the mantel ticked relentlessly.
When he spoke again, his voice had gone hoarse. “Was it...could you tell if…he…she…”
“No.” She shook her head. “It was too early. I knew only that something was terribly wrong, and then it was gone.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “It was my fault. I should have known sooner. I should have recognised the signs. If I had been more careful, if I had rested more, if I hadn’t...”
Years of self-recrimination and bitter guilt came tumbling out.
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. She watched his rigid self-control fracture, just for an instant, before he forced it back into place.
“Why didn’t you write to me the moment you suspected?”
“Because I didn’t know myself until it was already too late.” Her eyes burned with unshed tears. “By the time I understood what was happening, it was already over.”
The familiar, old pain washed over her again. The agony. The terrible, dawning realisation. The impossible question of whether to tell him at all.
“I nearly didn’t write to you,” she admitted, dropping back into her chair. “What good would it do, I thought, to burden you with grief over something that was already lost? But it felt wrong to keep it from you. So I sat down and wrote this letter.” She turned it in her hands.
Dear Sebastian,
It is with great regret and with great mourning that I must write to you regarding some heartbreaking news…
She could still remember it. The way her hand had shaken. The tears that had blotted the ink.
He rose abruptly and strode to the fireplace. Braced both hands against the mantel. His shoulders rose and fell with each breath.
“I don’t understand.” His voice was hoarse. “Why do you believe I answered this letter?”
She opened her lips to quote the infamous lines once more. “‘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 to conduct her life henceforth as she sees fit.’”
He turned, and the horror on his face was terrible to behold.
“Dear God.” His voice broke. “Viola. You thought I meant...you cannot have believed I would...” He could not finish the sentence.
And then, at last, she understood.
“You were referring to something else altogether.” The words came slowly. “You were answering another letter. The one I wrote before this one. The one where I asked for a divorce. And by ‘unfortunate circumstance’ you meant our accidental marriage.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Not…not…”
“Of course I meant the marriage!” The words exploded from him.
“How could you think, even for a moment, that I would write such a thing about our child? That I could dismiss...that I would tell you to forget...” He dragged both hands down his face.
“Good God, Viola. What sort of monster did you take me for?”
The question hung in the air, dreadful and unanswerable.
She had no answer. Because that was exactly what she had believed. That with a single cold sentence, he had told her to erase their child from memory as though it had never existed. An unfortunate circumstance to be forgotten. A regrettable mistake.
She had indeed believed him capable of that.
He saw the answer in her face and recoiled as though she had struck him.
He dragged his shaking hand across his face. “I cannot... I must...”
He could not finish.
Without another word, he turned and walked out of the room.
She heard his footsteps in the hall, swift and uneven. Heard him call for his coat. Heard the front door open and close with terrible finality.
He was gone.
He did not return for luncheon. He did not return for tea. He did not return all afternoon.
The sun set. The footman lit the fire in the grate. Still Viola waited.
She fell asleep on the sofa, wrapped in a woollen blanket.
Then, much later, the door opened, and he was back, suddenly kneeling on the floor beside her, bringing with him the smell of rain and fresh air.
“Have you been walking all day?” she mumbled, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Yes. I walked through all of London. I had much to think about.” He took both her hands in his cold ones and touched his forehead against hers.
An eternity must have passed before he finally spoke.
“Forgive me, Viola. I did not know.” His eyes were red and held deep pools of grief.
“I should have known. It was my responsibility to care for and protect you. I’d failed at that.
I should have gone after you. I did not.
I told myself I was respecting your wishes.
It was but pride. I am sorry. I have failed you and the child. ”
That brought tears to her own eyes. “No, you must forgive me for having believed, even for a second, that you did not care.”
“Ah, Viola.” He twisted his lips wryly. “How you must have hated me.”
It was true. For a while she certainly had hated him. Yet, for all her fury, even in those darkest moments, she had never stopped loving him. That was the cruelest part of it all; she had never been able to expel him from her heart.
“And all this time, you grieved alone, believing I had abandoned you and our child.” His voice was hollow. “No wonder you never wrote again.”
He sounded so immeasurably tired that her heart twisted.
“I should have known better,” Viola whispered.
“I could have tried harder. Not given up as easily. I was so young and too deeply hurt to think clearly for a while. Then, later, I could have written again. But the chasm was too big, and both of us had moved on with our lives. I truly believed it was better that way. To leave the past behind. To move on, each on our own. I thought you were better off without me. You were leading a new, successful life. And now this.”
Silence fell between them once more.
She had had months, years even, to mourn and grieve and process what had happened. But for him, it was all brutally new. He seemed utterly at a loss.
Neither did she know what to do. How to comfort him. Whether to comfort him at all. Whether he even wanted comfort from the woman who had believed him capable of such cruelty.
She reached out tentatively and touched his hair.
He did not pull away.
She stroked it gently, as one might soothe a wounded creature, and said nothing at all.
There was no sound for a while, save for the fire crackling in the grate. They sat together in the flickering light, mourning at last what they had both lost.