Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
The elections in June proceeded without Sebastian.
The Tories carried the day, and a new Chief Secretary for Ireland was installed.
As Josephine had prophesied, Sebastian’s name was absent from the polls.
He had not stood for re-election, and for the first time in nearly a decade, he held no office and no seat.
Westwood Hall was just as she remembered it: dark and quiet and with the sense that time stood still. Her godmother, Lady Regina, of course, was no longer there; and Viola missed her presence with a fierceness that robbed her of her breath.
Sebastian was there, yet oddly absent simultaneously. He spent hours in his study; she could see the correspondence piling on the table in the hall, letters arriving daily that he haphazardly collected without comment.
He was polite but distant when they met, and far too courteous.
Sometimes, he would touch her stomach, gently, with a wondrous expression flitting over his face, as if he still could not quite believe that they were expecting a child, but then he’d enquire after her health as politely as though they were acquaintances, then nod in quite the avuncular fashion when she said that she was very well, thank you, followed by him murmuring something about matters requiring his attention before disappearing into his study again.
It was rather vexing, Viola thought, well aware that she could hardly blame him.
He walked the grounds alone, frequently, in all kinds of weather.
Viola watched from the window of her drawing room as he strode toward the forest in the middle of a downpour, and she resisted the urge to run after him, shake him and tell him to snap out of it.
Instinct told her he needed solitude, even as she craved company and felt lonelier than ever.
She’d taken a walk to the ruins alone, a fond smile on her face as she remembered the auspicious day they’d met.
She’d pretended to be so cross with him that day, when she’d lost her heart to him on the spot.
And now?
They no longer shared a bedroom. He occupied the suite on the far side of the corridor, the rooms traditionally reserved for the lord of the house, while she had moved into her godmother’s chambers.
She did not feel comfortable there at all, and tossed and turned the entire night in the enormous bed, missing his warmth beside her.
Sometimes, she fell into a fitful sleep when the first rays of dawn shone through the room, and then she dreamt of George, and Nana, and Sebastian, and how he was walking away from her, and how she could never quite catch up with him.
Viola wondered whether it was to remain like this for the rest of her life, this strained coexistence in which they were married, yet each alone.
The situation reminded her of those first weeks after they had met, when she had felt like the sole occupant of this vast mansion, when the servants cast pitying glances her way and took it upon themselves to console her.
When, one day, even the scullery maid approached her to comfort her, and to assure her that her stories were the best and that there was no better storyteller than her, and she should take heart, for surely things would look better soon, Viola knew things must look dire indeed.
“Thank you, Mary,” Viola had said after her impassioned speech, which had touched her.
Back then she had at least had Nana to tend to.
Now she had no one.
Well. That was not entirely true. Her hand crept over her swollen belly. There it was, ever so faintly. A flutter, and then a kick.
She spent hours like that, sitting quietly, marvelling at the miracle growing inside her. And because she had no one else to talk to, she told the Little One stories. And because she had so much time on her hands, she wrote those down, too.
Peregrin wrote euphorically, saying her book was outselling everything she’d ever written, combined.
Viola closed her eyes painfully. While it was wonderful to be successful, she couldn’t help but feel a desolate sense of guilt and wished she’d never written the book to begin with.
She knew Sebastian was finally reading her books because she’d seen the butler carrying them from the library, a tower of damning volumes stacked on his arm, crowned by that ominous pamphlet that had printed her letters.
She herself hadn’t been able to bring herself to look at it yet.
Viola paced the corridor outside his study, biting her fingernails to the quick. When the butler approached her to suggest that dinner be served, she shook her head.
“Bring me a chair,” she requested. The butler did so immediately and brought her a cushioned armchair with a footstool and a blanket.
She appreciated that he did so without pulling a face or lifting an eyebrow or showing in any other way that her request was odd, unreasonable, or plain strange.
He even set up a little table with a lamp, a hot pot of tea, and a plate full of shortbread, freshly made only for her. Clearly, the cook was pitying her, too.
For Viola was determined to wait outside Sebastian’s door until he reemerged. Even if that took until judgment day dawned.
By the time it was eleven at night, Viola’s resolve to leave him undisturbed dwindled. She supposed she needed to be patient and that he needed time to process it all.
But just how much time, if you please, did the blasted man need?
She scrambled out of her blanket, stepped up to his door and lifted her hand to knock. Just at that very moment, the door tore open and Sebastian, ready to storm out, nearly ran her over. He steadied her by placing his hands on her shoulder.
“Viola! What are you doing here?” He took in the chair, the blanket, and the table with the lamp.
Viola folded her arms across her chest. “I’ve been waiting for you, a most nerve-wracking experience, I must add. So I decided that I’d waited enough. You have been hiding in your cave long enough. We really must talk, Sebastian. This can’t continue.”
“By all means, I was about to seek you out. Come in.”
His study was a typical masculine abode, consisting of green wallpaper, dark mahogany furniture, a massive desk by the table, and several cabinets filled with files and documents. The fire flickered and cracked in the fireplace, and Viola stepped up to it, seeking the warmth.
His eyes travelled down to her feet, his brows drawn together in a disapproving frown. “I will never understand why you always insist on running barefoot, particularly in weather like this. Come here.”
He pointed at the sofa that stood in front of the fireplace, and she sat. Then he took one foot, cold in his warm hand, and pulled out a woollen stocking, which he drew up over her foot and up to her knee. He did the same to her second foot.
“Do you keep stockings in your study?” Viola asked, to disguise her embarrassment.
“Yes. I have an entire drawer full of them, particularly ordered for you from a hosiery shop in Bond Street.”
“You must be joking!”
“Indeed, I am not.” His face was perfectly serious.
She felt touched by that unexpected kindness and the notion that he’d set out to the hosiery shop to buy her stockings. “That is rather sweet of you,” she said gruffly.
His thumb traced an absent circle against her ankle; her foot still cradled in his hand. “Now. What is it you wanted to talk about?”
“We must talk more. I never know what is going on in that mind of yours, particularly when you look at me the way you are looking at me now. I have grown tired of guessing.”
“The way I am looking at you?”
“As though you find me either very amusing or very exasperating, and I cannot tell which.” She pressed on before he could respond. “We must talk more, Sebastian. About everything. If we want this to work.”
“This?”
“Our marriage,” Viola said quietly. “I know it started as an accident. Neither of us intended it, and yet here we are. It wasn’t your fault. Nor was it mine. I have often thought about how different our lives might have been. If I had not visited Aunt Regina that summer. If I had not met you.”
Something shifted in his expression, though she could not quite read it. “You sound as though you still feel responsible. After all this time.”
She considered the words. “I suppose I do. A little.”
His grip tightened, almost imperceptibly, around her foot. “You are entirely right. About needing to talk more.” A pause. “As it happens, I came to find you for precisely that reason. There is something I must tell you. But you first.”
And now she had his full attention, his eyes on her face, waiting, and she had just declared they must be honest with each other, and she did not know how to begin.
The fire crackled. The room suddenly felt too warm.
“I feel that...” she started, then stopped. Started again. “I feel that your life is ruined, and it is all my fault.”
She pressed her hands to her face. “You should never have met me. You could have divorced me, but now that there is a child on the way, I would rather you did not. It would be dreadful for the baby, you see. And now I am terrified you will do it, anyway.”
The tears came then, hot and sudden and utterly mortifying.
There it was. The whole wretched weight of it, finally spoken aloud.
She could not bring herself to look at him, but she felt him go very still.
“Nonsense.” His voice was low, firm. “Viola, look at me. I will say this only once.”
She lowered her hands slowly. She braced for coldness, for condemnation. But there was only concern in those striking eyes of his, the very ones she had described so extensively in her novels. The ones that had led to his downfall.
“I have said it before and I say it now. I will not divorce you. Not now. Not ever. Aside from the fact that no grounds for a legal separation exist, there is nothing you could ever do to alter my mind. Do you understand?” He held her gaze until she nodded, then scowled and pressed his handkerchief into her hand.
“Oh.” She wiped her cheeks, feeling rather foolish.
“Secondly. Regarding my political career.” He released her foot and shifted to face her more fully. “I want you to understand that I had every intention of staying to fight, of remaining in office. But the moment Penworthy spewed his filth in the chamber, everything changed.”
“What do you mean?” She pressed the damp handkerchief into a tight ball.
“He rather helped me make this decision, so I suppose I ought to be grateful. Staying in my position would have meant regular travel to Ireland. You would have had to remain here alone or accompany me to Dublin. The former would have separated us for half the year. The latter would have meant our child would be born there.”
His jaw tightened. “I won’t have it. The residence in Ireland is comfortable enough, but the situation is volatile.
There is political unrest, and fevers regularly sweep through the city.
Life there is grim. I will not subject you or our child to such conditions.
I want our child born here. Safely. At Westwood Hall.
And I wanted to be here and not away in Ireland when it happens. ”
The weight that had pressed so heavily upon her chest began, at last, to ease. “Are you saying that you resigned because our child is on the way, not because of the scandal?”
He shook his head. “You are not responsible for my resignation, Viola. Nor is the book. And while I grant that a scandal of this nature does not reflect well on my character, that would only signify if I intended to stand for election.”
“But you were so withdrawn when we arrived. You hardly spoke to me. You locked yourself away in the study for days. I feared the worst.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, in a familiar gesture that was at once restless and almost agitated.
“I know. And for that, I must apologise. I needed time alone to wrestle with my own demons. My life changed radically and without warning. One moment I was Chief Secretary, and the next I was not. I felt adrift.” He paused, as though the admission cost him something.
“Unmoored. I am not proud of how I handled it.”
He drew her onto his lap, and she went willingly, tucking herself against his chest.
“What will you do now?”
“I shall have an alarming amount of time on my hands. Perhaps I’ll take up gardening.” He glanced around the room with a critical eye. “Or interior architecture. This place is a mausoleum. It needs thorough improvement. And we shall need a nursery.”
“A nursery. Yes.” She hesitated, then pressed on. This needed saying. “But Sebastian, I would rather not have it at the far end of the house, so removed from everything. From us.” She swallowed. “And I have not been sleeping well in Nana’s room.”
That bedroom where the old woman had died. Where they had married, quite by accident, nine years ago.
“It is too isolated. Too lonely. Too far from the rest of the house. Too far from you.” Then she added quickly, “And I daresay it’s haunted by some Elizabethan ghost.”
He was quiet for a moment, and she felt him working through her meaning.
Then he nodded slowly. “The doctor said that you needed much rest, so I thought it was best to give you an entire suite on your own. But if you feel lonely, there is only one solution then. We renovate the adjoining rooms. Put the nursery there.”
“And where am I to sleep in the meantime?” She traced a button on his waistcoat, not quite meeting his eyes.
“In my room, obviously,” he said, rather gruffly, gathering her to him.
She smiled against his shoulder. “What an excellent solution, Mr Fane.”
His arm tightened around her. “I have my moments.”