Chapter Fourteen
The bookshop on Piccadilly was one of Vanessa's favourite places in London.
It was not the largest establishment, nor the most fashionable.
It did not cater to the ton's appetite for scandal sheets and society novels.
Instead, it was a quiet, dusty sanctuary of serious literature, shelves crammed with volumes of poetry and philosophy, history and natural science, the kind of books that demanded attention rather than merely passing time.
She had discovered it years ago, during her first Season, when the relentless social whirl had threatened to drive her mad.
She had slipped away from a particularly tedious afternoon call and wandered the streets until she found this place, a refuge from the endless performance of being Lady Vanessa Wayworth.
She had never told anyone about it as it was her secret, her escape.
And yet Martin had known to meet her here.
The letters, she thought, for what must have been the hundredth time since last night. He read the letters. He knows everything.
She arrived at quarter to two, unable to bear another moment of waiting at home.
Her mother had been insufferable all morning, full of questions about the ball, about Lord Deane, about her plans for the afternoon.
Vanessa had pleaded a headache and escaped as soon as she could manage it, claiming she needed fresh air and solitude.
The headache, at least, was not entirely a lie. She had slept poorly, her dreams a jumbled confusion of Martin's kiss and Martin's voice and the nagging certainty that had crystallised in the carriage on the way home.
He knew. He had known for weeks, perhaps longer, and yet he had said nothing.
The bookshop was quiet when she entered, the bell above the door chiming softly. Mr. Haberton, the elderly proprietor, looked up from behind his counter and nodded in recognition.
"Lady Vanessa. A pleasure, as always."
"Mr. Haberton. I hope you are well."
"Tolerably so, tolerably so." He gestured toward the back of the shop. "Your usual corner is free, if you're wanting privacy. I've just received a new shipment of poetry, some lovely editions of Shelley, if you're interested."
"Thank you. I may browse later."
She made her way to the alcove at the rear of the shop, a small space tucked between two towering shelves, furnished with a worn armchair and a reading lamp. It was invisible from the front of the store, shielded by walls of books, a private world within a private world.
She settled into the chair and waited.
The minutes crawled by. She tried to read and picked up a volume of essays that someone had left on the side table, but the words blurred before her eyes. Her mind was too full of Martin. Of what he would say. Of what she would say in return.
She had spent the morning rehearsing conversations in her head. Calm, measured responses. Dignified acceptance of his confession. A graceful acknowledgment that yes, she had suspected, and no, she was not angry, and could they please move forward now without any further dramatics?
None of it felt right. None of it captured the tangle of emotions in her chest, the embarrassment, the relief, the lingering disbelief that any of this was actually happening.
The thought still seemed impossible, even after last night. Even after the terrace, the kiss, the desperate confession that had shattered six years of careful pretense.
The bell above the door chimed.
Vanessa's heart lurched into her throat. She heard voices…Mr. Haberton's measured tones, and then another voice, deeper, achingly familiar.
"I'm meeting someone. In the back, I believe."
"Of course, Your Grace. You know the way."
A measured tread disturbed the silence, punctuated by the sharp groan of floorboards and the slight whisper of material brushing against the shelves.
And then Martin appeared at the entrance to her alcove, and everything else ceased to exist.
He looked... different. Not the polished duke she had seen at countless balls and dinners, with his perfectly arranged cravat and his sardonic smile.
This Martin was rumpled, slightly disheveled, as though he had dressed in haste and forgotten to check the mirror.
His hair was disordered, more so than usual and there were shadows beneath his eyes that spoke of a sleepless night.
He looked, in short, as wrecked as she felt.
"You came," he said.
"Did you think I wouldn't?"
"I thought…" He stopped, shook his head. "I don't know what I thought. I've been thinking so many things since last night that I can no longer distinguish between them."
He moved into the alcove, and suddenly the small space felt even smaller. He was too close…close enough that she could smell the familiar sandalwood of his cologne, could see the rapid pulse beating in his throat. Close enough to touch, if she dared.
She did not dare. Not yet. Not until she understood.
"You said you had things to tell me," she said. "Things I should know before we go any further."
"Yes." He ran a hand through his hair, further destroying any pretense of order. "I do. I have been trying to find the right words all morning, and I confess I have failed utterly. So I shall simply have to say it badly and hope you forgive the inelegance."
"Martin…"
"Please…allow me to speak. If I don't say it now, I may lose my nerve entirely, and then we shall be here all afternoon while I work up the courage again."
She nodded, her hands twisting in her lap.
Martin took a breath. Then another. He looked at the ceiling, at the floor, at the spines of the books surrounding them…anywhere but at her.
"About a month ago," he began, "I received a package. It arrived at Montehood House without warning, no return address, no accompanying note. Just a bundle of letters, tied with blue ribbon, addressed in a hand I recognized."
Vanessa's stomach dropped.
"Your hand," Martin continued, still not meeting her eyes. "I knew it immediately. I had seen it on notes you had written to Edward, on letters you had sent to mutual friends. I would know your handwriting anywhere."
"Martin…"
"I should not have read them." The words came out in a rush now, tumbling over each other.
"I knew they were private. I knew they were not meant for me…
or rather, they were addressed to me, but never intended to be sent.
I understood that the moment I opened the first one.
And I should have stopped. I should have burned them, or returned them, or done anything other than what I actually did. "
"Which was?"
"Read them." He finally looked at her, and the expression on his face was raw…
stripped of all pretense, all protection.
"All of them. Every word. I read them once, and then I read them again, and then I kept them in my desk and read them a third time because I could not…
I could not believe what they said. What they meant. "
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the ambient sounds of the bookshop seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of them suspended in a moment that felt infinite.
"You know," Vanessa said quietly. It was not a question.
"Yes. I know that you…" He swallowed hard.
"I know how you feel about me. How you have felt, for years.
I know about the supper waltzes and the longing glances and the…
" A strangled laugh escaped him. "The cushion incident. You wrote about the cushion incident. Did you know that was the moment I become forever yours.”
She stared at him. "I beg your pardon?"
"The cushion. When you threw it at my head and called me a pretentious pedant. That was the moment." His voice was rough, unsteady. "I had admired you before then…how beautiful you were…how clever... But that was the moment I realised I was in trouble.”
"I didn't call you a pretentious pedant. I called you an insufferable pedant."
"Ah. My mistake." A ghost of a smile flickered across his face. "The distinction is important, I suppose."
"Very important. Pretentious implies you were putting on airs. Insufferable implies you were simply... yourself."
"And my natural self is insufferable?"
"Frequently."
The familiar rhythm of their banter settled something in her chest, loosened a knot she hadn't realised had formed.
This was still them. Whatever revelations lay between them, whatever secrets had been exposed, they were still Martin and Vanessa, still capable of arguing about word choices in a dusty bookshop on a Tuesday afternoon.
"I should have told you immediately," Martin said, his voice sobering.
"When the letters arrived. I should have come to you and explained…
should have returned them to you, let you decide what to do with them.
Instead I…" He broke off, shaking his head.
"I kept them. I read them over and over. And then I used them."
"Used them?"
"The meeting in the park. That was not coincidence, Vanessa.
I knew you rode there, you had written about it.
I knew the time, the path and the fact that you preferred the eastern trails because they were quieter.
" He looked sick with guilt. "I engineered the encounter.
I wanted to see you, to be near you, and I used your own words to make it happen. "
"I know."
He blinked. "You... know?"
"I suspected. After…well, after everything.
The park, the gift, dinner, last night." She met his eyes steadily.
"You were different, Martin. You had been different for weeks.
Looking at me in ways you never had before.
Saying things that felt... significant. And I kept thinking about the letters, kept wondering if somehow, impossibly, you had received them. "
"You suspected." He said the words slowly, as though testing them. "All this time, you suspected, and you said nothing?"
"What was I supposed to say? 'Excuse me, Your Grace, but have you by chance received and read six years' worth of my private confessions?' It seemed rather forward."