She Walks In
Chapter twenty
Henry
Henry sat in the chair by the window with the glass balanced on his knee and watched the clouds drift past the moon. He had dismissed his valet. He had no patience tonight for the performance of being attended to.
Too much had gone wrong. And too much, inexplicably, had gone right. He was not certain which unsettled him more.
He thought back to the dinner with Edmund.
He had been in good spirits, as Edmund always was.
Easy in his skin, light on his feet, genuinely amused by the world and expecting it to continue obliging him.
Henry had nothing against him for it. The carelessness was not cruelty, only character.
Edmund would not hurt a living soul. He was also constitutionally incapable of keeping his mouth shut past his fourth glass, which made him a liability of a very particular kind.
What Henry had not liked was the way Edmund’s attention had found Violet.
His heir presumptive had watched his wife with that easy appreciation he turned on everything that pleased him, and possessiveness had moved through Henry that he had never experienced before.
He did not want his wife being watched by anyone he had not hired to do so.
He would need to manage that quietly.
He turned the glass on his knee.
The carriage was harder to think about.
She had crossed the seat without warning. He had expected interrogation. She gave him silence instead and held him while the road moved under them, and his arm had gone around her before he had permitted it. He had turned his face into her hair because he had been longing to do that every day.
I am sorry for Elizabeth.
I am sorry you married into a house full of ghosts.
He had been more grateful for her embrace than he knew what to do with, and the last thing he wanted was to look at it directly.
A man who wished to keep his wife alive had no business wanting what had buried the last three.
But the affection was growing despite every intention he had brought to bear against it.
It had been growing, if he was honest, since the morning she had proposed the terms of their arrangement with more determination than a badger protecting his family.
He had not been careful enough. He knew because his mind frequently went to Violet when he had not directed it.
And when he saw her, even after nearly a month, his stomach dropped at unpredictable intervals for no cause he could have justified.
He had not felt it with Catherine or Margaret, both of whom had given him genuine warmth.
But it had not been this. He had not felt his chest pull tight at the sound of a laugh.
He was feeling it now. And he refused to follow the thought the whole way down. He had begun to touch her with an intention that was more than duty, let himself want her, and give in to the need to please her.
But the fear was there, quiet and absolute.
He was still thinking about all the reasons why he should not love her when the door opened.
She stood in the frame in her nightgown and dressing gown, hair loose over one shoulder, a candle in her hand.
“I was uncertain if you were awake,” she said.
“And yet, here you are.”
She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “I wanted to tell you—”
“Sit down.”
She crossed the room and settled into the chair across from his, tucking her feet beneath her as though they had been doing this for years. As if they had been married for decades, not days. She set the candle on the low table and folded her hands in her lap.
“I will be going to my mother’s tomorrow,” she said. “I expect I will be gone most of the day. I wanted you to know.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes.” Her gaze drifted to his bed then quickly returned to him. “Thanks to your generosity, very much so.”
He waved away the thanks, the guilt feeling familiar. What he had given her family cost him nothing he would notice. What it cost them… the life of their beloved daughter, sister… He had deemed her worth two-thousand pounds. He pushed that thought down along with all the others.
“Do they need anything else?” He took a sip of his drink. “We have tallow to spare, if they are running low.”
She looked at him with wide eyes. Then she laughed, startled out of her. Her eyes going bright and warm pulled at something behind his sternum.
This was the problem. This specific thing, this precise helplessness, arriving on the back of nothing. He was undone by a woman who had not noticed the difference between tallow and candle wax.
“I will tell them that you insisted.”
He nodded, not trusting himself to smile. But he did want to smile.
Violet smoothed her dressing gown over her knees. “I find myself in need of guidance,” she said. “Someone who understands how these rooms work. The unwritten rules, the expectations. I would rather not learn by public error again." She looked up at him. “Do you know anyone who might be willing?”
He immediately thought of Cranbrook’s wife.
Sharp-minded, recently deprived of purpose since the last of her children had married, whose husband had forbidden her another dog on the grounds that he was not going through the training stage again at his age, not for any consideration on earth.
She would take Violet to task and be profoundly grateful for something to do, as would her husband.
“I may know someone,” he said.
She nodded and rose. He watched her move toward the door.
“Violet.”
She turned.
He had not meant to say anything, but now that she was looking at him expectantly, he found himself asking, “Are you miserable here?”
She blinked. “No. Why would you say that?”
“I don’t expect happiness from you. I am aware of what you gave up. I would prefer it if you were not miserable on top of it. I could perhaps accept dissatisfied or even discontented."
She regarded him with that concentrated attention of hers. “I am not miserable, Henry.”
He nodded. “When are you expecting your courses?”
The colour that rose in her face was becoming. “A week, I should think.”
“I want to arrange protection for you. Until we know whether you have conceived, I am not prepared to leave it to chance.”
“I don’t want strangers following me about.”
He understood. “Have you someone in mind?”
“Kit.”
“Absolutely not.”
She straightened. “Why?”
“He is unmarried. I watched him watch you very closely all three times I saw him. His feelings for you are not difficult to read.”
Her fists clenched. “He is like family.”
“He is not family. That is the issue.” He felt his shoulders tense. “My men can become your family. Give them time.”
“Kit would lay down his life for me. Can you say the same with certainty about your hired men?”
Henry leaned back in his chair. She had a point. He could say they were reliable. He could say they were well compensated and dependable. He could not say if they would stand between his wife and a bullet.
“Very well,” he said. “At all times.”
“Of course.”
“I mean it, Violet.”
“Understood. I will speak to Kit when I see him tomorrow.”
He watched her go, the candlelight going with her, until the door closed and he was alone with the dark.