Her hand found his in the dark. “It is not vanity to trust your own, but it is expensive.”
His fingers squeezed hers once. He was quiet for so long she thought he had fallen asleep again. Then he said, “The boy.”
“Edmund’s son. Yes.”
“She told me he was Harold’s.” His words came out breathless. “She came to me a year after my brother died. She said Harold had loved her in secret, that he had got her with child, that the boy was all that remained of him. She wept. I had never seen her weep before, and I believed every word because I wanted Harold to have left something behind.” He paused to catch his breath. “Ihave never met him. She would not allow it. She said the boy was settled, and that visits would unsettle him. I told myself every pound I sent was the last service I could do for Harold.”
He turned his head on the pillow and looked at the ceiling.
“She used me. And she used my love for a dead man to open my purse and my guilt.”
His jaw worked. She watched the grief and the fury compete for his face and neither win.
“I should have asked more questions. But I wanted him to be Harold’s. I should like to meet the boy,” he said. “He is not Harold’s, but he is still…” He searched for the word. “He is still ours. In some fashion.”
“Yes,” she said. “He is.”
He closed his eyes. “I miss my brother, Violet.”
She pressed her lips to his temple and stayed there until his breathing told her he was asleep.
Chapter thirty-six
The Sixth Morning
Henry
By the sixth morning Henry could sit up without the room tilting, and he had had enough of lying in bed thinking about a piece of paper. He sent Patten down with a single instruction, and by afternoon Brigg had come and gone again, and the thing he had asked for lay across the counterpane where the man had left it.
He did not send for his wife until the light had gone gold and the house had quieted. She came in still in her gardening apron, a smear of soil along one wrist, and stopped short when she saw what lay on the bed.
“You are meant to be resting,” she said.
“I am resting. I am in bed. I have never in my life been more thoroughly horizontal.” He moved his hand toward the document. “Come here.”
She came, sat on the edge of the bed where she had rested her head for four days. “It is our marriage contract,” she said.
“It is.”
“Why is it here?”
“I have spent the better part of a week lying in your bed owing you my life,” he said, “and unable to stop thinking that somewhere in London was a piece of paper that called you acondition.” He picked it up. It felt heavier than paper had any right to be. “I had Brigg read it to me again this morning. Do you know, in the whole of it, there is not one line that protects you. Your mother is provided for. Your sisters are dowered. The trust is irrevocable. The heir is accounted for to the third contingency.” He looked at her. “Your own mother asked, the night it was signed, whether there was a clause for her daughter. There was none. And I signed it, and I thought myself generous.”
Violet said nothing. Her hand had come to rest near his.
“I knew what I was purchasing,” he went on, his voice dipping. “An heir, and a quiet, grateful woman to provide it. I did not know I was marrying the person who would capture a murderer and save my life. I am ashamed to admit, I had decided in advance that you were a means to an end, and a man does not look closely at a means.” His jaw worked. “Its existence offends me, Violet. I will not have it exist anymore.”
With unsteady hands he tore the document from top to bottom with great effort. He did not stop there. He tore it across, and then folded the halves and tore them again, into quarters, and laid the pieces on the bed between them.
“The settlement on your family stands,” he said. “That, I would never touch. But this is gone. And there is another being drawn in its place. One that guards you, not the heir and regardless of heir. You will never again be as vulnerable as you were when we signed this contract.”
She was crying without sound. But only for a moment. She wiped her face with the heel of her hand and looked at the torn pieces.
“You did not have to do this,” she said.
“I am aware. I wanted to.” He swallowed. “There is something I have not told you,” he said. She edged closer to him. “When I was under. I could not answer, but I heard you.”
She tilted her head. “What did you hear?”
