Maybe love wasn’t so much about grand gestures, moonshine and poetry, Viola mused, as much as it was about being present and not leaving the room when everything shook around them. Maybe it was about not giving up on each other, and not running, no matter how difficult things were. But that required so much trust. Trust that they had to rebuild, brick by brick.
Could it really be as simple as that?
And oh, could anything be more difficult?
Perhaps the differences between them mattered less, as long as neither of them gave up the willingness to understand each other.
It was all about trying, wasn’t it?
Her heart warmed at the thought, and she felt as though she’d cracked one of the universe’s biggest mysteries. If this was indeed the case, then there was hope indeed. For if there was one thing in life she was good at, it was trying. She would never stop trying to understand him, she vowed. She would never stop trying to scratch away at that shell of his to reach the core that he kept so jealously guarded within. Now and then she saw glimpses of it when his shell cracked, which it did now increasingly often, and for now, she would have to be satisfied.
They were sitting in the drawing room, and it felt comfortable and familiar. Viola sat on the floor, nibbling shortbread and pretending to read a book, while Sebastian occupied the sofa behind her, perusing his documents. If she shifted back, just a little, she could lean right against his legs, giving her support, and she rather liked that. It seemed like he did, too, for he did not move his legs the entire time. He must have developed a cramp in them, in fact, from holding them so still.
Next to her was a neat pile with her things: her shawl, folded, an errant sock pressed into a perfect square, two hairpins, and a leather bookmark that she thought she’d lost. She’d walked into the drawing room and caught him compiling it all into a neat pile and setting it on the table.
All this time, even back at Westwood Hall, when she’d randomly encountered those tiny packages of her belongings, that had been him? She felt a tinge of embarrassment at the thought that he’d been cleaning up after her.
“I always thought the maids did that.” She ran her finger around the frayed edge of the bookmark.
He hadn’t commented on that and picked up his dossier.
After half an hour of unfocused reading, Viola set her book aside. “I suppose I ought to invite my cousin Georgiana for tea one of these days,” she said entirely at random. She had been avoiding her cousin, but she supposed she could no longer put her off.
Sebastian lowered his dossier. “If you do, give me fair warning, so I may make myself scarce. Not that I have anything against your cousin,” he added hastily. “But she does have the tendency to talk…a lot.”
Georgiana had still not forgiven Viola for keeping her marriage to Sebastian quiet all these years, yet now the woman expected Viola to help make a match for Lily.
“And nothing less than a duke will do!” Georgiana had proclaimed. “With your husband’s connections, surely that is a feat easily accomplished.”
“Leave Fane out of this, pray,” she retorted, harried. “He truly doesn’t have time for any matchmaking ventures.”
Georgiana nodded. “He is a busy man. Yet, as the Chief Secretary working for the Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Richmond, surely it can’t be too much for him to ask for Lily to be introduced to one of his sons. He has three of them, after all. Though I would very much prefer the firstborn. If Fane won’t do it, then you must, Viola!”
Viola wondered how she was to wheedle a duke’s son, or any sort of gentleman for that matter, into marrying Lily. The girl was pretty enough, but in Sebastian’s words, a dim-witted milk-and-water miss, much like her mother.
Viola was inclined to agree, but then felt a disloyal pang within her chest. Cousin Georgiana and Lily were family, after all, and a sense of loyalty bound her to them. She would need more than one Season to find someone for Lily.
Yet one afternoon, Sebastian mentioned leaving London after this Season was over.
Viola had nearly dropped her book. “What do you mean?”
He’d lifted an eyebrow. “I must return to Dublin after the elections are over, of course.”
She’d never even thought of that. “Where do you live in Dublin?”
“In the Chief Secretary’s Lodge. I work in Dublin Castle.” He said it as if that were a fact as commonplace as if he were to take a daily stroll along Pall Mall.
“Dublin Castle!” Viola’s face brightened. “Are there any ghosts there?”
An involuntary laugh broke from his lips. “And if I say there are, would that motivate you to join me?” There was an odd, expectant sort of look on his face that made her stammer.
“I suppose so. I mean, if there are indeed ghosts there, that would be quite the thing. Imagine living with actual ghosts!”
He nodded solemnly. “Naturally, you would go there only for the ghosts.”
Not because she wanted to be with him—that phrase he left hanging in the air. Then he returned to his document.
She scratched her head with the blunt end of the pencil. “Well, it isn’t the only reason, but a reason,” she put in, “and not even the most important one. Next to being married to you, of course, which might be an equally, if not more potent reason. In the imperative, inevitable sense.” She winced at her own garbled nonsense.
