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 pulledout 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.
