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“It’s my brother’s first name,” she said quietly, still trying to make him look at her. He blocked out the sight of her completely by putting his hands over his eyes. He couldn’t make sense of any of it. Every pleasant memory he’d had with Mr Blake, was with Lady Violette instead. “I just had to get away, start a new life away from the one that was contrived merely to force me into marriage.”
Hearing the complaint, Marcus at last, lifted his face from his hands, for it was so similar to a complaint he’d often made himself.
“Then I met you, and it was just easy to be your friend, then everything just sort of…happened,” she said helplessly.
“Happened!?” he repeated in derision. “None of this just sort of happened.”
“But it did!” she insisted, striding toward him. “My lord, other than my identity, I have never lied to you.” She pulled on the lapels of his jacket. The closeness was confusing to Marcus. On one hand, he wanted to veer away from her, now that he knew she had lied to him so much and she was not who he thought she was. Yet on the other hand, he was curious to feel the thrill of that kiss again. “Everything I ever said or did with you, I was my true self.”
“You expect me to believe that?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows. “We went sailing, riding, fishing. Good god, we played cricket.”
“And by your own admission, I’m a finer player than you,” she said with the smallest of smiles. “Is it so impossible for a woman to like all those things as much as a man does?”
“No,” he said, his voice choked, though he was still shaking his head. Her grasp on his lapels was confusing him all the more. “And that kiss?” he said, thinking back to the excitement in his stomach that had coupled that kiss.
“You were right, my lord, in that I have an attachment to someone, and that the prospect of you marrying Lady Helen brings me heartbreak, but I have no attachment to Lady Helen. I am attached to you.” She was looking up at him hopefully, but he had no words in response. This was all too much to take in.
He backed away from her until her hands slipped away from his lapels and fell down between the two of them. When he had put enough distance between them, he turned away, unable to look at her anymore. He couldn’t do it now. He had to come to terms with the fact that Mr Victor Blake was Lady Violette Blay.
“I see,” she said quietly from behind him.
“I can’t….” He trailed off, uncertain what to say at all.
“You do not have to say anything, my lord. I understand,” she said, her voice even more strangled than before. “I shall leave you now.”
He didn’t turn back, though he heard her snatch up the hat and the tailcoat, then the sound of her hurrying through the door, which then closed quietly behind her.
The moment she was gone, Marcus growled with exasperation in the back of his throat and flung himself down into the nearest chair, resting his head back and staring at the ceiling. He kept reliving the moment, over and over again, where Lady Violette had reached up, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, yet each time he thought of it, he understood more and more that it wasn’t Mr Victor Blake, but Lady Violette.
“How could I be such a fool that I never saw it?” he muttered quietly into the air. “I never even suspected.”
***
By the time Violette had returned to her room, she couldn’t stop the tears. She sank down against the closed door for a while and cried, yet the image of Lord Northrive’s turned back tore at her heart, making fresh tears come with each second. Soon, she was trying to dry those tears with the sleeves of her shirt before heaving gasping cries into her knees.
It was clear to her now. She may be in love with Lord Northrive, but he would never be able to love her back.
When the tears began to slow naturally, she stood and rang the bell pull in her room another time, yet still, Sherborne didn’t come. He showed no sign of coming at all, and the conversation she had shared with the butler had been so long ago now that clearly, he’d had no luck in finding Sherborne either.
She had no choice. She had to go home to her parents, and she had to leave without him. It wasn’t as though she could take Sherborne with her back to Snowspring in Brunlow, even if she wished to. She briefly considered writing a letter to say goodbye to him and apologise for their quarrel, but with his lack of knowing how to read, the task was impossible.
“I have to go,” she muttered to herself and stood to her feet. She spent a few minutes resetting her appearance and pulling her hat low over her face before deciding that the signs of her tears had faded enough to allow her to leave the house.
When she peered into the corridor, all was quiet, with no sign of Lord Northrive or any of the household about. Taking the trunk and heaving it over her shoulder, she crept along the corridor, knowing she would have to be quiet if she was to escape the house without anyone seeing her. As she passed the door to the chamber where she had revealed the truth to Lord Northrive, she felt a fresh stab to her heart.
When she had kissed him, for one second, she had thought he kissed her back, then he had wrenched himself free of her, looking at her in horror. That horror had only grown tenfold as she revealed who she really was. She expected he despised her now, and that rejection hurt even more than Lady Helen’s threat had.
Being careful to constantly look around herself, she tiptoed down the staircase and headed into the entrance hall. When she heard footsteps coming, followed by laughter, she panicked. Looking to one of the nearby archways that led into the music room, she dived inside, hiding there, thankful the room was empty, just as Peter and Laurie walked past.
“Have you seen Marcus?” Laurie asked Peter.
“He just ran past me, like the flames of hell were at his heels.”
“What has gotten into him?”
“Can’t you tell?” Peter said with a deep chuckle.
“What does that mean?” Laurie asked.
