To make you both safe.
The cottage roof came into view.
Marry me… or send me away forever.
But keep these documents. They’re hers.
He reached her gate—
—and every prepared word fell away.
His heart pounded so violently he wondered if she would hear it through the door.
He stepped onto the small stone stoop.
Lifted his hand.
Knocked once.
The latch lifted.
The door opened.
And Violet stood there, her eyes widening, her lips parting in a silent gasp.
Her hand—the one still on the door, fingers slack around the latch—slipped from it and fell to her side.
She looked exactly as she had the last time he saw her—
and not at all.
There was a tiredness in her, a quiet defeat etched into her features, as though the last two months had been carved into her very bones.
Something inside him wrenched, a deep and helpless ache he didn’t have words for.
“Violet,” he breathed—barely a sound.
Emotion surged through her gaze—fear, disbelief, longing, and something he didn’t dare name.
She swayed, almost imperceptibly, as though the very sight of him shifted the ground beneath her.
“William…”
Barely a whisper.
Barely anything at all.
The words he had practiced, the plea he had prepared—vanished.
No speech he had written was meant for this Violet.
This wounded, tired, breathtaking Violet.
This Violet who looked at him as though she wasn’t certain he was real,
or feared she had conjured him out of longing.
He swallowed hard.
