“No,” he murmured—whether to the memory or himself, he could not tell.
He would not think of graves.
He would not think of coastal winds tearing through a cottage with no one left inside.
She lived.
She had to have lived.
Violet was strong—stronger than anyone had ever allowed her to be. She would have endured the journey. She would have survived the birth.
The child—his child—had survived.
No if.
No doubt.
For anything else was a darkness he refused to name.
He would not permit any other thought. He would not give shape to the darkness that waited beyond that thought—the same hollow ruin that had claimed Victoria, and the man she loved. He pressed the heel of his hand once, hard, against his eyes, and breathed until the tremor in his chest settled into something he could hold.
When at last he lowered his hand, his gaze fell to the bed. The stack of letters waited where he had dropped them—twine tight, neat, indifferent. He drew them closer, the locket beside them catching the lamplight like a silent witness.
His thumb brushed the topmost seal—already broken, the wax split and dulled. Proof enough of what he’d known, and still, seeing it undone felt like a violation.
He pinched the knot between his fingers.
He needed her truth.
Her hand.
Her words.
He exhaled—a shallow, trembling breath—and drew the twine loose.
Thomas Hayes’s words—the ones he had carried with him across years and continents—rose unbidden.
May God judge you as He will.
They had followed him like a shadow he could neither escape nor atone for.
And now, as the knot gave way, he feared the judgment had already begun.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Earlier that afternoon, Violet had stopped by the Hamilton house to deliver a bakery order. Nathaniel had been in the entryway, speaking with the housekeeper, when she arrived—a rare coincidence, as he was seldom present when she made her deliveries. Yet the ease with which he turned toward her, the quiet expectancy in his expression, made her wonder if the meeting had been quite as accidental as it appeared. The thought unsettled her more than it should have—not for fear, but for the strange, quiet hope it stirred.
He’d thanked her for the delivery, his tone warm and familiar, then asked if she and Lily might join him and his daughters for dinner that evening. The invitation was not the first—he had extended it several times over recent months—and each had been offered with that same gentle sincerity that made refusal difficult.
Dinners at the Hamilton household had proven far less grand than she’d once feared—warm, easy, threaded with laughter. Lily adored the company, and Violet found herself quietly grateful for the comfort of it, though she had begun to sense a tenderness in Nathaniel’s manner that went beyond courtesy.
Now, after supper, she and Nathaniel sat in the lounge. The lamps were turned low, their glow soft against the polished wood of the drawing room. Beyond the windows, twilight deepened over the hills. Laughter drifted faintly from the nursery upstairs—Lily’s voice mingling with the Hamiltongirls’—until the sound was swallowed by the hush of closing doors.
Nathaniel poured the last of the wine, the decanter catching firelight as he tipped it toward her glass.
“Another?” he asked.
Violet shook her head. “No, thank you. I think I’ve had just enough for one evening.”
