William’s voice was rough.
“I cannot blame you for wanting her,” he said. “She is…everything.”
Nathaniel’s mouth tightened, a weary breath escaping him.
“Then for her sake—not yours—you had best decide very carefully what to say when she stands before you again. You may only get the one chance.”
William nodded his understanding.
Nathaniel inclined his head once.
“May God help you in it.”
William met his gaze, the words barely a breath.
“He already has,” he whispered. “She’s alive.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Violet did not breathe—not truly breathe—until the gates of Hamilton House were behind her.
Every step down the gravel path felt too loud, too sharp, as though the whole world had heard William Ashford say her name. Her heart still hammered in her ribs, wild and unsteady, each beat a memory she had fought for years to forget.
He saw her.
He saw Lily.
The thought made bile rise in her throat.
Lily skipped ahead with Mary and Emily, the girls chattering excitedly about shells and tide pools. Their laughter drifted back to her—bright, innocent, utterly untouched by the storm tearing through Violet’s chest.
She tried to gather herself.
She should smile. She should breathe. She should pretend that nothing at all had cracked beneath her feet.
But she could still feel it—the shock that had frozen her pulse when she spotted him, and the burn of his voice, soft and reverent, saying her name as though he still had any right to it.
She clenched her jaw.
He had looked at her child—their child—with a kind of broken awe that made something deep inside her twist in fury.
Where was that awe when she told him she was carrying his child?
Where was that wonder when she waited for him to returnearly, praying he would keep his word?
Where was that reverence when he finally came home only to tell her she—and their child—meant nothing to him, and that he intended to marry another?
And now—now—he appeared, years later, standing on Nathaniel’s steps and looking at her with something like heartbreak in his eyes.
Her pulse kicked painfully.
It had to be a coincidence.
It had to be.
He couldn’t possibly be here for her.
Not after everything he had said.
