Not after everything he had done.
She swallowed hard and forced her voice steady as they reached the crest of the hill overlooking the sea.
“Stay where I can see you, girls,” she called.
“Yes, Mrs. Grey!” Mary and Emily chimed, hands clasped, already racing toward the waves.
Lily ran back to her, tugging at her hand.
“Mama, I promised Mr. Hamilton I’d find him the best shell… let’s go!”
“You go ahead, darling,” Violet managed. “I’ll be right here.”
Reassured her mother was watching, Lily dashed after her friends, curls bouncing as she ran.
Violet closed her eyes for a moment, steadying her breath.
She had imagined this moment—the moment William saw his daughter—more times than she cared to admit.
At first, in the earliest days, the visions had been soft, foolish things—him taking Lily in his arms, love in his eyes—
silly fantasies in which he had kept his promises, chosen her as he once vowed he would, and married her at the end of that Season… as though her heartbreak could be undone with a single imagined choice.
But as the years crept on, those tender imaginings had soured.
Hope had curdled into dread.
Now, in her dreams, he sneered—
his remembered words twisting into cruelties he had never quite spoken, yet she feared he might have meant.
And worst of all, Lily began appearing in them too—small, innocent, reaching for him while he turned away.
Every nightmare ended the same way—with a cold echo of his voice, crueler than the real man had ever been, telling her she had meant nothing… and the child she carried even less.
But nothing—none of her dreams, none of her nightmares—had prepared her for the way he looked at Lily today.
Not with coldness.
Not with disdain.
But with recognition—
with a shaken, aching softness she had never seen on his face before.
It shook her to her core.
She didn’t want it.
She didn’t trust it.
And it frightened her more than hatred ever could have.
Violet sank onto the cool sand, drawing her knees beneath her skirt as she watched the children chase one another along the shore. Their bright shouts rose above the steady rhythm of the tide.
The sunlight she had welcomed on their walk to collect Mary and Emily for their afternoon at the shore now felt almost mocking in its cheer, as though the whole day refused to bend to the chaos inside her.
Slowly—unwillingly—her thoughts circled back.
