He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers curled into his hair.
Something inside him sagged inward, quietly, deeply, in a way that felt irreversible.
He had come to the village carrying every truth he had uncovered—foolishly hoping that offering her all of it might earn him the barest chance at redemption.
Instead, her truth had pierced first—splitting him open with a precision he deserved.
When he finally lifted his head, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand, one truth settled with merciless certainty—
He had no right to her forgiveness.
For years in Vienna, he had done nothing but survive—throwing himself into duty, mistaking working himself to the bone for atonement, pretending that exhaustion might cleanse the stain of what he’d done.
But seeing Violet again… seeing the cost carved into her… stripped every illusion away.
His eyes were open now—fully, painfully open.
And whatever years remained to him, he would spend them trying to become a man worthy of evenaskingfor redemption.
A faint, sardonic smile touched his lips.
Their reunion hadn’t unfolded the way he had imagined.
Violet had eviscerated him where he stood, stripped him bare with every word, and then she had left him, without giving him even a heartbeat to offer the truths he had only just discovered. The weight of everything unsaid nearly bent him double.
He swallowed hard, the motion jagged, his chest knotting around everything he could not fix.
He needed air. No—not air.
Distance. Darkness.
A place to break where no one would see.
He rose unsteadily, the quiet room he had just shared with Violet suddenly feeling far too small to breathe in. He slipped out the door and into the corridor, turning toward the staircase—toward the guest room Nathaniel had shown him to after he arrived, the only sanctuary he could bear to face after Lily’s face… after Violet’s words.
He barely made it five paces when a familiar voice sounded behind him.
“Lord Ashford.”
William stopped dead.
He turned—slowly.
Thomas Hayes—Violet’s father—stood a few feet away. His cap was in his hands, his presence solid in that familiar way William remembered from boyhood.
He had taught William to ride.
Had steadied his first pony’s reins.
Had spoken to him with more gentleness than William’s own father ever had.
But the expression on the older man’s face now was one William had never seen there.
Disappointment—deep, unvarnished, edged with heartbreak.
“Mr. Hayes,” William managed.
Thomas met his gaze with a level stare, making no move to bow.
