Impossible.
The day after the fence was mended, she saw him leaving the Pembrokes’ house just as she passed by with Lily on the way to her parents’. Mrs. Pembroke had mentioned his bruised hand to her husband, and he insisted on examining it.
Violet had almost turned around, but Lily had already waved.
Then, two days later, Violet brought broth to Mrs. Smith, who was ill. And he was there.
Repairing her gate.
She nearly dropped the soup.
“What are the chances?” she hissed as Lily darted ahead to admire Mrs. Smith’s spring violets. “This is twice in two days.”
He blinked, still holding the hammer.
“Your father mentioned she needed the help.”
Of course he had.
Of course.
Violet had walked away before she said something sharp enough to regret.
And it continued.
Everywhere she went, it seemed he was helping one of her neighbors with a repair, oftentimes with her father beside him—Mr. Harding’s loose shutter, Mrs. Whitfield’s leaning post, old Mr. Turner’s broken latch.
Exposed.
That was how she felt.
A spectacle.
On display in her own life.
As if his very presence might unravel the lie she lived—
as if anyone might look from him to Lily and simplyknow.
And beneath it all was the knot of guilt that she lived under a false name, a false story, and every day those lies pressed heavier.
Still, life went on.
On a mild Saturday morning, Violet took Lily up to the Hamilton Estate to collect Mary and Emily for an afternoon in the meadow, a quiet field of grass and wildflowers a little way down the lane from the estate’s grounds.
The girls were waiting in the estate’s garden—beneath a sweeping chestnut whose branches made a natural canopy.
But William was there too.
He sat cross-legged in the grass, a book open in his lap while Mary leaned against his shoulder to read. Emily fired questions at him faster than he could answer, and he listened with patient amusement, the picture of a man entirely at ease with young children.
He looked… natural.
Too natural.
Violet’s stomach twisted.
Lily broke into a run.
