The statement took Violet by surprise, giving her pause. She turned to Strathmore—Griffin, she corrected herself inwardly—and studied him. He faced forward, a hat worn low on his brow, hiding his lustrous dark locks from her perusal. His expression was intent, presumably because he was concreting upon driving the rather pitiful excuse for a horse and cart he had managed to procure upon their arrival in Oxfordshire. They had taken the train for much of their journey, leaving the handsome carriage and horses that had aided their flight from London behind.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked him, when a few moments had passed and he did not appear inclined to offer more. “What belonged to your grandparents?”
“The home we stayed in last night,” he elaborated, his jaw tight, his voice sounding thick and odd. “It belonged to my grandparents, then changed hands half a dozen times, until finally, it became mine when I purchased it.”
The revelation seemed difficult for him to make. It had taken him an entire day before he had willingly made it after all, and even now, it seemed somehow torn from him. As if it were a secret he felt compelled to confide, rather than one he willingly shared.
She could guess the reason. When he had shared his mother’s background with her, he had been hesitant. Ashamed not of his mother, a woman he clearly loved, for the way his face had lit up with tenderness at recalling her, but of her lack of blueblood.
The grandparents he spoke of, the former owners of the tidy little home they had spent the previous evening in, could not have been the parents of his father, the duke, and so they must have been his mother’s parents. His mother, who had been a cook before wedding the duke. Now that she thought upon it, she had a vague recollection of whisperings of a scandal concerning the former Duchess of Strathmore.
“Why did you buy it?” she asked as the cart swayed and rumbled on behind their ancient mount.
“It was a piece of my mother’s history, and having it when I no longer had her, felt like the right thing to do.” He cast her a quick sidelong glance, as if to gauge her reaction. “But also because I enjoy having one place that is mine, and mine alone, not a part of the entail one day to be passed on to another, not filled with servants. There was also a time, after…after Paris, when I could not bear to be in large rooms. When small chambers comforted me. I lived there for almost a full year.”
His rough-voiced admission sent an answering pang straight to her heart. She wondered if Paris was the place where he had received his scars. Where he had been tortured. She hated that word, in conjunction with him. Hated to think what he must have endured.
But he was a proud man, and she knew he would not want her pity. She chose her response with care, waiting for the cart to rattle a bit farther down the road as she formulated her response. He was so complex, possessing so many layers, and she could not shake the feeling she had yet to even penetrate his tough outer shell. She wanted to, desperately, but she would have to proceed with caution, wearing kid gloves.
“What happened to you there?” she dared to ask. “In Paris?”
For a long time, he did not speak, and she feared she had gone too far. That despite their intimacy of the evening before, he would not entrust such a painful memory to her. She tamped down a spear of disappointment, telling herself in time, perhaps he would be more forthcoming. Perhaps after they got to know each other better, after they were husband and wife, his battlements would lower.
“There was turmoil in the region,” he said suddenly, startling her once more. “I was green, new to the League. They sent me to be their eyes and ears, to monitor the tension between the French and the Germans. Tension turned into war, and I ended up not only trapped in Paris during the siege, but double crossed by a French agent. The French accused me of spying for the Germans and clapped me in irons.”
Her gut clenched at the thought of him, young and alone, imprisoned and suffering the kind of torment that would leave the scars she had seen scoring his flesh. She did not know what to say, how to properly convey all the emotions whirling through her. So she did the only thing she could think of doing. She scooted nearer to him on the bench they shared and slid her arm around his side, catching him in a half embrace.
He stiffened at first, and she braced herself for words barbed with censure, for a distance he would want to construct between them once more. But then he leaned against her, almost as if he needed the comfort of her presence, her tucked against him. Something inside her broke, and perhaps it was the last cord keeping her from giving herself to him completely, the final tie.
Whatever it was, she moved forward, leaving it behind. She gave his large upper body a reassuring squeeze and waited patiently to see if he would share more, or if the slivers he had revealed would be all she could have for now. Either way, she would accept it, for he had told her much more about himself in the past day, than she had known about him since he had first fallen into her lap.
“I am sorry you suffered,” she told him at last, breaking the silence of the horse’s plodding hooves and the rumble of the cart wheels.
He shot her another quick, sidelong look, and there was something in his expression that took her breath and made her heart leap. It was the same intensity he had shown her yesterday on the stairs. How he had made her come so thoroughly undone, changing her entire world as she knew it, only to calmly lead her to her chamber for the evening, as if he were the world’s most perfect gentleman, would forever be beyond her. She had half expected him to join her in her chamber, or to sweep her into his arms and claim her. She would not have objected.
“Thank you, Violet,” he said softly, before turning his attention back to the road.
Overhead, the sky was a beautiful shade of blue, untroubled white clouds traveling with torpid grace above them.
A perfect spring day. Almost too perfect and dreamlike to be true.
“You need not thank me for caring for you,” she said, her head still resting upon his shoulder.
In their harried escape from Lark House, there had been no time for niceties, and she had neither a fresh dress, nor proper headwear, to be traveling beneath the sun. She could only hope her complexion would not turn. Sunshine had a knack for making the freckles on her nose re-emerge.
“The French spy who double-crossed me was a woman.”
How silly she instantly felt for worrying over some spots. Whatever Griffin had experienced in France, it must have been horrific, and now came the realization he had suffered because of another woman.
She bit her lip as jealousy flared unexpectedly to life. Somehow, she had not envisioned the spy as a female, but as a male. She hugged him even tighter, as if protecting him from the nameless, faceless woman. “I hope she paid for her treachery.”
“I do not know. I never saw her after the day she betrayed me, nor did I expect to. I was foolish for trusting her. For believing she was not a threat to me. I learned many lessons from her, and I have not forgotten them.”
There was steel and ice in his voice, underscored by bitterness. Whatever the Frenchwoman had done to him, Violet knew their relationship had not been a mere friendship. It had been more, far more. But she would not allow herself to contemplate it, for everything he spoke of had happened long before she had ever met him.
“What lessons?” she dared to ask then, knowing she shouldn’t. Unable to stop herself.
“To never truly trust anyone but myself.” His jaw, in profile, was rigid, clenched. “To never allow my heart to be vulnerable. To never again land myself in hell because I believe a woman when she says she loves me.”
