Tears stung her eyes at his consideration. He was giving her permission to be herself. To grieve in her own way, even if it was half a lifetime after her mother had drowned herself. She sat alongside him in silence for an indeterminate span of time, studying their hands, so different, intertwined. Connected in a way that symbolized their union. Admiring his fingers in a manner she had not before—his fingers were thick and long, power radiating from them, and yet they held her with such reverence.
This was a man she could fall in love with, and she knew it. This was a man who did not understand her yet, but who was willing to make the time and effort to learn her, inside out. To discover her eccentricities and oddness, to embrace her successes and her failings, to admire all the parts of her making her who she was, imperfections and all.
“Or until your arse falls asleep,” he offered.
She laughed. Or rather, half-laughed, half-cried. It was so silly and sweet, and so unlike anything she had come to expect from a gentleman. Charles had never made her laugh, and nor had he truly listened to her. Perhaps if she had been an orchid, he would have taken greater interest.
She gave Griffin’s fingers a squeeze. “Thank you.”
“You need not thank me, Violet.” He brought their hands to his lips as one, kissing the top of hers. “If any of us should be expressing gratitude to the other, it is me. You selflessly ran away with me, at great risk to your reputation and relationship with your brother, and all because you believed in my innocence. I cannot thank you enough for that, and for the priceless gift of you as my wife.”
His words made her heart give a great pang, because she knew instinctively he meant them. The Duke of Strathmore was a great many things, including a mystery to her most of the time, but in this, she sensed his complete and utter honesty.
“But I do want to thank you,” she said, compelled to offer her own honesty by his example. “Thank you for being patient with me and kind, for not being angry when I fled the wedding breakfast, for wanting me as your wife. Thank you for opening yourself to me. It is not something you do easily, that much I can tell.”
“What a pair we are,” he said with a half grin, leaning his shoulder into hers.
“I am glad to be your wife,” she told him then, startling herself with her candor, with the veracity of the confession. It emerged directly from her heart. She meant it.
“You would not have preferred to be Lady Flowerpot after all?” he asked, a deeper question in his tone, along with a hint of self-doubt.
“The Duchess of Duplicity is a far better title,” she teased, nudging him back, bumping their shoulders together lightly as their fingers remained tightly tangled.
He stared down at her, his expression growing intent, his blue eyes darkening. “Do you mean it?”
She knew what he was asking, but she wanted to hear him acknowledge it just the same, to own his vulnerability. “Do I mean what?”
He did not hesitate. “That you are glad to be my wife?”
She drank him in, a man who was beautiful on the surface, it was true, but who was also beautiful beneath. He possessed depths and scars, and he was so much more than a duke, so much more than she could have ever expected or even comprehended. He was imperfect and real and hers. Just hers. All hers.
Forever.
She cupped his face with her right hand, enjoying the bristle of his neatly trimmed whiskers in her palm. “Of course I do. I am proud to call you my husband.”
And she meant those words, how she meant them.
“No more proud than I am to call you my wife.” He turned his head, pressing a reverent kiss to her palm. One first, then another, and another, and then her bare wrist. “What made you run?”
Violet swallowed, wondering where to begin. How to respond. For there was not one, simple answer. The truth, as it always tended to be, was complex. “On my sixth birthday, my mother held a ball in my honor. There were immense cakes and towers of gifts and so many people dancing, laughing, swirling. Such gaiety. Mama was so very delighted. She insisted I stay up in defiance of my governess, and then she demanded I eat an entire cake on my own.”
She stopped, the memory of that long-ago day flooding her, and with it a combination of bittersweet sadness.
Griffin’s fingers tightened on hers, as he seemed to sense her upset. “Violet, you do not have to—”
“Yes,” she interrupted, determined to relieve herself of this burden, to tell him the truth. “I do. When Mama was happy, you see, it was good to keep her that way. We all lived around her moods, and so I did as she asked. I ate cake until I was sick and vomited all over my gown. And then suddenly, she wasn’t happy any longer. She was crying, hysterically, and she would not stop, and my father was forced to take her from the ballroom.”
She still recalled the horrified expressions of their guests, the dazzling lords and ladies who had watched with growing discomfort as Violet tried to please her mother. Mama’s sobs that day had been soul-deep, and remembering them now, she could not help but wonder if they had been partially meant for her, as much as for her mother.
“I am so sorry, love.” He released her hand and put his arm around her shoulders instead, drawing her into his side as if he could shield her from the painful past. “Was she that way often?”
“More and more as time went by.” She took a deep breath, the revelations freeing her. “She was not well. My father did his best to shield us from the worst, but as we grew older, he lost control, and eventually, interest. She was too much for him. Too much for all of us. Too much, even, for herself eventually.”
“It haunts you, does it not?” he asked quietly. “You fear you shall be like her one day.”
“Today,” she forced herself to say, staring down at the silk flowers trimming her skirts. A dozen of them, fashioned to be roses, and she had never felt lovelier than when she had donned it, only to wallow about on the floor.
What must her new husband think of her? Furthermore, what did she think of herself?
