“Breakfast is ready whenever you are, my lady.You are the mistress of this house, and it runs around your needs.”She bustled over to the dressing room.“Now this dove-gray day dress is the best I can do while we wait for your new clothes to arrive from the modiste.Hopefully, the day after next.You only have two black dresses, and I need to launder them,” Ginny muttered to herself as she came out with the gray dress in her arms.“As long as you don’t leave the house, I don’t think you will ruffle any feathers with the color.”
Violet sighed.Not leave the house.This was to be her life for at least another month.Perhaps she would write to her sisters and ask them to come visit.She donned the gray dress with its pretty lace cuffs at the wrists.Then she sucked in a sharp breath as Ginny attempted to hook the buttons up the back.The dress had a high enough waistline that it flowed over her growing bump, but Ginny struggled to button the top part.
“Take another deep breath in, my lady,” Ginny said through clenched teeth.
Violet did as she was told while Ginny hooked the last two buttons.When Violet walked over to the mirror and saw her reflection, she laughed out loud.Her bust was obscenely spilling over the top of the once-modest neckline.She turned sideways and took in her profile.“Good Lord.”
Ginny tried but failed to hold back a giggle.“Let me fetch a fichu.”
“Don’t bother.I am not going to see anyone today anyway.I’m hungry.This baby is demanding sustenance.”
Later in the afternoon, Violet sat curled up on the chaise in her drawing room with her book when she overheard voices she recognized coming from the front hall.
“Thank you, Hodgins.I am aware Lady Sommerset is not receiving.She will receive us.Now step aside, or I will use my bulk to run you over.”
Violet rose from her seat just as Lucy Barclay barreled into the room, followed closely by Adeline Iveson.Her two best friends in the whole world, and two women she had not seen in such a long time, were right here in her drawing room.Tears filled her eyes.“Lucy!Addy!”
“I hope you are receiving; otherwise, I’ve bullied your butler terribly,” Lucy said.
Violet’s throat clogged with emotion, and no sound came out when she opened her mouth to respond.With a loud, wet hiccup, she simply opened her arms wide.Both ladies rushed to her and enfolded her in an awkward three-way hug.Violet didn’t care, though.She wrapped one arm around each friend and squeezed.“Addy, what are you doing here?”
The ladies stepped back.Adeline straightened her spectacles.“I have come to town to be here when Lucy’s baby arrives so I can be of some help.Kingsbury and I arrived two days ago.”
Hodgins hovered in the doorway.
Violet gave him a wide smile.“Mr.Hodgins, please have tea prepared.My friends will stay for a visit.”
“Right away, ma’am,” Hodgins replied.
“Please have a seat,” Violet said.“I’m so glad to see you both.But Lucy, what are you doing out of the house?”
“As I have said repeatedly to my husband, I am pregnant, not an invalid.Besides, Seaton came this morning and said that you needed us.So here we are.”Lucy sat with a sigh in a leather wingback chair.“Do you have a footstool of some sort?”
Violet stared at Lucy dumbly for a full minute.Rhys had told her friends that she needed them?She crossed to the corner of the room, picked up a small tufted footstool, and returned to tuck it under Lucy’s feet.“Rhys sent you?”
“Yes, he showed up at breakfast, ate all my bacon, and said that you needed us.So we came.”
Violet plopped down next to Adeline on the settee.She buried her face in her hands.“I didn’t know if you would forgive me for pulling away, for not responding to your letters.I was sure you both would be angry with me.”
Adeline wrapped an arm around her shoulders.“We were worried about you, not angry.”
“But why have you disappeared?Was it to do with your husband?”Lucy asked.
“We are so terribly sorry for your loss,” Addy said softly.
Violet burst into earnest tears then.She had missed them so much.“I was so ashamed of what my life had become.Of what I let him do to me.”
“What did he do to you?”Lucy demanded.
“He was hurting me.He would drink excessively, and then his temper would boil over.He h-hit me…often.”Once the admission was out of her mouth, she couldn’t stop talking.She told them everything.All the shameful parts of Stuart’s cruelty.Things she hadn’t even told her mother.Addy held fast to her hands as she let loose all the ugly things that had defined her life for the past year.
At some point, Lucy had risen and was pacing angrily back and forth across the carpet.“That bastard.I knew something was wrong when we visited you in Kent.Why didn’t you say something sooner?We would have helped you.Does your mother know?”
Addy sent Lucy a stern look.“Sometimes things are too difficult to speak about.”She squeezed Violet’s hands.“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to notice and help.”
Violet shook her head and turned to meet Lucy’s troubled gaze.“I didn’t want to see you because I knew that you would be able to tell how desperately unhappy I was.”She shrugged.“There was nothing I could do about it; he was my husband.As the duke so succinctly told my father when he complained about Stuart hurting me, what’s between a husband and wife was no one else’s business, and he could do what he wanted to me.”
Lucy huffed.“That is nonsense.No one should be at the mercy of a cruel husband.It’s too bad he’s dead, because I would have thrashed him something fierce.”She took her seat with another loud huff of indignation.
