She set down the quill and waited for the ink to dry. Then, as she had done hundreds of times before, she folded the letter carefully, added it to the stack, and locked the box.
Tomorrow, she would be composed and appropriate, the perfect Lady Vanessa Wayworth. Tomorrow, she would smile at Lord Deane's compliments and pretend that her heart did not lurch every time Martin entered a room. Tomorrow, she would continue the performance she had perfected over six long years.
But tonight, in the quiet of her chambers, she allowed herself one moment of weakness. One moment to trace her fingers over the locked box that held every foolish, hopeless word she had ever written to the man who would never read them.
Dear Martin.
Always Martin. Never anything else. Never anyone else.
She blew out the candle and went to bed, where she dreamed of grey eyes and the ghost of a hand at her waist, and woke with the taste of longing on her tongue.
Chapter Two
"No, no, no…the blue trunk goes in the second carriage, not the first. The first carriage is for linens.Linens, Mr. Hendricks. Surely you can tell the difference between linens and personal effects?"
Lady Wayworth's voice carried through Wayworth Manor with the authority of a general commanding troops into battle. The household had been in a state of controlled chaos for three days now, every servant pressed into service for the annual migration to London. Trunks were hauled up and down stairs. Crates of silver were carefully packed in straw. The good china, not the everyday china, Lady Wayworth had been very clear on this point,was wrapped in cloth and nestled into boxes like precious eggs.
Vanessa observed the mayhem from the safety of the morning room, where she had retreated with a book she was not reading and a cup of tea that had long since gone cold. She had offered to help, early on, but her mother had waved her away with the particular expression that meantyou will only make things worse, dear.
She was not offended as her mother was probably right.
The book in her lap, a novel Helena had recommended, something about a mysterious count and a crumbling castle,held no appeal today. She had read the same paragraph four times without absorbing a single word. Her mind kept drifting, as it had been drifting for days now, back to the ball and the waltz and the way Martin had looked at her in those final moments before he walked away.
I am not the man I ought to be.
What did that mean? She had turned the phrase over in her mind countless times, examining it from every angle, and shewas no closer to understanding. Was it an apology? A warning? A confession of some kind? Martin was not typically given to cryptic statements as he said what he meant, usually with devastating precision. So why had he chosen that moment to speak in riddles?
Unless he had not been speaking in riddles at all. Unless the meaning was perfectly clear, and she was simply too afraid to see it.
"Is that the Castleton's invitation?"
Vanessa looked up to find Aunt Bertha settling into the chair beside her, a plate of biscuits balanced precariously on one knee and a tangle of lavender yarn in her lap. Her aunt had been attempting to knit something, a shawl, perhaps, or possibly a very misshapen blanket, for the better part of a week now, with results that could charitably be described ascreative.
"I beg your pardon?"
"The letter in your hand, dear. I thought perhaps it was an invitation. The Castletons always host the first ball of the Season, do they not? I remember attending one in... Oh, it must have been 1804. Or was it 1805? Frederick was still alive, I know that much. He danced with Lady Castleton and she stepped on his foot quite badly. He limped for a week afterward, poor man, though he never complained. Frederick never complained about anything. It was one of his most admirable qualities, and also one of his most infuriating."
Vanessa glanced down at the paper in her hand which was not a letter at all, but a page from her book that she had been absently folding and unfolding for the past quarter hour. "It is nothing, Aunt. Just a bit of paper."
"Ah." Aunt Bertha nodded sagely, as though this explained everything. "You have been doing that rather a lot lately, you know. There you sit, fixed upon vacancy and tormenting thatpoor paper, while a slight furrow steals across your forehead. Pray, what weights your spirits so?”
She gestured vaguely at her own forehead.
“Your mother is fussing over your health, but I see that clouded brow and your idle folding. You are not ill, my dear…you are merely distracted by a suitor.”
"I am not…"
"There is no shame in it, dear. Thinking about men is one of the few pleasures afforded to women in this life, and we should indulge it whenever possible." Aunt Bertha selected a biscuit and bit into it with evident satisfaction. "I think about Frederick constantly. Not in a morbid way, mind you. Just... reminiscing. The way he laughed. The way he always smelled faintly of tobacco and peppermint. The way he used to read poetry aloud after dinner, even though he was dreadful at it. Absolutely dreadful. His recital of Milton was quite an assault upon the ear.”
"That sounds lovely."
"It was. It was perfectly lovely." A soft smile crossed Aunt Bertha's face, transforming her features into something younger, more wistful. "I had seventeen years with Harold, my first husband and eight with Frederick. Twenty-five years of matrimony in total, I would not relinquish a single hour of that time for all the comforts in the world. Even the difficult days. Even the days when I wanted to throttle them both."
Vanessa found herself smiling despite her distraction. "Did you want to throttle them often?"
"Oh, constantly. Matrimony is rather like that, I find. One moment, one is swept away by the most fervent attachment, and the very next, one is surveying the fire-irons and wondering if they might not be put to a more decisive use than tending the hearth.”
Aunt Bertha's eyes twinkled with mischief. "Harold was particularly skilled at leaving his boots in the most inconvenient places. I nearly broke my neck on them at least a dozen times. And Frederick…Frederick had a habit of bringing home stray animals. Dogs, cats, once a very disagreeable goat. He could not bear to see a creature in need, even when the creature in question ate three of my best hats."
