The later letters, from her first Season, when infatuation had deepened into something more complicated.You danced with Lady Hartwell three times tonight. Three times. I counted. I always count. Is she the one you will take as your wife? The very thought makes me want to scream.
The letters from last year, when she had finally admitted to herself that what she felt was not going to fade, was not going to pass and was going to be with her for the rest of her life. You have my heart’s deepest affections. I have tried desperately to suppress these feelings but I have failed to do so. I am utterly consumed and withdrawing my heart from yours would be inviting my own end, for I find I cannot live without this devotion, however much it may grieve me.
Every single one of those letters was now in Martin's possession. Every pathetic confession, every desperate longing and every moment of weakness she had allowed herself in the privacy of her own chambers.
She was ruined. Not in the traditional sense, not in any way that society would recognise, but ruined nonetheless. How could she ever face him again? How could she look into those grey eyes, knowing that he had read the contents of her soul and found them wanting?
It was beyond her power as she could never look upon his countenance without falling into despair.
The solution was simple…she would never see Martin Hale again,
The decision settled over her like a shroud, heavy and final. She would refuse every invitation where he might be present. She would claim illness, family obligations and religious conversion…whatever excuse might serve to keep her safely distant from the man who now knew her deepest secrets.
It would not be a simple feat. Martin moved in the same circles as her family, attended the same events and frequented the same establishments. Avoiding him would require constant vigilance, careful planning, and a level of social maneuvering that would exhaust even the most seasoned diplomat.
But she was determined and would do it. She would do whatever it took to preserve what remained of her dignity.
To encounter him directly and find her secret mirrored in his eyes… to endure the exquisite torture of his pity or the cruelty of his amusement, was a prospect she simply could not summon the courage to contemplate.
She would become a ghost of herself. A shadow, flitting through the edges of society, always watching for him, always ready to flee. It would be exhausting. It would be humiliating in its own way. It would require a level of vigilance that would drain her of all joy, all spontaneity, all the things that made life worth living.
She was determined to execute her plan as she could not bear see the look of knowing pity in his eyes.
***
Vanessa would feign illness for the entire season by claiming a recurring fever, a weak constitution, a sudden allergy to ballrooms and social gatherings. She would become a recluse, the strange Wayworth daughter who never left her chambers.
She had it all planned out. She would tell her mother that she had developed a sensitivity to crowds, there were such conditions and she had read about them. She would claim thatthe physician had recommended rest and quiet, no excitement, no social obligations. She would spend her days reading and embroidering and slowly going mad within the four walls of her bedroom.
It was an ill-conceived scheme, but in her extremity, she clung to it.
"You cannot hide forever," Helena said gently.
Helena had come as soon as she received Vanessa's desperate note, arriving at the townhouse with her usual quiet efficiency and settling into the chair beside Vanessa's bed as though she belonged there. She had listened without interruption as Vanessa poured out the whole horrible story, her expression shifting from confusion to shock to sympathetic horror.
"I can certainly try," Vanessa said. "People do it all the time. There are women who have not left their homes in decades. They seem perfectly content."
"You would go mad within a week."
"Perhaps madness would be preferable to…" She gestured vaguely, unable to articulate the scope of her humiliation.
"To what? To facing the Duke of Montehood?" Helena reached out and took her hand. "Vanessa, I know this feels catastrophic. I know you are imagining the worst possible outcomes. But consider…is it truly so terrible that he should know how you feel?"
"Yes." The word came out with more force than she intended. "Yes, it is the most terrible thing that has ever happened to me. I would rather have been thrown from a horse. I would rather have contracted the plague. I would rather have…"
"I do believe you are being slightly dramatic."
"I am not being dramatic. I am being entirely, perfectly, rationally terrified." Vanessa sat up in bed, her hair tangled,her nightgown wrinkled, her eyes wild. "Helena, you do not understand. Those letters containeverything. Every foolish thought I have ever had about him. Every embarrassing fantasy. Every desperate, pathetic declaration of affection that I wrote in the dark hours of the night when I was too exhausted to maintain my defenses."
She pressed her hands against her face, as though she could hide from the truth. "There are letters from when I was sixteen, Helena. Sixteen! Full of girlish nonsense about his eyes and his smile and how I thought I might die if he did not notice me. There are letters from my first Season, when I watched him dance with other women and felt as though my heart was being torn from my chest. There are letters from last year, when I finally admitted to myself that what I felt was never going to fade."
"And what did those declarations say?"
“That he possesses my heart…that he has held it in his keeping from the very first, with an unwavering constancy. That I find him arrogant and insufferable and also the most captivating man I have ever known." Tears burned behind her eyes, and she blinked them back furiously. She would not cry. She had already cried more in the past two days than she had in the past two years combined. "That I have spent six years writing letters to a man who sees me as nothing more than his friend's little sister, because I could not bear to keep the words inside but was too cowardly to speak them aloud."
Helena was quiet for a long moment. Her thumb traced circles on the back of Vanessa's hand, a soothing rhythm that did little to ease the panic coiling in her chest.
"That does not sound pathetic to me," Helena said finally. “That is a woman who has surrendered her heart completely and would sooner perish in silence than risk the mortification of having her feelings dismissed."
