Heat flooded Vanessa's cheeks. The embarrassment she had been holding at bay crashed over her like a wave.
"They were the ramblings of a foolish girl," she said, looking away. "Melodramatic nonsense. I cannot believe you read them…I cannot believe anyone read them. I wrote them in the dead of night when I could not sleep, when I was too tired to maintain any sort of dignity or restraint. They were never meant to be seen. They were…"
"Honest." Martin's voice was quiet. "They were honest in a way that nothing in my life has ever been honest. You wrote about wanting me, about cherishing me, about the particular way I smiled when I was genuinely amused versus the way I smiled for society. You noticed things about me that I did not even notice about myself."
"I was obsessed," she muttered. "It was pathetic."
"It was not pathetic. It was…" He stepped closer, close enough to take her hands in his. His fingers were warm, slightly trembling. "Vanessa, I have spent six years convincing myself that you did not want me. That you saw me as nothing more than Edward's irritating friend. That your sharp words and sharper glances were genuine dislike rather than…"
"Rather than what?"
"Rather than the same desperate defense I was employing." His thumbs traced circles on the backs of her hands. "We were both hiding. Both pretending. Both so convinced that the other did not care that we built walls of wit and sarcasm to protect ourselves from the truth."
"And the truth is?"
"The truth is that I have been devoted to you for six years," he said simply. "Since a cushion and a library and an argument about Byron that I have never forgotten. The truth is thatreceiving your letters was the most terrifying and wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, because suddenly Iknewthat I was not alone in this. That you felt it too. That everything I had been feeling for years was not one-sided, was not hopeless, was not the pathetic obsession I had always feared it was."
Her vision was blurring. She blinked rapidly, refusing to cry. "You should have told me. When you received them. You should have said something."
"I know. I was a coward." His grip on her hands tightened. "I kept waiting for the right moment, the perfect opportunity. I told myself I needed to be sure…needed to see if your feelings were still current, still real. The letters spanned years, after all and people change…hearts change. I was terrified that you had moved on, that the woman who wrote those letters no longer existed."
"She exists." Vanessa's voice was barely a whisper. "She has always existed. She was simply... hiding."
"As was I." Martin lifted her hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. "Can you forgive me? For reading them, for keeping them, for using them to find my way to you?"
"There is nothing to forgive."
"There is. I violated your privacy. I took something that was not meant for me and…"
"Martin." She freed one hand from his grasp and pressed it to his cheek, silencing him. "The letters were addressed to you. They were always meant for you, even if I never intended to send them. You were their audience, their purpose, their reason for existing. How can I be angry that they finally reached you?"
"You could be angry quite easily, I should think. Most people would be."
"I am not most people."
"No." His voice was rough. "No, you are not."
He turned his head, pressing a kiss to her palm. The sensation sent a shiver down her spine from the warmth of his lips, the slight rasp of stubble against her skin.
"I was mortified at first," she admitted. "When Aunt Bertha told me what she had done. I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear. I imagined you reading them and laughing, or reading them and being horrified, or reading them and,I don't know, fleeing to the Continent to escape my pathetic devotion."
"I would never flee from your devotion. Pathetic or otherwise."
"Itwaspathetic. Some of those letters oh… Martin, some of those letters were written when I was seventeen. I shudder to think what idiotic things I said."
A slow smile spread across his face. "Ah, yes. The early letters."
Her stomach dropped. "What about them?"
"Nothing. They were very... enthusiastic."
"Martin."
"You had quite a lot to say about my eyes."
"I was seventeen!"
"And my shoulders. You devoted an entire paragraph to my shoulders, as I recall. Something about how they looked in evening clothes and how you wanted to…"
