“Yes, I know, I never said anything of the sort while he was alive, but he was a mean man.” She held up her hand in protest. “Of course, that’s not the similarity the two of you shared. He wasn’t always mean; he’d once been charming and handsome and so smart.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “Lord, that man could talk of such things I’d never even heard of.”
“But you never knew what to do with me?” Vanessa repeated.
“I simply didn’t know how to relate to you. It was easy with the other girls—buy them a ribbon or a new dress and they were happy. But you”—she shook her head with a smile—“you didn’t have a need for any of that nonsense. You wanted books and tools, and it infuriated your father and confounded me. Then after he was gone, I didn’t know how to reach you. I had nothing to offer you. I couldn’t teach you anything, and you,” her words faltered, and her eyes filled with tears, “you didn’t appear to need me.”
Years of misunderstanding melted, and Vanessa quickly closed the distance between them. She embraced her mother, and the older woman’s arms wound tightly around her. They didn’t have to see eye-to-eye on everything to have a relationship. The realization that her mother did actually love her nearly overwhelmed Vanessa.
It was in that embrace that Jeremy and Violet discovered them.
“Vanessa?” Violet said.
Vanessa had thought about this encounter several times over the last few weeks, and every time, she had expected to feel the same way she had when she’d found them in their heated embrace. She’d expected to feel the stab of betrayal and the wash of humiliation. She’d thought her stomach would stir with nausea and that words would fail her. She’d expected to want to run out of the room, but never once did she imagine she’d be in this moment and feel nothing. No anger, no hurt, no betrayal. Vanessa released her mother and turned to face her sister.
“Are you home for good?” Violet asked.
“I don’t live here anymore,” Vanessa said.
“No, of course not,” Violet said. She smiled brightly. “I meant London.”
“My husband has many duties here, so I suppose we will reside here most of the time,” Vanessa said. Her husband. The words had rolled off her tongue so effortlessly, as if he’d always been a part of her life.
“Hello, Vanessa,” Jeremy said. He stood next to Violet, looking very much the same as he had the first time Vanessa had met him. His pale-blond hair was tousled in soft curls, making him look more like a romantic poet than a scientist, and his brown eyes were unwavering as they met her face. He swallowed hard and nodded politely.
He was nervous, Vanessa realized, worried about whether or not she would create a ruckus. But facing him now, she felt no pang of jealousy toward her sister. Jeremy was a fine man, but he paled in comparison to Graeme.
“I believe you have something to tell me,” Vanessa said to him.
His face blanched, and he stammered several incomprehensible syllables.
“About my father’s book, the letter I sent,” Vanessa clarified. Although it was somewhat gratifying to see him stumble over an explanation of his indiscretion, she did not have time to enjoy it. “I am in a bit of a hurry.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he said, coming forward.
“Vanessa, you and your husband must agree to come to dinner. I would love to meet the man who captured your heart,” her mother said.
Vanessa smiled and nodded, but found no words. Captured her heart? The thought didn’t seem so ludicrous to her as she’d once imagined. One more squeeze of her hand, and then her mother left the room.
“The images you drew in your letter looked so familiar, I knew I’d seen them somewhere,” Violet said. “And I shared them with Jeremy and we started looking through Father’s books.”
“The code is really quite brilliant,” Jeremy said. He looked up with a wide grin, and it struck Vanessa that she’d never seen him smile with such ease. In the past it had always been tight slips of a smile, seemingly forced into place to appear polite. “I’m assuming you brought the remainder of it with you?”
“We’ve been most eager to unravel the mystery,” Violet said.
They were an unlikely pair—her rambunctious sister and the buttoned-up American—yet together they were different. Gone was the attention-loving Violet whose behavior bordered on inappropriate, and in her place was a lovely woman whose eyes lit with intelligence and curiosity. And Jeremy seemed far more friendly, less reserved.
“I did bring the entire inscription,” Vanessa said. She opened the book to the page in question and revealed the code. Here in her father’s study, the hand-drawn symbols looked more than familiar. Now she knew why she’d felt that way the first time she’d seen the decoder.
Violet looked at Jeremy and asked, “Is the book still in the parlor?”
“Indeed it is. I’ll fetch it at once.” With that, Jeremy dashed out of the room, leaving the two sisters alone.
A moment of awkward silence passed before Violet stepped forward. “Vanessa, I am sorry for what I did,” she said.
“And you should be,” Vanessa said, then paused. “But it is hard for me to be angry, because if you had not betrayed me in such a manner, I would not have left. And then I wouldn’t have met—” Her mind stumbled over how to describe Graeme. The possible labels tripped through her mind. Graeme. My husband. My own love.
“Your duke,” Violet supplied.
“Yes,” Vanessa hastily agreed. That was the simplest description. Yet it was the least revealing.
