“What did you say?” James asked.
“I told her,” the reverend said carefully, “that a gentleman’s interest in a woman of her position was not the kind of interest that led anywhere respectable.”
Silence.
“She wrote back,” he continued. “She said she understood that. She said it was not… that the situation was not what I was imagining. That he was a good man who wished he could offer more than he could, and that she loved him, and that she had made her choices with a clear head. I wrote back and told her she was a fool.”
He paused. “She did not write again for three months. And when she did, she did not mention him. She talked about the Ellingtons and the weather and a book she had read, and I wrote back about the parish and pretended nothing had happened, and we continued that way for a while.” He exhaled slowly. “And then she told me she was with child.”
A log popped in the fire.
“I see,” James murmured.
“I did not handle it well.” It came out with the flatness of an understatement so severe it had become honesty. “I wrote things I cannot—I said things in that letter that I cannot read now. I have tried since she died, and I cannot seem to do it.” The reverend pressed his lips together. “I told her that she had shamed herself and that she had shamed me and that she hadshamed her mother’s memory, which was… that was the cruelest thing. To put her mother in it. She had loved her mother.”
James said nothing. He was aware that this was not a conversation that benefited from being rushed.
“She wrote back once more,” the reverend continued, his eyes watering. “A short letter. She said she was sorry to have disappointed me. She said she hoped I would understand in time. She said the Duke intended to see that she and the child were provided for, and that she did not… that she did not wish me to worry about her because she was cared for.” He paused. “She said she hoped that I would come to feel differently when the child was born.”
“And did you?” James asked.
“I did not go to her,” the reverend choked out. “When she wrote to tell me the child was born—a healthy little girl she named Violet—I did not go. I told myself I needed time. I told myself I would go when I had worked out what to say.” He looked at the painting on the wall, his tears falling freely now. “I was still working out what to say when she died.”
The room was very quiet.
“I did not see my daughter for a year,” he sobbed. “A whole year, and then she was gone. The last communication between us was a letter in which I told her she had shamed her mother’s memory.” He sniffled. “I have had to live with that.”
“I am sorry,” James offered.
“It was not your fault.” The reverend took a deep breath and looked at him. “It was my fault. I believed certain things about how the world should work and chose my principles over my child. I lost her.” He paused. “One ought to think very carefully before choosing principles over people.”
James thought about Isadora and how she had looked in the nursery at midnight, and the words he had not said before her carriage disappeared down the drive.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “One ought.”
The reverend let out a shaky breath. “Violet… Clara chose the name herself. It was her mother’s middle name. She wrote it in the letter.” He looked at the fire. “I have thought of her constantly since Clara died. I do not know her. I have never seen her. She does not know I exist.” His voice thinned. “She is all that remains of my daughter, and I am a stranger to her.”
“She is well,” James assured him.
The reverend looked up immediately with bright eyes, which told James everything about how long he had been waiting to hear those three words.
“She is very well,” James said. “She is… She has a strong will. She grabs people’s lapels when she wants their attention, which is frequently, and she has recently discovered that clapping andgiggling gets people to smile at her and has been conducting experiments… a lot.” He paused. “She is doing well.”
The reverend looked at him for a long moment.
“You love her,” he noted.
“Yes,” James said simply.
Relief flashed across the reverend’s face. “I was so afraid,” he breathed. “When Clara died, and when I heard what Lord Mortimer was doing… I was afraid she would end up in some institution. That she would grow up not knowing who she is or where she comes from. That she would be—” He choked up. “That she would be what I made Clara feel. That she would feel unwanted.”
“She does not feel that,” James said.
“I can see that.” The reverend looked at him steadily. “I can see it in this visit. A man does not leave before dawn and travel a long distance for a child he is merely responsible for. She has someone who chooses her.”
“She has several people who choose her,” James emphasized. “And she is aware of it.”
The reverend pressed his lips together for a moment.
