“Clara would have—” He stopped. Tried again. “Clara would have been grateful. To you, and to your wife. All she wanted was for her child to be loved.” He looked at the painting again. “That was what she said in the last letter I received from her. Not money, not standing, not respectability. Just love.”
“She has it,” James affirmed, and the reverend nodded.
They sat in silence for a moment. Outside the window, the village went about its quiet business. Someone crossed the street. A dog barked somewhere in the distance.
“May I see the letters?” James asked.
“I will do better than that,” the reverend said, standing up. “I will give them to you.”
He was gone for perhaps fifteen minutes.
James sat there and looked at the fire and thought about Mortimer sitting across from him in his own drawing room with his carefully prepared letters and his solicitor and his patient, practiced certainty.
He thought about Violet in the nursery at Ashbourne, entirely unaware that her inheritance had been the subject of legal challenge, that men had sat in rooms and questioned whether she belonged where she was.
He thought about Isadora saying, Don’t let anyone take her away.
The reverend returned with a carved wooden box. He set it on the table between them and opened it.
There were several letters, bundled by month and tied with plain cord. Beneath them was a sheaf of financial documents. James could see the headings from where he sat—records of provision stretching back to almost a year before the child’s birth.
“This is everything I have,” the reverend said.
James looked at the box. “This ends it,” he uttered.
“It should never have begun,” the reverend sighed. “Lord Mortimer knew the truth, but he chose to construct an alternative.” He sat back down. “I should have come forward the moment he filed the petition. My silence allowed it to continue longer than it should have.” He hung his head. “I am sorry for that.”
“The petition will be withdrawn within the week,” James said. “With this documentation, his case would not stand.” He paused. “Rest assured that Violet is well. She is loved. She has…” He considered his words. “She has a home.”
The reverend’s expression did something it had not done since James had arrived—it brightened briefly.
“A family?” he asked.
James thought about Isadora at Blackmoor.
“Working on it,” he replied.
The reverend looked at him with the assessing directness he had deployed since the moment he opened the door, and this time something in it shifted.
“You love her? Your wife.”
James looked at the box of letters. “Yes.”
“Does she know?”
He was quiet for a moment.
“Not yet,” he admitted. “There were… issues. I managed them badly. I am going to Blackmoor to manage them better.”
“Mm.” The reverend looked at the fire, then at him. “May I ask something of you?”
“Yes.”
“Violet.” He said it simply. “I know I have no right to—I know that I am not…” he trailed off. “She is my granddaughter. She is the last thing I have of Clara. I would only ask that you allowme to see her. Not frequently, if that is not… Not publicly, if the circumstances make it complicated. But occasionally. If you and your wife will permit it.”
James studied him. He thought of a child who had lost everything in an afternoon and a grandfather who had lost a daughter before he had made things right between them. He thought of the terrible grief the reverend was carrying, which was not the clean grief of loss but the complicated grief of a missed opportunity.
“She will know her grandfather,” James assured him. “I give you my word.”
