Author’s Note: I think Violet’s scene can follow this and end this arc, but we’ll see about that tomorrow. 🙂

Robert should not have stayed. He had taken only a few bites of his meal before he understood the mistake he’d made. He had not thought it should be so difficult a thing, surviving a meal, since they were all civil people and knew how to be polite. They had all spent hours in each other’s company without incident. That precedent should have been a simple one to continue, but when her aunt’s disapproval combined with yet another stolen story, the evening was effectively ruined.

It might have been different if the story had not been one of Robert’s less savory moments, one of his later follies involving another girl he’d tricked—this time it was fooling the winner of the local baking contest into making him several pies—but nevertheless, all Beatrice did was frown as the others laughed, and when Violet looked at him and realized that the story her mother was repeating belonged to him as well, she had fallen silent.

No, that was not quite true. She managed not to sob with much of any sound, but her sadness spoke with every glint of the tears on her face or slight flinch of her body.

“Violet?”

“I am sorry, Mother. The story was amusing when we first heard it, and even though it was Winston’s, it did not bother me to hear again, but it is not… The story is Robbie’s, not his, and that is yet another one of them that… that was a lie.”

Robert grimaced. “Not exactly. It did happen, and I did get very sick off the pie, so the story is real. It’s just not his.”

“And how is it that he knows all of your stories?”

“If I knew that, I think I would know who he is. I don’t. I should, but I don’t.”

The spinster set down her napkin and shook her head. “I find that rather hard to believe. This whole farce has gone on quite long enough. If you were as honorable as you pretend to be, you would already have married her. Instead, you let her modern sensibilities cover over your inadequacies. Now you say that you are the one who has all these stories that he told Violet? I say that you must have been in collusion with him all along.”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am, but that is far from what has happened here. I admit that it seems implausible that I would not know a man who has done all this to me, but I swear that I do not. He took my name and my childhood, and it would seem that he hates me. I do not know why, but I will learn that when I find him. As for marrying Violet… That is something that is not for you or anyone else to decide—only the two of us have the right to determine that, and we have made the best decision that we can at present. It is not just about sensibilities. It is about much more than that. If there were some good reason why this man had done what he did, if his intentions were at all honorable, would you not want to see that he did what was right? How is that possible if I have already done it? And even though I think that prospect unlikely, it does occur to me that if he hates me so much, my involvement with your niece would make him angry and unreasonable. He could hurt her or the child or both, and I do not want that to happen. It is imperative that we find him and learn the reasons for his actions before we go any further in ours.”

Violet put a hand on her stomach. “I do not feel well.”

“I am sorry. I did not mean to distress you. It… I wish I had lied about all the stories being mine. That would, I think, hurt you less than I already have.”

She brushed at her eye, trying to compose herself. “It is not like you lying would make things better. You are not… You have the right to acknowledge those stories because they are yours. You need not attempt to protect me—I am afraid there is little that could do such a thing at this point. I have already endured most of the worst of it—I do fear when the birth comes as any mother might, but even that is not pain that you could spare me. Nor, in fact, do I expect you to spare me any of it. I am not your responsibility, Robbie, and I never have been.”

He reached over and took her hand. “I am not going to call you an obligation—not now and not ever—but you have suffered because of a man who seems to be looking to hurt me, and that means that I should do something about what you have been through, something to make it right.”

“I trust that you will when you find him,” she told him, withdrawing her hand. “Now I think it is best if you—”

“I think I should go. This is my fault, after all, and I should have declined your generous invitation since I knew it would upset Violet if I stayed. It has. I apologize, and I will not trouble you further tonight—or any night, for that matter. Please excuse me.”

She blinked, but he had already risen and started for the door. He did not dare look back. He knew what he’d told her earlier, but he did believe it was time for him to pack up and return home, even if it delayed the answers that might come in the mail. Surely that was worth sparing her this pain.

Author’s Note: I am starting to think that I can’t draw this out too much longer. It might be time for a twist or something, and yet… I have an end in mind, so we’ll just have to see if I can make the two things work. I will wrap up part of this idea soon, and then I can add in a new thought or two and make it more exciting, I think.

“What could you have done before the war that was so terrible? Did you seduce someone and leave her pregnant and alone?” Violet asked, folding her hands in her lap. She did not see how Robbie could think his stories so terrible. “Did you kill anyone? Did you steal someone’s name and lie to everyone?”

He grimaced. “That is hardly a fair comparison. I don’t know that I was—I didn’t act with malicious intent, didn’t do things to hurt others, but that is not necessarily an excuse. I didn’t go ruining everyone I saw—though I did steal a kiss—I tricked a girl into letting me close enough for one, and then I did refuse to marry her after that. I didn’t like the way she kissed.”

Violet laughed, but then she had to grimace. “Was her name Alice?”

Robbie nodded. “Yes, it was. How did you know?”

“Another one of his stories. I asked him how he knew that he loved me, that he wanted to marry me, and he said because he’d tried this before, that he’d kissed Alice Andrews, and she didn’t mean a thing to him—that he didn’t like the way she tasted. He said I tasted better, that I was something more like… like the garden and freshness and flowers, and I remember telling him that flowers do not taste good—”

“Oh, Violet, did you go eating them when you were younger?” Robbie teased, a grin on his face as he leaned toward her.

She flushed, feeling very foolish. “They looked so pretty and smelled so nice I thought they’d taste wonderful as well. I found that I was wrong. They did not taste good at all. It was a rather humiliating experience, though Mother laughed for days and said she’d picked the right name for me.”

“I do think she did.”

“You are not going to call me a sprite now, are you?”

“No, of course not. I just think that a fine name shared with a lovely flower suits you. You are in some ways as delicate and beautiful as a flower, but then you are stronger than any plant could hope to be, even those that withstand the winter frosts. I would not say that it is right to think of you only as your namesake, but I do think it agrees with you in many ways.”

She lowered her head, flushing for a different reason. “I would think it best if you do not flatter me, Mr. Winston. This is… Our situation remains quite awkward, and I do not wish to confuse things.”

He shook his head. “Forgive me. It was not my intention to be confusing, nor insincere. I hope I did not offend you or make you uncomfortable. I do not want to cause you any more distress than I have already. It seems every time we discuss a part of my past, I learn it has been usurped, and you learn that another story he told you is a lie.”

Violet put her hands together. That was part of what concerned her—indeed, she did not think she would avoid a second sleepless night over the matter. All of Winston’s stories were Robbie’s, and what she’d loved about him was not true, not even the slightest bit. She felt sick again. She did not want to give in to that feeling, that despair. She needed to act with the strength that he kept saying that she had.

“I think that I should go.”

“Oh, and just when I’d come in to ask you if you’d like to stay to dinner,” her mother said, drawing both their eyes to the doorway where she stood, a slight grimace on her face. “Are you sure you won’t? Cook has prepared Violet’s current favorite, and while I know we did have it the last time you dined with us, you did seem to like it.”

“So I did,” he said with a smile. “I would not mind staying—if Violet does not object to that.”

She should—or part of her thought that she should—but she also didn’t. She would like him to stay. She didn’t know what was best. She knew her mother wanted him here. She had already said so. Aunt Beatrice would not be as welcoming—she had not been pleased with Robbie since he refused to marry Violet when her aunt more or less decreed it.

“No,” she said, thinking that she would likely regret this. “I do not object.”

Author’s Note: This story was a lot easier to incorporate the words from Three Word Wednesday into, since all it took was Violet’s question to lead into them all. In fact, one of them kept coming up without any effort on my part.

The words for this week were: believe, penitent, and tribute.

“Do you believe he feels any kind of remorse?”

Robert shook his head. He had to think that if the man who’d stolen his name had any kind of repentance in him. If he had, he’d have come back and done right by Violet a long time ago. He’d have confessed, on his knees, to everything he’d done, to the lies and the theft, and after he’d finished, he’d take her by the hand and beg her to forgive him, to let him make it up to her for the rest of his life. He’d do anything to be able to marry her legally and be the father to her child that he should be.

Since he had not even bothered to write her since he left, Robert had to assume that he didn’t care at all what happened to her or the child. He didn’t have any remorse in him, and he would not be penitent, not now, not ever. He’d never come back and ask to be forgiven. He’d left, and he had no heart in him, not if he could abandon Violet like that.

“No.”

Violet nodded, turning away from the window, rubbing her back as she did. “I don’t think I can disagree with you. That is the hardest part in all this. I doubt that if he came back I would know what to do with him. Shouldn’t I hate him for the rest of my life? And yet… propriety would say that I should want him here, that I should be glad to have him if he’d only have me, that if he gave me a legal marriage and a name for my child that I shouldn’t care. I should just be grateful.”

Robert shook his head. “I don’t think so. How can you be grateful to have a man who abandoned you come back into your life like that? So what if he gives you a name and a marriage? Marriage to him would be a mistake you should not make a second time.”

She sighed. He grimaced. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He crossed over to her side, taking her hand and trying to guide her back to her chair. She should be sitting, even if she didn’t think so.

“I just think it’s dangerous to let yourself be open to him hurting you all over again. Even if he begged for forgiveness, how would you know if he was sincere or not?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have any way of knowing. Everything I thought I knew about him was a lie, wasn’t it?”

“Not necessarily. Those stories were mine, not his, but maybe others weren’t. Maybe the real him showed through at times, and you loved that, too, didn’t you?”

She twisted her lip, biting it. “I don’t… What if that was the part of him that I found the most infuriating was the part that was the most real? What if the only part of him that was honest was the part I hated?”

Robert almost laughed. “I’m sorry, but I can’t see that you’d like only the parts that he stole from me. You are too smart for that.”

She gave him a look. “I was a fool, and we all know I was.”

He wanted her to stop saying that. He did not like it when she talked about herself that way. “You had no reason to think that he was lying. You didn’t know that his stories were stolen. You were perhaps a bit naïve, but who would think that he would deceive you like that? Even now we don’t know why he did that. His reasons for marrying you don’t make much sense.”

“Thank you.”

Robert winced. “I am sorry. That’s not what I meant. I can see why you were someone he was interested in, why he’d want to marry you, why he loved you, but what I don’t understand is why he thought he had to lie to get you.”

She let out a breath, brushing back some loose hair. “Perhaps it is what you said. He thought I was… That I was not willing to marry any man with less than your social status.”

“That makes him a fool. I don’t think that is what matters to you at all.”

She smiled. “Not so much. I did not plan on marrying before I met him, and then he… I found his stories charming and really wanted to believe that I was in love. Now… Well, now I don’t know that I was. If all I liked was his stories…”

“Perhaps he should have been a writer. He could have audiences love him like… uh… Dickens did.”

She laughed. “You’re not much of a reader, are you?”

“No.”

“He stole your stories, too, and just because he could tell them in a way that I enjoyed hearing does not mean that he could write them. I doubt he would want to write them down, though. All that book would be—”

“A tribute to boyhood mischief?”

“Well… yes, though I think there was more to his stories besides your childhood.”

“There was?”

“Does that scare you?”

“Considering some of the things I did before I went to war, yes, it does.”

Author’s Note: Robert had a long night. He might not have been thinking clearly. I might not have been, either.

“How are you feeling?”

“I think I feel better than you look,” Violet said, rubbing her back and wondering what left him in such a state. He appeared so haggard that she would have thought he’d spent the night drinking, though that would be difficult in a dry town, but then again, a man determined to drink would find a way—and it was not that far to their sister city where alcohol had never been banned. “What happened?”

“Oh, I thought… I thought, that’s what I did. Over and over, all night through, didn’t do anything but think. That left me rather lacking in sleep, and so I suppose I must seem rather… unkempt despite my best efforts to be presentable.”

She shook her head. “Your clothes are in order. You just look as though you are ailing somehow.”

“I rather feel it,” he said, letting out a breath as he sat down. “I’ve been trying to determine what I should do at this point, and I can’t seem to make a decision that I stick to for more than a few minutes. I thought I’d stay and ask others about the man who stole my name, but I am not certain there is much point. If he told them the same stories as the ones he told you, then all I end up doing is repeating what I already know. If I don’t ask them, there’s asking you, but that has been causing you a great deal of grief lately, and I do not want to do that again. I should probably go home. I think there is very little I can do here.”

“Oh.”

She fidgeted, not certain that she liked that idea much, even with the way she’d struggled with every time he claimed one of the stories as his own instead of Winston’s. She didn’t want him to go, but she was also wondering if that might not be for the best. She didn’t know. She was still very confused. She didn’t like this sort of confusion, either. She was sick at heart, sick to her stomach thanks to her child, and she could hardly think, so she felt even worse than she had during the most terrible time of her pregnancy so far.

Oh, she did not think she would survive to see the child born, not with all this strain.

“Violet?”

She looked up, biting her lip. “I am sorry. I did not mean to become distracted. I have been trying to find… Did you put the inn as your address on those letters you sent? Or did you have them sent to your home?”

He frowned. “I… I think I wrote down the inn since I was still expecting to be here, and I didn’t want to send them to my home just to have someone interfere with them. I would not trust my father with them, not with the way he had opened other letters of yours and thought this matter could be ignored. Any response I got might never reach me if I had it sent home first.”

“So then you have to wait here to get it? Or can you have them send it on to you when you are back home?”

“That is another delay on the information that has already taken long enough to acquire.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose I cannot leave immediately, though I might have been tempted.”

She let out a breath, not sure that she dared be relieved by the idea of him staying. She shouldn’t be. She should be bothered by it, shouldn’t she? She did not know anymore. “The cook wasn’t fooled by the tomatoes, was she?”

He laughed. “Well, she shouldn’t have been, but there was a commotion that day because of the rat—that had nothing to do with me, I swear—and so by the time she got to baking the pie, she didn’t know her right hand from her left. That poor woman. She hated me so much… I remember I ran off to find some strawberries to replace the ones that I’d switched with tomatoes and—”

“Oh, this must be worse than the rest of it. What did you find? A poisonous plant?”

He smiled. “No, I didn’t. I did know what most of those were, at least. No, I went all the way into town, went to the market, bought as many of those beautiful little strawberries I could find and come to find out later that they are raspberries and that I am allergic to them. Oh, the cook liked that, I can assure you. She became a true master at baking anything and everything with raspberries in it.”

Violet found herself laughing. She shouldn’t find this so amusing, but she did. “What about the tomato pie?”

“You should have seen my father’s face. I wish I’d had a camera just then, but then you’re supposed to hold still for that, and he’d never have allowed such a violation of his dignity. He doesn’t much care for cameras. Mother adapted to that better than he did. She’s the one who insists on having them instead of painted likenesses of us all. I think my father would like to burn them all someday, but he is too vain to destroy his own face.”

“It’s not much of a face.”

Robert frowned. “You haven’t seen my father.”

She grimaced. “I… Winston showed me a picture of his father once. I suppose I don’t know if that man was even his father. I don’t know anything about him. He wasn’t your father, though, and I don’t know why I said that. I know better.”

“Sometimes it must be very hard to tell us apart.”

She lowered her head. “Yes, it is. It has been so much harder than I thought it would ever be. You do not look that much alike or sound that much alike, but with those stories he stole from you… I don’t know what to do.”

“I can go. I had come only to tell you that I was going—”

“You’re not, though. You decided not to go.”

“I… Yes, I suppose I am staying, but that doesn’t mean I have to stay here bothering you.”

“You are not bothering me.”

“I’m not?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

Author’s Note: So, in thinking of Sunday Scribblings’ prompt of “resistant,” I thought about Violet’s struggles with her emotions, with what she fears and what she needs to know even if it is not what she wants to hear, and how she continues to resist the urge to give in and give up. I thought this fit it with that as well, since she keeps forcing herself to face what she wants to avoid.

“I… I am glad that you wanted to see me this morning,” Robert said, his throat tight as he did. He did not know how to fix what had happened yesterday, could not go back and lie to her, though he had considered it. If he told her that his story was not the same as the one her “husband” had told her, then she would not be so upset, but he could not do it. He could not lie about it. That was his story. He had not slept, not when his mind could not stop searching for the answer to why that man had stolen his name and stories from his childhood. He had tried to go through each and every boy he’d known when he was younger, but he knew of no one that resembled the photograph, nor did they look at all like him so as to pass for him to someone not well acquainted with him.

He did not understand, but he knew that he had to keep searching, and if he was going to do that, he hoped to have more assistance from her. The more he knew of what that other man had told her, the more he would have to narrow down all the possibilities. They had not yet heard from his father’s lawyer or anyone from his regiment—that would take time, time that he knew neither of them felt that they had.

She did not have much longer in her pregnancy, after all, and that would change things a great deal for her, for everyone.

“I am not so certain that you should be pleased,” Violet said, not looking up from her hands. She twisted them over her stomach, her voice betraying her anxiety as much as those small movements did. “I… I know I said that I did not want to know all the things that he had lied about, all that he had stolen from you, all those stories, but then I was thinking… I think I must know what was him and what was not. I need to know how much he stole from you as much as you do.”

“I… This will not be easy for you, and I do not want you to think that you have to. I should never have pushed you for so many details—”

“It would seem undeniable that he knows you somehow. If he does, if all we find agrees with that assumption, then you will be able to find him because you will have to know how he learned all these things of you. You will have to know.”

Robert frowned. “As much as I want to believe that, I have not been able to think of anyone near my age who would have been close enough to know these intimate details of my family—no friends, no relatives, and no neighbors. I cannot find any reason why a stranger would know these things, though.”

She let out a breath. “I suppose there are other possibilities. Perhaps it was a coincidence, since we did not discuss all the details of what you did to the beehive or what he did. Perhaps if you did tell that tale, then we might know whether or not it was something he learned of you or something he did or simply something he decided made a good story.”

“Very true,” Robert said, going over to kneel down next to her. “This is hurting you too much already. You do not have to do this.”

Her head lifted, and her eyes met his. “No, I do, because the other possibility… That is that you are lying, and I need to know that you are not.”

Robert cursed. She flinched when he did, and he sighed. “I am sorry. I should not have said that, but it is very unpleasant to have you voice those doubts again. I do not care for being mistrusted, especially since I am one of those who were wronged by this man. In some ways, he has stolen more from me than I had ever thought I could lose. I cannot say he wronged me more than he did you, but I did not… Hearing how many details of my life he used for himself is more… I have this strange fear that I am—what if I lose all that is me? What if those memories I thought were mine are not mine? Perhaps the war has had more of an effect on me than I thought it did. Perhaps I am the one who is—”

“I did not mean to make you start doubting yourself. You… He is the liar, not you.”

“How do you know that?”

She lowered her head. “I suppose I don’t, and the more I hear of what he did take from you, the more I know that I never knew him, but at the same time, Robbie… He took your stories and your memories… That is the part I thought I knew, the part I trusted, and while it is foolish, it is still what I believe. That boy with the beehive was a bit spoiled and foolish, but he is not a bad man.”

Robert placed his hand over hers. “I wish I felt worthy of that kind of sentiment.”

She closed her eyes. “The apples and the horses…”

“Stole a barrel from the kitchen, fed them as many as I could, but was caught because they rotted in my room.”

“The pie.”

“Blueberry or apple? Oh, there was that thing with the strawberry one that—”

“I think I need you to stop again,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “Those… They are all your stories, not his, and I cannot stand to hear them from you right now. I’m sorry. I wish I was stronger, but I am not. I cannot do this.”

He nodded. He admired her for being willing to see him this morning, for talking about this as much as she had, even when it was clear that she did not want to. Truthfully, neither of them wanted to talk about it anymore. He did not want to lose more of his own identity, nor did he want to cause her further pain by taking all the memories she would have held onto, the “good” parts of her courtship and marriage before the man proved false.

“I will go. I do not have to come back—”

“No, we…” She drew a breath, rising, using the strength she didn’t think she had as she faced him. “We can try and talk again, it’s just… I will need more time.”

“Of course. You will have as much time as you need, I promise.”

She bit her lip, shaking her head. “A part of me wishes you were not so nice a man. It makes this that much harder.”

“Violet—”

“Please excuse me, Mr. Winston. I do not feel well.”

Author’s Note: This seemed to flow rather well after the flashback with how Violet met Winston.

“Is something wrong?”

She sighed, looking up from her hands. She did not remember much of walking back to her bench in the garden, and if she’d been lost in her thoughts all that time, she was certain to have worried her companion. That had not been her intention, but her mind had been on Winston a lot over the past few days. He was an impossible subject to avoid. Everything had come about because of his arrival in her life, and even though he was gone, he had left too many marks behind to say he’d been there.

“I’m sorry. My mind went to… I was thinking about the first time that I met Winston.”

“Oh.”

She heard the edge to Robbie’s voice, a sort of sharpness that made her feel worse about her mind’s wanderings. She must seem very rude, perhaps even pathetic, dwelling on memories that had to with the man who’d betrayed them both. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t bother you with my recollections or worry you with how they make me feel.”

“It’s…” He let out a breath, shaking his head, and she realized that his disgust was directed at himself. “I almost made a snide comment, actually, and that was not right. You do not deserve that kind of treatment.”

She frowned. What treatment did he mean? Was he thinking the same thoughts as the towns’ gossips? Was that it? “What?”

“A cruel remark about you foolishly thinking it was love the moment you saw him,” he said, wincing as he looked at her face. “I know. That isn’t fair. It was wrong of me to think it.”

She shook her head. “I do not think it was wrong. Given how quickly our courtship progressed, many people thought it must be that way, that we loved each other on sight alone. I did not think that was true—certainly it was inaccurate for our first meeting. I could not hardly see him because of the sun, and I rather made a fool of myself. It would seem that was all I ever did with him.”

Robbie frowned. “Surely your next encounter was not as… the first, or you would not have been willing to see him again.”

She almost laughed. He was right about that much. She would never forget the way that Winston had returned, the way he’d stepped in with a flourish, revealing the bouquet, and how sweet he’d been as he explained his offering. “Oh, no, the next time, he was all smiles and apologies and charm. He brought me flowers to replace those I’d dropped, and… Other than his habit of comparing me to nymphs or sprites, he was quite charming. I liked to hear him speak; he was a fine storyteller. Perhaps that should have warned me, how much I loved his tales. He would tell me of places he’d traveled, but I liked hearing of his childhood best. That is what fooled me into thinking I knew him, how well I could picture his upbringing. It was as though I’d been there to see each moment, sharing it with him as he spoke.”

Robbie gave her a slight smile. “He must have had some great stories if he impressed you. I rather think I should not have managed it. I would be surprised to hear you liked him if he told you the beehive story.”

That one made her smile. She’d laughed the entire time, even if it was not proper. “That, as mother said, was simply a boy being a little boy.”

Robbie stiffened. He rose, moving toward the back of the garden. “That was not how my father saw it. He was very displeased, and I was never allowed honey again because I cost them so much. Not for breakfast, not in tea, never.”

“No,” she whispered, not wanting to believe it. He could not know that tale. That was Winston’s. It had to be. It was not Robbie’s, not again. How could Winston have known something like that, anyway? There was no way, was there? “Tell me that the beehive is not one of your stories, too.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. It is.”

“Was… Did you knock that down with one of your friends, perhaps? Is that it? He said he was alone, but if you weren’t, if you were with another boy, and he saw or helped and—Please. This does not make sense.”

Robbie shook his head. “No. I did it alone, thought it must have become known to all around us when the neighbors learned of our honey shortage. I do not understand, either. My mind must be more damaged than I thought if I cannot remember who he is, if I cannot recognize him. He has such intimate knowledge of my life, so how is it that I know nothing of his?”

She swallowed. “I do not know. I cannot think of any sort of explanation for that. This almost seems like proof of your conviction that he knows you, doesn’t it?”

Robbie came back to her side. “What other tales did he tell? What about the snake? Did he talk about the snake and the minister and—”

“Please stop. I do not want to hear how many more of those stories belong to you and not to him.”

“Violet—”

“No,” she said, pushing herself to her feet. “I am… I cannot do this. I cannot sit here and examine every instance of how I did not know him at all. I should be stronger, but I am not. I cannot bear hearing how I gave my life and my love away to a man that I knew nothing of. I cannot. Do not ask me to do so.”

“Oh, Violet,” Robbie said, reaching up to touch her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about what that meant for you. I was so determined to learn how he could have known these things that I didn’t stop to think of you.”

She closed her eyes, wishing that she’d shut out the tears as well. “I think I shall lie down. Perhaps you can ask your family more of this man, but I… I do not think I can help you again. It… This hurts too much.”

“I understand,” he said, letting his hand drop back to his side. He shifted his feet, looking at her with such guilt that she wanted to tell him it was all her doing, not his, but she couldn’t change how this made her feel. She could not help him again, not now. Perhaps later, but she could not bear it at the moment. “Would you rather that I didn’t come back at all?”

“I… No… That is… Oh, I do not know.”

“I will send a message, then, and if you do not wish to see me, simply say no in reply. I will finish what I can here, and if you change your mind before then, we may meet, but otherwise, I shall most likely return home in the next day or so.”

She nodded. A part of her wanted to beg him to stay, but she would not. She did not know what she was thinking or feeling now, so mixed up and confused and wishing she was anyone but herself. She needed to be somewhere where she could attempt to end this turmoil within her.

“Excuse me,” she said, turning back toward the house, not able to look at him as she left.

Author’s Note: I’ve been meaning to include the first meeting between Violet and her “husband” for a while now. It didn’t end up fitting in before, but I’m going to get it in now.

“You are quite the… nymph, aren’t you?”

Violet looked up at the man who had spoken, shielding her eyes from the sun. She could not make out much more than a silhouette, but she did not need more than that to know that he did not belong here, not for any sort of delivery, nor were they expecting guests. She frowned, not certain how he had managed to get in here in the first place. She could have sworn that she had shut the gate earlier. She was tired of Beatrice lecturing her about it. “Excuse me?”

Mortified, Violet dropped her flowers and rushed into the house, shutting the door behind her as she struggled to compose herself. She didn’t know which was worse—that he might have heard what she’d said or that she’d run away from him. She closed her eyes and waited for the humiliation to fade.

Author’s Note: So I didn’t have this ready before I had to leave today. Now that I’m finally able to sit down with my computer with internet again, I can post this.

“Are there any more of those little sandwiches?”

Robert frowned. She had not been lying when she said that she could eat when she was craving things. He swore she’d been through enough food to feed three people already, and she did not seem close to stopping. He had never seen any woman eat so much, and he should, he thought, be repulsed by it, but instead he found it rather fascinating. His mother had never had any other children, never tried, at least not that he could tell from his parents’ cold and indifferent manners toward each other when they were not hosting some sort of social function. When they were alone, they were worse than strangers—they were the sort of people that he did not want to become, the reason he would not rush to give Violet and the child his name and the “protection” of marriage. He had seen what such arrangements led to, and he did not want to be a part of one. Still, since he lacked any sort of experience with pregnant women—no sister or aunts to educate him in those matters—he found himself paying more attention to everything that Violet did. He could not help the curiosity.

“You ate them all,” her mother said, though she sounded rather pleased. “I will see about getting more, though. Do you need anything, Mr. Winston?”

Robert shook his head. “Oh, no, I ate plenty, and if I forgot to thank the cook, do send her my compliments, but I think it best that I see these letters to the post office now that they are complete.”

“Do you think anything will come of your inquiries?”

“I do not know, Mrs. Carpenter, but I do hope so, since I would like to find the man who stole my name and see to it that there is some sort of repercussion for his actions. I keep thinking that I should know him, and yet he is still a stranger to me. I can think of no one who would extend this kind of malice toward me. I am not perfect, and yet he chose me to malign, and I do not know why. I should, but I do not.”

“Were it not for the way his stories coincide with yours, there would be no reason to think that he knew you at all,” Violet said, turning her hand in circles on her stomach. “He could have picked you at random. Indeed, all he would need is some kind of social register, and he could have your name and those of your family. He would not need to know much more than that since no one here knew you or anyone connected to you. The distance between your home and my was no doubt a reason for his successful deceit. Without it, it might never have worked.”

“Yes, but why pick me? Why go so far as to marry you? Unless…”

Violet sat up, frowning at him. “Unless what, Robbie? What is it that put that look upon your face and made you stop speaking?”

He grimaced. He did not much like the thought, but he supposed he owed her the honesty of voicing it. Concealing it would only lead to trouble and hurt feelings. “I could not help wondering if perhaps the reason for taking my name had to do with… with his social position. If he were from a lower class, if he had no money or connections of his own, he would want to use the name of someone who had both—or so they would assume, since few people realize how little I have of my own or my dependence on my father.”

“And you think that without such a pretense he could not have married me?” Violet shifted in her seat, shaking her head. “I know that it would gall most people, but I had no interest in making any sort of… advantageous marriage. I have only a modest inheritance from my father, and it is nothing to boast over, not the sort that someone should hope to steal. Yet… your idea suggests the possibility that he left before his ruse was uncovered.”

“By whom? I was still across the country, and you said no one here knew him—or me—or anyone by my name, I suppose is the best way to say it.” Robert shook his head. “If that was all he wanted, I do not think he would have left. He stood a greater chance of the deception never being known had he stayed. The only reason that you and are in contact now is because he left you. Otherwise I might never have known that he took my name.”

Violet sighed. “It is a bit foolish to hope that he left for that reason, isn’t it?”

Robert looked at her. He had a suspicion that she still retained some affection for the man despite her words and all her bravery. Perhaps she needed to believe that she had not been completely betrayed. “I would not call it foolish.”

She let out a breath. “I do not know what else you can call it. Oh, Mother, do not bother with the sandwiches. I have lost my appetite again.”

Robert cleared his throat. “I… Would it be better if we adjourned to the garden for a while? Perhaps the fresh air would help.”

“Yes, I think I would like that, actually.”