Her words rang against the clackity-clack of the train as they sped into the heart of France. Violet looked so empty, so starved, that Daniel almost relented. But his temper wouldn’t let him.
“Why the devil should I leave you alone?” he shouted back. “You seem to like my company. You’ve had the power to send me away anytime—why didn’t you use it?”
“Power? I don’t have any power over you at all! You do as you bloody well please, no matter who doesn’t like it. Me, your friends, country innkeepers, your glittering courtesans . . .”
Violet broke off, snapping her mouth shut, as though she hadn’t meant to say the last.
“What glittering courtesans?” Daniel made a show of looking around the empty room. “I don’t see any glittering courtesans. Maybe they’re hiding under one of the sofas?”
“I saw you,” Violet said, her voice hard. “The night we got back from the country. You were with gentlemen friends outside a restaurant, and lady friends too. They were quite beautiful. They were covered with diamonds, which is why I call them glittering. Please, do not pretend you are anything but a wealthy aristo who has any sort of woman he wants—respectable and not-so-respectable—happily going from one to the other.”
Daniel’s confusion cleared. “Do you mean you saw me outside the bistro? My obnoxious friend Richard provided the female company that night. The glittering ladies went home with Richard and his cronies, and I went to my hotel to be interrogated by my precious little sister. I’d just been with you, Vi. I wasn’t interested in them.”
Violet stared at him as though he’d lost his mind. Daniel supposed the fashionable world would think it odd that, plied with the most expensive and willing ladies in Marseille, Daniel would ignore them for a struggling confidence trickster with beautiful blue eyes. But that was because they hadn’t met Violet.
“We’ll be discussing this lack of trust in me,” Daniel said. “Thoroughly. But I noticed ye’ve neatly turned the tables back to me being a complete bastard instead of talking about what we started out to. Tell me about this marriage. Every detail. Who is he?”
Violet’s bosom rose in the beaded gown, the costume she’d not yet had a chance to remove. “I married Jacobi. To save my reputation, he said.”
“Jacobi.” Daniel’s hatred for the man spun higher.
Violet wet her lips. “It is one reason I forgave him. I thought, at the time, he’d been as much of a victim as me. He made me a married woman, in name only, to protect me.” She stopped, and fresh pain filled her eyes. “And because I was pregnant.”
Dear God. Daniel’s rage drained swiftly away. Violet watched him with trepidation, waiting for him to turn her away as she feared. Daniel knew, realistically, that with any other man her fears might not be unfounded. He’d just have to convince her he wasn’t any other man.
“Was the father the man who took you as . . . payment?” The word tasted sour in Daniel’s mouth.
“Yes.”
She said it so calmly, but Violet wasn’t calm. Her hands trembled, and she couldn’t look directly at Daniel.
“Where is the child?” Daniel asked in a quiet voice.
Violet was silent for a long time, and when she raised her head, Daniel knew. Pain bored into his heart as though someone had stabbed him. “I never had the child. I miscarried.”
“Violet . . .”
Violet held up her hand, fingers stiffly spread. “No. Wait. I want to finish. I was onstage with my mother when it happened. She had no idea about any of this.” Violet smiled a little, that heartbreaking smile that made Daniel want to kill every person who’d ever hurt her. “I was too young and ignorant to understand what was wrong with me. A lady in the audience, a courtesan called Lady Amber, saw what was happening. She came backstage, took me away to her house, and got a doctor—a real doctor, a good one—to help me. The doctor saved me, but couldn’t save the child.”
Violet trailed off. The train’s wheels clacked into the silence, the train rushing along at a great speed toward Paris.
“I’m sorry, Violet,” Daniel said, not moving. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Perhaps it was for the best.” Violet got the words out, but her voice broke.
“No, not for the best. It’s never for the best. You tell yourself that so you can bear the hurting. My stepmum, she lost a babe that came from an unscrupulous man, but it grieved her all the same.”
Violet’s tears dropped to her cheeks. Daniel came to her, gently seated her on the sofa where she’d sat with Ainsley, and sat down with her.
“Tell me the rest, love.”
Violet looked up at him, her eyes wet. “There is no rest. Jacobi was kind to me, trying to make amends. But when he was in debt again, when he offered me again, as I told you, I packed our things and took my mother and Mary out of Paris. I never wanted to live through that again. I haven’t seen Jacobi from that day to this.”
Daniel let silence fall between them for a time. Her hurting was real, no more lies. “Was it a legal marriage?” he asked after a time. “You were very young. Are you certain?”
She nodded. “There was a priest, our names in the register, a license, witnesses. I’m fairly certain it was all legal. Whether Jacobi is alive or dead now, as I said, I have no idea. I might be a widow. I don’t know.”
“Have you never tried to find him? Obtain a divorce, or annulment?”
Violet shook her head. “I never wanted to see him again. I did keep an ear out for mention of him, but I never heard anything. And he never tried to find me.” Her shoulders slumped. “It didn’t matter to me. I had no intention of marrying anyone else, so the fact that I’d married wasn’t important.”
Not important. Daniel had to stand up again. If he strangled Jacobi, not only would it feel good to his restless hands, he would set Violet free.
Daniel turned back to her. “It’s important to me, love. I’ll hunt down Jacobi, and if he’s still alive, I’ll shake an annulment out of him. If you haven’t seen him in years, the marriage might be null anyway. Abandonment or disappearance can dissolve it. Or Jacobi might have ended it so he could marry someone else.”
“He could have. I never had the opportunity or the money to bother with it. As I say, I wanted nothing to do with him. Ever.”
Daniel nodded. “Yes, you ran away. You’re good at that—running. How was it the police caught you this morning? I’d have thought you light on your feet.”