Page 14 of These Violet Delights
Freddie squeezed his eyes shut, going limp as an old rag in Alasdair’s grasp. “And to make my intentions known. That I love her. That I mean to marry her.”
With one powerful yank of his arm, Alasdair dragged his brother to his feet, then glared down into his eyes. “With what money?”
“Why, she has more than enough!”
“Indeed.” He clamped his hand around the base of Freddie’s neck, pinching. “And what does the lady’s father have to say about all of this?”
“Colonel Graddock is a-abroad,” Freddie whispered. “How should I know?”
“Fortunately, I’m here to speak sense for the both of us. You’ve no income of your own, no employment, nothing besides your eagerness and charm, and you’re mad if you think that is enough to recommend you for marriage.”
“Not mad, no, just in love. Can’t you understand that?” He let Freddie go and his brother spun away, his eyes filling with tears. “In all your wanderings, were you never sick with love?”
No. Yes. I don’t know.
Freddie charged on, his voice rising with every word. “Did you not write to me of a Georgiana or some such? And do you think our mother would approve of her? An Austrian, if memory serves, your lady, yes? And that would never do! Never! Miss Graddock is half-English, her mother from the Indies,and you should have heard the way our mother and Danforth spoke of it!”
His brother could go on and on, but it did not matter; Alasdair was beyond reach. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with the heel of his right hand and sighed. There was nothing for it. Freddie would continue on this impossible path until it was swept out from under him or he lost his feet entirely. It would be admirable, his determination, if it weren’t exasperating. “Take the painting of your so-called lady love and wait for me to dress. Then, we depart for Pressmore—this foolishness ends today.”
5
O, when she is angry, she is keen and shrewd.
She was a vixen when she went to school,
And though she be but little, she is fierce.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream—Act 3, Scene 2
The affliction that prevented Violet Arden from ever starting a thing was the exact same condition that kept her from finishing: perfectionism.
“You’re too hard on yourself,” Maggie had warned her a thousand times, but Violet never listened. For most of her two and twenty years, she had failed to devote herself to any cause or passion for fear that her drawing or dancing or stitching would fail to live up to her own standards. Or, even ghastlier, that the lofty standard would be met, and then it would change, and the whole mortifying ordeal would begin again.
She had started and abandoned several sketches that morning. The proof of her failure was mounting in accusatory piles at her feet. Perfectionism. It was poison. Yet there was a face lodged in her mind, or the idea of one, and her want of perfection was in direct conflict with this surge of inspiration.
She outright refused to paint the whole face, for it would break the new laws she had established for herself. No, she would not paint the horrible man who had screamed at her in the ruins, but she might draw an eye, an ear, a certain corner of the mouth…
Violet grumbled and stepped back from the easel, appalled yet again at her inability to get it right or even to honor her own vows. She shouldn’t be drawing him at all, not even bits. Her gaze wandered to the balcony and the wan hand of morning light stretching its fingers across the plummet to the pond. Beadle Cottage, a half mile down the hill from Pressmore, waited somewhere in the chilly embrace where the light had yet to spread. She thought of her sister Maggie, who was no doubt awake at that early hour and scribbling away, hard at work on her next novel.
“I’m not like you, Maggie,” Violet said softly to that view out the balcony doors. “There is no inspiration in an insult for me, only doubt and shame.”
Derivative and silly. And for no one.
Now Violet could put a face to the discourtesy, and that made the sting of it doubly powerful. She thought of young Violet in the Pressmore fields playing pirates with her friends on an endless summer’s day, of Alasdair Kerr, who had seemed a friend then, laughing at her jokes and racing her along the water’s edge to the bridge. Bigger, faster, he always won those races but never boasted of it to the others.
“Who are you speaking to? My easel? I should hope so! I hope you are the best of friends, for that might justify your thieving of it!” Cristabel Bilbury stood at the door, hair wild and tangled, fists perched on her waist. There was a vastness of carpet between them, for Ann always let Violet take one of the grander bedrooms in the estate when she spent the night,and with Maggie deep in her second novel, those stays were becoming more and more frequent.
“You went to bed so early last night,” said Violet, putting down her pencil. “I didn’t think you would need it until this afternoon.”
“But where is yours?” Cristabel demanded, marching over to her. At once, she scrutinized the light marks, the bare beginnings of a face, not quite anyone, as if Violet had been sketchingaroundthe subject, afraid of the direct approach.
“I left it in the ruins. The rain caught me out.” Cristabel had left her easel in the drawing room, and she was nowhere to be found when Violet returned from the ruins. At dinner, she learned from her aunt, Mrs. Mildred Richmond, that Cristabel had complained of a headache and had gone up to bed early. These abrupt comings and goings were referred to as “her little episodes.”
Cristabel’s eyes flared. “And your paintings?”
“Gone, I’m afraid,” Violet replied quietly, her shoulders collapsing inward. They were both looking at the sketch now. There was no use lying. “A man startled me, chased me off. It’s his land, and he had every right to do it, I suppose, but there was no need to be so…so…” She huffed and waved her hand at nothing. “Anyway, I will have to ask Lane to send someone to Sampson Park for my things.”
“You cannot retrieve them?”
