Page 16 of These Violet Delights
“Discourteous?” She knew she sounded hysterical, but the words tumbled out before she could stop them. “Discourteous! He nearly trampled me to death yesterday!” Everyone waslooking at her now with varying degrees of surprise and interest. Emilia appeared like she might faint but had not abandoned her place at the window. “It’s true! Oh, do not receive him, Ann, I beg you.”
“On the contrary, do let him in. I should like to see what happens,” said Cristabel, standing back and chuckling. “She’s done nothing but pretend not to sketch him all morning.”
Ann’s black brows raised in shock. Tearing herself away, Violet paced in an anxious circle, her thumbnail between her lips. “That is because…because…you see—he was like a demon! An apparition! Immense! And with these eyes like hell’s own embers. Oh, it was horrible. And the way he spoke to me! Who could possibly address a lady with such…such…”
“Violet, you were in the ruins of his old home,” said Ann mildly. “That would make anyone uneasy.”
“Certainly, certainly, were I an opportunistic looter, perhaps, and not a lady swishing about with a few paints!” Violet threw up her hands, addressing a staring, unsympathetic audience.
Ann cleared her throat gently and took Violet by the arm, leading her to a cozy chair away from the windows. “Mm. And if your families were friendlier or better acquainted, then you might expect an apology, but as it stands…”
“He should do it anyway, the scoundrel,” Violet muttered, flopping bonelessly into the chair.
“And…you want this scoundrel to appear so he might apologize, yes? Not so that you might see his immensity and ember eyes again, but properly this time, and in daylight?” Ann smirked, gesturing to the north lawn. “You may just get your chance.”
Violet soared out of the chair, turning on Ann with open-mouthed fury. “The suggestion! Ann!”
She shrugged. “I have not seen you this impassioned, dear cousin, since we took up Maggie’s cause in London. Given your clear offense, I must be mistaken.”
“Absolutely so, Ann. I should rather kiss Puck on his disgusting, demented old goat mouth than flutter my lashes at Alasdair Kerr.” She was running out of breath. Ann watched with bemusement as Violet worked herself up into a state again. “As if he would ever say a kind word to me! I am some insipid pretender to him. He probably took my paintings and danced on them until they were muddy shreds! Insipid, uninspired, that’s what he thinks of me. And, oh! I shall never see that self-portrait again, and I quite liked it, too. It was almost something.”
Cristabel had returned to the breakfast table. She snorted at Violet’s distress over saffron honey cake.
“Calm yourself, cousin, please.” Ann looped her arm lightly around Violet’s shoulders, leading her to the open doors where they could both have some air. Beyond the veranda, near the pebbly path winding down to the pond, not far from the back step, Puck tore mouthfuls of grass up, chewing lazily. “It sounds to me like you are writing fiction now.”
Violet sagged against her cousin, her voice diminishing. “Not at all. He was at Aunt Eliza’s exhibition in London, and he said the most dreadful things about my work. That was after…well, you know, the incident, and I was at my lowest, but he just had to get in one nasty little kick…”
“Enough! Enough!” Emilia shrieked, storming up to them.
“Sister, what has offended you—”
“This irrational feud! That’s what offends me!” Emilia tore off her own shawl, balled it up, and tossed it onto the ground, stamping her feet. “Freddie Kerr is a kind, spirited, wonderful man! And he loves me, do you understand? He loves me, and I love him, and I hope that very soon we shall be engaged.”
Emilia’s voice seemed to echo in the cavernous drawing room for an eternity.
“My, um, my word,” croaked Ann, looking at her sister with new eyes. None of them moved. Lane’s mother, Violet’s aunt, Mrs. Richmond, bustled into the room from the back garden, having clipped a few fading late summer blossoms. She arrived with a smile but absorbed the glacial atmosphere at once. Her small, keen blue eyes flicked from lady to lady.
“What could possibly inspire four young ladies to stand about in total silence?” she wondered aloud. As if to answer, the butler, Bloom, sashayed into the room from the front hall, bowing with a flourish. “A Mr. Frederick Kerr to see Miss Emilia, ma’am.”
“But I must have misheard you,” Mrs. Richmond replied, clutching the flowers to her breast. “Mr.Kerr? It isn’t possible!”
“And,” Bloom said, drawing out the word impatiently, “Mr. Alasdair Kerr to see Miss Arden.”
Mrs. Richmond’s lace cap was in danger of flying off of her head as she whipped her attention between Emilia and Violet. “Have I returned to the correct house? Not one but two Kerrs on my doorstep! And here it seemed such a lovely day…Well! I suppose we cannot leave them waiting outside, though I dearly wish propriety deemed we could. No, no, I shall not give that dubious family one more reason to speak ill of us.” She turned to Emilia, then Violet. “Go! For heaven’s sake, go!”
With her heart lodged in her throat, Violet drifted to the drawing room on the other side of the house. It was warmer there, the windows shut against the cold, the rich, dark swirl of the wallpaper and the ponderous purplish curtains giving one the sense one was safely enfolded in the belly of some giant, slumbering beast. She had no desire to come face-to-facewith the man who had made such a tumult of her spirit, but at least she might receive a deserved apology and accept the return of her possessions. It did gladden her to imagine that she might see that self-portrait again.
She had just positioned herself near a small statue of Orpheus on a white plinth when Bloom returned to announce Mr. Kerr. The polite thing to do was turn and face him, which she did, but slowly, dread spinning her stomach into a nauseating vortex.
Mr. Kerr encompassed nearly the entire doorframe; as he swept off his hat, his head grazed the bottom edge of the trim. The light pouring in from the front hall made him wholly shadow until he bowed and took a step inside. She heard other voices in the house, but that did nothing to assuage the sense that she was being gradually trapped against that plinth.
“Miss Arden.”
Glacial.
“Mr. Kerr.”
Indifferent.
