Page 18 of These Violet Delights
Veering off the drive and toward the hedge maze, Mr. Kerr stopped abruptly beneath a willow. The draping branches wept yellow tears, a carpet of tiny golden leaves gathering beforethe trunk. “No, nothing of the sort. I simply will not stand to be interrogated in this manner. God, a wall of mortared stone would balk at the task. Desist, madam, and draw breath.”
She answered him with steely silence, waiting with crossed arms.
“It…was spoiled by the rain,” he told her. He added something in such a quiet undertone she couldn’t tell if it was “regrettably” or “predictably.”
Violet shrank. “Oh.” It was a harsh disappointment. “That’s a shame, I almost liked it.”
He seemed ready to say something else when his brother burst from the house. Clutching his hat with both hands, he ran toward them with his head bowed as if he might need to duck or dodge at any moment. His face was red, his blue jacket rumpled as if he had slept in it; unspent tears shined in his eyes.
“Well?” was Mr. Kerr’s sneering inquiry.
“It’s done,” Freddie murmured. An agonized scream erupted from the house behind them. By and by, it flattened out into a wail. “Badly. It went badly.” Mr. Kerr reached out and slapped Freddie hard on the shoulder, jostling him. “Please, can we go? I’d sooner be lashed to a rock and torn apart like Prometheus than stay and hear her cries…”
Mr. Kerr pulled his brother away from the willow and toward the road. With one stiff jerk of his head in Violet’s direction, he started toward the gates up the drive. “Good day, Miss Arden.”
Whatever urge Violet felt to follow was immediately quashed by the sound of Emilia continuing to suffer. She made a nasty face at the backs of the retreating men and hurried back to Pressmore, following the sounds of gulping sobs to the same drawing room where they had just eaten breakfast,finding that a distraught Emilia had flung herself across a low sofa to endure her breaking heart. It might have made a pretty picture if Emilia weren’t her dear friend and in such obvious, harrowing pain.
Ann knelt at her sister’s side, stroking the wet hair from Emilia’s tearstained cheeks. And Violet joined them, wedging herself in beside Emilia and taking her by the waist, holding her tightly. Not so long ago, Violet had been the subject of just such a scene, though Winny and Maggie had been the women there to comfort and soothe.
“There now, my darling, it will be all right,” Violet assured her, catching a droplet as it cascaded down to the edge of Emilia’s delicate chin.
“H-he said we cannot be! That he does not love me! It is a lie—I know it is a l-lie!” Emilia got out between heaves.
“Freddie has given you a gift, Emilia. You will see, I promise, you will see just how much better off you are without him. There are a thousand better suitors in the world more deserving of your love.” Violet caught Emilia as she tipped forward into her grasp and resumed sobbing. She shared a look with Ann over her sister’s shoulder, and they both rubbed the young lady’s back and let her pour it out. A calmness settled over her, one she hoped would pass to the woman in her arms. The image of Mr. Kerr’s burning gold eyes turning black with rage flashed across her vision. “You were never meant to be with a Kerr. None of us were. Think of how they behaved today!” Golden eyes. A sneering mouth. The towering form of a fiend angelical.
Yet I behaved badly, too, allowed his coldness to provoke me.
That was a thought for another time; Emilia needed her.
“Violet is right, cho?i bahan,” said Ann, soothing her sister in the Hindi language they shared. “There will be others.”
Emilia fussed and shook her head. “I don’t want others. I want him!”
Elsewhere in the house, Mrs. Richmond shut and re-shut doors as if the action could seal the house against another incursion of unwanted visitors.
“Disarray!” she could be heard shrieking. “Crying and wailing and whatever else! Never again, I tell you! How is my hospitality rewarded, Bloom? We are left all out of sorts with a screaming young lady! Well!Well.That is what courtesy affords you with the Kerrs.”
6
Are you more stubborn-hard than hammered iron?
King John—Act 4, Scene 1
“I need to get drunk immediately.”
The men made it as far as the outer gates of Pressmore before their paths diverged. The edge of Freddie’s hat was mangled where he had been squeezing it like a wet rag. He gazed off toward the village below, Cray Arches, no doubt envisioning all the cups he would drain in his misery. Straight ahead, a wild row of low, shapely trees formed a reddish-gold wall, lining the road.
“Wallowing in self-pity will not make this easier,” Alasdair insisted.
“You don’t know that. Join me, we can find out together.”
He almost accepted the offer, then remembered he was trying to nudge Freddie toward his better nature, if for no other reason than to appease their mother. “Come home with me instead.”
“Nothing about that place is reassuring. Go, run back to Mother, one of us should.”
“Don’t do anything rash.” Alasdair watched him float away, as if pulled toward the brandy and wine on an invisible string. A wave of melancholy hit him then that almost knocked him off his feet. He often felt panicked at goodbyes, haunted by the leave-taking with his father that had been their last.Be wise and good, Cub, the other boys won’t have your sense.Foolishly, Alasdair had been eager to get on his way, to be at Cambridge, a man on his own, brimming with half-cocked ideas about what his life would look like. If he had known his father would die in the Clafton fire a few months later, he would have never left.
Freddie stormed off; regret locked Alasdair in place.
