Page 19 of These Violet Delights
“I haven’t been the best brother to you, have I?” he wondered aloud.
“Did you say something?”
Alasdair shook his head, and Freddie turned away. He watched his brother turn left down the road toward Cray Arches, hearing the last words he had spoken to his father bleed into the present.You worry over me too much, Father; the carriage is here, and I must depart.
How impatient he had been, how arrogant.
The sun was high by the time he returned to Sampson Park, and he ducked into the house drenched in the prickly sweat of a chill day made over-warm by a cloudless sky. He had considered a swim on his walk back, but there were too many people out about their business, and he had no interest in returning to the county only to set tongues wagging about his habits. He discovered Mr. Danforth rocking from heel to toe outside his room.
“Your mother is within,” said the clergyman, smirking. “To be sure, she’s eager to know everything is taken care of where your brother is concerned.”
Alasdair frowned. “Lady Edith rarely leaves the comfort of her chair. How did she—”
“I took the liberty of carrying her with Hilary’s assistance.”
Odd. All of it was odd. His mother was a known snooper, but on conversations, never intruding physically on their private spaces like this. Alasdair said nothing and pushed by Danforth, closing the door resolutely behind him. His mother leaned on her cane in the middle of the chamber, shivering beneath her shawl, squinting at the self-portrait of Violet Arden on the bookcase.
“Good afternoon, Mother, I trust—”
“Since your father’s death, you have always been a reliable child,” she said, cutting him off. She had been an incomparable in her youth, but the fire had robbed them all differently. Her rare smiles became something only remembered, her appetite withering and her body along with it, her trust and kindness reserved for God and Danforth and whatever quiet counsel she kept with herself. Without looking at Alasdair, she continued, “You have always given me the gift of obedience, and I am grateful for it. Where is your brother?”
“He’s off to the inn, I suspect, to drown his disappointments.”
“That is all he gives me of late, disappointments,” she said with a sigh, and seemed to become yet smaller. “But there will be no more discussion of any engagement.”
“None,” said Alasdair.
That brought the wintriest hint of a smile to her face.
“Mr. Danforth has tried to encourage him toward better things—study, modesty, sobriety—but he has concluded it a fruitless endeavor.”
“And what do you think?” he asked, afraid to step closer and come into the powerful gaze of the painting.
“I don’t, Alasdair,” she told him sadly. “I pray. How did you come to have this…this thing?” She risked taking one hand from the cane and waved it toward the portrait.
“Not intentionally, I assure you,” he replied, refusing to look at Violet, who was not a thing, though he could not yet decide what exactly she was. “It was left behind in the Clafton ruins, I simply removed it here to keep it from the rain.”
Lady Edith sniffed and shrugged and began struggling toward the door. Alasdair leapt to help her, supporting her with his left forearm. The fingers she draped across his wrist were like a dusting of feathers. Then, her grip tightened, startling him. “Get rid of it,” she commanded when they reached the door. Danforth was waiting outside, grinning and at attention.
“Of course,” said Alasdair.
When he was alone, he took the self-portrait and covered it in a cloth from his wardrobe, briefly considered feeding it to the fire, then, with a sizzle of shame, slid it beneath his four-poster bed, the symbolism of which was greatly annoying. He could part with it, heoughtto. Why had he lied about it?
Why did he want so badly to keep it for himself?
Returning the portrait cured two ills—it would please his mother and Miss Arden. Yet other symptoms remained unaddressed, and the painting was not moved.
Clark Gordon arrived bright and early the next day. His coming was a welcome distraction, significantly reducing the number of times Alasdair felt the urge to check under his bed and verify that Danforth hadn’t crept in like a thief and discovered his secret. There was absolutely no additional benefit to these little spikes of suspicion, and he did not experience a shudder of emotion at each glimpse of Violet’s questioning gaze.
Or that was what he insisted to himself whenever he was gripped by self-recrimination.
He liked Clark Gordon right away; he was a stocky badger of a man, all beard and chin, reddened and callused from head to foot.
“It’ll be a monstrous undertaking,” said Gordon when presented with the hollowed-out shell of Clafton. It took mere moments for the man to win the builder’s confidence and awe. “Monstrous,” he growled again through the ungroomed mustache of his unfashionably huge beard. “But this hill ought to have a crown. It’s missing something, don’t you think? And we’ll provide it. Ha-ha!” He often laughed explosively at his own declarations, whether they were humorous or otherwise. Alasdair liked that, too; Gordon seemed a man utterly unburdened.
Alasdair insisted that, when able, Mr. Gordon dine with them at Sampson, an honor the man took in stride. But each night the party remained four, with always a place laid for the youngest Kerr, who never appeared. Danforth claimed he was unperturbed, but Alasdair couldn’t help but worry; it had been four busy days since they had last seen Freddie.
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