Page 33 of These Violet Delights
More and more of the town arrived to watch the Florizel burn. It was clear now that there was absolutely no saving it. Like Clafton before it, it would be a charred shell by morning. Alasdair’s face hardened as he watched the blaze feast and glut itself on the charming little theater. He thought of Miss Arden’s wooden case of paints and brushes somewhere inside andimagined the pigments bursting in their compartments like miniature fireworks.
Margaret Darrow and Mrs. Arden arrived on foot, Mrs. Darrow clasping her cloak in both fists as the fire was reflected in her light blue eyes. Hasty greetings were exchanged.
Violet went to them at once. “Emilia…but she…and…” She glanced nervously at Alasdair.
“There is no need for secrecy,” Alasdair assured her. “I know that Miss Graddock and my brother are missing. Indeed, I rode to town to search for him.”
“Too many disasters for one evening,” Mrs. Darrow muttered.
“And Emilia is not at Beadle?” asked Violet, clasping her sister’s wrist.
“She is not, and I fear we can do nothing now but pray she is safe. It will be easier to search in the morning. And the Florizel! What horror! Does Mr. Lavin know how the blaze began?” asked Mrs. Darrow.
It was a question meant for Violet, but the young lady was off in her own world. She searched the ground near Alasdair’s feet, her eyes moving faster and faster until her mouth popped open in apparent revelation. “No.No,but…I’ve just had a thought. Brilliant, Maggie, you never fail to inspire!”
“I…do?”
Alasdair took a small step toward them. “Are you well, Miss Arden?”
“Yes. Yes! Oh, I know it now. I know! I’ve done nothing all summer long but regale Emilia with stories of our childhood adventures, the way we ruled Pressmore and ran roughshod over the whole of the property,” said Violet, struggling to get her words out fast enough. She pulled herself away from her family and began almost floating toward the town square.Sharing a confused look with Mrs. Darrow, Alasdair decided to follow.
“Playing pirates on the bridge, chasing each other through the maze, and, long before Ann had the Grecian temple put in, there was a thicket of raspberry bushes. Mrs. Richmond was wild about cultivating raspberries for a time, and we would gather them all with sticky fingers and carry them in our skirts across the hidden lane to the wood and eat them by the fistful until we were sick in Morning-glory Hollow.”
“Morning-glory Hollow,” said Alasdair, arriving at the thought at the same time.
“Mrs. Richmond never knew to look for us there,” said Mrs. Darrow, nodding.
Miss Arden turned most urgently to her sister and mother, whispering, “Tell Winny where we have gone to look. If they are there, we can find them before the scandal widens.” With big, hopeful eyes and her smudged elfin face, she fidgeted in Alasdair’s direction. “No more lives should be ruined this night.”
It was deliberately said, and slowly, and with the weight of a question.
Alasdair gave a single nod and gestured toward the blacksmith’s. “My horse is nearby,” he offered, and off they went.
11
Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
Macbeth—Act 1, Scene 4
A hard rain had begun to fall, the slap of the droplets against the remaining forest leaves giving the impression a hundred creatures galloped alongside them as they rode to the hollow.
It was a stroke of fortune for the burning Florizel, but less ideal for two exhausted people unprepared for such weather.Maybe this is what it’s like to drown very fast,thought Violet, scrunching her face down into her neck and closing her eyes against the rain. Sitting in the warm, awkward cradle of Alasdair’s saddle and lap, she was reminded of their walk across the fields, of his arms holding her as if she weighed nothing at all, and the intriguing slide of his wet shirt against her back.
“We seem doomed to odd, moist arrangements,” she muttered, flinching from the jostle of the horse and the unforgiving rain shower.
“What?” Alasdair called over the noise of the hooves and the storm.
Violet shook her head and fell silent. Surely they would be there soon; she wasn’t sure how much longer she could take. The saddle dug into her thigh, but when she tried to hold on to the pommel, her left hand screamed with pain; the burn was worse than she wanted to admit. But if she relied on Alasdair’s body to keep her in place, other considerations arose.Don’t think of anything rising, don’t think about his body, or him, or what you saw coming out of that river. In fact, don’t think at all.
But that was easier said than done for one of Violet’s makeup. She couldn’t breathe or sneeze but think and wonder. There was no escaping the man partially wrapped around her, the insides of his arms rubbing up and down against her as he controlled the horse, the subtle but powerful way his legs flexed to urge the beast faster or slower…He seemed completely unaware of her, which somehow made her that much more aware ofhim.The rain soaked them both, strengthening the rich, dark scent from his soap, hair pomade, and sweat. It had been hours since she ate, but that was just partially to blame for her sudden lightheadedness.
Morning-glory Hollow sat in something of a no-man’s-land between Pressmore and Clafton. Certainly, someone somewhere knew the exact boundaries of the estates, but as children, they thought the large assortment of tumbled stones and overgrown plants felt like a world between worlds. If the adults of either side knew about it, they never indicated as much. It was the perfect place to stash secret treasures, to hold silly contests, and it often featured as the bandit or pirate stronghold, as needed. None of them knew its true origin, though Violet suspected it had probably been a tiny medievalchapel that had fallen into disrepair, forgotten by humans to be reclaimed by the woods.
Somebody—Maggie, probably—had given it the name Morning-glory Hollow, for the bold purple trumpets hung like curtains over the warped, sloped entrance to the cave-like hollow.
“A lantern,” Alasdair said close to her ear. “Do you see it?”
