Page 5 of These Violet Delights
Alasdair politely intervened, offering his respects to Sir Thomas before pulling Robert aside.
“That table in the corner…”
“I knew you would want it,” said Robert, smirking. He had immense hair, copiously piled, and was sharply dressed, as any true Brummell devotee. When they had both taken up river swimming at Cambridge, it had slimmed Robert down fashionably but managed to somehow make Alasdair bigger and broader. Robert’s watery blue eyes flashed. “Your lady wants it also. What am I to do?”
“Please. She isn’t mine,” Alasdair replied, gruff. “But I will have the table.”
“Miss Holzer has already named a price, though you’ll have no trouble matching it.”
“I thought she would stay longer,” said Alasdair, frowning.
“Thought or hoped? She isn’t some uncivilized beast, Alasdair. She wouldn’t dare be seen aggressively bidding, nor aggressively doing anything. She made a polite bid, feel free to recklessly exceed it. Afterward, gift the table to Miss Holzer. That ought to impress her.”
Maybe Julianna ought to do more things passionately, and perhaps that was the bridge that was missing between them. “I told you—she isn’t mine.”
Robert lowered his head and clucked his tongue, uncannily like Alasdair’s own mother. “My good fellow, you ought to have both. A pretty wife to stand beside a pretty table, isn’t that just what every man requires?”
“Two hundred,” said Alasdair.
Robert’s eyes widened. “Pounds?”
Too loud. The guests swarming the portrait of Robert’s wife recoiled while Alasdair flinched.
“Just wrap it carefully, it must survive the trip to Clafton in one piece.”
He turned to go, and Robert called after him, laughing playfully. Mocking him, maybe. Alasdair stiffened, plunged inside himself, and lengthened his already lengthy stride. “Is that where you’re off to, then? To brood across the countryside?”
“Home,” Alasdair told him shortly. “I’m going home.”
—
The road to Warwickshire was long and muddy, but Alasdair had always been a confident rider invigorated by exercise and country views. Going home was perhaps easier said than done; back in the county of his origin, he passed the little church at Cray Arches and the inn, taking the northerly road that sliced through a forest of silver birch. There was a small path that ran alongside and eventually veered west, which met up with a lane that led to the Richmond property. Trotting through the birch, he came upon a narrow little bridge, one that had featured prominently in his childhood adventures. He smiled at the memories of two boys spending forever afternoons on that bridge, kicking off their shoes to let their toes cool in the water, then popping up onto the boards and demanding tolls from passersby, who humored the lads with a farthing or two.
He urged his horse faster down the road. The bridge of his nose itched, sweat gathering there beneath his spectacles. The birch gave way to yet denser forest, a woodland sprawl thickened with beech and hawthorn. He didn’t look too hard, knowing that somewhere beyond that beauty lay a wound etchedinto the landscape. Another mile along and the road split, the left fork leading to Sampson Park, a place that was his but that he only ever considered as belonging to his mother.
Some distant farm had been burning its leaves, for a gust of smoky wind traveled down the road at him, enfolding him, making his eyes water until he shook it off. He turned his shoulder against the watchful west, the site of his last joyful days. Clafton had once risen like a gray spike from the hillside, towering above the wood, but now, destroyed, it was no more than a suggestion of what had once been.
He’d left one day for Cambridge, a tender and cheerful nineteen, and returned to a smoldering ruin and the burden of burying his father. The fire might have killed him, too, had he been at home, for it chewed most ferociously through the west wing, where his father’s libraries and study were, and where Alasdair had slept as a boy. The smoke-tipped wind came again, insistent, and, succumbing, Alasdair breathed it in, letting it cover him like a shroud.
And so, he came to Sampson Park, while only ever thinking of his true home, Clafton, and the fire that claimed it.
The two buildings couldn’t be more dissimilar. The road carried on west across the hills just as the forest dropped away. Alasdair urged his horse down a pebbly path that curled east, guarded by iron gates with a scrolled top, and those firmly shut. There was nobody there minding the entrance to Sampson Park, so Alasdair slid down and opened the gates himself, then led his horse on foot, shaking out the cramp of so long a ride. Red, papery wild cherry trees had been planted at intervals along the well-manicured drive. Looking at them now, he could all but taste the bursting cherry brandy their cook would make with the summer crop, and he wondered if there was any left for him in the kitchen.
With his inebriate little brother, Freddie, at home, likely not.
Ahead, Sampson announced itself with all the subtlety of a peacock flouncing in a pleasure garden. It was a pale, Palladian confection built a hundred years ago by a successful London merchant who had been all too eager to sell it on after nearly bankrupting himself constructing the thing. The gardens were luxurious, though nobody ever seemed to use them. The drive split to circle a grass lawn, a lonely wind scattering leaves across the façade. It seemed a place that ought to be lively, filled with the laughing Robert Dalys of the world, but instead it was quiet, withdrawn, a great stone lady in hiding.
Or in mourning.
Maybe the quiet would soothe him, wipe the smell of smoke from his nose and mouth, bring him back to a necessary calm. He could imagine inviting the builder to Sampson, where they could sit together in the cold light and sip cherry brandy. They would nod over the plans while his mother was tucked away in another part of the house. Sampson Park was so spacious that they need not stumble over each other. He had just come around to the idea of all that heavenly peace when he heard the raised voices inside. They spilled out as a footman met him at the door, louder as the disagreement echoed through the cavernous front hall.
Alasdair handed over his hat and gloves, marching through the house to the sitting room that overlooked the back gardens. The doors there were propped open, the bonfire wind from the road blowing inside, and his brother, Freddie, was there mid-step. Or at least he was until a book of sermons sailed by his head, thunking off a statuary with one arm.
“There is certainly no need for that!” Freddie was whimpering, shielding his head against further projectiles. His younger brother was almost Alasdair in miniature—several inchesshorter, but with the same golden eyes and thick, waving brown hair. Freddie favored their mother more, mirroring her slight proportions and narrow chin.
“On the contrary!” Their mother was not in robust health and hadn’t been since the fire. The physicians they brought to the house said she had taken on too much smoke, permanently damaging her body and imbuing her with visible frailty. She still sat by the overbearing carved Stanton fireplace, the book of sermons she had thrown taken from a stack on a table beside her chair. “We must always guard ourselves against deceit, is that not so, Mr. Danforth?”
Lady Edith hoisted another book, preparing to throw it, but Mr. Danforth, her constant companion and ever-consulted clergyman, deftly tugged it out of her grasp.
