Page 6 of These Violet Delights
“Alasdair!” Freddie shouted, bounding into the house and racing over to him with a growing smile. “Thank God, you’re here.”
He could tell from the flurry of staff on the periphery of his vision that they were alarmed by both Lady Edith’s outburst and Alasdair’s arrival. His mother’s eyes widened below the frilly edges of her cap. “But were you expected?” she seemed to ask herself first, then Mr. Danforth. “Are we expecting him?”
“I wrote,” said Alasdair.
“He did,” Mr. Danforth confirmed. He was of a similar age to Alasdair, dressed in neat and sober black, and by far the comeliest clergyman in the county. There was a decided slipperiness to Danforth’s smile that never settled well with Alasdair. “Remember, Lady Edith, his room was to be made ready, and his wardrobe aired out. You gave the instruction yourself just last week.”
Lady Edith frowned, puzzled, then relaxed into a grin and beckoned Alasdair forward. “Then, it is a blessing. There wasjoy in the learning it from your letter, and joy now in the remembering! You must forgive an old woman’s memory…”
“There is nothing to forgive,” Alasdair assured her. He went to her and received her greeting, which was a light pat on his hand while he bowed. They had never been an affectionate bunch. “I do wonder, however, what I have stumbled upon.” He swiveled toward his brother, who seemed poised to run back outside if necessary. “Would anyone care to provide an explanation?”
“Frederick has always been defiant and unruly, but now he has simply gone too far,” said Lady Edith. She took another book from the pile, and this time Alasdair intervened to take it. “No! He should be punished.”
Beside him, Mr. Danforth made a soft, strangled sound.
“For what, exactly?” Alasdair asked.
“For a passing comment. I said only that Miss Emilia Graddock looks well these days,” Freddie supplied, eyes fixed to the carpet.
“Andthat you had been to Pressmore to see her!” Lady Edith croaked, receding into a mound of heavy blankets. “She is a Richmond in everything but name! You have been coming and going, coming and going, and now I know it was to skulk away and seethat girlin secret.” She craned her neck to look up at Alasdair, then reached for his hand, her papery skin hot from the blazing fire at their backs. “You are home. Oh, thank God, thank God, you are home. Will you speak to him? He is profligate, I say, profligate when you are gone, son, and you are gone all the time.”
Gone because you begged me to go.
Alasdair tucked her featherlight hand back onto the chair’s arm, then went to his brother, nodding toward the front of the house. “Come, we will have this all untangled straightaway.”
“It was only a passing comment,” Freddie mumbled, allowing himself to be led away. They returned to the front hall, then took the wide staircase carpeted in deep blue, ascending to the landing while doors and windows were opened and closed hastily, a soft drumming in distant rooms. “It is a blessing you’ve returned, brother. I say, I am not the wild one at all. It is Mother who has lost her senses, emboldened by that cunning little rat, Danforth.”
“Mother relies on his constancy,” said Alasdair. “We could have been better sons in Father’s absence, provided more comfort.”
“How could we?” Freddie squeaked. “You’d need a broadsword to sever them. Besides, neither of us shares her convictions. She may have just tried to cave my head in withA Discourse on Pain,but soon she will be engrossed in it again. She isn’t strong enough to attend church, so it must come to her, and thus, Danforth. We cannot give her what he can.”
“And maybe that is our failing, too.”
Freddie shook his head. “You are not the failure here. You have always done exactly as she asked.”
“What’s this about a Richmond girl?” Alasdair asked. It was just like Freddie to try to worm his way out of confrontation by throwing someone else out onto the road. There was a frenzy of activity in the hall outside Alasdair’s rooms. He watched a stream of sheepish staff hurry by with crates laden with books, folded cloths, and diaries.
“Danforth’s things,” Freddie said with a sigh. They waited until the rooms were quiet and empty, and Alasdair went inside. It smelled wrong somehow. “He was using your chambers, you know. Mother allowed it.Insistedupon it.”
“I suppose nothing has been done to prepare for Gordon’s arrival, then.”
Alasdair crossed to the tall window beside his four-poster bed and urged the casement open; immediately the fire-tipped air blustered inside, and he thought better of it, shutting the window with athump. Even the cloying ambergris ghost of Danforth’s presence was better than smelling smoke.
“Gordon?” Freddie shifted out of the doorway, a footman returning with the small number of items Alasdair had packed in his saddlebags.
“The builder. Does anyone at Sampson speak to one another? I warned of his imminent arrival. The east pavilion was to be made ready for his ease and comfort while Clafton is rebuilt.”
Freddie’s golden eyes burst with stars. In a few eager steps, he was at Alasdair’s elbow, mouth open, quietly mystified. “You’re really doing it. You’re resurrecting the old beast.”
Alasdair flinched at his choice of words. “I haven’t been running all over the continent hunting furnishings for the place only to let them rot in a London warehouse. Mother has sent me after enough statuary and art to fill Clafton six times over.”
“How marvelous! How utterly marvelous! And, of course, I am at your disposal.”
“Yes, I imagine you are keen to make yourself useful.” Alasdair took advantage of his proximity, grabbing Freddie by the forearm and bringing them nose to nose. “So. The Richmond girl. What has made Mother this agitated? Surely, it was more than apassing comment.”
The blood drained from his brother’s face. Even through his sleeve, he could feel Freddie go cold. Just as swiftly, red pinpoints gathered in his cheeks. “There is some truth to what she says.”
“Some?” Alasdair’s grip tightened.
