Page 65 of These Violet Delights
“You shouldn’t take the stairs without assistance,” Alasdair chided gently, moving toward her.
“It was worth the effort,” she replied, gnarled and still beneath her fluttering cap of white lace. Her mouth trembled, pinched. “By now you have noticed its absence.”
Heat rushed up from under his collar. “Where have you put Violet’s painting?”
She flinched at his casual use of her given name. “It’s gone. I told you to be rid of it, and you disobeyed me. I will tolerate many things, and I have, but not that. Not her. Not a Richmond.”
“She is hardly a Richmond,” he shot back, furious.
“The relation is enough!” Lady Edith cried. “Do not go searching for the painting. It is beyond your reach, we—I—have made certain of that.”
“Danforth,” he muttered. “I should have thrown him from this house long ago. He has worked every kind of sinister sortilege on your mind.”
“There you are wrong,” she said, nearly toppling over from the force of it. Alasdair hurried to her side, guiding his mother into his bedchamber and to a bountifully stuffed chair near thewindow. She accepted his help but seemed to withdraw at his touch. “Thank you. I will try to remember that kindness; you are unlikely to repeat it.”
Alasdair watched her from across the room, leaning against the mantel.Violet’s painting ought to be here.
“I will forgive quickly if you tell me what happened to that painting,” he replied.
“No, no…” She waved him away, tossing her head in a strange, distracted way. “I know you left this house and went to Pressmore. There is an air of betrayal about you.”
Alasdair didn’t deny it.
“And it has quite broken me. You left, dearest. You left on Christmas. You had to know what it would mean, what it would do! There is only so much a woman can bear. There is only so much pain one can carry before the cracks appear, before all the secrets come spilling out!” Her voice rose to a near shriek. A pit widened in his stomach. Secrets? “You must understand; he was the only one who stayed. The only one who listened.”
His hands curled into fists. “Danforth is at the jail; his trial will commence at Epiphany. Tell me you have not intervened on his behalf. Tell me that degenerate filth does not roam free.”
Lady Edith pulled her head back, statue-still. “I maintain some influence. Our family is respected, and your father was well-liked.”
Alasdair yanked off his spectacles and wiped at his eyes in frustration. “How dare you invoke Father in this—”
“I will invoke him whenever I please,” she interrupted, suddenly calm. “Do you remember when John Danforth arrived at Clafton?”
“I suppose. It was not long before I left for Cambridge. He was well-spoken but unsure of himself, determined to impress.We were similar in age, though he seemed much older somehow. Why? Am I to pity the criminal once I hear his sad story?”
“He is not merely a criminal, Alasdair,” she replied, shrinking. “He is your brother.”
Impossible. Deranged. He sliced his hand through the air as if he could ward off the revelation. They did resemble each other in certain ways. More than that, if he considered it, Danforth did favor his father from certain angles. “This cannot be true.”
“I did not know the truth at first,” she said, hardening again as she sat hunched in the chair. “I was made to welcome him to the parish, the new young vicar for the living! He was eager and devoted, a blessing.” She coughed out a dark laugh and shook her head. “Here I should stop. Here Icouldstop. You will never regard me the same way again. But no, the secrets are out now, let them come. Clafton burned the night your father told me that the young clergyman I had grown so fond of was his blood, his son. He had gotten a serving girl from Pressmore with child. I don’t remember her name, why would I? Creatures like her deserve to be forgotten.”
The blood drained from his body. Sir Jonathan, the man he admired, worshipped, had foolishly let his passion lead him astray, then brought the fruit of that mistake into their home.
“My God,” he breathed. “You must have been furious.”
“He hid the child in London for a time, with a family of lamplighters,” she continued. The shawl fell back from her, and she seemed lighter somehow, as if releasing the secret had pulled back a stifling veil. “That night, that horrible night, we quarreled; suddenly the flames were everywhere. I don’t think I started it, but how could I be sure? I was just so angry, angry as I had never been before. He had made a mockery of the life we built together, made a mockery of the love I bore him. And I couldn’t punish John. John hadn’t asked to ruin everything,had he? He simply was, and when he learned that he had issued from sin, he was contrite. All his life, contrite, interested in nothing but this family and earning my forgiveness.”
Alasdair pushed away from the mantel, sickness roiling in his gut. “Danforth knew?”
“Yes, he put the pieces together himself,” said Lady Edith. “He devoted himself to me, the child of sin bringing me ever closer to God, and perhaps to one day finding my own forgiveness. I have often failed. The last time Mildred Richmond and I were in the same room, she laughed and asked me to keep your father away from her maids.”
“Where is he now?” Alasdair asked, afraid.
“London, I would think,” Lady Edith replied, smiling faintly at something across the room. “That’s where I told him to go. I gave him a letter with our family seal. The letter instructs our solicitor to give him access to the storehouses.” She sniffed and raised her shoulders. “To the art.”
Alasdair spun and slammed his fist down on the mantel, upsetting a candlestick and several vases. “It has taken me years to collect those pieces! They were meant to fill Clafton, not to furnish this…this damned altar to your shame! Why must we suffer now for Father’s mistake?”
Lady Edith retreated behind a blank mask. “We must all suffer together. That is the way of families.”
