Page 70 of These Violet Delights
Violet had spent the last half hour trying to get Emilia’s eyes just right; an eye was not a flat object in the body, and Cristabel had always stressed that one must imagine the orb itself, the liquid within, and picture where the light would enter, how it would bounce within the luminous jelly, and where shadows would remain. The pupil, the light, the orb, the perfect touch of the white paper peeking through where the reflection ought to go. With the right crescent shape of color, the right balance of deep, deep brown, and finally that dash of white to represent the wetness shining across the eye, an artist could capture the personality and the soul.
“Your eyes have changed since last I painted you,” said Violet, lost in the gaze she had rendered.
“This is a more sedate setting than the Clafton ruins,” Emilia replied, seated primly on a velvet chaise near the drawingroom fire. “But maybe I was wilder then. Maybe we were both too wild.”
“That is certain,” said Violet, trying not to sink into the carpet with despondency. Cristabel had taught her to see the world in colors and shapes, to see not what she wanted to, but what was. A pale hand posed beneath a leaf would gain a green reflection. An artist could discern the true colors in anything. Black was not a color on its own; black was mixed from red, yellow, and blue. The night of passion she had spent with Alasdair had been a dizzying wash of rich purples, of vermilion splashed across a black more red than blue. Now she was noticing gray everywhere—in her own eyes, in her nail beds, in the fading luster of her skin.
“You told me once to be patient, that my heart would mend.” Emilia shifted, working the stiffness out of her neck. “I didn’t want to believe you, but it’s true. Time is a balm like no other. Shall I say: I told you so?”
Violet’s head snapped up. “Is this better? For us both to be miserable?”
“You’re miserable, not me,” said Emilia, still. “My eyes are wide open. Are you ready for that solidarity now?”
“I’m sorry, Emilia, sorry for what we have both endured, but I refuse to believe this new peace of yours! How could I? How could I when I know now how much you must have been burning up night and day from the pain!” Violet slid to the floor, her eyes welling with tears. Emilia stood and came to her, kneeling.
“It’s what I’ve had to tell myself to go on,” Emilia whispered, embracing her.
“Do you love him?” Violet asked in a wail muffled by the other woman’s sleeve.
“I love who I thought he was, who I wish he was.”
Violet nodded, hearing a glimpse of what she now feared was her future. “And if he came to you now?”
“I would pummel him for abandoning me so easily, and I would not trust a word out of his faithless mouth.” Emilia sat back, holding her at arm’s length. “Well. At least we can be melancholy together.”
“Yes, the hurt is lonely,” Violet murmured. Melancholy was good for painting, Cristabel always told her.You can always tell when a gleeful artist painted it, because it doesn’t say a damned thing.
That was encouraging for Violet, who was convinced she would never be happy again.
An hour later, Emilia required a break to stretch and take a turn about the house to get the pins and needles out of her feet. Violet undid her smock and hung it on the edge of the easel, then massaged the soreness out of her fingers and wrists. Whatever tension had settled between Emilia and Violet had eased, and Violet was at least glad for that. Ann and Lane had been preoccupied with the baby, whose frustrated screams punctuated the deep winter silence of the house. She wandered to the windows facing out onto the front drive; they were partially obscured by thick curtains within and draping, snaking vines without. Shifting one curtain edge aside, she watched Puck chasing a messenger toward the front door. It wasn’t the postman, for he had no bell or satchel, but she recognized the outfit he wore from the butler she’d encountered at Sampson.
Her gaze sharpened on the folded note in his hand, and Violet was there to meet him at the front doors, outrunning even the Pressmore staff. She and the messenger were both breathless when they came face-to-face.
“This bloody goat!” he shrieked, thrusting the letter into her hands.
“I’ll handle him,” said Violet, laughing. “You get a head start.”
She slipped out into the cold and held Puck by his belled leather collar while the man from Sampson shot back up the drive. The goat nosed against her, curious, trying to bite the message out of her grasp.
“If it’s more disappointment, it’s all yours,” she told him. Violet let go of Puck, and he scampered off to chase the messenger, likely halfway back to Sampson. Back inside where it was warm, Violet raced up to her room to read the note in private. There was every possibility it would be more bad news, and she couldn’t stand to crumple in the front hall. Everyone was treating her as if she were made out of glass, and she was tired of it. Violet’s breath caught in her throat as she sat on the bed; she recognized Alasdair’s handwriting immediately.
Dearest Violet,
I will never forget the pressure of your hand against mine, the kiss of our palms as the players gave voice to my feelings. “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright.” My world is in shadow without you, and I eagerly await you at Clafton Hall. Come there at dusk, and I will make final in matrimony what my lips against yours silently promised.
I remain yours,
A. Kerr
She couldn’t hear her own thoughts over the mad pounding of her heart. Drumming, drumming, drumming. To her surprise, she was angry. How dare he! No word for almost a month, clandestine meetings with that Julianna woman, her painting destroyed and defaced—what sort of game was this? Something about the letter was so strange. Not a single mention of the painting, or her horrible conversation with Lady Edith…but perhaps he meant to address those things in person. Hermind warred with her heart; she pulled his last letter from the dressing table (yes, she had kept it, though hidden under cards and sketches and bits of ribbon, just on the small chance that he one day came to his senses and begged for forgiveness) and compared one to the other. The penmanship was identical, though she found it strange that he had changed his way of addressing her. Every time before, it had been “Miss Arden.”
But perhaps that one day is here and he has come to his senses, and he means to plead and beg and crawl across the floor in weeping contrition.
In the end, it was the reappearance of “I remain yours” that did her in. How could she resist hearing his side of things? More than that, she deserved to express her own disappointment and heartache. He had sorely abused her trust, and he needed to know that, needed to suffer and hurt the way she suffered and hurt.
She made some excuse to Bloom about feeling overtired and not well enough for supper, then waited for the afternoon to wither away into darkness. Just before sunset, she crept down to the gallery, taking advantage of the staff preparing for dinner to slip out of Pressmore the back way, under the portico facing the fields and pond, picking her way across the patches of dry earth between piles of snow. When she was well clear of the house, she paused and looked toward Clafton; indeed, a single light shimmered there. A beacon. Violet jumped forward, startled, cursing as Puck butted into her backside with his stubby horns.
“Back, you horrible imp,” she muttered, then stifled a shriek as he chomped down on her skirt and pulled. Violet wrenched herself the opposite way, a piece of blue fabric hanging from his mouth as if he had torn loose a piece of sky. “Enjoy that, I won’t let it happen again!”
