Page 72 of These Violet Delights
Danforth slid the lid on the nearest barrel to the floor, oil sloshing down his front as he did. She flinched as the lantern in his hand skimmed perilously close to it. By heaven, he was really going to do it, kill them both, destroy Clafton again. There had to be an answer. There had to be a way to stop him.I’m part of this. My defects, the shame I brought to the family, my place in society and in this, all parts of this.
Lady Edith. Lady Edith was his earthly savior.
“What a waste,” she muttered. Then, softer, “You werechosen.”
Danforth turned abruptly, the dark, slick curls over his forehead ruffling. He took a single step toward her. Violet eyed the lantern in his left hand for just an instant. It was conical glass, frosted with age and grease, open at the top. Pistol. Lantern. She had to manage both if she wanted to survive. If he just came a little closer…
“What did you say?”
Violet tossed her head. “Nothing. It isn’t important. You’re determined not to hear a word I say.”
“Chosen,” he repeated. “What do you mean,chosen?”
She gritted her teeth, glaring up at him.Play the part well, Violet, remember all those summers spent embodying Titania, Ophelia, and your namesake, Viola.“Alasdair had no intention of marrying me, just like Freddie would never have given himself to Emilia. We were just…just playthings to them. Distractions. With the Kerr name and fortune, they could have anyone; why would Alasdair choose me? He didn’t. He was always going to pick Julianna in the end, someone demure, someone dainty and discriminating who knows what a Donnerbrunnen is and never raises her voice above the gentle whisper of a summer’s breeze. I can delude myself all I like, but we both know I’m too ruined to love.”
Danforth studied her, his eyes moving back and forth across her face nervously.
“Lady Edithchoseyou,” Violet added quietly. Tears sprang to her eyes. This wasn’t the speech she’d intended to give, but it drew upon her broken, aching heart all the same. She said the next part incoherently, forcing Danforth to step even closer. Violet saw her chance.
“And of course she would. Look at what you’re prepared to do for her! You would spare her pain, something her sons never bothered to worry about. She chose you above even her own sons,” she whispered, holding his gaze, milking every word. “Lady Edith choseyou.”
He wavered; he flinched. His shallow breaths skittered across her forehead. Violet straightened up, aimed a single puff of air at the candle in the lantern, blowing it out, and launched herself forward, screaming. She wrapped both hands around the hand holding the pistol and forced it up into the air. It fired, startling him, but Violet had prepared for the noise. She slammed him into the wall, then darted to the right, threw open the door, and spun into the hall. Darkness would be her friend. She retraced her steps, following the candles but kicking them as she went, hot wax flying in every direction as she tried to find the front door. When she did, she found it unreachable, two heavy barrels of oil in front of it. Bastard. While she’d fretted over the piled art, he had made certain she couldn’t get free. She heard a hiss and a click, then the pistol fired again, the shot exploding against the barrel just by her hand. The hole left behind gushed and splattered.
Violet scrambled away from the door in the dark.
“No!” she heard him thunder. “Where are you? WHERE ARE YOU?”
The tunnels. The old medieval tunnels built by the madidiot who commissioned the castle. Would Danforth even know of their existence? She dropped low and felt along the wall until she reached an archway. Too fast. She plunged down the steps, falling, losing her balance and tumbling for the latter half. Her knees screamed in pain, ankles bruised, but she stayed on all fours and crawled down the next flight. She squinted into the unforgiving shadows but saw nothing. Still. She could feel the air getting colder, the smell of mossy, wormy soil rising around her. This was the passage, she just had to trust it.
Violet heard the fire burst to life behind and above her. Danforth had thrown one of the lanterns at the barrel in the front hall; she could hear the flames eating and spreading. One of the barrels came bouncing down the passage behind her. Violet covered her head as it slammed into the landing wall just feet behind her, feeling the debris of the shattering wood shower her. Danforth was using the light to find her, plunging into the fire itself as it roared down the passage. Violet got to her feet and ran, taking another curved, tight set of uneven stone stairs to a dirt tunnel that led straight onward. Somewhere outside, she heard raised voices that didn’t belong to Danforth. People. Hope.
The pistol fired again, the bullet singing past her shoulder. He was coming. He was close. The cold was soon dispelled by the smoke and heat flooding the house. There was another sound, too, the sound she heard when the bullet found its destination—not the dull thud of stone or the clunk of wood, but a sound almost like a stifled cough. It had hit dirt. The floor raised, the passage now climbing steeply. Then, the most beautiful thing she had ever seen: the suggestion of different light beyond three narrow bars. A door. Violet threw herself toward it, searching with frantic fingers for the handle. She found it, turned, and pushed, but nothing happened. Locked.
“No!” Danforth’s hands closed around her shoulders and yanked her back. They tumbled back down the slope together, tangled, kicking, shrieking. “Don’t fight this,” she heard him hiss in the darkness. “We are lost. The undesirables.”
Violet lashed out at him with her foot, turned onto her stomach, and clawed her way back to the door. She pulled herself up by the handle, yanking until her fingernails broke and bled. A shape moved beyond the bars, obscuring the meager light. Then a jangle, a scrape of metal over metal, and a gasp of sobbing relief as the door swung toward her.
Danforth’s fingers dug back into her waist just as freedom arrived. Violet swung her arms around the shape in front of her, holding tight. There was awhooshand a wetcrunch,and then Danforth’s grip on her loosened, going slack. Strong hands gathered her up, guided her up the rest of the passage to the clean, crisp night air. Several lanterns circled around her, and she gazed up into Alasdair’s face.
“I hoped, I hoped…” His voice, thick with panic, trailed off. He crushed her to his chest, pushing his nose into her neck and holding her. “All I could do was hope you remembered. You’re safe, Violet, you’re safe. By God, you will never leave my side again.”
Men called to one another from the other side of the house, where they faced off against the fire. After an age, Violet peeled herself away from Alasdair. He cupped her face and whisked the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. Breathing hard, she turned and stared at Danforth, clubbed over the head with a shovel and groaning for help. Alasdair scooped Violet into his grasp, carrying her away from the gruesome sight. She rested her head against his shoulder and huffed out a weary laugh. “Somehow I always end up back in your arms.”
26
Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you did
My heart fly to your service.
The Tempest—Act 3, Scene 1
Alasdair closed the door, dampening the sound of his mother weeping and wailing downstairs.
“Danforth will live,” he said, watching Violet stir and sit up in the bed. She had been moved to one of the guest chambers at Sampson to recover from her harrowing ordeal. “I suppose I’m grateful for it, he is my blood, but I will never forget what he put you through.”
“The fire…”
