Chapter 20
It didn’t occur to Violet until she was face-to-face with Noah that it would have been better to clean herself up before confronting him.
Things would have gone much better if she had been presentable.
As it was, she could only see herself through his eyes—walking into the house, the obvious victim of his prank, covered in tomato juice and shivering as it began to dry on her skin and her clothes.
It was going to be difficult to present herself as any kind of authority figure while she looked like this.
The moment he saw her, he began to laugh—he didn’t even try to hold himself back—and she realized that this was going to be even more difficult than she had believed it would be.
Noah didn’t see himself as in any sort of trouble here.
All he saw was that his prank had happened the way he had intended it to. He was proud of himself.
Proud—of this mess! Jonathan is right about one thing. He really does need to be corrected. He can’t continue to go around doing this sort of thing.
But what was she supposed to say to him?
That was the part where she became more unsure.
What were the right words that would convey to him how serious this was—but without being too severe, without making him think she was so angry that he had lost the new friendship that had begun to develop between the two of them?
She tried to imagine what her father would have said, but stopped almost at once.
There was nothing he would have said that mirrored what she wanted to say to Noah.
Her father was, in this instance, more of an example of what not to say and do.
And if she was honest, she didn’t want to use him as an example in that way either.
She didn’t want anything she had taken from her father to influence the way she handled Noah now.
I don’t need him for this. I can figure out what to do here on my own.
She waited quietly for a moment, her gaze fixed on Noah, hoping that he would get the message she meant to convey by her silence and her serious expression—and he did. His laughter faded, and he watched her warily, waiting to see what she would say.
“Do you think this is funny?” she asked him, striving to keep any aggression out of her voice.
Her father would have made that statement roughly; he would have demanded to know whether she thought it was funny, and there would have been nothing funny about that situation at all.
She would have been frightened no matter what answer she had given him.
She didn’t want Noah to feel afraid. She wanted him to consider what she was saying and to genuinely tell her what he thought about it.
“It’s a little funny,” he said, his lips quirking slightly.
So he wasn’t afraid. She supposed that was a good thing.
But it also seemed as if her message wasn’t landing with him as she’d hoped it would.
She needed to come up with something else to say, something that would show him she meant business.
He had to realize that this was not a shared joke between the two of them, and that Violet really was unhappy with his behavior.
Jonathan had come into the room behind her and was standing with his back to the wall, watching the proceedings. She wished he would leave. She didn’t appreciate having an audience for this, especially when she was sure there was a part of him that wanted to see her fail.
I still can’t believe I opened up to him outside.
That was so foolish. I should never have let him see my fears and concerns.
I should have known he would use them against me, make me think I wasn’t capable of disciplining Noah.
I can’t allow him to get into my head about this!
I know I can manage this without any help from Jonathan, and if he really wants to stand there and watch, it just tells me he’s a strange man with odd hobbies.
I would never spend my day watching someone like that.
She lifted her chin. “It isn’t funny at all, Noah,” she said.
“You could have caused serious damage with that bit of mischief. As it is, you got tomato juice all over my dress, and this is one of my favorites.” She spread her arms wide so that he would have no choice but to look at the damage, even though she was still wearing Jonathan’s jacket.
The jacket covered some of the mess, but most of it was still visible.
Noah looked her up and down. “It’s not that big a concern.”
“You’re trying to tell me how concerned I ought to be about my damaged clothing?” she asked him. “I don’t believe that’s up to you, Noah. It’s for me to decide how much your actions upset me—and they upset me plenty. This is a dress I love a great deal.”
“It’s only tomato juice,” he told her. “It washes out of clothes. Trust me. I’ve gotten it on plenty of my clothes.” He chuckled. “You look very silly.”
“Do you really think this is the best time for you to make jokes about what I look like?”
“Aw, come on, Violet,” Noah teased her. “You must admit that it’s a little bit funny. I didn’t know who I would get with that prank. I thought maybe it would be the gardener. But I think it’s even funnier that it’s you.”
He was smiling expectantly, as though he thought that at any moment she might give in. As if she was going to burst out laughing, commend him on his high-spirited sense of fun, and admit that she thought the prank had been funny or clever.
In his defense, it was clever. If he could put that cleverness to use, he could really make something of himself—and that makes it that much more important, I suppose, that he should learn how to read. A bright boy like him needs an education, not a bucket of tomato juice to dump on people’s heads.
“Well, it’s not a very kind thing to do,” she said. “You owe me an apology.”
“All right.” Noah was still allowing giggles to slip out. “I’m very sorry.”
“Do you mean that? Stop laughing, Noah. I need to see that you’re taking this seriously,” she said firmly.
He pressed his lips together and managed to stop his giggles. “I mean it,” he said. “I didn’t know it would upset you. I am sorry about that. And I hope you manage to get the tomato juice out of your dress, Violet, truly I do.”
“And you won’t do it again?” Now she did try to make her voice more severe.
She wasn’t sure her message was landing with the strength she intended it to.
Though she didn’t dare to look over her shoulder and see, she imagined Jonathan was also laughing at her, and the idea of it made her stomach churn.
“I won’t do it again,” Noah said, composing himself. “I promise I won’t.”
There was something about that promise that made her feel uncertain, but she didn’t know what it was. “All right,” she agreed after a moment’s hesitation. “Go on out to the garden and see if you can help them clean up after that mess.”
Noah nodded and trotted happily out the door, as carefree and light-footed as if he was just running off to play.
“You call that a scolding?” Jonathan asked, stepping away from the wall and toward Violet. A smirk had bloomed on his face, and Violet turned away—she’d known that he was laughing at her, and she didn’t want to watch him do it.
“I said what I needed to say,” she told him. “I think he’ll remember this.”
“Do you?”
“He promised he wouldn’t do it again,” she said defensively.
“Yes, and I’m sure he won’t,” Jonathan said. “I’m sure you will never see him leave a bucket of tomato juice out like that again. But is that really the promise you wanted from him?”
“What do you mean?”
“He wasn’t going to try the same thing twice anyway,” Jonathan explained.
“I don’t think you made any real progress by getting him to agree to that—his next prank would always have been something fresh, something he could shock you with.
Or shock someone else with,” he added, and she wondered suddenly if he might be the target next time.
If Noah does it again and does it to Jonathan next time, it will be my fault for failing to teach him that he shouldn’t. And then I’ll have to admit that I really do need Jonathan’s help in raising him. That maybe Jonathan is even better suited to the task than I am…
She hated the thought of it. She wouldn’t allow herself to think about it longer than was strictly necessary. “I think he understands that I was talking about pranks in general,” she said.
“Then you don’t know what little boys are like,” Jonathan said frankly.
“If you really think he’s going to follow the spirit of the law when you’ve handed him such a convenient loophole, you don’t know how far boys will go to get out of behaving as they should.
I’m sure he ran out of here so quickly because he didn’t want to run the risk of you realizing your mistake and rectifying it. ”
She scowled. “You’re very quick to label my attempt a failure,” she said. “In spite of the fact that it’s only just concluded, and we don’t really know what the result will be yet.”
“Well, I hope I’m wrong,” he said. “I hope that does have the effect you wanted it to. But I’m here to tell you that I don’t think it will. I think it’s only a matter of time before he tries something like that again.”
“You ought to stay out of it,” Violet said sharply.
“What happened today is between me and Noah.” She was still wearing Jonathan’s jacket, she realized—she pulled it off, walked over, and thrust it at him.
“I wish you hadn’t gotten involved in it at all,” she said tartly.
“It would have been better if you had never found me out there.”
“I was just trying to help,” he told her. “And I’m still just trying to help. I know that you think you don’t need any help, Violet…”
She shook her head and turned away, holding up a hand to forestall any more words from him.
It wasn’t that she didn’t need help. She probably did, and if she was being honest with herself, she could admit that.
After all, she had never taken responsibility for a child before. She had never tried to be a parent before. She wanted to be capable—clearly, Aunt Margaret had believed she could do it. But she hadn’t been expecting this, hadn’t prepared for it, and she was afraid of making mistakes.
But she couldn’t have help. That was the real issue here.
She could have the staff. They would guide her, tell her where she was going wrong.
But Jonathan…no. She couldn’t have him. She couldn’t wish for him to be a father to Noah.
Because as much as she wanted Noah to have that…
there was no world in which both of them would get to stay here for very long.
And the closer they each got to Noah, the more it would hurt him when, eventually, inevitably, one of them was forced to leave.
And Violet couldn’t help thinking to herself—it will hurt me that much too.