Chapter 19
Violet lifted her head as Cyril strode into their shared office and made for his desk. She hadn’t seen him since their swim, and her dratted heart leaped at the idea. She quickly resumed her work.
Mrs. Penhurst then entered the office. “Oh, good morning, Mr. Burke. I wondered that we hadn’t seen you yet today.”
“I was in conference with Mr. Whittemore.”
Violet’s head lifted again. “In conference?”
He turned a slow gaze to her, a brow lifted. “In conference. As in, to confer. Converse. Communicate.”
“Compete?” she asked.
He paused, a far-too-handsome glint in his eyes. “Call it what you will; I’ve turned in my class proposals and lesson plans.”
Violet stood with a harsh scrape of her chair, her gaze taking in the somewhat orderly piles of pages on her desk. With a short puff of air, she dropped back down into her chair, scooted it forward again, and accepted that she was not quite ready to turn her proposals in.
But she was close.
“Well, isn’t that exciting,” Mrs. Penhurst said, pouring a cup of coffee and bringing it to Cyril.
Violet had observed the woman warming up to Cyril.
How could she not? Drat it. “I can’t believe how quickly things are coming together.
Before you know it, students will be chattering excitedly in the halls and hurrying to get to their next class.
Which reminds me, at half the hour you both have a meeting with Lord Buckley and his daughter, Miss Alice Felton. ”
Violet stood again, her chair screeching once more.
“Lord Buckley? As in Roland Felton, Lord Buckley, seventh Viscount of Kilborn? That Felton?” How had she not recognized the name on her schedule?
She shifted through her paperwork and found Miss Felton’s name alone and no Honorable before it. No wonder she’d missed it.
“Do you know Lord Buckley?” Cyril asked her from his desk.
“Yes. That is, we’re acquainted.” Violet rubbed her eyebrow, then realized the movement and dropped her hand. “My father introduced us after Lord Buckley came out of mourning. His wife passed away three years ago, leaving him with two children.”
“Alice being one of them,” he observed.
“Yes, of course.” She began to pace. “Do you know what this means?”
“That you begin pacing frantically at the mention of titled families?”
She stopped and spun to face both Cyril and Mrs. Penhurst. “No. It means a titled family is seeking to send their daughter to a school of higher education, and they are considering ours.” She threw her hands out. “They’re considering Locke Hill.”
Miss Penhurst dropped the cup of coffee and clapped her hands to her face as Cyril dove to catch the cup before it shattered, hissing an expletive as he caught the cup but also the sloshing hot coffee.
“Oh!” Mrs. Penhurst exclaimed and ran out of the office, presumably to retrieve a towel.
Perhaps they should begin to stow a set of towels in the office.
Violet hurried forward. “Are you all right? Here, give me the cup.”
“Yes, I’m all right. No, I’m not giving you the cup. Heaven knows what you’ll do with it should someone announce that Bertie has arrived with Princess Victoria.”
“The princess is too old, you ninny.”
“Naysayer.”
A laugh escaped her as she busied herself looking over Cyril’s hands, taking the cup, and setting it on the carpet anyhow.
“You know,” Cyril said quietly, “I should thank your mother.”
“And why is that?” She didn’t see any angry raised blotches, but he did have a few red marks that needed cooling and grease.
“I rather like sharing an office with you.”
“Why, so you can witness my bumbling attempts at playing grown-up?”
A chuckle escaped him. “I’ve been witnessing you playing at grown-up since you were four.”
“I must appear ancient by now.”
He turned his hand and in one fluid movement had caught hers in his warm grip. “Not with a blush like that,” he murmured.
Her gaze halted on his, and the memory of their tangle in the pool, his skin on hers, rushed through her.
“I’ve brought cold water, towels, and liniment,” Mrs. Penhurst announced as she reentered the office at a clip.
Violet snatched her hand away from Cyril’s and stood aside as Mrs. Penhurst made a fuss of tending to him. Despite Cyril’s declarations that he was well, his hand was soon cloaked in a surplus of bandages and the pungent aroma of lanolin and eucalyptus.
“That should do it.” Mrs. Penhurst nodded and began to clean up the mess.
“Yes, just the thing,” Cyril said, examining the white boxing glove on his right hand. “Thank you, Mrs. Penhurst.”
“My utmost apologies, Mr. Burke. My sensibilities are seldom overcome in that way. Can I get you anything? Would you care for some cake? Cook has just made a treacle pudding.”
Cyril smiled graciously. “I am well for now, thank you.”
“Of course. Anything for you, Miss Whittemore?”
Violet blinked her eyes wide, still feeling the warmth in her cheeks from Cyril’s spoken observations. “I think a tea tray when our guests arrive will suffice. Thank you, Mrs. Penhurst.”
“I’ll see to it myself, miss. I don’t need to say the prospect of Miss Felton attending our school is quite exciting. But there. I’ve said it anyway. I’ll see to the drawing room as well. I assume you’ll wish to meet there.”
“Yes,” Cyril and Violet replied in unison.
Mrs. Penhurst excused herself, her arms full of bandages, toweling, the coffee cup, and the jar of liniment.
Silence blanketed the office with her absence.
Cyril broke it. “Do you suppose she’ll return soon?”
“I think not.”
“Good.” He began to unwind the bandage on his hand.
“Just the thing, eh?” she asked.
He responded with a look that dared her to stop him.
She muffled a laugh and removed herself to the windows beyond his desk. Rain pattered on the glass, the bright sun of yesterday ensconced in clouds today. Vibrant greens assaulted her senses, the lake a gray smudge to the far right.
She heard Cyril rise. He must’ve finished freeing his hand.
He approached her from behind. “How does it go? ‘When that I was and a little tiny boy, with hey, ho, the wind and the rain—’” He stood beside her, his arms folded. “‘A foolish thing was but a toy …’”
She smiled. “‘For the rain it raineth every day,’” she finished. “Shakespeare. Twelfth Night. Only an Englishman would’ve written that.”
His brow rose. “An Englishman with a hoop and stick?”
“An English woman with a skipping rope,” she added.
“A whip and top,” he said.
Her lips quirked, continuing with their list of foolish toys. “A bag of marbles?”
He smiled and glanced her way. “Just so.”
Silence settled between them as the rain pattered on. He took a breath as if to speak but did not.
“Yes?” she asked.
He paused another moment. Just long enough for her cheeks to grow warm again. Infernal man.
He placed his hands in his pockets. “I was only considering what you asked me yesterday, after the ink and before the … swim.”
She closed her eyes tightly. Perhaps if she closed them tightly enough, she might disappear. It didn’t work, because she heard his next words.
“You asked if I remember the day I left.”
She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “I can’t believe I did so. You obviously don’t or didn’t. That is, it was ages ago, and what does it matter—”
“It matters.” His response was abrupt and rough.
She frowned, turning to him. His gaze steadied on her, his eyes penetrating beneath his dark brows.
He took another breath, and his eyes softened. “Of course I remember that day.”
“Oh no.”
His lips hitched, as if fighting a smile. “Oh yes.” His gaze sobered once more. “It was the day you made me promise that you would never become a wife.”
Violet’s mouth dropped open. Had she? It sounded like her. Drat. Her father had inspired that command.
The irony.
Cyril continued. “And you asked me what I’d been doing all these years—without you.”
Something in her panicked. Did she want to know anything beyond what he’d already shared?
“I remember you promised you would send me your class notes.” She folded her arms. “And I never received so much as an algebraic formula from you.” She turned her head away, her voice roughening to a whisper.
“Not a ‘Dear Violet.’ Not one iota that you remembered I had existed quite steadily in your life once.” She cleared her throat and attempted to brighten the increasingly dank atmosphere.
“Did you know that enough time has gone by to nearly equal the number of years we were in each other’s almost daily company?
Isn’t that remarkable? I have gone without your presence nearly as long as when I believed I could not ever do without it.
” Her breath held as he said nothing. She was revealing too much.
She shook away the erratic thrum of her pulse.
She turned to him as he remained looking out the window.
“We grow up, though, don’t we? I grew up and learned to rely on myself.
My ideas, my research, my experience. I was better for it. ”
He dropped his gaze to his hands resting on the window casing. “I knew you would be.”
Anger like fire burst through her chest. “Did you? How wonderful for you. On my part, I was terrified. Lost. Drowning.”
His head lifted, and he opened his mouth to speak.
“No,” she said, standing taller. “It was only a year or two. When I finally accepted that you were not going to write to me or visit my family, I rallied. I wasn’t entirely alone, was I? I had my friends and my wits and a champion for a mother.”
“You’ve done well.”
“Do not patronize me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He shook his head at the glazing and took a deep breath. “Your mother wrote to me.”
She turned sharply. “What?”
“At school. She asked me …” He turned to face her, his gaze searching. “She asked me why I had not written. And told me you missed your sparring partner.”
Her flush of anger and embarrassment was overruled by curiosity. “Did you respond?”
“I did.”