Chapter 9 #2
“Good morning,” Cristabel greeted them with a strained smile. Emilia clung to her side. “I thought Emilia could use the air today and brought her along.”
She could use more than air.
Violet found it hard to believe how much Emilia had shrunk in just a fortnight. The poor lady was wasting away, her usually luminous brown skin almost gray. She had seen widows with stronger color in their cheeks.
“It is so lonely without you at Pressmore,” Emilia said, leaning against Violet as they left through the cottage gate. “Ann has her child and her society now, and I am an afterthought. Did you know, there are men working at Clafton every day? I can see them from my window. It only reminds me of…”
She trailed off into bitter silence. Violet shot a wretched look at the other women, who were no help at all.
“Perhaps you should take up painting,” Violet suggested. “It has been a balm for me.”
Though I fear in this state you would struggle to lift the brush…
“Miss Bilbury said the same, but I find it hard to care about anything at all.” Emilia’s thinness through her dress and coat made Violet tense with worry. “To be unlovable and rejected, there is no greater pain.”
“Come, Emilia, I’m sure he loves you, but that does not change the material circumstances.”
Violet flinched. It had just spilled out. But how could she let Emilia suffer so? A small, surprisingly strong hand latched onto her wrist, and suddenly Emilia’s huge brown eyes were peering into hers with owlish intensity.
“Do you really think so? Oh, but you are just trying to content me…”
“Mr. Kerr himself said as much.” Another flinch. “He didn’t want me to think Freddie could be responsible for the fire at Pressmore.”
Emilia gasped.
“Then…then there is hope…”
Perhaps Mr. Kerr was right; finality is more merciful.
“No, dear, I think there is only the truth—that you should not and cannot marry him, and that love, sadly, is simply not enough.”
But Emilia wasn’t listening. Her entire demeanor changed, a sparkle gathering in her once-dull eyes.
Violet, by contrast, brooded, realizing her mistake.
She had offered hope where there ought to be plain rationality.
The ladies neared the Florizel only to find a dense crowd gathering outside its doors.
The sisters joined the stragglers at the back.
Winny, popular in town from her constant trips to the ribbon shop, pulled an older lady aside, eager for an explanation.
Why such a crowd on a Saturday afternoon?
“It is all in this pamphlet,” said Winny’s acquaintance, handing them a folded collection of yellowed papers. Violet took the manual, reading through it with a knot tightening in her belly.
“Unbelievable,” she murmured. “Here this Danforth fellow describes Romeo and Juliet as an ‘inculcation to impropriety and sin.’ He can hardly be serious! It’s meant to be a warning, not encouragement. There are Cristabel and Emilia; stay with them, I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”
She didn’t hear Winny’s response, already pushing through the throng of townsfolk with the ridiculous pamphlet tucked under her arm.
Mr. Danforth had taken it upon himself to perch on the front steps of the Florizel, preaching to those who had assembled, while Mr. Lavin, the owner, attempted to reason with the man.
“We are all allowed our beliefs, sir,” Lavin was huffing, crimson with fluster. “And I believe you are out of line. Not since the Licensing Act has the Florizel been met with opposition of any sort!”
“That is about to change,” said the vicar. He had thick, curling hair and a smug way about him that Violet disliked immediately. Worse, hovering just over his shoulder was a familiar face, and not one she expected to see on the side of censorship.
“Mr. Kerr!” she exclaimed, coming to stand beside Mr. Lavin and making her position clear.
The clergyman’s timing could not be worse; the play was set to debut in just two days.
Violet searched among the faces of those Danforth had brought, most of them strangers, leading her to wonder if these weren’t the good people of Cray Arches at all but folk he had assembled in neighboring Anselm.
“Good morning, Miss Arden.” Mr. Kerr angled out and away from the preacher; as he bowed, he wore an uncharacteristically sheepish expression. “I trust that your leg is much improved?”
“My—oh. Yes, thank you, it’s no trouble at all now. You are with this…person?” she asked, nodding toward Danforth and his horrid little basket heaped with pamphlets.
They stepped aside while the vicar continued arguing with Mr. Lavin. The actors were trickling out from the theater’s front doors, which only inflamed matters.
“I am near him,” Mr. Kerr replied, his lip curling somewhat with disdain. “I am not with him.”
To Violet’s continued dismay, Freddie Kerr peered out from behind his brother’s broad, concealing back. He looked pale and like he had not been sleeping adequately. If he caught sight of Emilia, there was no telling how he might react.
“Is this what clergymen are meant to do?” Freddie mumbled.
“My brother has taken a sudden interest in the profession,” Mr. Kerr explained.
“Harangue the populace over Shakespeare?” his brother continued.
Mr. Kerr clamped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Having second thoughts?”
“And third and fourth. Does he really think this will fill his pews on Sundays?”
Violet held up the pamphlet, waving it in Mr. Kerr’s face. “What I want to know is how he afforded all of this! There must be hundreds of them…”
“My mother, I’m afraid,” Mr. Kerr replied, sullen. He stepped out of the shadow of the theater portico, and Violet followed. It was quieter there, and she could finally hear him clearly above the crowd and Danforth. “She’s inexplicably devoted to the man.”
“And she’s started the Ladies’ Society for Decency and Restoration,” said Freddie, whom she had not noticed coming around the corner with them.
“What?” Mr. Kerr rounded on him. “When did she do that?”
“Only yesterday. Wonder of wonders, Danforth set it up for her.” Freddie’s eyes rolled so vehemently they might have made a grinding sound. “Really. It sounds like he established the ladies’ society. When has our mother ever expressed interest in such a thing?”
“Since Mrs. Ann Richmond established her own charitable society, I imagine,” Mr. Kerr muttered, removing his spectacles and pinching the top of his nose.
Freddie shook his head. “Rivals to the bitter end.”
“I hardly care who established what,” Violet cut in. “I care about this,” she cried, gesturing to the agitated crowd. “And this.” She shoved the pamphlet into Mr. Kerr’s grasp. He held it as if it were a used handkerchief.
“I agree, Miss Arden, it is an astonishing use of free will.”
“Then get him out of here,” she growled.
Her vision was clouding at the edges, a surge of dizzy anger making her nearly topple as she spun and marched back to the front of the theater.
Winny was waiting for her there, and, eager to be away from the rising noise, she took her sister by the hand and dodged around Mr. Lavin.
A large shape blocked her path, and Violet stumbled back, another swell of rage sweeping over her as she craned to look Mr. Danforth in the eye.
“Let me pass, sir,” Violet said, seething.
“Miss Arden, you seem to be without a pamphlet,” he said, holding up one of the leaflets between them. “It pains me to think a lady of your gentle breeding might need educating upon this subject, but even God’s purest lambs can be led astray.”
When she did not take the offered material, the preacher held up his hands, lightly touching Violet’s shoulders.
“Is this where you belong, dear child?” he murmured, almost sad. “With the dregs and the prostitutes and those who would parade themselves before the public for vanity’s sake?”
A shadow fell across them, and Violet blinked up and out of her anger to see Mr. Kerr had come. He had only to gaze down at Danforth in his direct, silent way and the clergyman removed himself, lowering his presumptuous little hands to clutch his basket with a half-mumbled apology.
“I would not advise touching the lady again,” warned Mr. Kerr.
The words nested inside her, somehow both warm and cold.
“Maybe he could come every day to escort us,” she heard Winny breathe to her right.
Mr. Kerr touched his hat and kept the solid bulwark of his body between Danforth and Violet until she and the others hurried safely inside the Florizel.
Violet did not draw breath until she noticed the tightness in her chest. People flowed around her, hardly more than streaks of color whooshing by her head.
Mr. Kerr’s presence, his protectiveness, had made her less afraid and even momentarily grateful.
“Did Emilia sneak in before us?” Winny asked, bringing Violet back to herself.
“I don’t know,” she stammered. But a quick glance around the front hall and office did not produce Emilia.
Cristabel had already gone ahead to the stage to begin mixing pigments, and Mr. Lavin could be heard ranting about Danforth in his office.
Ginny’s cat, Sailor, rubbed against Violet’s ankles until she picked up the creature and absent-mindedly stroked its neck.
“Perhaps Mr. Lavin can have someone look for her outside,” Winny suggested. “I’ve no interest in elbowing through that crowd again.”
Cristabel summoned Violet, impatient to begin the work they were in danger of not finishing in time, and she went, and let Sailor go to chase mice or dream of fountains of milk or whatever cats fantasized about, and the morning rolled on.
And in all of it, surprisingly or not, Emilia’s absence was forgotten.
For Violet’s part, she could not forgive herself for feeling so much relief when Mr. Kerr leveled his mild threat at Danforth.
Nor could she stop imagining that look of his, all of that considerable strength and concern rallied just for her.
When the afternoon wore on and there was no more to be done, when Violet’s hands were stained with paint and cramped from effort, she and Winny said their goodbyes at the front doors, walking outside to find it blissfully quiet.
Violet found herself wishing Mr. Kerr were there waiting for them, a sentinel to protect them in case Danforth burst from the bushes or flew down from the roof.
But he wasn’t there, and neither was Emilia, whom, it became evident, they had entirely forgotten.
“I did ask Mr. Lavin to send someone out to search for her,” said Winny, her voice rising as the ladies descended into panic.
“Emilia is a smart woman. I’m sure she returned to Pressmore,” added Cristabel, though her pallor told the fuller story. “Of course she would. Of course…”
Violet let them spin and speculate while she sifted through her thoughts for the answer. “No, oh no,” she murmured, slapping her cheek and holding her hand there. “I shouldn’t have said anything, but I may have mentioned that Freddie Kerr still loves her.”
“What?” Cristabel rounded on her. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because it’s likely true,” Violet groaned, stamping her feet against the cold. “Mr. Kerr said as much as a sort of defense of Freddie, an explanation for why it couldn’t be him who set the fire at Pressmore.”
“It could have been anybody,” Cristabel said with a sigh. “Your cousin never found hide nor hair of the cloaked person you described.”
“I know, I know, and they probably found each other in the crowd when we were distracted, and…”
Cristabel reached for her, turning Violet until they faced each other. “Let us not fall to mischief with our minds when reason will better serve, yes? She might have returned to the house. She probably returned to the house.”
Violet had never let reason stop or serve her before. “Or they are already halfway to Gretna Green,” she cried, her head falling back loose on her shoulders. “And it is all my fault. Oh, God, Ann is going to kill me…”
“She will do no such thing,” Cristabel assured them. “But Ann is our answer. We will hire a carriage at the inn, it will be faster than walking back to the estate. If Emilia is not at Pressmore, then we can decide our degree of frenzy.”
Winny called it an excellent solution, and so it was.
They returned to Pressmore Estate with all haste, the driver from the Gull and Knave understanding the urgency very well, subsequently conveying them at appropriate speed.
The ladies flung themselves from the carriage and raced up the drive to the front hall, where Bloom met them with the sort of long-suffering look only a butler who had seen decades of youthful waggery could conjure.
It was put to the family simply that Emilia had not come into the theater, and only Lane and Ann were told about the alarming Freddieness of it all.
“Oh dear,” said Ann.
“Blazes,” said Lane.
“She is not here,” Ann continued, her mouth turning down with fear. “But we will search the grounds at once.”
By now it was dark, and the grounds were searched with lanterns and calls of “Emiliaaaaaa,” but Emilia was nowhere to be found.
“As much as it pains me to say it,” said Lane, as the collective consternation grew, “we should send word to the Kerrs. This could have everything to do with them.”
“Winny and I will return to the Florizel,” Violet told him. “They will still have rehearsal, and we can ask if anyone saw the two of them in town.”
The hired carriage had left long ago, but Lane gave the sisters one of Pressmore’s to expedite the journey. Violet sat like a lit cannon fuse, a heartbeat away from screaming at the top of her lungs. Nobody had mentioned to the Richmonds that Violet was to blame for it, but she knew it. She knew.
“If anything happens to her,” Violet murmured, pressing her nose to the freezing-cold window, “I’ll never forgive myself.”
“We will find her,” Winny promised.
Violet wanted with every sinew in her body to believe her.
They were trundling down the hill sloping toward Cray Arches when Violet, squeezed tight against the door and window, saw a flash of orange on the horizon.
Her heart seized. The light grew, spreading like the tail of a comet, arcing in a yellow crest over the center of town.
The unmistakable scent of burning wood followed soon after.
Smoke rose in hazy torrents, obscuring the first twinkle of stars.
“Something is on fire,” Winny whispered, cramming herself alongside Violet to look out the window.
“It’s the Florizel,” said Violet, her mouth bone-dry. “It’s gone up in a blaze.”