Chapter 14
This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
Alasdair was once more at a loss for words. The ladies were all staring up at him as if he had the answers to the wild and percolating questions of the universe. An answer was required of him, but he knew what must be done.
Robert’s harsh admonishment echoed in the darkening cavern of his mind.
Are you aware of her reputation? Her obscurity? It’s almost a pity she’s so beautiful, for who would have her?
And she was beautiful. So, so beautiful.
Without fail, it made his chest ache. He had hoped to avoid seeing her altogether, for now it was too cold for swimming and he would not be tempted to wander down to the stream that separated his property from the Richmonds’.
There were otherwise few reasons for him to visit Cray Arches, and so little chance of their paths crossing.
“I…could not please you with a response, madam, when you have not even named a date,” he replied. That would settle it, he thought, for this was the fancy of a moment, not a real invitation. But Mrs. Ann Richmond was not to be denied; she threw back her head and laughed merrily.
“That is a small thing.” She turned to the theater owner with a shimmering smile. “Mr. Lavin, why don’t you choose the date? What would please you most? Whatever you decide, I will accommodate.”
Violet Arden was growing fidgety; she kept staring off toward the burned building, her jaw forward, set with determination.
“I’m afraid Miss Thorpe and the others won’t stay much longer if there’s no work to be had,” said Mr. Lavin with a sigh. “No performances, no money. I can’t expect to keep them past Christmas—”
“What a lovely idea,” the formidable Mrs. Richmond exclaimed, clapping with delight. “The Society can host you all for Christmas! St. Stephen’s Day may be more customary for charity, but how I love the thought of celebrating you all in the warm glow of Pressmore on Christmas Day.”
“I—well—indeed, Mrs. Richmond, that is a generous proposition, but I couldn’t possibly impose—”
“Nonsense, Mr. Lavin. I will hear no talk of imposition.” She turned back to Alasdair, still grinning, though now it held a more pressing edge, as if her teeth had all sharpened at once. “There you have it, Mr. Kerr, a date has been given. Won’t you consider joining our benefit on Christmas?”
He almost laughed with relief. “I fear the day is quite special to my mother, and I couldn’t possibly be away from her. My apologies, Mrs. Richmond, though I’m sure you will all have Mr. Lavin’s interests well in hand when…”
His words trailed away. His refusal to attend had acted as some sort of permission or provocation, for Miss Arden strode swiftly away. Puzzled, he watched her hurry off toward the Florizel, leaving everyone quietly stunned for a moment.
Patching over the awkward silence, Mrs. Richmond continued in her breezy manner. “Your presence will be missed, Mr. Kerr, but perhaps you will consider making your contribution at some other time.”
“Mm,” he grunted, distracted. “If you will excuse me…”
Once more he found his words trickling and unfinished, and he bowed half-heartedly and followed Violet Arden toward the theater.
When he reached her, she was peering into the half-cocked front doors, her shockingly blue eyes huge and darting, as if she were assessing whether the whole building might come down around her ears if she stepped inside.
Given the seriousness of the fire that night, it just might.
“Have I given offense?” he asked, perhaps harshly.
“What? No, not at all.” She swung around to face him briefly, then did exactly as he feared and ducked inside. “Or, rather, no new offense that I can think of.”
Alasdair reached for her hand to pull her back, grazing her fingertips. With black dust dancing in the air between them, Violet looked over her shoulder toward him, hesitating.
“And if I insisted that you are putting yourself in harm’s way?”
“How well did that work last time?” she asked, vanishing inside.
“At least be careful,” he grumbled. She wasn’t going to go in alone, not when many of the blackened crossbeams overhead looked ready to collapse. He produced a handkerchief and pressed it into her grasp. “And cover your mouth. Your paints will not be salvageable, if that is your aim here.”
They were standing in the front hall, Mr. Lavin’s gutted office to their left, the cupboard where the orange cat had been cowering to their right. Ahead, the ceiling bowed, bubbled pockets of wall bulging out toward them.
“Isn’t it strange that someone tried to start a fire at Pressmore, the culprit was never discovered, then soon after the Florizel goes up in flames?
” Violet asked, her voice muffled by the cloth held over her nose and mouth.
She tiptoed carefully over the debris that had been pulled from the office and strewn across the floor.
“You believe the fire was set intentionally? For what purpose?”
“I don’t know yet,” Violet replied, forging ahead. “But I intend to find out. Mind your head, there’s a dip in the ceiling here.”
Alasdair did as she instructed, breathing into the crook of his elbow to keep from inhaling the dust. Every step crunched as if they walked across a bed of leaves, the cracked, burned debris dislodging puffs of dry black powder.
They reached the end of the central hall that emptied out onto the auditorium.
The flames had eaten away the ceiling, exposing the attic space above, barren and spare as a skeleton.
The deeper they went into the theater, the worse the damage, though if Violet noticed the increasing peril, she did not comment on it nor let it slow her down.
She started down the carpeted aisle that split the lower auditorium into two sections.
“Help me up?” she asked, indicating the stage with a nod.
He nearly refused, then realized she would simply crawl up with her own power and likely hurt herself. “What do you hope to discover, Miss Arden? The materials that spread fire tend to…well, burn.”
Alasdair bolstered Miss Arden as she took a bold leap up onto the stage.
He followed, hoisting himself easily, as the lip of the stage was no taller than his waist. The lady drifted toward the set—destroyed, of course, and reduced to sifted piles of ash and charred timbers.
Fabric peeled away from one false wall; the oil paint that had been splashed across ran down its face like springtime tears, green and blue and buttercup yellow.
“Better to look and know than refuse and wonder,” said Violet.
She paused to frown at the spoiled sets, then sidestepped them to search the back of the stage.
Red curtains hung in tatters, drooping from the warped, half-melted railings.
The stench was terrible, the dust kicked up by their movement clinging to the frail fabric of her pale purple dress.
The back of the theater had gotten the worst of it.
Most of the far wall was missing completely, providing a macabre, scorched window onto the path of cobbles beyond.
There was a space there for wagons to load and unload, then a few meters of untended yard, and finally a thin slice of wooded area.
The trees there bent away from the theater, as if blown back by the horror of it.
Miss Arden waited again with her hand extended, and Alasdair joined her but decided it would be easier to help her from below.
He jumped down, then turned and offered both hands.
Carefully, she put her weight into her palms on his shoulders and bent, and Alasdair took hold of her waist. Gently.
When he grasped her that way, her coat and gown conformed to the elegant shape of her waist, exaggerating the yet more pleasant flare of her hips.
He felt the strong push of her midsection against his thumbs, then the give of those same muscles as she exhaled, and trusted him, and went briefly into the air.
Alasdair lowered her carefully to the ground, closing his eyes as their bodies met briefly on her descent, her breasts, God help him, grazing his chest. In that short suspension, that half a moment between her being above him and then on the cobbles, he held his breath.
When she was standing again on her own two feet, looking anywhere but at him, he wondered if she had become as painfully aware of him as he had been of her.
I held you; I felt your breath go in and out, the sweet proof of your life.
Alasdair tore himself away, pretending to find something worthy of his attention in the brush at the edge of the wood.
There could be no tender feelings for her—civility, certainly, but no more than that.
Even if the world cinched tight around them when she was in his arms, even if that one sweep of contact felt more significant than all the letters and glances he had ever exchanged with the women who came before.
Her gaze swept along the ground and then up the ruined posterior of the Florizel while Alasdair performed his indifference beneath the aghast bend of the watchful trees. Violet drifted past him, kicking idly at the ground, turning over charred roof tiles and bunches of leaves.
The silence felt like needles in his ears. He had to be away from her, or they had to speak, but he could not endure the quiet. “You’re looking for something in particular.”
“I don’t know,” she murmured, but it held none of her usual lively conviction.
A few paces away, beneath the first earnest shade of the wood, Violet stopped abruptly.
She gasped, then took a few stuttering steps toward what looked like nothing more than a cluster of weeds.
Kneeling, she pushed aside the longer, dying gray grass to bring forward a few stalks of faded blue flowers.
Picking one stem, she stood and stared at it, the fateful blossom suspended between them.
“This…” he began slowly, reading her expression, “…is significant?”
Violet Arden’s gaze flew to his, an unmistakable shine of fear in her very blue eyes, blue that put the flower she held to shame. There were perhaps many objectionable things about her, but her propensity for plain honesty was not one of those things.
“You know something,” Alasdair whispered, lowering his head.
She shied and curled away from him with the same diffident posture as the trees. That shift only made him more certain.
“Miss Arden,” he added, checking in every direction to confirm they were alone. There was no one, just the distant, muted sounds of town life and the bare breeze shimmering against the last clinging leaves of autumn. “Violet.”
Her eyes raked up his chest to his chin, then higher, and her mouth quivered exactly once.
“I fear we must be bound by yet another secret,” she said, holding up the flower.
“Monkshood. Some of the stalks were shorter, clipped as if recently picked. These are the flowers your brother chose to bring Miss Graddock the night we found them in the hollow. The glove she touched him with was stained with oil, and when she held it near flame, it swiftly caught.”
Alasdair felt the world tilt.
“Do not faint, Mr. Kerr,” Violet said in an urgent whisper. “I fear I cannot catch you if you fall.”