Chapter 15
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
“I ask that you allow me time to put this right.” Mr. Kerr extended his open palm, silently asking for the flowers.
Violet hesitated. “If it was him, if he confesses, I will see to it that Mr. Lavin is compensated and pay personally for the Florizel to be repaired. Any amends that should justly be made will be. Please, Miss Arden, it is not in my nature to beg, but I will if I must—he is my brother.”
“He’s your brother, and he tried to burn down Pressmore,” she hissed, clutching the flower stems to her chest.
“You don’t know what your forbearance would mean to my family,” he continued, his golden-brown eyes dimmed behind his spectacles.
His family. As if she had any interest in protecting the reputation of the Kerrs!
He seemed almost to reach for her, then thought better of it. “What it would mean to me.”
Violet stilled. That was harder to understand, harder to disregard. She looked down at the faded monkshood blossoms, their purplish-blue cowls shriveled from the dry cold. They were so fragile, so frail. He took the smallest step toward her, his hand still hovering between them.
“I swear it on the stones of Clafton, I will not let anything happen to you,” he whispered, then tightened his lips together and corrected himself. “I will not let anything happen to y-your family, of course.”
What would she do if their positions were reversed?
If Maggie or Winny were in danger of being taken before the justice of the peace, how would she respond?
A handful of wildflowers and an oil stain did not exactly place the lit torch in Freddie’s hand, but it certainly smacked powerfully of guilt.
She tried to imagine Winny languishing in a jail; her heart crumbled, and she slowly handed Mr. Kerr the monkshood stems.
He didn’t take them. “No. No. I misspoke just now, Miss Arden. Violet. I will not let anything happen to you.”
She pulled up her courage and met his eye squarely. “If there are more fires, Mr. Kerr, I will know you have failed me.”
“I will not fail you,” he assured her. Violet expected that to be that, but Mr. Kerr let the flowers linger between them.
He was so close now, she couldn’t escape his scent, his warmth, the intoxicating power of his presence, all the things she tried so desperately to banish from her mind when they were apart.
“It would skin me to the marrow to fail you, I think. Do you understand?”
Violet froze, then slowly nodded.
“Do you?” Alasdair asked again, his hand brushing her wrist.
“Our thoughts are one.”
With a great exhalation of relief, he took the flowers, touched his hat, and bowed, then strode away quickly, before Violet could react or even wrap her mind around what had transpired between them.
The moment he was gone, she wanted him back.
Our thoughts are one. What an absurd thing to say!
Yet it had felt like the truth. It was the truth.
Nobody and nothing occupied as much space in her thoughts as he did.
As she returned to her friends near the wagon, she noticed the preacher, Mr. Danforth, hurrying down the lane and away from the square, headed in the direction of the church.
She liked the doddering old vicar there, Mr. Corner, and hoped he was not subject to Danforth’s corrupting influence.
While Ann finished her conversation with Mr. Lavin, Violet watched Danforth’s shape diminishing; down by her waist, where no one could see, she made a rude gesture.
“Odious little man,” she muttered.
Emilia sidled closer to her. “Did you find anything in the theater?”
“Nothing definitive,” Violet replied, sidestepping. For once, she decided to keep her mouth shut. If Mr. Kerr was a man of his word, Freddie would never have the chance to set another fire.
Emilia frowned. “There must be something…”
Violet did not respond, terrified she would let something slip.
“Did you see the way Mr. Kerr blushed when I asked about his activities in London?” Ann was upon them, laughing with glee. “Oh, but we must find a way to corner him again and dig for more information. Now I am convinced he is the mystery benefactor!”
It was Violet’s turn to blush and stammer. “That’s ridiculous.”
“He probably fell in love with you after carrying you across the fields!” Ann sighed. “It’s unbearably romantic, like something from one of those novels you’re always reading, Emilia.”
Emilia didn’t seem as delighted and curled her lip. “But why would he do it?”
“He wouldn’t. He thinks my paintings are—”
“Derivative and silly, and for no one,” Emilia, Ann, and Cristabel finished for her in unison.
Violet stared blankly, wishing she could sink beneath the road. Her cheeks roared with hot embarrassment. Was her fixation on him so obvious? She remembered the way he had gazed down at her and touched her wrist, and her knees nearly buckled. “I haven’t…I haven’t complained about it that much.”
“And why should you encourage them together when you despised Freddie?” Emilia asked, thankfully missing Violet’s blushing cheeks. “You told me his rejection was a gift!”
“Your prospects are rather grander than Violet’s, dearest, you know that,” Ann said in a strained undertone. “And the two brothers could not be more different…”
“It isn’t fair,” Emilia said with a sigh. “My dowry should mean I can do whatever I like.”
“It does and it doesn’t,” Ann told her, wrapping her arm around Emilia’s shoulders and squeezing. “What sort of sister would I be if I did not look out for your interests? Never mind what our father would have to say about it!”
“I’m sure Mr. Kerr would never marry me,” said Violet, for Emilia’s benefit; even to her own ears it sounded like a lie.
When they returned to Pressmore, Cristabel urged her back into the cool cerulean splendor of the Sapphire Library, where Violet’s new pigments awaited.
A letter arrived shortly after for Cristabel, and, grunting with annoyance, the painter began reading it—first just over Violet’s shoulder, but the content must have upset or alarmed her, for soon Miss Bilbury quit the library.
Violet did not see her for the rest of the afternoon.
Nor did she paint, for when she looked down at the neat row of cake colors, ready to be mixed and applied to the prepared paper, it seemed a shame to even touch them.
They were like royal jewels glimmering in a velvet box, precious and perfect.
And when Violet lifted one of the brushes, tipped with softest Russian sable, her mind went blank except for a single image.
Alasdair Kerr.
She closed her eyes, but he was there, too.
Common sense would dictate that she paint him, then, but she had vowed not to, and besides, how could she pursue him when Emilia had been denied her chance at love?
She couldn’t imagine tossing aside the regard of her friends and family.
When Maggie was hopelessly besotted with Mr. Darrow, she had acted much the same—distractible and lost, as if the only world that interested her was the one in her mind where she and Bridger were already together.
The canvas remained empty. The paints went untouched.
—
Alasdair’s fury had stoked itself into an inferno by the time he reached Sampson Park.
Ordinarily, the steady drumming of hammers at Clafton would raise his spirits, for the workmen had enjoyed a stretch of good weather while Alasdair was away in London, and the manor was taking shape.
Gordon had requested more builders, and Alasdair obliged, reminding him that expense was of little concern when the goal of restoration was now plainly in sight.
But even that, even the walls rising on the hill—jagged but decidedly there—did not penetrate his bleak mood.
The house was persuasively silent, nothing required his urgent attention; there was nothing before him but the horrible task of confronting Freddie.
His steps grew heavier as he went up the stairs, dread settling on his chest, weighty as the earth piled high on a man buried alive.
And as with that oppressive fate, the fear came, too, and the panic.
We have already lost Father. How could we lose you, too?
His mind offered a thousand improbable but tempting alternatives. They had the money; they could hurry him out of the country, send him to a new life in America. Justices of the peace were men like any other, weak in the way all men were weak, easily swayed by power, by bribes, or…Or!
No. Their father’s portrait hung in a dozen places around Sampson, and each of them seemed to turn and watch him now, casting judgment over Alasdair’s next decision.
My great duty is to make you a man of quality, Cub. We have given you an easy life, and easy lives make soft men, so I must impose what the walls of Clafton repel.
Alasdair had tried, in his way, to do the same for Freddie. Had he not made him go to Miss Graddock and refuse her in person? Had he not decreed that his brother would find a profession and better himself?
“Too little, too late,” he muttered, reaching the landing.
As he did most days now, Freddie sat at his desk poring over correspondence for Mr. Danforth.
The chancellor had written, agreeing to provide a recommendation for Freddie’s turn toward an ecclesiastical life.
Subsequently, he had become Danforth’s top man, shadowing him almost night and day.
Alasdair did not announce himself, but rather marched to the desk in the low-lit room and tossed the monkshood flowers onto the letter Freddie was reviewing.
His brother yelped in surprise, then twisted and sprang to his feet, splattering his own shirt with ink.
“You will explain to me how you came to be behind the Florizel on the night it burned.”