Chapter 16
At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled shows,
But like of each thing that in season grows.
December
My Dear Sir,
I received your latest letter in great health, thank you for asking.
In fact, I write in good health and in better cheer, for I have such a wily little proposition for you, and I know you will agree to it!
Lillian and I will no longer be afflicted with her mother’s presence this Christmas, the details of which I couldn’t possibly bore you with, and so we find ourselves quite aimless in that regard.
Or we did, until clever Lillian began extolling the virtues of Christmas in the countryside.
You should have heard her! She was never a poet or even articulate, but it was amusing to us both.
“Who has not longed for Christmas but to have it where the snow is crisp, and the trees look like sugared sweets.” Something along those lines, though doubtless I have improved it.
And I know you are already scoffing, my friend, for snow would very much ruin your building plans at Clafton, but for Lillian’s sake, I do hope we are blithely dusted with the stuff.
Or rather, I do hope so if you agree to have us to Sampson Park.
And I hear you scoffing again, ha! Yes, it is unforgivably impish of me to impose upon you and your family, but I suffer imagining you in that big house with no one to celebrate with but your brother and Lady Edith.
You have never described your mother as a game kind of woman, and pardon me for saying so, but a man should not be dreary at this time of year.
Admittedly, I miss you, old friend, for no one here can talk about art the way you do—Jasper tries, but there is something so desperate about him, it’s off-putting to say the least. The port has addled his wits, I wager, because he is constantly wrong.
I simply cannot abide hearing him mistake Masaccio for Messina again, it might kill me even while the Yule log burns.
Say you will rescue us from this ugly fate! Say you will have us, and we will make such a merry little party that there will be talk of it for years to come. I await your generosity, and who knows? There may even be another Caravaggio—or something better! Ha!—in it for you.
Enduringly your friend,
Robert
If Alasdair was being honest with himself, he did dread the thought of spending Christmas alone with Freddie and his mother.
They had each become miserable in their own way.
Freddie listlessly continued his pursuit of the ecclesiastical profession, his heart decidedly not in it, and his attention decidedly and increasingly elsewhere, usually a bottle of cherry brandy in the library.
He seemed disinterested in Alasdair’s speeches and guidance and was often found stone drunk, sleeping in front of their father’s portrait.
All of his plans had come to nothing, and pursuing the living attached to Sampson Park had inspired Danforth’s crimes.
He was without a mentor and without Emilia.
Alasdair had tried to coax him into meeting the vicar in Cray Arches, Mr. Corner, to which his brother shrugged and made several noncommittal noises.
Lady Edith had subsided into silent protest, so much so that she could be mistaken for one of the marble busts in the drawing room.
She had developed a nervous blink and spoke to them in a strained whisper.
Dinners were unbearable. As such, Alasdair made certain to stay “late” at Clafton as often as propriety allowed, and truthfully, beyond that point.
He almost wished one of them would throw a cup at him, shout, rage—anything but stare into the middle distance in a depressed stupor.
Alasdair read Robert’s letter over again.
Maybe Robert, boastful and ridiculous, was just the antidote to his creeping poison of silence.
Gordon had consulted a number of local farmers who were confident they were in for a relatively dry winter, so Lillian would be disappointed on that score, but that would just give them something to talk about.
Alasdair laughed mirthlessly at himself; was he actually wishing for idle chitchat?
“Things really are dire,” he muttered, and went to his writing desk.
To respond, he was forced to brush aside a number of unfinished drafts that gathered in a shameful pile.
Alasdair sat down hard, staring at the discarded letters.
He really ought to burn them; that he hadn’t made the cut of the guilt that much deeper.
Dear Miss Arden,
Dearest Miss Arden,
My Dear Miss Arden,
Miss Arden,
God, he couldn’t even begin the damn thing without collapsing into indecision.
Recently, at dinner, desperate for a single human sound he himself had not created, he had asked his mother to recall the days of her courtship with their father.
The look she gave him could have leveled London.
Freddie had made the soup course particularly noisy with slurping after that.
I am writing to inform you of certain events regarding my brother and Mr. Danforth that transpired after our last conversation.
Your suspicions regarding my brother were not unfounded; he unknowingly aided the vicar of Anselm, Mr. Danforth, who set the fire at the Florizel and presumably also at Pressmore.
He has been transferred to the Anselm jail to await his appearance before the grand jury at Epiphany.
Too cold and unfeeling.
It is my sincerest hope that this letter reaches you while you and your family are in excellent health. That the weather has been so unseasonably merciful exacerbates that wish.
The weather? Really? And he hated the word exacerbates—it was hideous on the page.
Thankfully, the most embarrassing draft languished in infamy at the bottom of the pile.
He had gotten into the brandy himself that night and, after staring into the eyes of Caravaggio’s lute player for an undisclosable amount of time, gone to his desk with the fervor of a man possessed.
Possessed. I will not say by what.
His hand hadn’t even felt like it was his own. Some other creature took control of him.
No, it was me, me stripped to the marrow, just as I told Violet.
Me as I see myself in dreams, feeling and thinking while unshackled by the waking, stifling anxieties that stalk me like a pack of wolves.
I am vanishing in this house, this prison.
When Clafton is finished at last, my body will find a new prison to haunt.
Alasdair stood, angry at himself, and gathered up the pile of unsent attempts, crossed to the hearth, and shoved them behind the grate.
Then, possessed again, he knelt, swore, and fetched out the truest one.
He shook it, batting down the wisp of flame, and hid it in a desk drawer, where it would taunt him as steadily as the portrait of her beneath his bed.
The cold and unfeeling version would have to suffice.
Giving Miss Arden a concise summary of events and promising to write again when Danforth’s fate in the courts was better understood.
At the bottom, he indulged his true feelings only to the extent that he thanked her for her patience, and for allowing him to clear up the matter himself.
Sealing the note, he tried not to imagine her expression as she received it, or the way her hands would smooth out the folded page to read, indirectly touching his own.
Afterward, he dashed off a letter to Robert, agreeing to play host to the Dalys for Christmas. At the bottom, he urged Robert to come with all the mischievous and lively spirit he could muster.