Chapter 18 #2
Alasdair dismissed his valet and went to the window, gazing with hard eyes out at the snow. You fool, you shouldn’t have said anything to Violet about your feelings. Did you think somehow you would end up there and not here? In what world would that be possible? Certainly not this one.
He was stupid to hope but doomed to anyway.
He wondered what Violet might be wearing for the benefit.
She would look best in silver and white, he thought, or maybe a rich blue to bring out her striking eyes.
He almost caved and went to steal a look at her self-portrait, but he tore himself away from the window and went downstairs, where Robert and Lillian were waiting.
“Lord, the mood in here is dire,” Robert muttered, his mouth pulling down at the corners until his neck wrinkled. “Lady Edith has read to us from Sermons to Young Women for the last hour. I thought Lillian was going to hurl herself at the Yule log!”
“Lady Edith is very shy, I think,” Lillian added gently. “I wonder if conversing comes easy to her.”
They sat down to white soup bright with parsley and thyme, venison with wine and mushrooms, trays bending beneath the weight of vegetable pies, piccalilli piquant with long peppers and vinegar, lemon cheesecakes sharp enough to sting the inner cheek, and the traditional pudding crowned with holly.
The food, served amidst sunset-colored hills of oranges studded with cloves, never seemed to lessen in quantity, despite their best efforts.
“Mr. Danforth would take this in hampers to church tomorrow,” said Lady Edith, looking right, as if speaking to a person only she could see. “Maybe Eades can do it, though the snow will be harrowing.”
At the mention of Danforth, Robert choked awkwardly on a throatful of pudding.
Everyone moved into the drawing room afterward, to be judged by the ever-present and abundant bleeding martyrs Robert found so perplexing. They were not just in the library, but all over the house.
“At least they feel right for Christmas,” Robert commented, shrinking away from the laborious gaze of St. Paul, upside down and reaching toward the viewer of the painting. “Shall we play a game? Cards? Perhaps Eades could be persuaded to fill a bucket with water for bobbing apples.”
Lillian positioned herself at the ancient pianoforte and played for them.
Nobody in the house used it, and it was slightly out of tune.
It jangled everyone’s nerves for half an hour, until Robert mercifully proposed a game of riddles, but Freddie began guessing too many shocking answers, upsetting Lady Edith.
“Perhaps you will answer a riddle for me,” said Freddie, taking himself to a wrapped rectangle near the open doors leading to the front hall. The package had been there all evening, tipped against the wall, coyly in the shadows. “What have you brought with you, Robert?”
It was perhaps rude to ask, but Freddie had nipped indulgently into the wassail.
Robert had joined him. Swinging his empty cup around, Robert paraded to the package and gazed down at it lovingly. “I promised your brother a surprise, and I never fall short of a promise. Ha! Do I, dear? Do I?”
Lillian, on a chaise near Lady Edith and the Yule blazing in the hearth, shook her head and smiled in a far-off way.
“It isn’t Twelfth Night, but we shan’t be here until then…”
Thank God for that.
“…so, we may as well present Alasdair with his gift now. Don’t you think so, dear?”
Lillian nodded sleepily.
The usual “too kinds” and “you shouldn’t haves” were expressed and waved away, and Alasdair carefully removed the brown paper, knowing from the shape and weight that he was bound to find a painting within.
Sure enough, when he righted the thing, he was looking at the watercolor he had admired in Robert’s hall.
“Don’t be shy,” Freddie said with a laugh. “Show us!”
Alasdair did, and everyone clapped for Robert’s generosity.
“I’ve spared you the frame,” Robert teased, winking at Lillian.
“Who is the painter?” Lady Edith asked politely, stirring from her dense nest of sermons and shawls.
“Cristabel Bilbury,” said Robert, standing beside Alasdair to admire the work. “Not widely known, but your brother here was taken by it when he was last with us in London.”
“But we know her!” Freddie snapped his fingers a few times, standing and pacing in a tight circle. “She’s that steely-haired one who’s always with the Richmonds. The one Danforth had it out for. She was run out of town, but before that she was teaching one of the Arden girls.”
“Oh?” Robert smiled, the glint off the fire turning it feral. “Arden, is it? I’ve heard there was a lady by the name of Violet Arden with promising talent.”
The drawing room walls collapsed in on him, squeezing. Alasdair’s spectacles itched on the bridge of his nose, his gaze fixed on the painting but not seeing it as he tried to concoct a way out of this conversation.
“Violet Arden?” Lillian spoke up from the chaise, decidedly less sleepy now that the scent of fresh-meat gossip was in the air. “Isn’t she the young lady who was entangled with a Frenchman? It was all anyone could talk about at Vauxhall in August. I had no idea she fancied herself an artist.”
“A reported beauty, or so it’s been said,” Robert added. Alasdair could feel the man’s eyes upon him, pointed and searching.
“Oh, a pity,” said Lillian with a sigh. “But I suppose it makes sense; having ruined her prospects for an advantageous marriage, she may be seeking acceptance among the eccentric set.”
Freddie belched and retreated to the wassail, disappearing into the shadowy nook beyond their mother and near the archway to the dining room.
“Whatever promise she may have possessed, whatever qualities of innocence and gentility existed in her as a youth were corrupted by her proximity to the Richmonds,” Lady Edith stated.
This was not an attempt at gossip, but information given as fact.
She sat up, suddenly brighter-eyed. “No moral person would join with that family. They are sin manifest. They poison everything they touch.”
An ominous silence descended. Robert and Lillian shared a look, no doubt realizing their dreams of a merry, simple country Christmas were crumbling before their eyes. Eventually, Robert cleared his throat, gesturing to the painting still in Alasdair’s grasp.
“Yes. Well! I’m sure we can all safely forget Miss Arden. Really, I doubt she is worth spoiling the joy we might have this evening. Where is Eades? Alasdair, would you be so kind as to inquire about that apple bucket?”
Robert’s ghoulish, spearing smile pricked the right spot. The boughs and the candles and the roar of the burning Yule log fell away. A verse came to mind, perhaps a different sort of gift from the multitude of biblical figures pinned to the walls all around him.
And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith…
They didn’t know her. By God, they didn’t know the first thing about her.
Alasdair saw his chance and took it. He handed Robert the painting and swiftly left the drawing room and took the stairs three at a time.
In his bedchamber, he watched the snow falling for a time, trying to summon the courage to do what he had already decided upon.
Just being alone was a relief; he hadn’t realized how hot and panicked he had become.
But if one more unfair, unfeeling thing was said about Violet Arden, he might have put Robert’s head through that painting.
Returning to the front hall, he called for Eades, but not to find Robert’s infernal bucket.
Instead, he asked for his horse to be made ready and for his gloves, overcoat, and hat.
Good gloves, sturdy ones for the weather, and boots that could withstand the snow.
By and by, the others in the house trickled into the front hall to see where he had gone.
They had all of them gathered—Lady Edith with help from Freddie—when he grabbed his cane and ducked out the front doors.
“Alasdair! What’s come over you, old friend?” Robert called, laughing.
He paused just long enough to tell them the truth. “It’s horrid here, and I’m afraid I can’t stay. Happy Christmas to you all, but I really must go.”
Robert’s nervous laughter followed him out into the white swirl of snow blowing in playful bursts across the drive. Perhaps a foot or so of accumulation piled around the edges of the house and obscured the finer points of the garden and road. It was no matter; Alasdair knew the way.
He mounted his horse and trotted off into the snow. His family called after him, but he didn’t care; he had somewhere far more pressing to be.