Chapter 20
They are in the very wrath
of love, and they will together. Clubs cannot part
them.
When the scene ended and the crowd began to lose interest and depart, Violet expected Alasdair to remove his hand, yet he must have been lost in thought or otherwise distracted, for he remained frozen there. She grinned and looked up at him, waiting for him to notice they were alone.
“Do you dance, Mr. Kerr?” she asked.
He blinked once, hard, and jerked his hand away from hers. “No,” he said. “Partners find my height troublesome.” Something at the other end of the gallery drew his attention, and he abruptly bowed, then strode away. “If you will excuse me briefly, Miss Arden.”
Violet didn’t have a chance to respond. The cold just on the other side of the gallery wall intruded, and she drew inside herself, wondering what had perturbed him so suddenly.
She felt silly just standing and waiting for him to return, but she also feared that any movement whatsoever would break the fragile spell of the night.
“Who was that gentleman?” Regina asked, slinking out of the shadows and to her side. Miss Ramos appeared at her other arm. Violet stared down at her shoes, nervous.
“Was he not the source of all the commotion?” Miss Ramos asked.
“Mr. Kerr’s family occupies the estate just north of here,” said Violet, trying to will the blood out of her cheeks and ears, for she knew the blushing gave her away. “There is some old enmity between his family and my aunt’s.”
“And he is to inherit?” Regina pressed.
“He already has.”
“And that inheritance was substantial?”
“It was.”
“Este, how stimulating,” Miss Ramos whispered, wiggling.
“How delicious,” added Regina. She tapped her pointed chin with one finger, then dug that same finger into Violet’s shoulder. “Who doesn’t adore a forbidden love?”
Violet rolled her eyes. “We aren’t in love, Regina.”
The two ladies shared a look over Violet’s head, then erupted with laughter, falling all over her and squishing her between them.
“Just have a care where your heart is concerned, dove, mm?” Regina prodded her again. “Protect it. When one has much and the other has little, it’s rarely a smooth path to happiness.”
As immediately as they had come, the two ladies were gone, linking arms and floating away into the growing swell of guests gathering near the auction tables.
Ann was among those assembled there, glittering in jade-green silk, scattered jewels falling from the headband damming her thick black tresses.
Violet took a nervous gulp, realizing they would end the bidding at any moment.
Noticing her all alone in the corner, Ann waved her over.
Violet went to her on numb feet.
“Congratulations, Violet,” said Ann, showing her a folded card. She thumbed it open just enough for Violet to see what had been written inside. It was the bidding card for her portrait sitting. “You’ve drawn the highest bid of the evening.”
“But how is that possible?” Violet snatched the card out of her hands, holding it up to her own eyes.
Lane had given the first number, a kind gesture, but he was outdone by Alasdair Kerr.
Another sum was proposed by Lane, but Alasdair had clearly grown impatient with the game and finished with a definitive fifty-pound bid.
“I might have urged my husband to move things along and keep them interesting,” Ann said lightly. “All for the good of the Florizel, of course.”
Violet laughed and flopped the card down to her side. “Of course.”
Somewhere in the crowd around them, Mr. Lavin could be heard weeping drunkenly with joy and relief.
Ann’s golden eyes flashed at someone over Violet’s shoulder.
“Ah! Mr. Kerr! May I commend you on your inspiring generosity this evening, sir? I daresay you have won yourself standing invitations to any events given by the Ladies’ Society for the Lonely, Abandoned, and Infirm.
With men like you in attendance, we may solve all the ills in the county! ”
Turning slowly to face him, Violet met his eye with great difficulty.
How many lectures had she endured from her aunts warning that she would end up a sad, lonely spinster?
Worst of all, she had allowed herself to believe them.
Her heart felt fit to burst with pride; Violet Arden, beautiful, exuberant, and strange, might amount to something after all.
It would be in bad taste to take the card and wave it under Aunt Mildred’s nose; just knowing she had not embarrassed herself completely would have to be enough.
“I will leave you two to decide the finer details of your sitting,” said Ann, spinning away behind Alasdair, but not before giving Violet a wink.
“Well, Mr. Kerr, I suppose that somewhat lessens the sting of what you said about my work,” Violet said, clearing the husk out of her voice with an awkward cough. “Thank you. I’m…surprised and flattered and humbled, which is a lot of things to be all at once.”
She could kiss him for his gallantry. She would kiss him, she decided, for more reasons than that.
—
Not long after the auction concluded, it became evident to the staff at Pressmore, and then the guests, that the roads had become quite impossible.
Indeed, impassable. Several feet of snow had fallen, and until the deluge stopped, or something could be done about it, it was unsafe for anyone to chance their journeys home.
Accommodations would be made, naturally, and everyone comfortably housed for the night.
Many of the guests took that as permission to continue the drinking and dancing until dawn, for now that they were all hostages of the snow—musicians included—what could be done?
Violet and her sisters accepted this unspoken invitation to excess, dancing themselves to the point of exhaustion, roses shining in their cheeks as the rules of partnership broke down, tipsy precepts taking precedent.
With no desire to dance, Alasdair watched the ladies from the edge of the ballroom, glad to help finish off the last of the punch while Margaret Darrow’s husband walked him through the ins and outs of their publishing ventures.
Darrow was an all-right fellow, if a bit long-winded, but Alasdair was content to sip and listen, though his eye wandered often to the left, where Violet swung arm in arm with her sisters and friends.
Even Emilia allowed herself to be taken by the spirit of the holiday.
Looking around, at the guests slumped sleepy and satisfied in chairs, at Ann still soliciting donations even as dawn approached, at Mr. Lavin shaking every available hand, at Mrs. Richmond, who had resigned herself to ignoring him (fair enough), and at Violet—the unexpected toast of the night with her triumphant auction—he was filled with…
sadness. Sadness that he had been lied to about these people.
Sadness that he had been kept from this place, a font of warmth and hospitality.
Sadness that his mother had taken their boat away one summer’s day, long ago, and deprived Alasdair of what might have been the defining friendship of his life.
At last, Violet noticed him watching her. She detached from her sisters and hurried over, her skin glowing from the exercise.
“Now, now, Bridger. You mustn’t talk Mr. Kerr’s ears off until I have a chance to paint them,” said Violet, beaming at them. “I’ve left her without a partner, you should go to her rescue.”
Bridger Darrow ran both hands through his thick, dark hair, squared his shoulders, and marched off to do just that.
The quality of the music was deteriorating as the musicians tired themselves out, and Alasdair wished to be elsewhere.
Somewhere quiet. Private. He left his punch cup on a table and moved to Violet’s side, casting his gaze around the ballroom.
“I thought you might show me your favorite painting in the house.”
“Absolutely I would!” she cried, sounding genuinely as if nothing in the world would make her happier.
“You…already have one in mind?”
“Of course I do.” Turning on her heel, she led him back out to the front hall, then toward a set of doors that presided over a library.
The interior was every imaginable shade of blue; even the sconces pulsed like witch fire, the cool, serene embrace of all that blue giving the impression one was somehow underwater, in a mermaid’s hidden den filled with books, globes, and art.
Ahead, a curved bay pushed out toward the lawn, the designs in the window glass throwing the crisp moonlight across the rug in unpredictable shards.
Violet went to stand beside a tall, worn cupboard, the space between it and a bookcase to the left occupied by a small framed sketch. The paper was yellowed and the figure drawn upon it inexpertly rendered. Yet it appealed in its simplicity and in the love for the subject.
“It’s me in the hedge maze as a girl,” Violet explained.
“My father drew it and gave it to Mr. Richmond before he died. Well, before they both died. Obviously. Maybe it’s vain that I love it so much.
Papa wasn’t much of an artist, but I could look at it for hours.
I must seem sentimental, to choose this over the portraits and landscapes by far more accomplished artists, but none of them touch my heart the way this does. ”
“His affection for you is obvious,” Alasdair replied, not finding it overly sentimental at all.
She could be so headstrong; to see the softness beneath her bold exterior was a welcome change.
Reaching over her head, he pointed to a curling line swooshing over her ear.
“This mark, the way the curve of the hair accentuates your cheek…perhaps he was not a studied artist, but that demonstrates an instinctual skill.”