Chapter 22
Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me.
He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.
Robert and Lillian’s things were being loaded into the carriage when Alasdair charged up the drive to Sampson.
There were plenty of staff to attend him as he leapt down from his horse and watched the last of their luggage being stowed away.
It was a crisp, clear day and growing warmer, and the ride had left him breathing heavily.
Those breaths curled away on white streamers, scattering as Robert and Lillian appeared from within the house.
“Leaving so soon?” he asked, not without surprise.
“That’s hilarious. Truly. What sort of buffoon invites his friends for Christmas and then leaves them that very same day!” Robert’s gaunt face burned with outrage as he bumped his chest against Alasdair’s stomach.
“Dr. Fornwell said you mustn’t get so upset, dear,” Lillian begged at his side.
“Oh, to hell with Dr. Fornwell! My upset is very much deserved! I am a man insulted,” Robert raged on.
He had the good sense to lower his voice for the next bit of complaining.
“By God! Where were you, man? How could you leave me with the two most depressing souls in England? How many sermons can a man stomach before he is sick with boredom? Take a guess! No, do not, for I will tell you the answer. Seventeen. Seventeen sermons. I came to heroically rescue you from that exact fate! I feel swindled, Alasdair, swindled. I can be very unpleasant when I feel swindled.”
Alasdair rocked back on his heels. “Indeed. I feel confident that if you think long and hard, you will hit upon why I left that evening.”
“Over…over…that woman?” Robert stammered, not even willing to use her name. “Incomprehensible. You have always been an odd one, Alasdair, but this is a degree of inscrutability I cannot unravel, and believe me, I have had ample time to do so while listening to seventeen sermons!”
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Lillian added softly, trying to pry her husband away. “It was charming to meet your family.”
“I do apologize for any confusion or discomfort you suffered, Mrs. Daly,” said Alasdair.
“Apologizing to Lillian? Of all people! Apologize to me, you scoundrel, at once.”
“No,” said Alasdair, stepping away.
“Here!” Robert yanked a folded letter from his coat pocket and shoved it with both hands against Alasdair’s chest. “This was the surprise I spoke of in my letter. I don’t even feel like giving it to you now, but I am a gentleman. Do you remember what that’s like? Being a gentleman?”
Alasdair stared down at the note, unblinking, recognizing Julianna’s handwriting.
With two more exasperated huffs, Robert stormed into the carriage, bumping his head, swearing, then dropping down onto the bench hard enough to rock the whole apparatus.
Lillian offered a helpless shrug and followed her husband.
He watched the carriage roll down the drive, realizing he had given little thought to what he would say and do once he was back at Sampson.
There had been a vague urgency to remove himself from Pressmore, a rising awareness that his presence was no longer to be tolerated after the benefit had concluded.
Standing alone in the cold, he found himself missing Violet already.
Her scent was all over him, like a dream persisting into waking hours.
And he was awake now, painfully so.
Inside, Sampson was roaring with heat. The Yule log still burned dutifully away; he could hear the snapping and cracking from the front hall.
Nobody in the family appeared to greet him, and he did not pretend to be disappointed.
Instead, he dispensed with his gloves and hat and bounded up the stairs, knowing he could do with a wash and a shave.
With creeping guilt, he stood at the window of his bedchamber and slid out of his boots, stretching his toes and working a cramp out of his calf.
He opened Julianna’s letter and read it, surprised at the indifference it inspired.
Something in him had shifted, a new stubbornness unfurling—he knew it, but how long until the world caught up?
My dear Mr. Kerr,
It will be Christmas when you receive this, and I will be thinking of you fondly.
Do you remember last winter in Vienna, when we strolled the Innere Stadt and I took you to my favorite fountain?
There was a man with the funniest little dog, and he fell right into the waters of the Donnerbrunnen chasing it away from the edge.
Nobody at dinner understood why it was so ridiculous.
That was the day with me you laughed the most; I keep that day close to my heart.
Perhaps it is folly to continue this. You were not yourself when we last met.
I know the man who laughed at that dog and the fountain is still there somewhere.
How do I reach him? What is the right thing to say?
I think you loved me once, but you have never spoken freely about your feelings.
You are a man enclosed. Still, it is not altogether unpleasant to be with a person so self-possessed.
Something tells me to return to the memories of us, again and again.
It’s maddening. Come to see me in London; I will be there until 7 January.
If you do not come, I will consider you lost to me forever.
Yours still,
Julianna
Behind the indifference was a brief surge of sympathy.
He would not go to her, but she should know that his heart belonged to another.
It was strange to see himself described like a stranger—he was not a man enclosed, or rather, he had found a way to give himself over, it had simply required a like-minded soul.
Julianna was kind and clever; life had been easy for her.
She was elegant, she moved elegantly, her manners were elegant.
The refinement never seemed to restrain her, and it seemed like she could laugh at anything.
Knowing that, he hoped she could laugh at the rejection he must send.
Someone better suited would swoop in to love her, he was sure of it.
He tossed the letter onto his desk and remembered needing a shave.
Yet he was reluctant to wash Violet off of his skin.
Well. The sooner he made their engagement real, the sooner he could have her again.
He wanted to do it the proper way, nothing sloppy; she deserved to be treated as honorably as any woman of quality.
Still. What was the harm in reminding himself of her brash beauty?
He knelt to retrieve the painting from beneath his bed; he found nothing but empty space, a faint impression in the dust where a rectangle had once been.
Alarmed, Alasdair righted himself and dusted off his breeches, then caught sight of someone watching him from the open doorway. Lady Edith.
“You shouldn’t take the stairs without assistance,” Alasdair chided gently, moving toward her.
“It was worth the effort,” she replied, gnarled and still beneath her fluttering cap of white lace. Her mouth trembled, pinched. “By now you have noticed its absence.”
Heat rushed up from under his collar. “Where have you put Violet’s painting?”
She flinched at his casual use of her given name. “It’s gone. I told you to be rid of it, and you disobeyed me. I will tolerate many things, and I have, but not that. Not her. Not a Richmond.”
“She is hardly a Richmond,” he shot back, furious.
“The relation is enough!” Lady Edith cried. “Do not go searching for the painting. It is beyond your reach, we—I—have made certain of that.”
“Danforth,” he muttered. “I should have thrown him from this house long ago. He has worked every kind of sinister sortilege on your mind.”
“There you are wrong,” she said, nearly toppling over from the force of it.
Alasdair hurried to her side, guiding his mother into his bedchamber and to a bountifully stuffed chair near the window.
She accepted his help but seemed to withdraw at his touch.
“Thank you. I will try to remember that kindness; you are unlikely to repeat it.”
Alasdair watched her from across the room, leaning against the mantel. Violet’s painting ought to be here.
“I will forgive quickly if you tell me what happened to that painting,” he replied.
“No, no…” She waved him away, tossing her head in a strange, distracted way. “I know you left this house and went to Pressmore. There is an air of betrayal about you.”
Alasdair didn’t deny it.
“And it has quite broken me. You left, dearest. You left on Christmas. You had to know what it would mean, what it would do! There is only so much a woman can bear. There is only so much pain one can carry before the cracks appear, before all the secrets come spilling out!” Her voice rose to a near shriek.
A pit widened in his stomach. Secrets? “You must understand; he was the only one who stayed. The only one who listened.”
His hands curled into fists. “Danforth is at the jail; his trial will commence at Epiphany. Tell me you have not intervened on his behalf. Tell me that degenerate filth does not roam free.”
Lady Edith pulled her head back, statue-still. “I maintain some influence. Our family is respected, and your father was well-liked.”
Alasdair yanked off his spectacles and wiped at his eyes in frustration. “How dare you invoke Father in this—”
“I will invoke him whenever I please,” she interrupted, suddenly calm. “Do you remember when John Danforth arrived at Clafton?”
“I suppose. It was not long before I left for Cambridge. He was well-spoken but unsure of himself, determined to impress. We were similar in age, though he seemed much older somehow. Why? Am I to pity the criminal once I hear his sad story?”
“He is not merely a criminal, Alasdair,” she replied, shrinking. “He is your brother.”