Chapter 17
If I leave this house, I leave Noah in his hands.
Violet tossed and turned, thinking about it.
It wasn’t the worst outcome imaginable, as she’d once believed it might be.
In fact, it wasn’t even bad. Having seen Noah with Jonathan today and the way the two had interacted, she had no fear of what his future might hold if Jonathan were the one given charge of him.
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? In the beginning, I told myself that it had to be me because he couldn’t be trusted. That’s not true anymore…so what do I have that will convince anyone I should be the one to keep the house and to keep Noah?
She didn’t fear for Noah’s future if he was with Jonathan—but she would be grieved to lose him. Already, he felt so much a part of her life.
It had broken her heart to hear him talk about the way his life had been before he had come to live with Aunt Margaret.
Just the thought of anyone treating him badly was painful.
She wished she knew who his parents had been.
They ought to face consequences. That his mother had been cruel to him and then abandoned him was almost more than Violet could bear to think of.
With a sigh, she sat upright. She had been lying here trying to sleep for hours, and it just wasn’t working. There seemed to be no point in it. Maybe it would help to get up for a while and go to the library to read. That always helped to quiet her mind.
She pulled on a robe over her nightgown, stepped into her slippers, and lit the lantern beside her bed. Picking it up, she tiptoed across the floor, avoiding the boards that creaked.
The hallway was dark, the light from her lantern throwing unpleasant shadows on the walls.
The way they danced and flickered was spooky to Violet, making her feel more nervous than she would have otherwise.
The house seemed larger and more ominous than it did during the day, and for a moment she regretted coming out at all.
I shouldn’t feel that way, though. This is my house. I have every right in the world to walk the halls at night. I’m not doing anything I shouldn’t be.
She reached the library at last, thankfully, opened the door, and went inside, turning to close it behind her.
As she pulled it shut, she rested her forehead for just a moment on the thick wood.
The fire was still burning in here—perhaps the servants hadn’t reached this room to extinguish it yet—and unlike her lantern in the hall, the flickering against the walls was soft and pleasant. Soothing.
“Fancy seeing you here.”
She whirled around with a gasp, nearly dropping the lantern in her surprise.
Jonathan was sitting in the armchair by the fire, a glass of amber liquid in one hand and a book in the other. He closed the book and set it down, taking a sip of his drink. “What brings you here in the middle of the night?” he asked.
“I…” she bit her lip. “I couldn’t sleep, that’s all. I didn’t know anyone would be here.” She stuffed her hands into her pockets—and then, suddenly, she was painfully aware of the fact that she was in her nightclothes. She took a quick step back and wrapped her arms around her body.
Jonathan was watching her. “Would you like to come in?”
“I—I don’t want to bother you…”
“You aren’t bothering me,” he told her. “I was just reading. I couldn’t sleep either, and sometimes spending some time with a book helps me.”
Violet nodded, surprised to realize that they had this in common. “It does me too,” she said. “I came here thinking I would read for a while, but…well, maybe I’ll just find a book and take it back to my room.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “If you want to read in here, you certainly can.”
“I wouldn’t want…” She hesitated. “I’m worried about disturbing you.”
“No, I told you, you’re not disturbing me,” he said.
Of course, that wasn’t really what she was worried about. “It’s not appropriate for us to be in here together.”
“You mean because we don’t have a chaperone?” He shrugged. “You and I have been in many rooms unattended by now, Violet. I hope you trust me not to be ungentlemanly—and not to besmirch your reputation by telling tales about things that didn’t happen.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” she said. “I know that. I…I’m not dressed.”
He looked at her again.
She was intensely, viscerally aware of his eyes moving over her body. It was as if he were tracing every line and curve of her. And, of course, he could see so much more of her shape right now than he ever could when she wore her day clothes. It made her feel vulnerable.
“You should stay,” he said again, flipping his book back open. “You should stay, and we can read. There’s no reason not to, really. No one need ever know we were in here together tonight, and I trust you know I will be a gentleman.”
“I don’t doubt that,” she admitted. “If you wanted to cross a line, you might have done so when you found me in the underground chamber. I don’t think you would have waited for this moment.”
“So you trust me?”
“I have…reasonable trust in you,” she said. “I understand the kind of man you are and I don’t think you will do anything untoward.”
“So you’ll stay?”
She drew a deep breath. “Against my better judgment…yes. I will stay.”
She went to the bookshelf and scanned for a moment, pulling down the first book she saw that looked somewhat interesting.
It was a book about flowers, nonfiction, and the moment she sat down and opened it up, she knew she’d made the wrong choice.
The pictures were lovely, and under other circumstances, she would have enjoyed them.
But it was impossible to be swept away by pictures of flowers, and her mind stayed in the room, focused more on Jonathan than on her choice of reading material.
He was studying the pages of his book, and after a moment, he turned one of them. He peered at the contents intently. She wondered what he was reading about—but could she ask? He had implied that they would sit and read silently, not that they would speak to one another.
But why shouldn’t they talk? “What are you reading about?” she asked him quickly, before she could frighten herself out of doing so.
He lowered the book again. “It’s a tale about a knight,” he said. “He fights in a war. A very good story.”
“Perhaps I might read it when you’ve finished,” she suggested. “Then we would have something to talk about.”
He cocked his head to one side. “It isn’t the sort of thing I would expect a lady to enjoy,” he said. “There’s a lot of violence. A lot of bloodshed. It may not be to your taste.”
“Do you think I’m so frail that I can’t read about a little fighting?”
“I don’t know,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I think you were too timid to hold a toad. That was what Noah said, right?”
“Well, I did touch that toad,” Violet said. “And I will read that book when you’re finished, if you’ll…permit me.”
She bit her lip. Where had that come from? She didn’t need his permission. The book was a part of the house’s library; it was hers every bit as much as it was his.
He didn’t say anything about that, though.
He didn’t mock her for forgetting that she had a right to the book, nor did he try to talk her out of reading it again.
“I’ll leave it out on this table after I’ve finished with it,” he suggested, patting the end table beside him. “You’ll be able to find it here.”
Violet nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s thoughtful.”
“I’ll look forward to hearing what you thought of it.”
They sat quietly for a moment.
She noticed that, this time, Jonathan didn’t return to his book right away.
It was as if he had now been just as disrupted by her presence as she had by his, and couldn’t focus any longer.
His eyes kept darting to her, making her heart race.
Did he find her so interesting that he couldn’t pay attention to his book? Was that what was happening?
“Wasn’t it awful?” he asked. “What Noah was saying today, I mean, about the way he was treated?”
It was as if she were a sail that had lost all its wind. The tension drained from her body. Of course, he hadn’t been thinking about her, finding her interesting. And why on earth should I want him to? No, he had simply been thinking about something he wanted to say to her.
But she did like what he had said. It was enough to make her set down her own book, grateful that there was someone to discuss this with. She even turned slightly in her chair so that she was facing him more directly.
“That’s the reason I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I was lying awake thinking about all he’s been through. He’s had such a hard life. I wish there was something I could do to take all that away. Not child deserves to go through ordeals like that.”
“I agree,” Jonathan said, his voice low and brooding.
“When I think about that story he told us, about him being abandoned by his mother, waiting for her to come back only to realize it wasn’t going to happen…
well, it puts the struggles of my life into perspective, I’ll say that.
No matter what I went through, I never had to fear that I would be abandoned or out on the streets.
I always had a roof over my head. I always knew where my next meal was coming from.
A little boy shouldn’t be without that kind of comfort and security. ”
“You really do care about him,” Violet said softly. “I’m sorry I accused you of pretending to care. I was very wrong about that.”
“I’m not angry,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting it either. I did think I was just making the extra effort to prove a point at first. I was never doing it out of any desire to manipulate Noah. But perhaps…it’s possible I was trying to manipulate you.”
“Of course you were.” Her voice was milder than she had ever expected it to be when talking about this. “We’ve both been doing that to one another, since this whole thing began.”
“Well,” he said, “perhaps it’s time we stopped.”
She glanced at him and saw that he was smiling, and she smiled back. “Perhaps it is,” she said.
For the next several minutes, the two of them went on reading together in a silence that was something like companionship.
Violet couldn’t quite let go of the feeling that they were watching one another, that each of them was waiting for a sign of something from the other.
But she didn’t know what that thing was or how to incite it, and eventually she gave up and focused on her book.
And that was when he spoke again.
“You said you needed this house.”
She looked up and nodded slowly. “I did,” she conceded.
He leaned forward. “Would you tell me why?