Chapter 22
Violet shifted and depressed the pedal as far as she dared. She sped along the road, eyes open for animal, person, or vehicle that might suddenly impede her way. The last thing she wanted was an accident. But time was not her friend at the moment.
She checked the curve ahead and slowed just enough to make the turn and speed up again.
Florrie had sent Ruby home to Oakleigh with her driver.
The family was gathering to go to London.
Mrs. Burke had been unable to contact Cyril at the school, and Pimms Mill had no telephone as of yet.
Violet had volunteered to go directly to the millhouse, as it was on her way back to the school, to make sure he’d been informed and, if not, to give him the news herself.
She hoped it was the right decision.
Everyone else had surely thought so.
She groaned and switched gears again.
Her long-kept secret was out.
Her stomach turned. It was as much a relief as it was a fear. She knew her friends, and there had been no time to explain the details of the matter.
She’d asked for time.
Of course, it was easily granted, given the nature of the Burke family’s current trial.
She turned off the shade-dappled main road and followed the drive to a large willow. Parking next to Cyril’s Sunbeam, she set the brake and leaped from the car.
Holding her skirts, she jogged toward the main portion of the house.
A woman emerged from a path amongst the trees. “Can I help you, miss?”
Violet turned and continued walking backward, the servant following with a basket of turnips on her arm. “Mr. Burke, please?” she said, rushed.
“Of course, miss, but—”
Violet turned and headed up a couple of steps to a small portico and turned the front door’s handle. “Cyril?” she called out.
“Miss! He be in the master’s quarters!” The woman had not yet reached her, so Violet took a guess and turned left, up a short flight of polished wood steps and through a sitting room with tall windows facing the rear property.
“Miss! If you please!”
Violet halted. Not because of the servant’s call but because she most distinctly heard music. Not just music. Violin music.
Mozart, to be precise.
Her feet stuck to the floor, stunned as she was. Her eyes closed.
It was being played beautifully. As if the player understood Mozart to the very core. As if the player had been playing his entire life.
As if he’d never quit.
Her eyes opened, and she followed the sound of the music to a large, rough-hewn door.
“Miss?”
Violet glanced over her shoulder at the stricken expression on the servant’s face, then turned the latch and shoved.
Y
The low creak of the wheelhouse door matched the dissonant sound of Cyril’s bow across his strings.
Cyril closed his eyes in frustration. “Mrs. Turner, I asked for some pr—” As he turned, his words died on his tongue.
Violet Whittemore stood just inside the open door, looking from him to his violin and back to him, his missing collar and open top shirt buttons, his bare feet.
He swallowed. “Miss Whittemore.” Remembering himself, he bowed.
Mrs. Turner spoke before he could rise. “I beg pardon, Mr. Burke,” she offered from the doorway, quite winded.
“I tried to stop her and have her announced, proper-like.” She curtsied.
“But she was right swift on her feet.” She leaned to the side and whispered, quite loudly, “I do believe the lady be bettermost and weren’t sure of my place in tackling her to the ground. ”
Violet turned her head away and pressed her lips firmly together.
He nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Turner. I can manage from here.”
The woman bobbed a curtsy and backed out of the room. “I’ll just be a-leavin’ this door open, then,” she said loudly. Then she went to humming as she remained in the sitting room just beyond the door.
Cyril glanced at Violet, his thoughts whirring. “She’s, er, quite protective of me.”
Violet still stood, staring at him. Or, rather, at his violin. “You were playing,” she said. “The violin.” Her gaze rose to his. “In your bare feet.”
He moved to a nearby table and set down his violin and bow in their case, then turned back to her, placing his hands behind his back, hoping the pounding of his heart didn’t show through the fabric of his cotton shirt.
He’d always preferred practicing in his bare feet. Something about the way he could feel the floor beneath him as the music moved through him. And she knew it, dash it all.
“Why did you come bursting into my home, Violet?” He made himself meet her gaze.
Kept himself from going to her, even as he noticed that she might have been crying recently.
Though, the idea did soften him a bit. “Is there something wrong?” He bit the words back.
The answer to that question could be anything and everything.
She breathed, her mouth opening, then closing. Finally, she stepped forward. “Your mother called. She couldn’t reach you.”
In an instant, he strode to her and took her arms. “What is it?” He watched her. Waited.
“Your father. He’s not doing well with the antiserum.”
As his grip tightened, she gently wrapped her hands around his forearms. “You need to go to Oakleigh. Everyone is packing for London. Florrie’s offered Janes House, including two Panhard Qs to get your family there and to use at your disposal.
I’m told it’s a brilliant car. Fifty horsepower. Large. You’ll all fit in the pair.”
He blinked at the observation.
She continued. “You can stay there for the duration. However long you need.”
He stared, unsure of what to say, his throat thick.
“You might want to put on your shoes.”
With that, he leaped into action, throwing clothes into his valise, putting on his shoes. His fingers fumbled as he attempted to button his shirt.
“Here, let me.” Violet pushed his Dopp case into his valise and hurried to him, tugging the buttons of his shirt fluidly through each buttonhole. “Give me your collar,” she said as if she did this every day.
He managed to place the starched collar in her hands, their fingers brushing as he did so.
“Chin up.”
He obeyed and soon had his coat on his arm and his hat on his head. Mr. Turner put his valise in the boot of his car.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you to Oakleigh?” she asked.
He shook his head as he put his arm through his coat sleeve. She reached to hold the rest of it so it would slide on smoothly.
“Is there anything more I can do?” she asked.
He paused, searching the ground, then finally lifted his gaze to fully meet hers. “I … I don’t know what to say.”
Her misty green eyes shifted back and forth to his. “Please. If you can. Give your father my love.”
His jaw shifted. Words wouldn’t come. But he nodded, adjusted his hat, and got in the car.
Y
18
Despite her protests, Violet’s coming-out ball was, indeed, a reality.
An archaic tradition meant to thrust a young girl into the adult world of behaving badly.
Or, at least, that’s what she’d observed so far.
Men who had not so much as brushed a glance in her direction a week ago were now arranged before her as pigeons awaiting her toss of breadcrumbs.
Her archaically minded father had insisted.
Her suffragette mother had encouraged—for in what other way could a young woman of eighteen display her poise, intelligence, and influence to so many in one night?
A university graduation ceremony, Violet had thought quietly.
But she had not attended university, had not gone to America, had not sat in stimulating discussion with scientists, composers, or philosophers.
So she stood before mustachioed boys who plied her with questions of her favorite flower and whether or not she enjoyed the opera.
“The symphony,” she responded. She smiled at Mr. Stratham, who had posed the question. “As a violinist, how could I answer any other way?”
Mr. Stratham nodded with a grin.
“A fellow violinist?” Mr. Ashbrook asked, his mouth quirked. Everyone knew Mr. Ashbrook took his own violin playing very seriously.
Violet had noted the doubt lacing his words. She had observed an aggression in Mr. Ashbrook that she did not care for. “More or less,” she said and turned to give another gentleman a go.
Mr. Ashbrook, though, was not finished. “What do you enjoy playing, may I ask?”
“You may. I dearly love to play Mozart’s ‘A Major Violin Sonata.’”
Sounds of assent hummed through the group.
“Ah.” Mr. Ashbrook chuckled and looked at the shine of his shoes. “A lovely work in its simplicity.” He glanced at the other men in the circle, then nodded to Violet. “I’m sure you play it well, Miss Whittemore.” He winked.
Somebody should have let Mr. Ashbrook know that patronization was not flirtation.
“I should hope so,” she said, tilting her head.
“Mozart’s genius is the soul of simplicity.
His music is as elemental as a sparkling mountain stream.
Of course, it doesn’t compare to the rigors of Vieuxtemps, the Mendelssohn E Minor, nor the thrill of conquering the Bach Ciaconna—I’m sure you understand.
But it does remind me of simpler times, before I was expected to prove the sum of my value as a person to those who only see the sum of my dowry. ”
A silence settled amongst the would-be suitors. Young men chuckled nervously or glanced away.
“Gentlemen.” A warm tenor broke the awkward pause. “Forgive my intrusion, but this enchanting young lady has promised me a dance.” The circle parted, revealing Mr. Benjamin Burke, patriarch of the Burke family, dressed quite handsomely in a black suit and white bowtie.
Violet grinned. “Mr. Burke, you are just in time.” She reached for his outstretched hand. “Excuse me, won’t you, gentlemen?”
She felt their gazes as she left them to discuss all the topics they wouldn’t have dared in her presence.
Horse races or the Southern Cross expedition or boxing matches—likely not, though, discussing Hertha Ayrton and her exciting paper on the electric arc, nor Georg Pick’s newly published theorem on the area of simple polygons.
Perhaps.
But not likely.