Sir Godfrey stared at him, aghast. “In a hundred years I could not imagine Violet wielding a sword.”
“I also give command performances,” Kit added, as if Godfrey hadn’t spoken.
“How much do you charge?” Aunt Francesca inquired.
“No doubt more than we can afford,” Violet said in an undertone.
Kit shook his head. “Didn’t I mention that my fees were negotiable?”
Heaven help her. And him. One more remark like that and she would swat the audacious rascal to a fare-thee-well with her fan. She had a firm grasp on it today. But the next time she got him alone
. . . Would
there be a next time? Could she in good conscience accompany the marchioness on another mission?
Kit stared at her in a silence deep enough to herald the end of the world.
Do
not
say anything else
, she implored him with her eyes.
Not another word. Don’t even think it.
She could sense the counterattack that he ached to deliver. At length he nodded at Godfrey, dismissing the matter with a cavalier smile. “You, of course, know the lady better than I do, sir. I envy you, but such is life.”
He tossed his foil over his shoulder to the assistant and three young pupils who waited within a yard of his shadow. A lace-trimmed cuff rose above the other hands to catch the master’s weapon. Violet remembered how she had considered it an honor to hold Kit’s sword while he climbed a tree or taught Eldbert and Ambrose how to box.
At least he had found another band of followers as dedicated to him as he deserved, even if he was more forbidden to her than ever.
Godfrey’s satisfaction had begun to dissipate soon after the duel ended. By the time he returned home he felt rather foolish for showing off to Violet, whose wholehearted affection he had never seemed to capture. What had he done now to displease her? He had been convinced when they first met that her coolness had been due to her demure nature. She was quiet, which a woman should be. She was refined, of aristocratic stock, a lady of virtue. Indeed, her composure aroused him. She would warm his bed at night, cool or not. Their children would carry his name and her blood.
She would never embarrass him by conducting affairs, like other ladies of her class. Perhaps he was not thinking clearly. Perhaps he was fatigued from the excitement of the charity ball, his long hours at his shops, and his match against Fenton today.
The contest had taken every drop of Godfrey’s strength. After a light dinner he was reduced to soaking in a hip bath and sipping brandy to ease his rubbery limbs. Oddly, he’d gotten the sense that all the swashbuckling in the world would not sway Violet to passion toward him.
Was it possible that she had thought his display to be vulgar? The other ladies present at the park, including her bothersome old aunt, had made no bones about enjoying the contest. It had been meant, after all, in a spirit of gentlemanly sport.
What did it matter that Fenton had thrown the match in his client’s favor? Godfrey wondered as he rose from his bath to dress. He was not paid to make himself look superior to his pupils. He put on his silk dressing robe. He wondered again whether he had imagined that tension between Violet and the fencing master.
Impossible. Intriguing. How dared they, even in Godfrey’s imagination.
Fenton had never shown any excess of emotion in the entire length of his professional association with Godfrey. Should he resign himself once and for all to Violet’s aloof detachment?
The benefit ball had been one thing. Violet excelled at dancing. It was not her fault that Fenton had led her off in that impromptu dance exhibition. But something had sparked the exchange between the pair of them today in the park. Antagonism? Or attraction? Godfrey had not thought Violet capable of such fire.
It was probably nothing, he thought, and turned to his chest of drawers to pick out a neck cloth for his Thursday evening at the club. Small surprise that the artful young Fenton found Violet desirable. Godfrey would not have chosen to marry a lady who lacked appeal.
Violet took her aunt upstairs to bed earlier than usual that night. The afternoon might have invigorated their spirits, but now even Violet felt the need to rest. The maid had folded down the bedcovers and closed the curtains to ward off the evening air and occasional disturbance from the street.
“Weeds are easy to grow,” Aunt Francesca said without preamble after she had settled into bed. “A violet requires the right environment. How wonderful it was to watch you and your uncle dancing a quadrille with our unreliable Miss Higgins, the footman on the fiddle, and Twyford covering his false notes with a cough, and then . . .” Her voice changed as if she could see through a door to the past. “Do you remember the afternoon we caught the little gentlemen at the window?”
Violet shook her head in concern. Her aunt’s mind wandered more and more. “You must mean Eldbert and Ambrose. They were at the window many afternoons.”
“How they made me fear for you.”
“The little
gentlemen
were laughing at me, Aunt Francesca. I do not know why you feared them. They never meant me any harm.”
“Perhaps not. Eldbert was polite enough. Ambrose was always rude, as was his mother. But there was that scruffy boy who worked in the fields. That pauper. I shall never forget the day he carried you home from the churchyard. Ambrose’s mother later told me that you had made a friend of him, and I called her a liar. I said that my niece would never set foot in that place. But you had.”
She swung her gaze to Violet, bright, alert. “I thought the boy had killed you. I looked at you in Twyford’s arms, still and white, and I thought that ruffian had brought you home dead. I thought you had been murdered and he had brought us your body.”
Violet’s memory of the incident was blessedly vague. Her high fever had distorted the details of that afternoon, although she could still picture Kit staring at her in horror, and she could hear his heart thudding where her cheek rested against his shirt as he carried her up the slope to the house. Eldbert had helped, but she wasn’t sure how. She had begged Kit to drop her outside the door. But he had refused. She had heard her uncle talking behind him and her aunt wailing in hysterics.
“He meant well,” Violet said, bending her head to extinguish the candle on the nightstand. “Ambrose didn’t want to come anywhere near me. Nor did Eldbert, but at least he brought my shawl when I felt better. Ambrose suffered the most, and let everyone know it when he recovered.”
“I wonder what happened to that poorhouse boy.” Aunt Francesca closed her eyes. “I can’t even remember the name of the man who bought him to apprentice and took him away. He was a captain, wasn’t he, a widower who’d lost his own son? They never returned to Monk’s Huntley, that I know. I suppose if the boy gave him trouble he could have sold him to another master. Wicked business . . . to own a person.”
“Perhaps he helped the boy,” Violet said, her throat constricting.
“Perhaps. How peculiar that he should come to mind when I never got a proper look at him. I would have feared for you even more had I known you had befriended a pauper.”
A chill slid down her nape. Perhaps her aunt’s mind was not wandering at all. Perhaps it was only coming to an inevitable conclusion. “Why did you fear so?” she asked after a pause.
“You were the only child your uncle and I would ever have. I had lost your mother when she was so young. And you . . . well, you were fearless during your earliest years.”
“I was lonely.”
“Were you, Violet?”
“Didn’t you know?”
Francesca looked away in distress. “Not until I lost your uncle.”
Chapter 14
V
iolet was surprised to find Godfrey absent from the emporium when she and her aunt went shopping early the next afternoon. The two women browsed for a good hour, admiring a number of goods as Twyford hovered nearby to be of help. Violet could have looked until the arcade closed; she was fascinated by everything from the hall clocks to the cake plates on display. But at length Aunt Francesca admitted to feeling worn.
“It’s time for us to go home,” Violet insisted, expecting a disagreement.
But it did not come. “Yes. This is a fine establishment. Godfrey has done well for himself. I do admire the silver tea caddy that is on display. My mother—your grandmother, Violet—had one quite similar in design.”
“Then you shall have it,” Violet said. “Let Twyford walk you to the carriage while I ask Mr. Cooper to put it away for us.”
“I’d forgotten what good taste Godfrey has,” Francesca said. “If his other shops are anything like this, he has worked hard, indeed.”
As they were walking to the door a gentleman in a frock coat and buckskin pantaloons drifted toward them. He had a narrow face that at first looked youthful but showed lines of dissipation as he drew closer. He tipped his hat and murmured something in French to Violet that she did not understand.
By the heat in his eyes as they met hers, however, she decided it might have been a greeting better left untranslated. “And the same to you, I’m sure,” she said quietly.
Aunt Francesca frowned at her. “That is exactly the sort of person one should avoid.”
“He made me feel uncomfortable, too.”
Her aunt glanced back at the throng of customers in the emporium. “I resent the way he looked at you.”
“So do I. But I’ll resent it more if you work yourself into a state.”
“Could you have met him at the benefit ball?” Francesca asked. “He acted as though he knew you.”
“Oh, I didn’t think of that. I doubt it—but it
is
possible. Perhaps
I
was rude.”
A few moments after Violet left her aunt with Twyford, she returned to the emporium. The gentleman who had addressed her was gone. Relieved, she caught the harried head assistant’s attention. He was so obviously eager to please his employer’s betrothed that Violet felt sorry for him. He climbed a tall ladder behind the counter to retrieve the caddy, and almost fell in his eagerness to do so.
“Thank you, Mr. Cooper,” she said as he escorted her through the arcade. “I expect Sir Godfrey is at the wharves.”
He lowered his voice. “I don’t think so, miss. He ran out with his sword and his foil. I assume he’s gone for lessons. Fencing has become his passion.”
“So I understand.”
“He fences well.”
“Yes,” Violet murmured, and instantly envisioned Kit walking toward her with a blade pointed at her heart. “Mention we stopped by, please.”
“Oh, I won’t need to do that, miss,” he said earnestly.
Violet gave her hand to the footman waiting for her at the arched entrance doors. “Why not?” she asked, hesitating at his anxious expression.
“He’ll notice right away that the tea caddy is missing and demand the name of the customer who bought it.”
Violet gazed back into the bustling arcade. “Well, a sale is a sale.”
“Yes, and your name has a good influence on his manner,” he confided, stepping back to bow. “However, I beg you, do not tell him that I said so.”
She laughed. “No, I—” She looked around, feeling as if a shadow had just enshrouded her.
“Is anything wrong, Miss Knowlton?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. I will sing your praises to Sir Godfrey. Thank you again.”
Violet was relieved that her aunt’s energy seemed to rally in the next few days. Three of the late baron’s friends had sent Francesca invitations for various affairs about town. “It is moving that so many of Henry’s acquaintances remember me,” Francesca said, staring ruefully at the letters on her lap. “Since we have no other relatives, I’d like for you to meet them, Violet. Godfrey has offered to act as our escort.”
“‘One cannot attend too many social events,’” Violet said, lowering her voice to imitate his. “‘It is good for business, and you, my dear, made a stunning impression at the ball.’”
Aunt Francesca’s brow lifted. “All you need is a little mustache and a walking stick.”
“I hope there is more difference between the two of us than that.”
Francesca laughed, holding up another letter. “Did you read this? It’s from your old friend Lord Charnwood.”
“Ambrose?”
“It’s an invite to a house party a month from tomorrow. Oh, my. There’s to be a treasure hunt, a
fencing
performance, and a ball.”
“Almost everyone will be there then.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I mean, well, Eldbert and . . . and Ambrose.”
“Yes, it is Ambrose’s party. One assumes he will attend.”
“And Godfrey, too. If there’s fencing.”
“Godfrey.” Her aunt set the letter on top of the others. “I take it that we are going to accept the invitation.”
“I don’t see how we can refuse.”
“Not with Ambrose and Eldbert there,” her aunt said rather slyly. “And another chance to see Godfrey’s spectacular fencing skills.”
“We don’t have to go if you would prefer to stay home,” Violet said in a neutral voice.
“I would not deprive you of the chance to see your old friends again, Violet.”
Her old friends. She thought it would not be a complete reunion without Miss Higgins. But if Kit was to attend, she would do her best to resist him, or perhaps by then his interest in her would have cooled.
She saw him again at the Duke of Wenderfield’s breakfast party on Berkeley Square the following week. Sir Godfrey mentioned during the drive that the academy was staging a small fencing performance for the guests on the lawn, but that he would not be participating. “Why not?” Violet asked. He did not say why, but he sounded a little miffed. For once Aunt Francesca did not venture an opinion.
Violet searched covertly for Kit in the group of handsome bucks lounging on the entrance steps. She looked for him among the younger guests drifting across the garden as she met the duke and duchess with Godfrey and her aunt. When he volunteered to take her aunt on a light stroll of the gardens with their hosts, she deliberately lagged behind.