“And Violet sketched,” Aunt Francesca said with a thoughtful frown. “She drew sketches of your adventures, and there was another boy.”
“That would have been Ambrose,” Eldbert said, as Violet held her breath, dreading his response. “His father is also deceased, Lady Ashfield, and he has inherited.”
“I am perfectly aware of that,” Francesca said in a subdued voice. “We are to attend his house party soon and I shall have to make peace with his mother.”
Eldbert looked down at the plate of cheesecake Violet quickly offered him. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Talking of graves and those we have lost, over tea, was not my intention.”
Francesca gave him a forgiving smile and rose without warning from her chair. Violet and Eldbert stood, each extending an arm toward her; Francesca deigned to give Eldbert her hand. “Nor was it mine. It is all right, Eldbert. I am glad to see you well. Now, why don’t the two of you go out into the garden while the sun is shining? If I can find my warm shawl, I might even join you.”
Violet gave vent to a sigh.
A minute or so later she and Eldbert had strolled to the end of the small garden, past the small pond to a low bench that sat against a wall smothered in old-world sweet peas.
“My father disliked Ambrose when we were young,” Eldbert said, remaining on his feet until Violet sat down.
“My aunt didn’t warm to him, either. He was a spiteful boy.”
“I believe he might be a spiteful man,” Eldbert said. “I’m not sure what will happen at his party. I’d hate to think he was planning revenge.”
“Revenge for what?” Violet asked, frowning at him.
“For not giving him his due. He always resented us for not doing what he told us to.”
“That was ten years ago.”
“Well, I don’t think he’s changed all that much.”
“Is that what you came here to tell me?”
“In part.”
“Then what else is there?”
Or who else?
Between them hung the unvoiced question.
Nothing, no hidden treasure, no person in heaven or below, not Ambrose or the earl’s ghost, could engender in them the concern or curiosity that Kit did. He was a creation ex nihilo that an abandoned cemetery had pushed forth for the world to notice.
He was the reason that Eldbert and Violet had run through another garden, and he was the reason they sat here today. He was all they had talked about in the old days.
His appearance in the churchyard had brought them together. His departure had broken their band apart. “What else could Ambrose do to hurt us, Eldbert? Brag of his title? Parade about in new trousers?”
He sat down beside her; the abstract air that had made him appear odd as a boy gave him dignity now. “I have something else to tell you. I assume it is still acceptable for us to share a confidence?”
She stared into his spectacles. “Always, Eldbert. To the end of time.”
“I found out myself only last month, when I visited London for a few days. It was shortly afterward that I finally received the last letter you had sent me. I know this will come as a shock, but Kit is here, Violet. He is in London, and he’s made a new man of himself.”
She turned away.
“Do you remember the retired captain who bought Kit’s indenture from the palace?” he asked her.
The palace. She cringed at how naive she had ever been to believe the euphemism.
“Do you remember,” he went on, “that we were afraid he would sell Kit to pirates or do him unspeakable harm?”
She stared down at a cobweb that a spider had built between the strands of sweet peas whose tendrils curled like question marks in the sun. The silk appeared fragile to the eye, too delicate to sustain the slightest damage.
“Yes, I do,” she said. “But—”
“Violet,” he said in an urgent voice, “I visited his
academy
. He runs a fencing school, and I have seen no finer swordsman in the years I served at war. He did not notice my presence in his crowd of admirers. But I know that if he had glanced my way, he would have recognized me. And my only thought was to call out my congratulations for what he had overcome.”
She turned her head. “You
didn’t
?”
He paused, clearly taken aback by the passion she had not been able to hide. “No. I realized before I could push my way through the crowd that public acknowledgment could lead to questions neither of us wanted to answer.”
She put her hand on his. “I understand.”
“Do you?” He shook his head. “I left as he finished his demonstration, but later that night I returned to the school to see if I could find him alone. There were people there even then. Violet, I did not go back.”
She stared past him, her gaze lifting to the rear of the house. What was that shadow in her bedroom window? Someone moving in her room? She felt a twinge of concern. Had she left Kit’s card where Delphine could see it? She reassured herself that she’d put it in a safe place—under the Bible on her nightstand. No one would think to look there.
“I felt as if I’d betrayed him,” Eldbert said, staring down uncomfortably at her hand. “But I thought of you, and of what might happen if you met him by chance before your wedding. How would you explain your friendship with Kit to your fiancé? I didn’t know whether Kit would give you away.”
“And this is your secret?”
“Yes—I thought I ought to come to you immediately and prepare you in case you were caught unaware in his company.” He gave her a grim smile. “I could too easily imagine Kit with his fencing skill meeting you and your fiancé.”
“Yes, Eldbert,” she said simply, nodding in agreement, biting her lip to discourage a smile.
“Violet,” he said in a suspicious voice, “you are taking this well. Do you think I’ve made too much over nothing?”
She broke into an irrepressible smile. “Oh, Eldbert.”
“You already knew,” he said in astonishment. “You let me ramble on, and all the time you knew.”
She released his hand and glanced up again at the house. Her bedroom curtains hung unmoving. Perhaps she had imagined that furtive shadow. “It is a dangerous situation,” she said, instinctively lowering her voice. “I don’t know what to do. Kit and I have seen each other. We are . . . in love.”
She expected him to gasp, to shake his head in chagrin or give her a long lecture, as the young Eldbert would have done. Now, he merely frowned; the surprise had already gone from his face, replaced by concern.
“A dangerous situation, indeed,” he said. “Then my fears were not unfounded.”
“My aunt doesn’t know yet, Eldbert, and I’m afraid of what will happen when I tell her the truth.”
“I am afraid of what will happen when Ambrose brings us back together. It could easily come out that we knew Kit as he was once the four of us are in attendance at his party. I can tell you this much—I will stand by you and Kit no matter what.”
Francesca convinced Delphine that she needed to borrow Violet’s shawl. It pained Francesca to invade her niece’s privacy. She had never done so before, even though she had been tempted on occasion. Fear of discovery, unfortunately, and not respect had stopped her.
Francesca had always been afraid of what she would find if she pried into Violet’s life too deeply. Even now she braced herself as she entered the room. As if it were yesterday she could see her sister lying still on her bed against a vivid wash of blood. And a baby in the midwife’s arm. A living, monkey-faced creature who had been spawned by sin through no fault of her own.
From that moment onward Francesca had felt she was protecting her niece against possible dangers that had been set into motion on the day of her birth.
Francesca had manipulated Violet’s world to shield her from the sins that might tempt her. She thought she had succeeded. Her niece was betrothed to a respectable gentleman, and Francesca should be able to attend their wedding day with a happy heart. But her instincts said the opposite. She crept to the window and studied the two people in the garden. Violet seemed animated now, as she had been while watching that mock fencing contest in the park.
But how could the match have made her happy?
How could comparing Godfrey’s stilted jabs to the other swordsman’s exquisite parries have failed to make her miserable? To know she was marrying a handsome oaf when there were beautiful knights in the world? Had she really convinced Violet that respectability was more important than a love match? Perhaps Francesca no longer believed it herself.
She could die knowing her duty had been fulfilled when she was convinced that Violet had found the protector she deserved.
But first she had to know
why
she felt that she had met that young swordsman before, or at least whom he resembled.
And she had to find out why he had made Violet seem happier than she had been since her childhood, since the days when they had lived in Monk’s Huntley.
The answer lay directly in front of Francesca once she turned from the window. She did not have to hunt for it. The answer lay upon Violet’s desk, in an old sketch atop a tidy pile of thank-you letters to be posted.
Violet was no great artist. But she
had
captured the boy’s face in its defiant youth. Francesca reached out for the drawing. If she tore it into shreds it would not change a thing. Violet was her mother, Anne-Marie, all over again, letting romance lead her and not practicality. Nothing that Francesca had done had thwarted the girl’s true nature.
Nothing had destroyed the passion in her soul. And, unexpectedly, the realization brought Francesca great relief.
Chapter 22
A
mbrose, third Viscount Charnwood, examined his shaven face in the mirror for evidence of the heavy jowls he had inherited along with his title and affluence. Despite his wife Clarinda’s reassurances that he did not show any sign of the family dewlaps yet, Ambrose noted the slack skin that hung beneath his jaw. Clarinda saw no flaws in either her snorting pack of pug dogs or the two sons she had provided Ambrose and abandoned to their exhausted governess.
Dogs.
Boisterous offspring.
Which of them had made a puddle on the pair of cashmere trousers that Ambrose had discovered under the bed this morning? His eyes watered at the lingering aroma. He feared it had permeated the wallpaper. How could he debut at a club smelling like a chamber pot? Or at least smelling one in his mind. The maids had not mopped it all up. He pressed a scented hankie to his nose.
He heard the boys, ages six and seven, creating an unearthly commotion on the formal terrace in the gardens below his bedchamber. He wandered to the window. Every article his children discovered, be it a twig or a chop knife, became a weapon of some sort. Had he behaved with such uncouth abandon as a child? He preferred to believe not. He had been bullied into walking through wild places.
It was no use trying to forget his childhood. The memories of Monk’s Huntley assaulted Ambrose at the most inconvenient moments. When he cheated at cards with the boys, for instance, he could hear Eldbert reprimanding him. When he was demonstrating to his sons the correct way to hold a sword, he could hear Kit snorting in derision or see him reaching out to position Ambrose’s thumb on the grip.
His face darkened in resentment. The old criticism still stung. What gall. A beggar correcting a Charnwood. An inmate touching Ambrose’s clean gloves when who knew what diseases besides the measles he carried on his person? It might be true that Kit’s influence had given Ambrose some advantage later in life. Ambrose’s fencing master at school had twice remarked that Ambrose showed a flair for the sword.
Which he hadn’t. Kit had taught him a few tricks with the blade, and Ambrose had been quick enough to use them to confound his opponents. In his opinion, however, a sword remained an instrument of slow torture. Take his own children, for example. Scars, bloody knees, a beheaded bust in the foyer. The boys should learn to shoot small animals at the hunt and become proper sportsman. All the noise, the practice, and for what? To score points in a salon? Elegance was outdated.
“Gentlemen still admire the art of swordsmanship,” Eldbert had said when they last met. It was a subtle insult, Ambrose knew. As if Eldbert’s military experience made him an expert on manhood, while Ambrose had dutifully attended his estate affairs.
Yes, yes, yes. Ambrose appreciated those who had fought for England. But how could England continue to conquer the world if the titled few were not respected? Rules were not meant for those who ruled. The aristocracy understood the idiosyncrasies and double standards that others were obliged to obey. One agreed to the proper order of things, or propriety perished.
At times Ambrose was afraid that even his wife, who claimed that royal blood ran weakly in her veins, had defected from her heritage. It was Clarinda who had suggested the house party at their Kent estate instead of in Monk’s Huntley. It was Clarinda who, after he consented to her suggestion, began studying the society papers for hints on how to plan an unforgettable first party. Now his wife had decided on the Marquess of Sedgecroft’s benefit ball as the model to which she and Ambrose must socially aspire.
Clarinda viewed the house party as the beginning of her rise in the upper crust, a foothold for the two heathen children she had brought into the world. Ambrose saw it as a descent into bankruptcy, but there was no doubt that it was a necessary evil. If a lord meant to maintain any appearance at all, he was compelled to entertain.
In the end Ambrose had been forced to assert himself in regard to the planning. “A house party is one thing,” he had informed his wife after meekly submitting to her request to host the event. “But, dearest, we need not outdo the Marquess of Sedgecroft’s lavish ball. An amateur theatrical, a small orchestra for the dance, and one of Eldbert’s treasure hunts will suffice.”
A party could have only one host. A band needed only one leader. To this day Ambrose was unsure whether he had been led astray by Kit or by Violet. It was preferable to think he had fallen under a young criminal’s influence. It was unendurable to think that an English lord had allowed a girl to rule the roost—or that Kit had carved out a name for himself and risen high.