Violet shuddered at the memory; at the flint in her grandmother’s eye as if she blamed Violet and Emily for being alive when her son was not.
“How long ago was this?”
“Five, nearly six years ago. I was fifteen.”
“Was your grandmother kind to you?”
“She fed and clothed us. She paid for decent clothes, fashionable enough not to invite censure upon her for being a poor guardian.”
“But…you ran away? That’s why you do what you do? Or is she dead? Did she leave you nothing?”
Clearly, it was a leap too far for him. And, of course Violet couldn’t expect him to know without being told. She’d come this far; she couldn’t retreat.
But this was the part she didn’t think she could put into words. Her parents’ deaths had been beyond her control.
This had everything to do with her own youthful lack of control. She didn’t know if she were ready to admit to her own failings and deficiencies to such an extent.
“I hesitate to tell you yet I daresay you can’t think worse of me than you do.” She sighed, speaking over his predictable protest. “When I was eighteen, we had guests. We lived in a large house in the village of Ruislip and two distant relatives came to stay. The gentleman was charming. At least, he was charmed by me, and I, who’d had no experience of the ways of men who want something from a woman was naïve enough to believe he found me attractive. I believed I was in love with him and that he’d take me away from my hateful grandmother. I dreamt of a life where I could be free. I imagined how we would take Emily with us and live our lives for one another. Without always feeling grandmother’s dripping disdain for the daughters of the woman who’d lured her son away and been responsible for his death.”
“But he didn’t ask you to marry him?”
“He was in no position to though I didn’t know it at the time.”
She felt the tension in Max’s grip. “He was married.” He didn’t have to make it a question.
“And I was despoiled. As it turned out, his wife was a dear friend of my grandmother’s, and she painted me the seductress, though truth be told I’d never even smiled at a man before I met Ralph. Well, grandmother seized the opportunity to send me away to earn my own living.”
“She cast you out? With nothing? Her own granddaughter had to fend for herself on the streets?”
“She paid me a small allowance which supplemented my earnings from a position in a drapery. A respectable enough job, I suppose, as long as she didn’t have to be troubled by me anymore. But it was the least she could do. As you pointed out, I was her granddaughter.”
He didn’t ask her the leading question, but it was implicit. And by her tone, he knew there was more coming, so he waited. Working in a drapery was very different from working at Madame Chambon’s.
Violet sighed and looked down at her lap. “You will think badly of me when I tell you the next part of my sorry tale.”
Chapter 9
Max blinked and wished he hadn’t. Whatever else she misread in his expression indicated that he already thought the worst of her. And he certainly didn’t.
“Yet, Max, it gets worse. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t already sealed my fate. As if I hadn’t already cast myself into the ranks of the impure. The fallen. I just hoped no one would discover my shame.”
“I don’t think you need to be so harsh on yourself. You were very young.” Max stroked her heavy dark hair. It was soft and smooth and carefully coiled in the fashion of the day. Violet was an exquisite-looking woman. She’d have enjoyed a great deal of male interest, surely. Yet she’d had no guiding influence. Nor had Max, but he was a man. Mabel had reminded him of this often enough, teasing him about the way he muddled through life oblivious of the niceties sometimes, and that she wasn’t sure she wanted to devote her life to teasing out his potential. She’d said it playfully during the past couple of years of their betrothal. Lord, they’d been on the verge of getting married so many times, but an untimely death or something else had always pushed back the date.
He stroked Violet’s cheek. She was the one who needed guidance, and he didn’t want to think about Mabel. “Obviously, you’d been taken advantage of by your grandmother’s acquaintance. Your grandmother would hardly have spoken of it. I’m sure you needn’t have worried.”
Violet sent him a wry look. She continued, “It was heavy work and long hours. I didn’t enjoy it. But there was one bright spot.” She sighed but didn’t smile. “A gentleman who seemed kind used to stop by the shop, first to buy ribbons for his nieces and then, after a while, he paid me compliments. When I’d known him for several weeks, he crossed my path on my way home and, as we were both heading into the same tearooms, he bought me tea and buns.”
She squeezed her hands together and sent Max an imploring look. “You must understand how lonely I was. Apart from my weekly letter from Emily, I had nothing to look forward to. No other family and no friends, for Grandmother had discouraged friendships since we’d returned from India. Besides, I’d grown up in India, not England. I’d not gone to school here. Grandmother kept us isolated. I had no one.”
“I understand, Violet. I shan’t judge you harshly.” He suspected he knew where her story was going and wished he didn’t.
“One evening, when I’d known Cedric about two months, he invited me to the theatre. He bought me supper afterwards, and we had wine. He told me he loved me and kissed me. I thought I loved him too. It wasn’t too hard to persuade me, when he was walking me back to my boarding house, to stop by his own lodgings. I hadn’t had anyone tell me I meant anything to them in so long.”
She stiffened in his arms as she brought the back of her hand across her face. Max held her tighter. “I went with him to his bedroom. He hadn’t made me drunk. I went of my own free will. I wanted human contact. I wanted to feel loved.”
Her eyes were large and imploring. As if she really did want Max’s exoneration. “Afterwards, as I lay in his arms, feeling happiness like a glow throughout my body, he said, “My sister told me you were a whore. And now I’ve proved it.”
Max gasped. He’d not expected this. Unsure what to say, he held her as she stared over his shoulder and recounted her tale in a soft, unemotional voice.
“I cried as I put on my clothes and didn’t stop as I ran all the way home, alone, in the dark. Two days later, my grandmother wrote to say she was cutting off my allowance. She’d heard about my loose character from too many quarters, and it was clear I could survive well enough selling the commodity that only the virtuous quarantined for marriage. Those were her very words. I’ll never forget them.”
Max studied her pale, drawn, beautiful face. She was honest and she’d been badly used. He didn’t know what to say, but he had to offer what comfort he could. “Then you were forced into this work. You had no choice.” He wanted to exonerate her, but she wouldn’t have it.
“I had a choice. I could have worked my fingers to the bone and perhaps, with time, I’d have managed to win the affections of a man who’d have me as an honest woman.” She grimaced. “Lord knows, it’s not possible to survive on the wage of a draper’s assistant without learning the necessary economies that must support such a position. And even then, an unforeseen need for a doctor or pharmacist often meant there was not enough left of my wage to both put food on the table for the week and keep a roof over my head. What little I knew about money was that there was never enough of it. I was always late with the rent and constantly threatened with eviction. But you’re wrong. I did have a choice. And I chose to present myself on Madame Chambon’s doorstep the very next day because I’d heard her name spoken with the utmost contempt because she traded in Cyprians. Lightskirts. Barques of Frailty. Prostitutes. And that’s what Cedric had said I was. Not only had he said it, but he’d proved it. I knew it in my heart, and now my grandmother knew it. I can’t change my past. I am destined for hell and damnation; however, I still have some years on Earth which I would like to spend as pleasant
ly as possible. I have no intention of going to a nunnery to repent or throwing myself into thankless hard labour just to keep from starving. Women don’t earn enough to keep themselves, and I’ll not sell my body on a street corner for a few shillings just to keep ahead of the creditors. Lord Bainbridge is going to set me up. The arrangements have almost been finalised. Two weeks from now, after I have fulfilled my obligations to you, I shall leave Madame Chambon’s to become Lord Bainbridge’s mistress.”
Max felt unaccountably discomposed. There was such bleakness in her tone. Her judgement of herself was so harsh and cold.
“Surely you could go back home? Your grandmother could not be so unfeeling as to refuse to take you in. And there’s your sister. You need to think of her.”
“My sister is dead.”
She said it so flatly, yet the pain that flashed across her face was greater than that which she’d shown when recounting her own miserable situation.
He wasn’t sure what to say.
“Emily died of typhoid last year. She’s buried in the village of Ruislip which is where my grandmother lives and where I have no intention of ever returning. So, you see, I have no one to be good for.” She smiled and touched his face. “And I am certainly not here to be good, Max.” She rose, her delicate, long-fingered hands hovering at the buttons at her throat. “Please Max, I know you invited me here to prove you have scruples. But you didn’t have to prove that for I already knew it, just as I know that in less than a week, there will be nothing more between us.”
Max closed his eyes and tried to subdue the violent impulses that were warring within his breast and, quite as uncontrollably, in his groin. His whole being ached for this woman. For her touch, light and delicate upon his bare skin, that never failed to whip him into the most exquisite delight, a precursor to a myriad of intense sensations and ultimately devastating satisfaction that was the inevitable culmination.
She wanted this. It wasn’t an act. He wasn’t paying her extra. This was no additional bargain. It was simply a coming together through want and need.
And he needed it as much as she did. For she satisfied his need for closeness with a woman like no woman ever had. Being in her arms made him feel a sense of freedom and fulfilment he’d not felt before.
Chapter 10
Noon was far too early for Max to present himself to anyone. Certainly after the excesses of the night before. So, to discover that not only his grandfather, but his grandfather’s old friend and neighbour, Lord Camberwell were awaiting him in his drawing room was a shock of the highest order.
Hesitating before the door, he wondered if he should make an ignominious exit through the scullery. Perhaps he could pay Violet a call.
Immediately he realised Violet was not available to him for such spontaneous visits. He’d have to gird his loins and face what he must without her.
Feeling unaccountably forlorn at the thought, he turned the doorknob and opened the door, pushing back his shoulders to face the occupants of the light and elegant, high-ceilinged room, who were currently engaged in drinking tea but who would soon focus their frighteningly incisive scrutiny upon himself.
“Hello Mabel,” he said with commendable lack of irony as he stepped forward to greet his errant would-be-bride. “This is a surprise.”
She nodded her neatly coiffured head and fixed him with her intense green eyes, the most surprising feature in her pleasant, serene face, though there was nothing he could see that was precisely wrong with her mouth, which was turning up at the corners. Except that it completely failed to move him as did the full, soft, rosebud lips that belonged to Violet Lilywhite.
And as an image flashed through his mind of the violent sensations Miss Violet Lilywhite had evoked upon him during the three notable occasions this past fortnight that had changed his life, he reflected that he’d never actually kissed Mabel’s lips.
Nor had he ever wanted to.
“Not an unpleasant one, I hope.”
To his surprise, she rose and went towards him, stopping in the middle of the floor as she looked between Lord Granville and Max. “I think we need to talk, Max.” She smiled an apology at Aunt Euphemia who, Max noted, looked as if she didn’t know what to say, and his grandfather who reclined in his wingback chair looking like a kingmaker as he smiled upon the pair.
“Yes, Max. You and Mabel should enjoy the sunshine on this beautiful morning. Mabel has something to say to you.” He patted his checked waistcoat, his iron-gray moustache twitching, signalling the smile he was trying to suppress.
And Max felt the dread seep up from the soles of his shoes as he added, “I think it will make you very happy.”
It was afternoon by the time Violet opened her eyes and focused on the flock wallpaper of her small room.
The smell of burnt toast wafted through the cracks in the floorboards, and the chatter of girls and servants going about their business in the passage outside her room was mildly disturbing when all she wanted was silence.
She closed her eyes and hugged herself, imagining she was in Max’s embrace and the pressure around her ribcage and breasts came from his strong arms.
Last night, she’d experienced every emotion to be had. There’d been the shame of confession; the brazenness of putting into words the baseness of what she wanted.
And then the sweet joy of fulfillment.
Max had been passionate. He’d been tender, and he’d been loving.
She’d felt loved, and that was what Violet had wanted. She’d not known if it was possible for her heart and soul to soak up another’s emotion and to actually feel loved. She wouldn’t question too hard whether that was manufactured on her part because it didn’t matter. She didn’t have to question whether Max would be around beyond next week, because she knew he wouldn’t.
But he’d made her feel loved and cherished and desired last night, and that was all she’d required.
In a little over a week, Lord Bainbridge would move in to fulfil his role, and Violet would continue to have a roof over her head and good food to eat.
And really, wasn’t that what life was all about?
Existing with the minimum amount of pain.
She rose and dressed in a plain, no-longer-fashionable striped day dress then went downstairs. Several of the girls, their hair unkempt, their eyes lacklustre with weariness, were sewing at the refectory table in the scullery. The modish gowns provided for the evenings were always carefully fitted and chosen, but a girl had to remodel her daywear from the secondhand offerings Madame kept in a wardrobe in the box room.
“That’s a nice dress, Charity,” she said, pouring herself tea from the teapot on the sideboard. “Did your young man buy it for you?”
Of all the girls at Madame Chambon’s, Violet thought Charity the sweetest. The other girls obviously thought the same, for none of them regarded her with envy even though she was clearly the most fortunate of them all.
Violet could not imagine how wonderful it would be to have the loyalty of a man who was simply waiting until he was in a position to make her his own.
“Hugo has to go away.”
As Violet seated herself at the table, a little distance away, she saw the girl’s eyes were red-rimmed. “Going away?” Charity surely didn’t mean for more than a few weeks. Charity and Hugo were simply biding their time until the young man came into his inheritance. “He’ll be back,” she said comfortingly, thinking of Max who really was going away forever. Or as close to that as made no difference. Her heart squeezed with pain.
“His father is sending him away to run his tea plantation in some faraway place across the sea I don’t even want to think about.” Charity put down her dress and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know that I’ll ever see him again.”
“Good lord!” Violet didn’t know what to say. “I…I’m so sorry.”
Charity managed a wan smile. “I shouldn’t have expected the happy ending. Your young man is leaving in less than a week, too. But you shall be married, and I s
hall be your bridesmaid and that will make me very happy, Violet. I need something to cheer me. Something to look forward to.”
“You know it’s only a sham wedding to please his aunt.” The words stuck in Violet’s throat.
“I know. But you’ll have that memory to cherish for the rest of your life.” Charity rethreaded her needle and picked up her sewing again. “You never thought it was anything else.”
Violet suspected Charity had harboured secret hopes that her fairy tale might have had an unconventional ending. That the baronet’s son might really have wed the girl from the gutter.
She poured more tea, spilling some onto the threadbare tablecloth. She didn’t bother to wipe it away. What was the point? Some stains were indelible. And even if the cloth was laundered, it would only gather more filth. Madame’s concern for appearance was only skin-deep. As long as her girls looked their best for their gentleman admirers when they had their pocket books at the ready, she cared little for the rest.
“I will treasure the memory, Charity. Both Max and his aunt have been so very kind.” She stood up suddenly, her voice choking on the words, and instantly Charity dropped her sewing and went to her. “Violet, I’m so sorry. I was thinking only of myself. Of course, you must have hoped for more. Don’t we all?”
Violet shook her head. “I’ve learnt too much to hope that.” She heaved in a breath, stepping blindly towards the door. She mustn’t think so much of herself. She’d accepted the arrangement. There was no point in wishing for what she’d known could never happen. “Why is Hugo allowing his family to send him away?” she asked, stopping and forcing herself to focus on her friend’s distress rather than her own.
Charity stared at the floor. At the two threadbare hems of the day dresses no gentleman would ever see them wear. Violet thought what a dispirited pair they must look and how no gentleman would find either of them the least bit entrancing in the morning gloom.
Wedding Violet (Fair Cyprians of London Book 4) Page 8