Haunting Violet

by Alyxandra Harvey

  “Marjorie, answer the bloody door.” Mother weaved in the parlor doorway, her hair disheveled, her eyes bleary. Marjorie visibly swallowed before opening the door, clearly reaching the conclusion that the mob was preferable to further agitating my mother. I could hardly blame her. And though I knew Elizabeth must be angry, I was still half-hoping it was the delivery of a letter, sent post-haste and addressed to me.

  It wasn’t.

  Instead, it was Nigel St. Clair, Earl of Thornwood.

  I smiled hopefully. He must have received my letter and he’d come to call, to meet his daughter. He held an impeccably white handkerchief to his aristocratic nose. Egg dripped slowly down the red paint of the door, behind his head.

  “Charming,” he muttered repressively. Nothing else flew through the air though. It was clear he was a gentleman of quality and no one would have dared, enraged mob or not. The bulk of his muscled carriage driver helped.

  “I’m here to see … Mrs. Willoughby, was it? Do let me in before the smell sets into the fabric.” He twitched the sleeve of his pressed coat and sailed passed Marjorie, who didn’t know what to do. She bobbed a hasty curtsy but he didn’t notice. I was sitting on the stairs, trying to decide if there was anything left to salvage in the parlor.

  “Nigel,” Mother half laughed, half slurred.

  “Mary,” he said, exasperated, when she stumbled and he had to steady her with a gloved hand on her elbow.

  She drew herself up proudly. “It’s Celeste.”

  “I see.”

  She smiled like any polite hostess. “Would you care for some sherry?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  “You’re intoxicated.”

  “Fancy.” She snorted. “I’m not intoxicated, I’m drunk.” She was turning to wander back into the shattered parlor in search of her teacup of sherry when I stood up. She caught the movement and turned back, eyes narrowed calculatingly. “Oh, you’ve come about the girl, haven’t you?”

  I felt myself flushing. Lord Thornwood cleared his throat.

  “I suppose I have.” He looked me over carefully and I did the same to him. He was quite tall and rather thin, with those rare violet-blue eyes. His expression was bland, curious and distant all at once.

  “Your name, child?”

  “Violet, sir.”

  “And how old are you?”

  “Sixteen, sir.” I didn’t know what the etiquette was for your first conversation with the father who hadn’t known you existed and didn’t look as if he cared overmuch for the news. So I retreated to thick politeness. I’d wanted him to be pleased to see me. I forced my lower lip not to tremble pathetically. He sighed.

  “There’s little point in denying the family resemblance, is there?”

  “No, sir.”

  He stared at me for another moment. “I hardly know what to think of this.”

  And this was all the man who was my father could think to say to me. He didn’t seem malicious exactly, just indifferent. When I was little, I’d longed to believe my mother’s tales of a wealthy earl. I thought once he found us I would eat cake with pink icing, have my own pony and dolls dressed in French lace. When I got older, I’d assumed my mother made up the story of the titled son from Wiltshire to make herself feel better. I never imagined the man in question would show more interest in the crease in his sleeve than in his own newly discovered daughter.

  “You never mentioned it,” he said to my mother as she smoothed her hair into some semblance of order.

  “Would you have married me then?”

  “Of course not.” He gaped at her. “You were a housemaid. I had a title to safeguard.”

  “Yes, your mother thought so too.”

  “Mother knew?” He blinked, taken aback.

  “Of course.” She laughed but there was no humor in it, only dryness, like wood about to catch fire. “Women always know these things. She offered me a few hundred pounds to take myself off. Kind really. Most wouldn’t have bothered.” She shrugged. “So I came back to London. I’d hardly have made that much blunt polishing your family silverware, would I?”

  “Well, you’ve certainly made a muddle of it, haven’t you?” he remarked, not unkindly.

  “What would you know about it?” she lashed out. “You’ve never been hungry or alone, have you?” In her distress her carefully cultivated town accent crumbled under Cockney vowels.

  “Mary—”

  “I’ve told you, it’s Celeste. Why were you at Rosefield if not to see me?”

  “I was invited. Lord Jasper has long been friendly with my grandfather. I thought it might be amusing.” His mouth quirked, tone dry as matchsticks.

  “Let’s not quarrel, Nigel.” Mother pouted prettily, clearly deciding to take another tack. “The important thing is that you have a daughter. Why don’t you take her home with you, then?”

  He gave a bark of startled laughter. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Why not? She’s as much your responsibility as she is mine. More, I’d say. You’ve never fed her or clothed her, have you? Not a penny.”

  “I have a wife,” he said. “And two boys.”

  So I did have siblings, after all. I wondered what they were like.

  Mother clapped her hands. “Excellent. Violet is wonderful with children. She can take care of them.” I could only stare. I’d barely ever even interacted with children before.

  “Celeste, you can’t expect my wife, a duke’s daughter no less, to accept a bastard into her house. Be reasonable.”

  All the blood drained clear out of me. It didn’t matter that I already knew I was a bastard; it was another thing entirely to hear it spoken by your very own father. And so casually, as if it were nothing.

  “You have to take her.”

  I felt weaker still. Neither of my parents wanted me.

  “I simply can’t. It’s out of the question. I shouldn’t have come at all.” He handed me back the letter I’d written to him. “I’m sorry.”

  “She’s a St. Clair!” Mother chased him as he made his way to the front door. “She’s one of you—you said so yourself.”

  He shook his head again.

  “How am I supposed to feed her?” she screeched as he went down the walkway to his waiting carriage. She watched him until he was down the congested road and out of sight. Then she came back into the gloomy hall and seemed to deflate. When she said it again, her voice was tiny and broken. “How am I supposed to feed you?”

  I sat on the step until the shadows grew longer and longer, until the crowd outside grew bored and went off to find their supper. Marjorie came to light the lamps and sweep out the parlor. Her eye was swollen and bruised, as she’d made the mistake of knocking on Mother’s door to ask if she needed anything. Mutely, I helped Marjorie gather all the broken crockery for the dustbin, carted out a splintered chair that required repairing, and rehung one of the drapes. There was a large tea stain that wouldn’t scrub out of the paper, nor would it blend sufficiently into the pattern. We covered it with a seascape painting from the hallway. The drawing room looked sparse now, empty.

  I didn’t weep until I was alone in my room, with a single candle and the distant sound of hooves from the street under the narrow window. And once I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop, even when my eyes ached and were as pink as hollyhock petals. I hardly knew what to do with myself. When I went to bed, I used the cold water on the washstand to clean my face. Looking up, the reflection in the glass was not my own—instead it had blond hair, white lilies, and dark bruises.

  “Rowena,” I murmured. She faded as quickly as she’d appeared, and I was left looking only at myself. “Wait, come back!”

  But no matter how I begged, she wouldn’t come back. Another ghost did though, but it was an old man who didn’t look my way. He shuffled his feet, walking through the wall.

  The thought that he could wander through my room when I was asleep—or worse, dressing—had me scatt
ering salt over the spot where he’d been.

  I finally went to bed and lay in the dark, unable to sleep, and turned the events of the week over and over again in my head, as if they were good, rich soil that might sprout an answer or two.

  Needless to say, nothing grew.

  Caroline had lit the lamp at the séance with deliberate intent. I was hardly a threat to her charge, but it was clear she didn’t like me poking around and asking questions about Rowena. Were we looking for a murderess and not a murderer? Or perhaps she was protecting Peter? And what could have induced either of them to such an action? How on earth was I supposed to prove their guilt and vindicate Rowena’s restless spirit?

  I groaned and punched at my pillow. There were too many questions circling in my head, none of them willing to let me rest. Why had Rowena chosen me of all people? Lord Jasper knew other mediums, surely, and she might have showed herself to anyone one of them.

  Poor Rowena.

  Because if I was her only hope, she was doomed.

  It was past midnight when I gave up trying to sleep. I’d been lying there for hours, listening to carriages rolling down the street and making myself mad with the attempt to alternately forget about Rowena and figure out what had happened to her. Neither was terribly successful.

  I did, however, recall something Elizabeth had said about the funeral.

  Determined to do something, even if it was foolhardy and futile, I put on my most serviceable dress and hurried up the stairs to Colin’s room in the attic. I knocked and waited impatiently. I knocked again.

  “What’s the bloody idea?” He swung open the door, grumbling. “Violet?” He was suddenly alert. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” He wore trousers and nothing else. I tried very hard not to stare at his bare chest. The room behind him was tidy and sparse. I hadn’t been up here since we’d stopped slipping spiders into each other’s pillowcases.

  “I’m sneaking out,” I announced in hushed tones.

  He didn’t waste a moment. “Let me get dressed.” He didn’t say anything else, just turned away to fetch his shirt.

  It was then that I knew. Really knew.

  No matter what happened, I couldn’t marry Xavier. I couldn’t marry a perfectly nice boy who thought I was a perfectly nice girl because he didn’t know me at all. I felt certain that Xavier would have entreated me to go back to sleep, but Colin offered to help me straightaway, without question. And though Xavier was handsome and well-to-do, he had one major flaw.

  He wasn’t Colin.

  “What is it?” he asked, shutting the door behind him and frowning at me.

  I was embarrassed to discover my eyes were watering. “Nothing. Are you ready?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “For what exactly?”

  “A stroll through a graveyard?”

  “You want to frolic in a graveyard?” He tilted his head, suddenly understanding. “The one where Rowena is buried, by any chance?”

  I nodded, biting my lip. “Highgate Cemetery. Do you think we can find her grave?”

  “Aye, I reckon we can.”

  We took the back stairs and the servants’ door as quietly as we could. We paused in the relative seclusion of a ragged lilac tree. There was a definite smell of rotting vegetables emanating from the vicinity of the front stoop.

  “At least the mob’s gone home for the night,” Colin said under his breath.

  “But they’ll be back, won’t they?”

  He nodded, not looking at me. “We’ll worry about that tomorrow.”

  “I have coin enough for a hack to get us there but we might have to walk back.” I showed him the pouch tied to my waist before pulling my hood up over my hair to hide my features.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “It’s the last of the money Lord Jasper gave me. I haven’t had a chance to get to the bookshop.”

  He whistled through his teeth. “Are you sure about this?”

  “No.” I smiled but there was no humor in it.

  Colin waved a hackney down and we climbed in the back. It smelled of stale sweat and spilled gin. The floor was sticky.

  “Not exactly the Jasper family coach, is it?” Colin remarked, pulling the window open.

  The nearer we got to the fashionable section of town, the more carriages clogged the roads with gilded family crests and armed drivers. Gentlemen helped ladies in silk gowns to the sidewalk and gaslights blazed in parlor windows. I’d thought Rosefield was gracious and beautiful, but Mayfair glittered with diamonds. There were butlers in starched collars and mansions so immense and lovely, they hardly seemed real. Hyde Park was a green shadow curled protectively around decadent ballrooms and men’s clubs. We jostled in the back of the hack for a long time, breathing the smell of horses and coal fog. It was blurring the lights and suddenly we might have been entirely alone in the world. My breath sounded loud in my ears as the carriage halted and the driver called down to us.

  “Here you be, lad. Highgate.” As I stepped out onto the sidewalk, Colin handed the requisite coins to the driver. He tipped his hat, slipping the money into his jacket pocket. “Mind the spirits,” he chortled, nudging the horses into a walk.

  “I assume the Wentworth family has a mausoleum on the west side,” I murmured. Highgate Cemetery was split by Swain’s Lane, bisecting it into two portions.

  “They are rather fashionable,” he agreed.

  The front gate loomed out of the mists, black iron bordered and overhung with a huge Egyptian-style arch the color of sand in the wavering glow of gas lights. Colin led us past it, not even pausing.

  “Are you ready?” Colin whispered. “We’ll have to climb the fence. The fog should keep us hidden and we can use this tree for leverage.”

  “Why can’t we go through the main gates?” I asked, knotting up my cloak so it wouldn’t catch me up.

  “They’ll have guards, against the Resurrection Men,” he reminded me, testing a portion of the fence to make sure it would hold our weight. The Resurrection Men were notorious for digging up graves and selling the body parts to doctors and hospitals for study and practice. It made me think of the first time I’d read Frankenstein. I’d hidden under my covers the entire night and hadn’t gotten a single wink of sleep. I wondered briefly if the Resurrection Men were haunted by the spirits of desecrated bodies howling for revenge.

  “You’re not going to go missish on me, are you?” Colin asked, waiting with his hands clasped together to give me a boost. I scowled, my spine straightening.

  “Of course not.” I placed the heel of my boot in the cup of his hands and let him push me up until I could grasp the top of the fence. I hauled myself over as if I were mounting a horse. Which I’d never actually done before.

  Needless to say, it was hardly a graceful affair.

  I landed with a grunt. Colin vaulted over, landing in a crouch without a single hesitation. It was clear this was not the first fence he’d ever climbed over. I made a mental note to question him about it later. We crept down a walkway hung with ivy, the center of my head feeling like it was being pierced with hot needles. I rubbed it, wincing.

  The sound of carriage wheels and horses was faint, seeming more distant than they actually were. Drops of water clung to the wool of my dress and my cloak, the hem dragging in the grass. We were in a soft cocoon. It might have been romantic.

  If it wasn’t for all the dead bodies.

  And the faint scratch of a footstep.

  I froze. “Did you hear that?”

  Colin tensed as well, listening. After a moment he shook his head. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Probably my imagination,” I said. My brow throbbed. Shapes seemed to coalesce, flitting through the fog. No one was particularly distinct, an eye there, a hand, the shape of a waist in a misty corset. The spirits were making themselves known, but the mist made it hard to see them clearly. That made it worse somehow. “It’s crowded in here,” I said tightly.

  “Will you be all right?�
�� Colin shot me a look of concern.

  I nodded grimly. “Yes, let’s just find Rowena. The sooner we can do that, the sooner we can get out of here.”

  Mausoleums sat like ornate boxes and stone angels wept all around us. The stones were hard to read in the thickening fog. It would have been much easier with a lantern, but we could hardly stay hidden that way. I had to trace some of the letters with my fingertips. The names were unfamiliar. We pressed on, following the avenue to the famed Circle of Lebanon, in the center of which stood a massive cedar tree several hundred years old. In the moist, warm darkness, I could smell the green tingle of it hanging in the fog. The stone circle was pockmarked with doors and yet more names etched into the stone.

  “Here’s a Wentworth,” Colin called quietly. I hurried over to him. It wasn’t Rowena but we were at least among her family. She couldn’t be far. We checked the other names, squinting in the dark. I was starting to feel decidedly light-headed. I swayed lightly, grabbing the wall for support. There were too many spirits vying for attention, hovering on the edge of my vision. The pressure on my head was making me feel ill. The mouth of the doorway opened beside me.

  I was going to have to go in. I hovered in the doorway, a breath of cold damp air swirling around me. Colin came up behind me.

  “I should have brought a candle,” I said nervously.

  “I’ve matchsticks,” he answered quietly, striking one against the stone. The flame was small and feeble but infinitely better than no light at all. And in the little house of death, no one would see it burning. I took a step forward, and another. Colin was a comforting presence at my side, the light flickering madly over his face. It was cool, the ground littered with old leaves. I was glad for the warmth of my cloak.

  Rowena Wentworth.

  There was her name, engraved in fancy scrollwork, and the dates 1857–1871.

  The flame ate at the thin matchstick and it guttered out. Colin swore under his breath and lit another match.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “It’s all right,” I replied, even though my heart had just performed a full pirouette in my chest. I took a handful of salt from my pocket and sprinkled it at our feet.