by Nichole Van
Her father’s expression became stonier and stonier as she spoke. Dimly, she noted the stray wisps of gray around his ears, the deep lines of his forehead. Signs of age that tugged at her.
“I hardly need to remind you, young lady, to cease employing such a tone with me.” Granted, there was nothing elderly about his voice.
Violet clenched her teeth so hard, she quite feared she heard something crack. “Not five minutes past, you yourself rightly pointed out the importance of having a chaperone at all times. I am concerned for my sisters’ reputations—as I am sure you can imagine, based on past situations—particularly as Aster continually displays more enthusiasm than sense. Heavens, sir, Aster is my heir—”
“The girls need to be married, Violet, not off gallivanting around the countryside.”
Ah, yes. That other sore spot in the family—the fact that Mr. Kerr had three unmarried daughters.
“Father, I must take issue with your characterization of a trip to the haberdasher as gallivanting around the countryside. Besides, you literally just said you wished them to marry. Presenting themselves favorably at a dinner party will surely assist in that, making the visit to the haberdasher essential.”
Mr. Kerr’s nostrils flared, but as he could find no fault with her words—or perhaps not trusting himself to reply without shouting (truthfully, the dice could land either way)—he merely nodded his head in one brief jerk, pivoted, and left the room. The harsh clack of the door resounded with his annoyance.
Violet swallowed and shot the two men still seated before her a smile that the mirror informed her was more maniacal than calm.
“Where were we, Mr. Lawyerly?”
“Lord Graham.” Her solicitor cleared his throat. “His lordship has hinted that he might be interested in leasing the southern tack himself.”
That furrowed Violet’s forehead. “Why would Lord Graham wish to lease a tack, particularly such a large one? He has his own lands to manage.”
Mr. Lawyerly glanced at his papers, studiously avoiding Violet’s gaze. “I believe his lordship sees it as a stepping stone closer to yourself, my lady. Perhaps a way to further intertwine his life with yours.”
Ah.
Reginald Graham, Lord Graham. The wealthy, English nobleman who had purchased an estate near Kilmeny Hall about five years ago. Her late mother had been vocal in her wishes for Violet to marry Lord Graham.
“If you are of a mind to consider a suit from Lord Graham, that would likely affect our current decisions.” Mr. Lawyerly continued, shuffling some papers.
Violet nodded, resisting the urge to bite her lip and fidget.
This was the problem with decisions. They were never done and dusted. They had consequences that lingered . . . like shame and guilt and regret.
What did she, Violet Kerr, wish?
She wished her mother were still alive.
She wished Dahlia had not made the decisions she had.
She wished her father were an ally rather than an adversary.
She wished she did not have to shoulder the weight of the earldom and its thousands of dependent lives at such a young age.
She wished that her smallest decisions did not have such far-reaching effects—
Angry, bickering voices sounded from the hallway outside.
“I did not!” Rose screeched.
“You most certainly did!” Aster returned.
Violet sighed. She wished that her younger sisters would magically become paragons of decorum and propriety.
The door flung open. Two young women burst into the room. One tall and curved, like Violet. The other of average height and dainty, like their mother.
Violet liked to think of her sisters as identical twins inside, not out. Being nearly seven years Violet’s junior, the girls had received haphazard attention. The years preceding their mother’s death, they had been virtually ignored, as Dahlia and her problems had greatly distracted their parents. Since their mother’s death, the twins had been coddled, empathy for their grief outweighing discipline.
The result was a pair of independent, out-spoken young ladies.
Mr. Lawyerly and Mr. Shambles shot to their feet.
“Violet! Aster stole Darcy again!” Lady Rose, the taller of the two, pointed a shaking finger at her sister.
Lady Aster tossed her dark curls. “I most certainly did not. You got Darcy yesterday. You may have Bingley or Willoughby today. Heavens, you may have the whole lot for all I care. But Darcy is mine!”
“Girls!” Violet tried to get through to them without shouting . . . with absolutely no success.
“Willoughby?!” Rose gave a pretend shudder. “Why should any lady want Willoughby as a suitor, even a pretend one?! The man is a cruel scoundrel!”
Aster paused, frowning. “Willoughby is not your preferred book beau?”
“Of course not. The man is an utter scapegrace. I think you are confusing him with Captain Wentworth.”
“How could one possibly confuse Willoughby with Wentworth?” Aster frowned deeper. “The letter ‘W’ is the only similarity between the two—”
“Girls!” Violet tried again, slapping a hand against her desktop.
Her sisters jumped at the sound, turning to look at Violet.
“First,” Violet strove to keep her voice calm, “have either of you considered moving beyond Jane Austen to other authors? Perhaps some Ann Radcliffe?”
“Ann Radcliffe?” Rose looked aghast. “Her heroes are such drivel—”
“Hardly drivel,” Aster interrupted, placing a hand on her hip and turning back to Rose. “Do you not remember Hippolitus who climbed the castle wall—”
“Oh! He was quite dashing.”
“Yes, particularly when he cuts the heroine free—”
“Enough,” Violet said. “As much as I adore arbitrating who gets which book beau, I am afraid I have other matters to attend to today.”
She looked pointedly at the solicitor and steward who followed their banter like a game of lawn tennis, eyes bouncing to and fro.
“We are terribly sorry to have interrupted.” Aster dropped her gaze, shooting the men a demure look, no matter that they were both married and twice her age. “Father is refusing to escort us into town.”
Violet closed her eyes.
She loved her sisters, she did. Just as she loved her father. But their strong personalities often led to conflict. Though Violet supposed Dahlia had been cut from the same cloth.
Only their mother had been able to hold them all together, her silken threads of love and words creating a net of security around them all . . . a net Violet had not fully appreciated until it was forever severed.
“Where is my bouquet of beauties?!” A loud voice boomed from the hallway.
Violet nearly sighed with relief.
Sir Joshua Kerr, their father’s youngest brother, strode into the study.
At last! The only other sane member of the family.
Uncle Joshua made an exaggerated study of the room with his quizzing glass before startling when seeing Aster and Rose before him.
“Hah! Here they are!” he exclaimed. “My beloved bouquet, as beautiful as ever!”
Violet couldn’t help but smile. Their mother had named her girls after flowers—as they are a garden of beauty to me, she had often said—and so Uncle Joshua always referred to them as his bouquet.
Violet often thought of Sir Joshua as the father she wished she had. Joshua was nearly his brother’s opposite in every way.
Where David was stern and religious, Joshua was unfettered by the concerns of society.
Where David was vain and self-righteous, Joshua was self-deprecating and full of joie de vivre.
Uncle Joshua had come to live with them after her mother’s death, moving his artist’s studio from London. He had stayed because he insisted that the ‘light in the white guest room made for the finest paintings in Britain.’
Violet privately believed he remained to look after her and her sisters.
Regardless, she was forever grateful for Uncle Joshua’s calming presence, particularly on days like this one.
“Uncle,” Violet smiled and came around the desk, pressing a warm kiss to his cheek. “I am so glad that you have ventured out of your studio. Aster and Rose were just expressing a wish to visit the village.”
“Ho, ho!” Sir Joshua wagged his eyebrows at Aster. “You wish to go dashing after the haberdasher, is that it?”
Aster flushed bright red.
Not a good sign.
No slow top, Uncle Joshua winked at Violet before extending his elbows to his two nieces.
“I shall be delighted to escort you both, but be warned, there will be excessive teasing. We shall leave Violet to her . . . business.” Sir Joshua nodded agreeably to the other two men in the room before whispering loudly to Violet’s sisters. “I understand they are discussing Lord G today.”
The mischievous look her uncle shot her said Violet would be included in said teasing. She closed her eyes, biting her tongue in a bid to stay silent.
“Lord G? Is that true, Violet?” Aster swiveled to look at her.
Everyone in the room knew how much Violet detested hearing Lord Graham referred to as Lord G.
So, naturally, her sisters and uncle called him nothing else. It was beyond maddening.
“Lord Graham is a minor player in our conversations,” Violet said. “Now, Uncle, please escort my sisters into town before I lose my patience altogether and decide to remove the ribbon stipend from their pin money.”
Hah!
It appeared Violet could make a decision when driven to the end of her tether.
Sir Joshua shot her another wink as he led the girls out of the room.
Violet gratefully sank back into hammering out solutions to various problems with her solicitor and her steward.
She hoped her immediate troubles had been tamped down.
A hope she was allowed to keep . . .
. . . for approximately two hours.
3
There is a . . . man at the door, my lady.”
Violet looked up from her current problem—should they plant oats or potatoes in the west field?—to see her butler, Irvine, standing in the doorway to her study.
Her steward and solicitor had departed an hour ago. Of course, no significant decisions had been made. She had asked for more time to ponder her options.
Debating what to do about the Manna Loan felt insurmountable. The consequences of the decision were so far-reaching. How could she account for them all? Sell the tack and potentially endanger their future finances? Or sell the London townhouse and, with it, the thousands of happy memories of her mother and Dahlia?
So, Violet had descended to lesser matters. In other words . . . oats or potatoes? That decision was possibly . . . surmountable.
“Pardon?” she asked Irvine.
“There is a . . . man at the door, my lady.” The slight hesitation in Irvine’s voice was the only sign of his agitation.
Violet set down her pen.
“I . . . see,” she said, though her tone implied that she did not, in fact, see.
Why would Irvine bring this to her attention? As a butler, it was his duty to scrutinize all visitors and deal with them accordingly.
Violet supposed he was to be forgiven as Irvine was new to the position of butler—he had been promoted from head footman only six months prior—and had yet to acquire the unflappable aplomb and discernment of a more seasoned veteran.
Her stare must have been more menacing than bewildered as Irvine wilted under it. He cleared his throat. The sound echoed in the room, causing the house maid, still mending garments in the corner, to jump.
“He is a rather large man, my lady.” Irvine lifted his hands upward and then apart, tracing the shape of a giant in the air.
Violet continued to stare, again unsure what to do with this information.
Irvine swallowed. “He wishes to speak with Sir Joshua. He says he has been summoned to ‘work’ with him on an art project.”
“Is he to be a model for my uncle then?” Uncle Joshua often hired local laborers to pose as muscled figures for his paintings.
Not that Violet would ever admit to peeking, but the men were, indeed, . . . muscular.
Aster and Rose weren’t the only Kerr women who appreciated a well-formed man. Violet was simply better at hiding her fascination.
“I believe so, my lady. But Sir Joshua is still in the village with Lady Rose and Lady Aster. I told the man to return tomorrow morning when Sir Joshua will be in his studio, but the man insists that lodging was part of the contract. He wishes to wait for Sir Joshua to return. Normally, I would have a pair of footmen escort the man from the premises for such cheek, but he is a bit too large for threats of physical violence to be effective.”
Ah. “I see,” she repeated yet again, this time actually meaning the words. At last! A decision that she could make. “Please show the man in. Perhaps authority and reason will work where brute strength will not.”
She stared Irvine down for a moment, hopefully giving him another stern, authoritarian look.
It must have been effective because Irvine’s shoulders sagged as he bowed and left.
Hah! She was not entirely ineffectual.
Of course, her uncle would hire a giant to model for him. Uncle Joshua was desperate to finish his magnum opus, a work he described as ‘the Battle of Waterloo depicted as an allegory of Alexander the Great and the Battle of Granicus.’
The monumental work would definitely require multiple, beefy models to accurately capture the brawny grandeur of Alexander’s Greek army.
Her uncle intended to submit the painting to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. The Exhibition was the most prestigious art competition in Britain and could ensure—or, in the case of Uncle Joshua, solidify—an artist’s reputation and career.
A few minutes later, Irvine walked back through her study door.
“Mr. Campbell to see you, Lady Kildrum,” he bowed.
Violet rose to her feet, expecting to see a rough laborer stroll in on Irvine’s heels.
Instead, a well-dressed gentleman stepped into the room. He was not kitted out in the first-stare of fashion, but the cut of his dark-green swallowtail coat and the brass buttons on his silk waistcoat exuded the skill of a fine tailor from a larger city such as Edinburgh.
She was going to have to speak with Irvine about classifying their callers more clearly. This man was decidedly not a day laborer.
Though Irvine had not exaggerated his size.
Violet was not a small woman, a fact that others brought up, over and over. An Amazon, as Lord Michael had described her years ago. She was used to being the tallest woman, often even the tallest person, in a room. Her height would have been more tolerable had she been svelte. But even there she was thwarted. Instead of inheriting her mother’s more boyish physique, Violet had a woman’s curves.
But she felt positively dainty beside this man. She had to look up, up, up to meet his eyes.
More to the point, Violet recognized him immediately.
The shock of red hair, the sharp lines of his face, the intensity of his gaze.
The sheer presence of his formidable body.
Memories assailed her.
The blood streaming down his bare chest . . .
The loud thwack of fist on flesh . . .
The humiliation of Lord Michael’s dismissal in his hearing . . .
The gentleness of the man’s final words to her:
Ye have a heart of great courage.
Red.
Red was in her study.
He was every whit as potent as her memory painted him.
“Thank you, Irvine,” she managed to murmur. “That will be all.”
The butler could have left the room trumpeting like an elephant for all Ewan knew.
His attention was consumed by the woman standing behind the desk.
Her.
Even nearly eight y
ears on, he recalled the timbre of her husky voice and the striking color of her eyes.
Vividly the interior of that carriage rose in his mind’s eye. Her face moving in and out of shadow, those incredible, eggshell-blue eyes—not quite true green, not quite true blue—catching the dim light over and over.
The color had come to represent compassion in his paintings—a bowl holding much-needed bread, the dress on a child’s doll, the stone in a mother’s earring. A symbol of her kindness.
Ewan had never told anyone about the lady in the carriage. Not even Alex.
How could he capture the quiet touch of her on his life? The warmth of her humanity had countered his icy despair, giving him the strength to rise out of the ashes of Mhairi’s betrayal.
He had genuinely never thought to see her again, particularly not here, in northern Scotland. They were worlds away from that cold field in England.
Lady Violet, they had called her then, meaning she was the daughter of an earl or a duke.
But now . . . she was Lady Kildrum, as the butler had said.
In the end, had she married that lord who had said such cruel things? Ewan desperately hoped she had not. The Lady Violet who had showed such care to a stranger deserved better than that.
Belatedly, Ewan remembered the gentlemanly manners hammered into him through years of association with Andrew and Rafe.
“Lady Kildrum.” He bowed, precise and deep.
“Mr. Campbell.” She nodded her head in greeting. No curtsy. But then a lady would never curtsy to a painter’s assistant.
They were not equals, not by any measure.
“Will you please be seated?” Lady Kildrum motioned to a leather chair in front of her desk.
Ewan nodded, darting a glance at the maid sewing in the corner. Her eyes flicked up and down his body, gaze flaring wide. He offered her a wan smile before turning to the chair.
He sat. The armchair heaved a sigh of protest. Ewan could not blame the poor thing. He was quite sure he looked ridiculous seated thus, like a normal-sized man sitting in a nursery chair, knees tucking toward his chest. Thank goodness he was wearing trews today and not his habitual great kilt.