by Erica Ridley
He slumped as if punched in the sternum. Was that it, then? The last chance for hope? It had been nearly a decade. Was it not time to face the truth? Lily would never get better. Alistair swayed, lightheaded. The life they had now was the one they would always have. Just this, nothing more. Forever.
“Master?”
Alistair’s startled gaze snapped from the blurry letter in his hand to the manservant hovering uncertainly at the open door. In his abstracted state, Alistair had apparently neglected to close the door behind him. Not that it mattered. If he was wasting his time searching for a nonexistent miracle—if he had wasted the first nine years of his daughter’s life chasing an impossible dream—then it was far past time to break free from his office once and for all.
Roper’s scarred face filled with concern. “Is everything all right, master?”
“No,” Alistair answered as he rose to his feet. “Nor shall it be, so it is up to me to make of it what I will.”
“Sir?” Confusion lined his manservant’s brow. “Is there aught I could do to help?”
Alistair paused in the act of rounding his desk. Slowly, he pivoted toward the pile of open books and retrieved the thick inquiry he’d penned to his solicitor. Here it was, then. The moment of truth. Sending this missive was tantamount to sending Violet from their lives, but what else could he do?
He handed Roper the letter. “See this gets posted, please.”
“Of course, master. As you wish.”
The corner of Alistair’s mouth sagged despondently. If only he could have what he wished. None of this heartbreak would be necessary.
Chapter 31
Violet arrived in the sanctuary to find her suspiciously cheerful charge had no interest in visiting the makeshift schoolroom this morning.
“No learning today,” Lily announced before Violet had even had a chance to secure the door behind her. “I am not of a mood for maths.”
“No?” Violet returned, careful to keep her expression blank. She, for one, was never of a mood for maths. “And what, pray tell, would Princess Tiger Lily prefer to be doing with her valuable time?”
Lily clapped her hands with glee. “I want to paint the walls.”
Violet frowned. “Paint them... pink?”
“No,” Lily burst out. “I want to put pictures on them. Like in my books, but better. Color pictures. Of real things and not-real things. And I want you to help me.”
“You want to paint... murals?” Violet asked doubtfully.
“I do if that means pictures-on-the-walls.” Lily’s eyes glimmered with mischief. “Ooh, see that? A new word! I’m learning even without maths. This will be positively educational.”
Violet suppressed a smile. “It’s certainly hard to argue with that logic. But I’m afraid I wouldn’t feel comfortable painting a single inch of these walls without consulting your father.”
“First,” Lily interrupted imperiously, “I already asked him, and he said I could paint whatever I want wherever I want. Second, Papa wants me to be happy. Putting pictures on the walls will make me happy. So can we start right now instead of doing maths? Please? I promise to study sums twice as hard tomorrow.”
If Violet had found the original twisted logic too humorous to argue with, she could find no quibble whatsoever with this line of reasoning. A day without maths would hardly impact Lily’s future. And her assessment of her father’s desire to see her happy was inarguable. Whether or not he’d specifically agreed to a sanctuary covered in child-created murals was a bit more suspect, but Violet could see nothing wrong with using some of the window planks as canvases until she could clarify the rest with Alistair. After all, the sanctuary had once boasted floor-to-ceiling stained glass. Why not replace art with art?
“All right,” she agreed slowly, stepping forward to inspect the boards’ surfaces more closely. How the ancient wood would hold paint was anyone’s guess, but it would be as good a project as any. “Let’s start with this board over here. What did you have in mind?”
Lily squealed delightedly, then raced for the paints. “I want the outside world, but I want it all mixed together. I want to paint the garden and the moors and the forest, but I want it to look like daylight and I don’t know how that should look. I want flowers everywhere. Not just the flowers Papa brings, but every single flower from my book. Even though I know they don’t all grow in the same place at once, I like them all and I want to look at them whenever I want. In color! Lots of colors! And then I want to make birds, but I don’t have a book of those yet so I’m not sure what they look like. Oh, and ladybirds, but that’s more like a bug. I want bugs, too. All the animals. And then after that, I want—”
“Slow down, slow down,” Violet interrupted, this time not bothering to hide her laughter. “We can paint anything you wish, but not all in one day. This sort of project will take weeks. Or more. Did you know it took Michelangelo six years and several assistants to paint the Sistine Chapel?”
Wide-eyed, Lily shook her head. “That’s too long. Is he a friend of yours? Why did he paint his sister’s chapel?”
Violet coughed, then decided to skip a longwinded explanation. “We’ll cover that later. The point is, frescoes and murals are hard work. A cohesive whole takes careful planning. You have a wonderful idea and I approve wholeheartedly, but we cannot just start flinging colors at the walls all havey-cavey. Our imaginations provide the inspiration, but our pencils provide the framework.”
Lily stared blankly. “What?”
“I’m saying, first we draw the outlines and then we paint, starting with the background first and then adding more and more detail.”
Lily’s face fell. “No paints today?”
“Not just yet. First we plan. No, don’t look so disappointed—you get to ‘plan’ directly on the walls. Here, take this pencil and begin sketching what you want, where you want it.”
Lily wiggled excitedly. “Right on the boards?”
“Absolutely.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Sit right here and watch. I am here if you need help, but these are your walls, and you are the artist.”
Lily nodded. “I’ll pretend I’m Michael Angelo painting a chapel for my sister.”
“Am I the sister?”
“The assistant.”
“Very well.” Violet settled onto a small hardback chair. Her knees popped up almost high enough to graze the underside of the table. “What a lovely table and chairs. Are they new?”
“It’s a breakfast set. Papa brought it today before we had breakfast together. Would you like to join us tomorrow?”
Violet’s stomach twisted. She wasn’t sure she’d like to join Alistair, well, ever. She hadn’t seen him since he’d accused her of being a whore and she’d thrown him from her bedchamber. She doubted she could keep down so much as a slice of toast whilst seated across from him. Much less make small talk.
“I don’t think so, honey. Perhaps your papa and I can take turns breakfasting with you,” she suggested instead. “There are only two chairs, and it would be horribly impolite to force someone to sit on the floor.”
Lily sketched for a moment in silence. “You’re saying no because of the chairs?”
Violet shifted uncomfortably. “Er... why else would I?”
“I don’t know. This morning Papa was happy until I mentioned your name, and now you’re acting just as queerly as he was. I don’t think it’s the chairs. When all I had was my too-tall table, you and I always sat on the floor for picnics. Why would you care now?”
Excellent point. Violet plucked at her skirt. “Maybe I would like your papa to see us as ladies and not heathens?”
Lily glanced over her shoulder, eyes shining. “You want Papa to see you as a lady?”
“I... ” Violet bit her tongue, wishing she’d launched into a detailed explanation of the Italian Renaissance after all.
“I’m sure he already does. He likes you, you know.”
“Not anymore,” V
iolet said sourly.
“Maybe.” Lily returned to her sketching. “Do you like him?”
Violet slanted her charge a hard look. Where the devil was this line of questioning headed? “I respect your father very much,” she answered carefully.
“Do you like me?” she asked, still sketching.
“I love you, you little imp, even when I fantasize about buttoning your lips together so you stop asking so many questions.”
Lily giggled. “Would you say we’re almost like a real family?”
Violet nearly choked. “Almost.”
“Me, too. I wish you were my mother. Not my dead mama—she’ll always be my first mother, plus now she’s an angel in heaven. But wouldn’t it be nice if you were my new mama?” Lily shot a concerned look over one shoulder. “Can people have second mamas?”
“I... ” Violet shook her head, speechless. What was she to do with these questions? “I never even had one mama, so I’m no expert on the topic of motherhood.”
Lily’s eyes rounded. “You didn’t? Did she die, like mine? Did you have a papa instead?”
“I never had either one.” Violet’s chest tightened at the reminder of her childhood. “I was a very lonely little girl.”
Lily nodded. “Then you’re just like me. A girl in want of a nice family. That’s why we’d be perfect together.”
Violet hesitated. “You had a mama and you have a papa. It’s not ideal, but—”
“But we’re not a family,” Lily interrupted. “Not yet, anyway.”
“I don’t think...” Violet took a deep breath. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to switch the topic to the Italian Renaissance after all. “Did you know Michelangelo was an Italian painter in the sixteenth century? Three hundred years ago, Pope Julius II contracted him to paint frescoes—murals done on plaster instead of boards, like we’re doing—in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City.”
Lily’s eyes narrowed at the abrupt change in topic, but she returned her focus to sketching without pressing further. “Where’s Vatican City?”
“Rome.” Violet counted her lucky stars for having successfully transitioned to an alternate topic. One in which there was actually something to say. Lily couldn’t imagine how badly Violet wished the three of them were a family. A wish unlikely to come true. “In Italy.”
“Was Julius the prince of Rome? Was that why he lived in a palace?”
“Not precisely. Have you heard of the Church of England?”
Lily sent a withering glance over her shoulder. “I live in an abbey.”
“Fair enough. Well, the Pope is the head of the Catholics, who have their own church. And the capitol, so to speak, is in Rome. The palace is sometimes called the Palace of Sixtus V, who was one of the popes. And in fact, the Sistine Chapel is called ‘sistine’ in honor of Pope Sixtus VI, who came right after him.”
Lily put down her pencil. “There was no sister?”
“I’m afraid not. Just popes.”
“If you married my papa, could I have a sister?”
Violet dropped her face in her hands with a groan.
She had hoped so hard that she’d been wrong about where this conversation had been going. She’d also foolishly believed talk of a distant city might distract a little girl from the far more real dramas unfolding betwixt the abbey walls. Most of all, she had no idea how to answer Lily honestly without simultaneously crushing the child’s dreams. Her own dreams were more than a little shaken. It had never occurred to her that Alistair might care about her romantic past. Where Violet was from, people only cared about right now. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow.
Come to think of it, she was surprised she hadn’t been evicted from the house at once, out of paternal fear for the governess’s negative influence upon his daughter. He’d been more than disappointed. He looked disgusted. At her. Well, she couldn’t help her past, but she wasn’t delusional enough to imagine wedding bells in the future. If she even had a future. She’d be fortunate just to avoid bells tolling at her hanging.
“What are you drawing?” she asked, hoping to distract herself from the direction of her thoughts. “May I see?”
To her surprise, Lily started guiltily and lowered her gaze. “You promise you won’t be cross?”
Violet’s eyes narrowed. “Why would I be cross?”
Lily’s careless one-shoulder shrug was more alarming than any words might have been.
Lips pursed, Violet lifted a candle from the table. She cupped the flame with one hand and made her way to Lily’s side, half afraid she’d discover the boards covered in imagery of a flamboyant father-governess matrimony.
Instead, what she saw were flowers. Beautiful flowers. Impossible flowers. Simultaneously picture-perfect and without the slightest attention to perspective. Verisimilitude crossed with the fantastical in bold, sure lines. Daisies towered over roses. An enormous ladybird settled among blades of grass, partially blocking a rectangular stone that reminded Violet of—
“Lily. That’s... ”
“Mama’s grave.” Lily’s voice trembled. “I want her to be here, too. She started our family.”
Violet’s throat closed and her heart dropped. When had Lily seen her mother’s grave? An awful thought struck. Had Lily seen her own grave, as well? “Tiger Lily... When did you see—”
“A long time ago.” Lily’s voice was matter-of-fact, although the glassiness of her blue eyes betrayed her suffering. “Mama’s dead. I don’t mind looking at her stone. But I won’t paint mine,” she added fiercely. “I hate it. I am not dead. I’m right here. Alive.”
“Oh, honey.” Violet pulled the child into her arms. “I’m so sorry.”
Lily latched on tight. “Papa wishes I was dead. Isn’t that why he created my stone while I was still alive?”
“No.” Violet shook her head forcefully, horrified that such an idea had ever entered Lily’s head. “Absolutely not. Your papa has loved you from the moment he first laid eyes on you. Everything he’s ever done is because he believed it was the best thing he could do for you and your future.”
Lily looked unconvinced. “That’s what he said, too. But I don’t believe him.”
She’d asked him if he wished her dead? Violet’s jaw dropped. She could not imagine such a conversation. Hearing such a brutal question from the daughter he loved above all else would have been a dagger straight to Alistair’s heart. And through Lily’s.
“I swear on everything I hold dear that your father loves you more than anything in the world.”
“How can he? He buried me. Right next to Mama.” Lily pulled away to stare bleakly across the room. “And then he buried me in here. I’m living in my grave. It just doesn’t have my name on it.”
“Oh, honey.”
In the privacy of her own mind, Violet cursed Alistair’s noble intentions six ways to Sunday. He only wished to protect his daughter, but... Anyone could see how Lily could feel this way, and Violet couldn’t fathom how to convince her otherwise. Undoubtedly, Alistair, too, had tried. Had spent his life trying to show his daughter how much he cared.
“He loves you,” she repeated firmly. “We both love you, and nobody wishes you were dead. I can safely say that neither one of us cares to imagine our lives without you in it. The rest of your questions should be answered by your father himself. I will mention to him it might be time for another conversation.”
Lily’s gaze slid somewhere behind Violet’s left shoulder and widened sharply.
Violet jerked around, half-expecting to find Alistair watching silently from an arm’s length away, but the chamber was bare and silent, save the sound of their breaths and the soft ticking of the clock upon the mantel.
“It’s noontime,” Lily said suddenly, turning back to her outline. “Time for your lunch break. Don’t forget to pick up books for afternoon lessons.”
“Honey, I am perfectly happy to stay and eat with you. At your new table or on the floor, whichever you prefer. The library is not nearly as important as you are.”
“I’m fine,” Lily said without turning around. “I prefer you to go.”
Violet sighed. She had learned to recognize when there was no sense arguing. “I do love you, Tiger Lily. And so does your father. Very, very much.”
Lily’s pencil continued its skritch-skritch-skritch across the wooden boards.
“I can see you’re busy.” Violet gazed at the back of Lily’s head, wishing there were something she could do to ease her pain. “I’ll be back in one hour.”
The relentless scratch of the pencil was her only answer.
Chapter 32
Alistair was just preparing to enter his library when incoming footsteps echoed from within the nearby catacombs. The door swung open before he could move. Within seconds, he found himself face to face with Violet... for the first time since she’d tossed him from her bedchamber.
“Oh!” She jerked to a stop, barely catching herself from plowing directly into him. “My apologies. My mind is elsewhere. I... I can come back another time.”
“Nonsense.” He smiled at her.
She did not smile back.
He was unsurprised she had no desire for his company. It was up to him to change her mind. “There’s more than enough room in the library for two people. I should like it immensely if you would stay as long as you like.”
She shook her head. “I won’t be long at all. I’m just picking something up for Lily.”
“As am I,” he admitted, fitting his key into the lock. “She asked me to drop off a new book of fairy stories over luncheon.”
“Over luncheon?” Violet’s tone was ominous, as if the words held a portent usually reserved for prophecies of the apocalypse. “She is certainly quite concerned about how we spend our luncheon, is she not?”
“Why would she be?” He disengaged the lock and pushed open the door. “It’s lucky coincidence that finds us both here at the same time. It’s not like she planned for us to—”
An involuntary choke cut off the rest of his words as the door swung open before them. The library... Alistair could not believe his eyes. His library had been transformed into a cozy nook for a summer picnic.
