by Beth Byers
The possibility might explain Delilah’s cruelty toward Phoebe. It must be hard for Delilah to want a child and not be blessed while Phoebe might be carrying a daughter she did not want.
“You’re leaving the money to Peter, are you not?” Delilah asked, blinking away a tear. “He’s a good nephew.”
“Is this what it was like for your aunt?” Mrs. Stevens asked Violet. “Everyone squabbling over her money before one of you killed her?”
“Yes,” Violet said flatly, entirely unamused. She set aside her custard pot and placed her hands in her lap to hide the fists.
“Oh Aunt Stevens,” one of the other older women said. Violet had already forgotten her name, but she liked the sound of the woman’s disgust.
“Thank you for the tea.” She placed her napkin next to her plate and advised, “If I were you, I’d leave all your money to charity and spend your final days on a warm island.”
“That is good advice,” Mrs. Stevens replied quietly with a dark look at her children. “I’ll consider it.”
“Mmm,” Violet said, not wanting to agree or disagree. She wanted to pour her tea on the lap of the woman who callously referenced the murder of Violet’s aunt.
“Good advice indeed.” Mrs. Steven’s mouth was as sour as ever and her condemning look extended to everyone present at the table. “Your aunt should have followed it.”
Grief stabbed Violet as she rose. “It was a pleasure to see you again, Phoebe,” she said, having to strain for politeness. “Thank you for allowing me to join your tea.”
Violet nodded to everyone and then fled the tea. It had been delicious but not worth the emotional turmoil. If she were going to observe the fighting of a family, Violet preferred it to be one where she could understand the undercurrents and pettiness behind the gibes. Having to weave the pieces together and understand how cruel they were being to each other, it was more than Violet wanted to handle. Especially when the undercurrent felt too much like Violet’s great aunt’s death. It was a loss that Violet would never shake. Having it tossed into the conversation so casually hadn’t helped.
She left the tearoom listless. Violet paused as she realized that she was feeling blue. Perhaps that was why she didn’t want to write. She shook her head. Of course it was. It was why she didn’t want to write, why she was so angry with Jack, and why nothing sounded fun.
She wasn’t going to decline back into those days again if she could help it in the least. Vi wasn’t arrogant enough to believe it was utterly in her control, but if nothing else, she could fight it. She walked towards the doors of Harrod’s, considered the rain, and frowned. The grey days matched what was happening inside of her heart.
She needed to move so she could flush away as much of the growing despair with exercise as she could, one remedy she’d had luck with in the past, but she had no desire to do so in the rain.
“It’s a day for either strolling in the rain and enjoying it,” the doorman said, “or sending for a black cab.”
Violet started to tell the man to send for a black cab and then paused. “No. Have the packages sent to my home, will you?” She handed him her card and then told him. “Now an umbrella and I think I’ll do just as you suggested.”
Violet purchased a large black umbrella and tipped the man generously, laughing at the look on his face as she stepped into the street and tilted the umbrella over her head. As she left Harrod’s, Vi saw Mrs. Stevens through the window. The old woman lifted a brow disagreeably. Out of sheer madness, Vi spun in a circle, curtsied, and then noticed a puddle in front of her. She shrugged and jumped into the puddle, remembering how much she liked doing so as a child.
“Oh,” Violet said in dismay. “That is uncomfortable.”
Her toes squelched in her shoes.
“You don’t have the right shoes, lady.” A well-dressed boy loitering nearby was watching her in amusement.
Violet glanced at him and then at her soaked shoes. “Too right you are, young sir.”
“You’ve gotta at least have good boots.” He rubbed his coat sleeve along his nose and sniffed deeply.
“What are you doing here? Don’t you have school?”
“Who’s got time for school?” he countered.
“Given your fine jacket, my good lad, I suspect your mother thinks you’ve time for school.”
He grinned at her. “Don’t tell her, will you?”
Vi lifted a brow and he shrugged lightly as though he were prepared for either outcome.
“So,” he said, stepping closer, “have you gone mad?”
“Perhaps a little,” Violet admitted, “I’m struggling to be happy.”
He eyed her again, frowning deeply. “What for? You’ve got a fancy dress. Came out of the fancy store. You’re grown up. You can probably do whatever you want.”
Violet leaned against the wall, tilting her umbrella over both of their heads. “You would think so, wouldn’t you? If you could buy anything, what would it be?”
“A dog,” he said immediately. “One that likes to run and plays fetch and has a big happy face.”
“Does your mother say no?”
He frowned and shook his head. “My father says I’m not responsible enough.”
Violet’s mouth twisted with sympathy. “Are you? Dogs are quite a lot of trouble, you know. I have two and servants to help me and yet I still end up running the dogs to the garden, rubbing their bellies when they don’t feel well, and I have been messed on more than once.”
“I wouldn’t mind that so much,” he told her seriously and Violet was certain it was true.
“Then you should ask your father what you need to do to get a dog.” He scowled at her darkly and she understood. “Oh ho. You have.”
“He said I had to earn the money to get a dog.”
Violet lifted her brows. “Is this how you’re doing it?” Her tone had him blushing. “Loitering outside of tea shops?”
“I help the old ladies across the street and am charming and sweet for tips. How else am I supposed to do it? I’m no good at shining shoes.”
“What do you think your father will do when he discovers that you’ve left school to earn money for a dog?”
The boy blushed more deeply.
“Do you know,” Violet told him thoughtfully, “I have quite the need of a good dog walker.”
He rubbed his arm over his nose again and then scratched his head under his cap, eyeing her as if expecting a trick. “I think I need to go to school before Father realizes.”
“Mmm,” Violet agreed. “Your troubles are more easily solved than mine, I fear.”
“Being happy isn’t so hard,” the boy told her. “You just do what you want to do.”
“I wish it really were so easy.”
The boy pshawed. Violet handed him her card. “My dogs are spoiled and prefer the warmth of home. I’ll be needing you to teach them to fetch as well.”
“You meant it about the dog-walking? You weren’t putting me on?”
“No, I was not putting you on.”
He took the card, eyes bright.
“It won’t be all fun and games,” Violet told him flatly. “I’m not going to help you sidestep your father. Just give you a job. You will still be expected to attend school.”
He was nodding happily, no doubt dreaming of playing with the dogs in the garden and giving them treats to learn tricks.
“I mean it,” Violet warned. “I’ll come up with horrible errands beyond playing with my dogs.”
“I’ll do them,” he said eagerly.
Violet shook her head at him and then glanced down at her shoes.
“You know what makes me happy and helped me out,” he said in a tone of a person older than his years, which she put at about ten. “What makes you happy?”
“My family. My husband. Helping people.”
“So, do those things, lady.”
“I do try, but they aren’t always possible.” She sighed and finally confessed what was truly botherin
g her. “I’m angry at my husband for getting hurt.” The boy’s scoff was echoed by Violet’s. “I know it isn’t reasonable. But a part of me thinks that it is reasonable. He was doing a dangerous job that he didn’t have to do and now I’m afraid he could be hurt again and he’s wrapped up in all the happiness I’ve been able to scrape together.”
The boy pshawed once again.
Violet, however, ignored the boy. She added, “I’ve come to depend on him being there, but he did something dangerous and was hurt.” Saying it aloud made it sound even more unreasonable. “I could lose him.”
“Was it something that had to be done by somebody?” the boy asked, clearly on Jack’s side. Oh men! Sticking together with little regard to the importance their continued living provided to those who loved them.
Violet sighed as she nodded. “Yes, it was quite necessary.”
The boy lifted a brow nearly as sardonic as one that Jack could give.
Vi glanced out at the rain and the dirty street and then down at her muddy feet, then at the boy she’d just spilled her fears to. “Oy, I’ve gone mad.”
He laughed at her, which made her grin. She held out her hand, “Violet Wakefield.”
“Leo Marshall.” He shook her hand firmly, giving her arm two solid pumps.
“What do you do when you aren’t sad?” Leo asked.
“Write. Go to clubs. Play, I suppose. I used to run my business, but I gave it over to my friend.”
“Why’d you do that?”
Violet frowned deeply as she replied, “I wanted her to be happy, and she does it better.”
“My mother says idle hands are a devil’s workshop.”
“I think I would like her,” Violet told him. The rain was picking up, and as much as she was enjoying the conversation, oddly enough, she wasn’t going to let the boy stand out all day in the rain. “Get to school,” she told him sternly, but she winked at him.
He nodded and ran off, but he cast a wink back at her that told Violet he wasn’t going to obey.
It wasn’t her problem, Vi thought, though if he were to work for her, it might become so. She turned back towards her house. It really was too far to walk and she was awkwardly wet. Violet hailed a black cab for herself and took a seat in the back, giving the man her address.
“Do you know what my problem is?” Violet asked the cabbie, staring out the window as the streets of London passed her by.
“You’re batty.” He’d eyed her muddy shoes as she’d climbed in.
“I think so, yes,” Violet agreed. She laughed low without humor and said, “I really am the most spoilt woman I have ever known.”
Chapter 3
Violet faced her house, glanced down at her sodden shoes and muddy stockings, and knew with utter certainty that she’d never escape without having to explain herself. She walked up the steps, grateful at least that she’d worn a good coat. She supposed an idle fancy would explain leaping into a puddle, but she knew what was happening with her was more than that.
She found Jack inside the parlor, reading the newspaper with a bourbon in his hand and she stared at him for a long minute before she confessed, “I’m angry with you.”
“I’ve noticed.” Those penetrating eyes of his passed her over, taking in her sodden feet and the umbrella and he tossed the newspaper aside before he continued. “What are we going to do about it?”
“I’m rather selfish of your life, you know.”
He set down his bourbon and slowly rose as she crossed to take the chair next to him. Rather than sitting back down, he settled onto the ottoman and pulled her wet foot into his lap, removing her shoe and rolling her stockings down and off.
“I like that you’re selfish of my life.”
Violet hated that her eyes were filling with tears. “I would say I can’t lose you, but I can. Can’t I? Nothing prevents it from happening. What more can a slew of murders in our lives teach us but that life is fragile and easily stolen.”
“It teaches us to cherish the moment,” Jack added.
“The fact that I almost did lose you is making me feel both like a spoiled brat since I know you were needed and like a wilting flower for being so weak.”
Jack rubbed her feet and his eyes were as full of emotion as hers. “I’m afraid loss is rather a part of life and we can’t live in fear of it, can we?”
“No,” Violet agreed, leaning back. “I don’t want to live like that either. I don’t want to be a wilting, spoilt flower or sucked into the blues.”
Jack let his hands grasp her ankles and leaned forward to place a kiss on her forehead. “You are neither wilting nor spoilt and your fight against the blues is inspiring. You’re witty and fun and you give yourself fully to the people you love, and you hand over parts of yourself far too generously.”
Violet laughed and then told him of the boy outside of Harrod’s and of Mrs. Stevens.
“She sounds like an odd woman.”
When she told him of the reference to Aunt Agatha, his jaw flexed in anger and he said, “I was invited to a scavenger hunt for Saturday. It starts at midnight. At the same time, these fools were mentioning your murdered aunt to you casually over tea? As though what happened to her were some sort of joke? Casually discussing her murder with someone who loved her while nibbling biscuits?”
Violet bit her bottom lip to hide the rush of emotion that hit her whenever they discussed the death of her aunt. Aunt Agatha was the woman who had raised Violet and her twin. There was nothing about her death that was casual for Violet. Losing a good parent effected someone for the whole of their lives. Having someone you adored stolen from you was beyond devastating.
“Oh,” Violet said, “Did you know that Miss Allen has been discussing us with this woman?”
“How could I know that?”
“Why would she?” Vi demanded. Emily Allen had been engaged to be married to Jack at one point. She’d thrown him over and come to regret her decision, but Violet and Jack had already found each other. “She does have a life of her own beyond us.”
Jack’s expression said he wasn’t quite sure how to answer.
“Well,” Violet said, pausing when she heard a bit of a ruckus at the door. They’d let the fellows who watched their house go since there hadn’t been an attempt on the house since they’d been plagued by a prankster. They hadn’t, however, lost their awareness of the noises and surroundings.
Jack set Violet’s feet back on the floor and rose, leaning forward to look at the door. There was no knock but the sound of rustling occurred again.
“Please no mice,” Violet muttered, following Jack as they approached the door. “I’ll never get past the mice, I don’t think.”
A moment later a letter was shoved through the slot. Violet frowned. It was far past the time when the postman should arrive. Jack leaned down to pick up the letter and then opened the door. They could see an auto pulling away, but whoever had just shoved that letter through the slot must have flown down the stairs and into the waiting auto.
Jack started to close the door, but Violet placed a hand on his arm. The deliverer of the letter had placed a brick in front of the gate to prop it open, no doubt to make a hasty escape. Vi ran down the steps in her bare feet and lifted the brick. It wasn’t from her house and she glanced about before setting it next to the gate and shutting it. Had the letter-deliverer brought the brick? Why did anyone want to deliver a note anonymously?
She turned to Jack, whose expression was baffled as he looked at her toes. “I’m calling for coffee for those poor cold feet of yours.”
Violet laughed. Jack nudged her towards the stairs. “New stockings, Vi. You’re going to catch your death.”
“What about the letter?”
Jack shook his head. “I’ll send for coffee and read it. It’s probably an invitation to a Sunday meeting. Nothing to worry about.”
Vi lifted her brow at that malarkey. She didn’t have Jack’s nearly all-seeing gaze, but she knew him better than that and the wo
rld better than that, too. He was worried about the contents of the letter, probably especially after her hijinks of the day. He wanted to see what it was, given the odd way it was delivered, and given how she had been behaving, he wanted to protect her.
Violet shrugged and ran up the stairs. She took one look at herself in the mirror and decided Jack might have a point. Her feet were dirty from the muddy water and the barefoot trip outside. Her dress was splashed with mud with the nonsense of jumping in that puddle. Her hair was wind-blown and messy and the kohl about her eyes had smudged.
“Oh Vi,” she told herself. She could shove on stockings and a clean dress and race back down to learn the contents of the letter, but she was still worn around the edges from the day and her feet were cold. Instead, she drew a hot bath. A dip into the hot, scented water and a quick scrub of her face left her red-cheeked, but not quite the drowned rat she had been. She kicked her messed dress to the side and opened her closet door, considering a dress or a kimono.
It was their cook’s night off, so they had intended to go out to dinner, but Violet threw that idea to the wind when she slid on warm knit socks and a pair of red silk pajamas. Her pajamas were embroidered with dragons in gold thread at both the ankles and wrists. She topped it with her favorite red and gold kimono and then threw herself on the bed.
The coffee wouldn’t be ready yet and she quite enjoyed luxuriously relaxing on the bed just before dinner. She should dress for dinner, but she was far more inclined to suggest to Jack that they eat in their bedroom, turn on the wireless, and enjoy an evening by the fire rather than out.
She hadn’t forgotten the letter, but she was unwilling to let its presence dictate her actions. Much better to relax for a time and let the blues grow distant and let Jack puzzle it out first.
Jack appeared in the doorway and his head tilted at her pajamas. “It’s Cook’s night out.”
“Yes.” She turned over, pushing up on her hands so she was half-sitting, half-reclined.
