Haunting Violet
Page 24

I blinked but the blasted girl remained.
I shook my head once at her and tried to ignore her. She should have the decency to stay dead. Not to mention she’d nearly drowned me in my own bedroom. I counted to ten under my breath before looking back.
She was still there, water dripping from her tangled hair, wearing a crown of lilies and grass, bruises on her arms, her fine dress ragged.
Elizabeth paused, sniffed. “Do you smell lilies?”
I looked at her sharply. “Do you?”
She took another breath and shrugged. “Not anymore. Must have been the wind off the pond.” She went back to her enamored fluttering over Lord Fitzwilliam’s shoulders.
Rowena’s pale face turned toward me pleadingly.
“Please, not here,” I muttered under my breath. “Go away. Just go away.”
She opened her mouth but only water came out, falling over blue lips. I shuddered, feeling water soak into my boots. I clenched my hands into fists, digging my nails into my palms, willing the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach to go away. I felt odd all over, as if I were standing on a ship in the middle of a storm. My vision wavered. I blinked frantically, but there was no stopping it. I felt as if I were falling. I wondered if I was swooning, but Elizabeth didn’t cry out and I didn’t feel the impact of the ground.
In fact, I couldn’t see the grassy field at all.
Instead, I was standing on broken flagstones overgrown with white lilies that glowed blue in the strange twilight. There was grass all around and apple trees raining pale pink petals everywhere. There was a huge stone staircase, the kind that belonged to a crumbling castle, only this one just stopped, leading to nowhere in particular.
Rowena stood on the third step near a branch of candles. A light at the top of the stairs grew bright as the moon, bright as a thousand candles. I could feel the warmth even as far away as I was. Rowena was shivering in her wet dress, her lips faintly blue. I couldn’t imagine why she didn’t want to get closer.
“Please, sweetheart,” a woman begged from the top step. She was in silhouette against the light, but I caught glimpses of long blond hair and diamonds. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
I knew without any logical sense that this was Rowena’s mother, who’d died years before. I felt it.
Rowena wouldn’t go to her. She covered her eyes as if the light was too bright, as if it hurt her to look at it. She was crying and shaking her head violently.
“Tabitha.” I saw Rowena mouth her sister’s name but couldn’t hear her over the sudden rain that beat down around us, flattening the grass and tearing petals from the apple branches. The light dimmed. Rowena was still weeping, and I was too, though I couldn’t have said why.
“Tabitha.”
The rain blurred my vision and between one blink and the next, I was back in the field. The crack of the croquet balls seemed too loud. There were tears on my cheeks. Rowena was gone.
But Tabitha stood in front of me, her smiled barbed. She trailed several young gentlemen in white cravats and windswept hair.
“What’s the matter with her?” she asked Elizabeth disdainfully. I had no idea how long I’d been standing there, unresponsive. I shifted, embarrassed.
“Are you ill?” Elizabeth asked me.
I shook my head. “I felt faint is all. Too much sun.”
“Allow me.” One of Tabitha’s beaus offered me his arm gallantly. Tabitha’s eyes narrowed as I placed my hand on his wrist.
“Violet, weren’t you wearing that same dress this morning?” She smiled at Xavier, who was talking to one of her gallants about cricket. “Mr. Trethewey, I do hope Miss Willoughby didn’t ruin your coat with her clumsiness.”
“Not at all, I assure you.” He bowed in my direction. I smiled and tried not to flush red. He’d think I was embarrassed when really it was my temper boiling under my skin. I was in no position to vent it here. I swallowed hard; it was like I had one of Elizabeth’s candied almonds stuck in my throat.
Tabitha smirked. She was an earl’s daughter and knew exactly what she could get away with.
“Oh, Tabitha.” Elizabeth sighed. She also was an earl’s daughter and therefore unimpressed. “Stop being such a flibbertigibbet.”
Tabitha sniffed. “Well, if you’re going to be like that,” she said, “I’ll take my new friends elsewhere.” They circled her, offering to fetch lemonade or clear a spot free of leaves under the branches so she might have some shade. The sun flashed off a cravat pin. I recognized the young man from the gardens who’d been spying on Caroline. And he’d been pacing the halls when Colin and I had hid in the ferns. He wasn’t smiling and flirting with Tabitha like the others. In fact, he looked quite desperate. And I couldn’t help but notice that his suit, though neatly pressed, was not nearly of the same quality as the others. He stood out against the lounging aristocrats, especially near Frederic, who was drinking from a silver flask he pulled out of his pocket, an emerald ring gleaming on his finger.
Elizabeth stood up straighter. “Hello, Frederic.”
He toasted her absently. Tabitha fluttered her eyelashes at Xavier, who blinked, ears red. “Mr. Trethewey, I should love to sketch those pink lady’s slippers we saw growing near that little cave. Perhaps you might fetch some for me? I’d be ever so grateful.”
He glanced at me helplessly. He was no match for her. “Of course, Miss Wentworth.”