Haunting Violet
Page 45

The bloody dead girl sopping into the carpet ignored me.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I muttered peevishly. “You’re the reason we’re in this mess in the first place.”
I cleared my throat warningly. “Rowena Wentworth, you blasted girl, is your murderer in this room?”
She nodded but remained where she was, her eyes keeping track of all of the guests and their movements.
“Show us.”
She didn’t so much as float an inch away from her position. I’m sure it was very touching that she missed her sister, even if that sister was horrid, but she could be a little more inclined to help us.
“You’re going to have to move,” I muttered.
Xavier looked bemused. I hadn’t noticed that he’d come over and was now standing right in front of us.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
Elizabeth’s giggle was perfectly genuine this time.
“Oh. Uh …” I couldn’t think of a single word that rhymed with “move,” which might explain how he’d clearly misheard what I’d just hissed at him.
“I was sitting on her sash, Mr. Trethewey,” Elizabeth lied cheerfully. “She was just asking me to move. And how do you do this evening?”
“Very well, thank you.” He bowed to each of us. “I wonder if you might care for a glass of lemonade, Miss Willoughby.”
“Yes, thanks.” I stood and took his offered arm even though what I really wanted to do was march over to the recalcitrant ghost and shove salt up her nose. Instead I followed Xavier to the table at the back of the room, where the silver punch bowl and glass cups waited. My mother watched us triumphantly. I tried not to glance at Colin to see what he was doing. I probably didn’t want to know anyway.
Xavier and I made polite chitchat about the weather. He was very handsome and attentive, his blond hair glinting in the light of several oil lamps. It wasn’t his fault he was rather bland. I nearly clapped a hand to my mouth. Clearly, this ghost business was pickling my brain. I should be grateful and flattered that he paid me compliments and might possibly wish to marry me.
And I was grateful. And flattered.
Truly.
I smiled more brightly at him, determined not to be a goose. He smiled back. His gloved hand brushed mine as he handed me a cup.
“You are beautiful as always, Violet,” he murmured. His parents smiled at us from where they sat sipping wine. There. Every single one of us was smiling.
It was all very pleasant, even if my cheeks were starting to hurt.
And then Rowena left her post without warning.
She really was becoming quite a bother. She’d had all that time to acknowledge my presence and instead waited until I was comfortably secluded with Xavier, who was telling me a charming story about his aunt’s poodle. It was a story he’d already told me, but still, that was hardly the point.
Rowena hovered over me until I shivered. Xavier led me to a chair, thinking he’d been keeping me standing in a draft. I tried to ignore her.
“In a moment,” I mumbled out of the side of my mouth.
She pressed against me in a most uncomfortable manner. A transparent white lily bobbed into my face, narrowly missing my eye. I felt cold, damp; even my bones wondered why winter had come so suddenly. I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering. The room tilted suddenly and I was caught in another vision. I wished Rowena had another way of sharing information with me. One that was clearer.
And made me less inclined to cast my accounts on someone’s shoes.
The small comforts of the parlor faded.
I was being dragged through the grass outside Whitestone Manor in my nightdress. The white cotton material caught the moonlight and made me glow. I felt faint and disoriented, with that medicinal taste in my mouth again. Rowena’s mouth. It was hard to remember that this wasn’t happening to me. I wasn’t being pulled toward the pond, didn’t have shards of pain in my throat from being choked. I couldn’t tell who had my wrists, who was even now shoving me under the water and holding me down. I couldn’t see properly. Panic and whatever drink I’d been forced to swallow made me hazy. The cold water was soft. I tried to struggle, kicked futilely. My lungs ached.
I snapped back into my own body with a strangled gasp.
“Violet, are you quite well?” Xavier asked me, clearly concerned.
I sipped at my lemonade to calm my throat before speaking. My hands were trembling. “A stitch in my side,” I explained. “My corset must be too tight.”
He flushed and I remembered belatedly that ladies weren’t supposed to mention their corsets. I followed his embarrassed gaze to the hem of my skirt, which was becoming damp, water unfolding like a blue rose. Rowena.
I smiled weakly. “Oh dear,” I mumbled. “I must have spilled some of my drink.”
I tried to keep my expression pleasant, even as Rowena flew through the room like a violent wind, scattering lily petals and water droplets as she went. Her mouth was stretched open, hideously wide as she keened. I could think of no other word for it. It was thunder and rain and ice shattering into a thousand sharp, angry pieces.
The soiree went on, as if everything were perfectly normal.
Tabitha accepted her shawl from a maid; Caroline stood just as straight-backed as she always did. Lord Jasper laughed at some jest, Wentworth ate another handful of macaroons. Mother flirted with a young man half her age and then turned to repeat the procedure with a man twice her age. Young girls giggled; young men continued to play cards at the tables under the window. A woman in white satin played Mozart at the piano without missing a note.