Haunting Violet
Page 58

“What’s the bloody idea?” He swung open the door, grumbling. “Violet?” He was suddenly alert. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” He wore trousers and nothing else. I tried very hard not to stare at his bare chest. The room behind him was tidy and sparse. I hadn’t been up here since we’d stopped slipping spiders into each other’s pillowcases.
“I’m sneaking out,” I announced in hushed tones.
He didn’t waste a moment. “Let me get dressed.” He didn’t say anything else, just turned away to fetch his shirt.
It was then that I knew. Really knew.
No matter what happened, I couldn’t marry Xavier. I couldn’t marry a perfectly nice boy who thought I was a perfectly nice girl because he didn’t know me at all. I felt certain that Xavier would have entreated me to go back to sleep, but Colin offered to help me straightaway, without question. And though Xavier was handsome and well-to-do, he had one major flaw.
He wasn’t Colin.
“What is it?” he asked, shutting the door behind him and frowning at me.
I was embarrassed to discover my eyes were watering. “Nothing. Are you ready?”
He raised an eyebrow. “For what exactly?”
“A stroll through a graveyard?”
“You want to frolic in a graveyard?” He tilted his head, suddenly understanding. “The one where Rowena is buried, by any chance?”
I nodded, biting my lip. “Highgate Cemetery. Do you think we can find her grave?”
“Aye, I reckon we can.”
We took the back stairs and the servants’ door as quietly as we could. We paused in the relative seclusion of a ragged lilac tree. There was a definite smell of rotting vegetables emanating from the vicinity of the front stoop.
“At least the mob’s gone home for the night,” Colin said under his breath.
“But they’ll be back, won’t they?”
He nodded, not looking at me. “We’ll worry about that tomorrow.”
“I have coin enough for a hack to get us there but we might have to walk back.” I showed him the pouch tied to my waist before pulling my hood up over my hair to hide my features.
“Where’d you get that?”
“It’s the last of the money Lord Jasper gave me. I haven’t had a chance to get to the bookshop.”
He whistled through his teeth. “Are you sure about this?”
“No.” I smiled but there was no humor in it.
Colin waved a hackney down and we climbed in the back. It smelled of stale sweat and spilled gin. The floor was sticky.
“Not exactly the Jasper family coach, is it?” Colin remarked, pulling the window open.
The nearer we got to the fashionable section of town, the more carriages clogged the roads with gilded family crests and armed drivers. Gentlemen helped ladies in silk gowns to the sidewalk and gaslights blazed in parlor windows. I’d thought Rosefield was gracious and beautiful, but Mayfair glittered with diamonds. There were butlers in starched collars and mansions so immense and lovely, they hardly seemed real. Hyde Park was a green shadow curled protectively around decadent ballrooms and men’s clubs. We jostled in the back of the hack for a long time, breathing the smell of horses and coal fog. It was blurring the lights and suddenly we might have been entirely alone in the world. My breath sounded loud in my ears as the carriage halted and the driver called down to us.
“Here you be, lad. Highgate.” As I stepped out onto the sidewalk, Colin handed the requisite coins to the driver. He tipped his hat, slipping the money into his jacket pocket. “Mind the spirits,” he chortled, nudging the horses into a walk.
“I assume the Wentworth family has a mausoleum on the west side,” I murmured. Highgate Cemetery was split by Swain’s Lane, bisecting it into two portions.
“They are rather fashionable,” he agreed.
The front gate loomed out of the mists, black iron bordered and overhung with a huge Egyptian-style arch the color of sand in the wavering glow of gas lights. Colin led us past it, not even pausing.
“Are you ready?” Colin whispered. “We’ll have to climb the fence. The fog should keep us hidden and we can use this tree for leverage.”
“Why can’t we go through the main gates?” I asked, knotting up my cloak so it wouldn’t catch me up.
“They’ll have guards, against the Resurrection Men,” he reminded me, testing a portion of the fence to make sure it would hold our weight. The Resurrection Men were notorious for digging up graves and selling the body parts to doctors and hospitals for study and practice. It made me think of the first time I’d read Frankenstein. I’d hidden under my covers the entire night and hadn’t gotten a single wink of sleep. I wondered briefly if the Resurrection Men were haunted by the spirits of desecrated bodies howling for revenge.
“You’re not going to go missish on me, are you?” Colin asked, waiting with his hands clasped together to give me a boost. I scowled, my spine straightening.
“Of course not.” I placed the heel of my boot in the cup of his hands and let him push me up until I could grasp the top of the fence. I hauled myself over as if I were mounting a horse. Which I’d never actually done before.
Needless to say, it was hardly a graceful affair.
I landed with a grunt. Colin vaulted over, landing in a crouch without a single hesitation. It was clear this was not the first fence he’d ever climbed over. I made a mental note to question him about it later. We crept down a walkway hung with ivy, the center of my head feeling like it was being pierced with hot needles. I rubbed it, wincing.