Violet shuffled in a daze through the dining room, her half eaten supper left to the weary maid who'd stood at her elbow a quarter hour, softly clearing her throat as snow fell silently on the windowpanes. The baron and baroness, along with their son Lord Ainsley Shelton and his younger sisters, had retired thirty minutes ago. As was customary, the family of the house dined before their governess.
Angling for the door, Violet recalled the surreptitious wink Lord Ainsley had sent her as he departed along the path she now tread.
Was the wink meant as a silent acknowledgment of enduring feeling? she wondered. Perhaps it was nothing more than a weightless nod to her existence.
She flitted a glance at the discarded china scattered over the long dining table, her gaze alighting on
his
dishes. Although she knew him to be a voracious eater, a good portion of the younger Lord Shelton's food had gone uneaten, too. Her mind turned somersaults, but Violet would not allow over-analysis of her erstwhile lover's lack of appetite, or
his fleeting wink, to upset the tenuous balance time had earned her. She was older now, she should have outgrown such fanciful notions.
Alone, she walked to her first floor room between the servants' wing and back parlor. Anne and Charlotte, a couple of chatty housemaids, dashed past, dripping with melting snow and holiday cheer; but they did not engage Violet. A governess was known to float in that lonely, uncertain space between social circles, as Violet did. She was not high born enough to dine or entertain with the Sheltons, and her middle class education set her apart from the rest of the servants, who would not include her.
Once upon a time, Lord Ainsley Shelton— just Ainsley, then— had filled a void in her solitary world. But two years ago their secret romance ended with his abrupt displacement from Herringdown. Today, Ainsley Shelton was a grown man, and a tutor. A teacher, like Violet, though he taught England's college elite. Tonight marked his second Christmas as a visitor to his parents' estate, much to his mother's ambivalence. And Violet's too, if she was honest with herself.
The excitement building under her cool exterior could not go unbridled. Everything was different now.
#
Some twenty minutes later, as she was tying the sash on her nightgown, a knock sounded on her door. A familiar rapping of three short
tap-tap-taps.
Ainsley.
Perhaps she had not been imagining things, after all. A slice of the corridor's candlelight brightened her rug as Violet peaked her head around the door. "Lord Shelton."
"Please," he blanched, "do not make me imagine I am my father, when you have that look on your face."
Violet wondered what her traitorous features gave away.
"But you are Lord Shelton now." Withdrawing slightly into the shadows, she added, "And I have not seen you in two years."
"Because every time I tell my mother I plan to visit, she sends you away! This time I came early. I told her it was my Christmas present to her. So I hope she will not jump to conclusions and eavesdropping. The truth is I was dying to see you, Violet."
"Surely not," she said over the loud thump of her heart. "You look utterly hale. The picture of health, really."
Ainsley's smile lit his whole face. His tilted green eyes, which reminded Violet of a cat's, crinkled with mirth. "It is a mental anguish. Life is not as vibrant without our conversations."
On that topic, Violet could not disagree. The catalyst for Ainsley Shelton's pursuing a hobby in private tutelage was common knowledge within the Herringdown household. During his undergraduate years at Eton college, their late-into-the-night-discussions on literature and philosophy had spurred many a heavy-handed rumor. It was only Lady Shelton's tenacious spirit that kept those 'rumors' — for they were not entirely untrue— from creeping past the estate's walls.
Violet deemed it the grace of God that prevented Lady Shelton from dismissing her. "
You are too pretty,"
the baroness had once told her in confidence. "
This is as much my fault as anyone's. I should have hired an older, plain governess. But you do such a fine job with our girls; and Ainsley is leaving soon as it is. Nothing will come of it."
And not much had...
"Will you at least let me in?" he said with a cockeyed grin, raising one tawny red eyebrow. "I have been starved of the sight of you for too long. After supper, it was all I could do to—" Violet cracked open the door. "Good God, woman! You are wearing next to nothing!"
"Keep your voice down!" she hissed, closing him in her room as he gaped at her. "Anne and Charlotte are running around. If they hear you..."
"Nonsense," he shook his head, draping his ungainly form across the wooden rocking chair in front of her dressing panel. The frock she had worn all day hung limply over the panel like a drying towel.
What would someone think if they walked into the room?
Violet drove the door's sliding lock home.
"You look beautiful," Ainsley said, his bright eyes darker in the dim light. "I suppose I should have expected you would be preparing for bed. With me gone, you must not have reason to stay up so late." Her cheeks flared. To Violet's surprise, Ainsley's did as well. "Discussing heroes and villains, and pondering life's meaning, of course," he added in a hurry, the slightest stammer coloring his voice.
But they both knew their past had not been
quite
so innocent.
"Of course," she agreed, staring at the ground. There was nowhere to sit except on top of her turned-down bedspread or the roll-top trunk at the end of her bed. The bed was preferable but, current circumstance as it was, she chose the discomfort of the traveling trunk.
Ainsley ran a hand through his light auburn hair, mussing it into disarray. Violet might have sighed, for the gentleman had lovely hair. It was the first of his striking features that she had become infatuated with, over five years ago and against her better judgment. He stretched his lean arms behind his head and she was nearly undone.
Unlike his ruddy, ham-fisted father, the younger Lord Shelton was lithe and vivacious. He bore no likeness to a Greek Adonis. He had neither the countenance nor the physique of a warrior. But as Violet had witnessed firsthand, from the outskirts of several a London season, Ainsley Shelton did not lack for interest from the female half. Not hardly. He could stand alone as proof that a great plethora of women scoffed at the showy Goliaths of the male species. Discerning women, like Violet, gravitated toward men just like Ainsley. And those who fell for his flashing cat eyes, lopsided smiles and clever wit, fell hard.
Poor Violet had fallen so hard she felt as if she was still sprawled on the floor two years later, all the emotions she had thought drowned by time rushing back with crushing force. "Why are you here, Ainsley?"
