Lady of Ashes (35 page)

S
amuel Harper was displeased with the results of his meeting with the minister. So angered was he by Adams’s pronouncement and frustrated by his inability to gainsay him that Samuel merely muttered courtesies and left the ambassadorial residence, jamming his hat on his head as he headed into another dreary, drizzly London day.

The good thing about the city’s short-lived but frequent rains was that they at least helped dispel some of the acrid, choking air.

Drown or suffocate, what a choice,
he thought, his mood growing blacker as he strode off to nowhere in particular.

Adams was well within his rights to send home anyone attached to his delegation. However, the man seemed more intent on not falling on his own sword than in serving the public good. It took extraordinary amounts of time, money, and guile to ferret out each commerce raider, and there were many more pearls being nurtured in their shells, just waiting to be discovered at the right moment to create a neckpiece of glory. They would not be ready for harvest early just to assuage the minister’s doubts about his own position.

The comment about Violet rankled, too. As though Samuel was somehow derelict in his duties because he had formed a . . . friendship. That was all it was. Violet had never expressed an interest in anything more, even since her husband’s death. Or maybe because of it. In some ways she flouted convention; in others she was as modest as a novice in a convent.

Samuel suddenly found himself outside the British Museum. It was raining harder now, so he went inside to wait out the weather. He was unconsciously drawn back to the Reading Room, where he was once again permitted entry. He climbed the stairs to the catwalk and went in search of the book on flora that had entranced Violet. Samuel scanned the shelves. Ah, there it was. He pulled out the tome, surprised by its heavy weight, and retreated down to the reading tables.

He opened the book, hardly noticing the difference between
dennstaedtia punctilobula
and
pteridium aquilinum,
but running his hands where Violet had placed hers over the dried fern leaves that were trimmed before being glued into place.

Was he being selfish? Had the chestnut-haired woman in Kentish Town—soon to be in Paddington—lulled his common sense into a drunken stupor? Perhaps it
was
time to return home. His law partner had been managing on his own for over a year, and letters flying back and forth did little to help his father manage the family farm.

Moreover, and probably more importantly, what about the thousands of men signing up to join the U.S. Army in order to cease the South’s insurrection? Even one of Adams’s sons had joined.

Am I derelict in my duty twice over?
he wondered. The thought pained him.

Samuel flipped through a few more pages of the book before shutting it with a firmer hand than he intended. The resulting thud elicited a stern look from a nearby uniformed attendant.

Samuel returned the book to its proper place, his innards decidedly heavier than when he’d climbed the stairs earlier. He’d not been enamored of London when he first arrived; now the thought of saying good-bye was sickening.

 

Violet was exhausted after seeing to the burial of a young child inside his family’s mausoleum. The poor boy, aged nine, had suffered a head injury while away at Harrow School, struck by a ball while learning cricket.

Even worse than the tragedy of the boy’s loss were his parents, more overcome than any Violet had seen before. The boy was the fourth of their six children they’d lost, each due to bizarre circumstances: a drowning, a freak carriage accident, a fall while climbing an oak on the family’s country estate, and now this.

Death recognized no privilege of social station.

The parents were inconsolable and clung to Violet as though she might somehow bring their boy back through magical means.

All funerals had elements of grief, sometimes great and sometimes minor, but children’s funerals—no matter how many of them she arranged—were always the worst.

Not only did they break the natural order of parents dying before their offspring, they were frequently sudden—accidents and virulent disease overcame children in an instant. Hence the family had no time to prepare by starting a scrapbook or sitting at the bedside for hours on end, recording their loved one’s final days.

The grief must have made the parents want to fling themselves in the path of an overdue mail coach.

After Will had returned the funeral carriage to the mews and Violet removed the ostrich feathers and black bunting from its exterior, she made one of her last trips back to Kentish Town. Soon she would walk only a few blocks home.

As soon as she entered the front door she called for Susanna, whom she’d left behind for the day, as Violet didn’t like Susanna witnessing the funerals of young children. The girl was learning fast, but she wasn’t ready for this yet.

Susanna launched into Violet’s arms as though they’d been apart for weeks. “Mama! I mean, Mother, I thought you’d never return.”

Susanna was filling out and, with her sudden onset of physical maturity, was trying out a more sophisticated tongue, too. Maybe soon she’d be ready to witness death in all of its ugly forms, although the train crash had probably given her more exposure to it than any thousand funerals could.

“I’m here now, although it has been a trying day. We’ve nothing pressing tomorrow, so why don’t we go to the London Exposition?”

“Yes, I’d like that. Is Mr. Harper going with us?”

Violet hadn’t heard from Sam in a week, but had been so preoccupied with other business that she hadn’t given him much thought. She put a hand to the jet beads around her neck. Thinking any thoughts of Sam whatsoever was inappropriate anyway.

“Probably not. We can have fun, just the two of us, can’t we?”

Susanna frowned. “Yes, I suppose.”

Did Susanna’s newfound maturity mean she was also developing crushes?

After dinner, Violet retired upstairs to pack up some of her personal belongings. She intended to leave behind most of the furniture for the next tenant, since the same was being done in her new location.

She’d hardly started, having opened a drawer in Graham’s desk in his study, when a double rap on the door signaled the arrival of the mail. Mr. Porter appeared momentarily. “A letter for you, ma’am.”

It was from the estate agent. The new tenants for Violet’s house were newly married and seeking their first servants. Knowing that Violet had no plans to take the Porters along with her, might he recommend them to the new tenants?

“I have delightful news for you, Mr. Porter. It looks like you can stay on here with the couple taking over my lease.”

Mr. Porter tried to hide his grin behind an air of mock severity. “It’s what Mrs. Porter and I have been praying for, ma’am, so I’m not surprised at all.”

He left to go inform his wife, and Violet returned to cleaning out Graham’s desk. What an awful hodgepodge of bills, receipts, cigar stubs, pencil shavings, and old editions of newspapers. She began dividing everything into piles for rubbish and for keeping, with most of it destined for the trash heap.

She made her way down through the desk drawers on her knees, eventually finding herself on her rear as she pawed through a drawer at the bottom of the ebonized desk. This drawer didn’t seem as deep as the others—why not?

Violet removed its contents and pressed along the bottom of the drawer. The wood had give to it. She realized that it was some sort of trapdoor. Pressing harder on it now, she finally found the spring mechanism. With a final push against it, the trapdoor popped up.

What lay underneath astounded her.

A tattered, yellowed envelope with Graham’s name scrawled upon it lay atop some sort of old blanket. She set aside the envelope and pulled out the blanket. No, it was a fur. A mangled-up fur made of at least three different animals, although half of it seemed to be missing. It was just a rag now.

A section of it fell back into the drawer as Violet brought it to her nose, gently sniffing it. She imagined this was what a buried animal carcass smelled like—extremely disagreeable but not as oppressive as human death.

“So your Pap bequeathed his mangy old coat to you, Graham. I stood right behind you at this desk while you told me the story, yet you never showed it to me. Why not?”

She dropped the remnant back into the drawer and fingered the envelope. It was the old-fashioned type, where the sender wrote on all but one part of the page, then folded it up so that only the blank space showed for an address. Pap must have handed this to Graham, for only his first name was on it.

Brittle remnants of scarlet sealing wax remained. She brushed them away and unfolded the letter. It was brief and written in a spidery hand that slanted down the right side of the page.

Violet let the letter drop from her hand. As cruel and sadistic as what happened to Pap was, why did he think it proper to guilt a young boy into seeking revenge for it?
Oh, Graham, I’m sorry you were led astray by this man.

 

Violet and Susanna stepped off the omnibus in South Kensington. The Great London Exhibition was easy to locate, with its massive façade along Cromwell Road. Wings were set at right angles on both ends and a triple-arched entrance in the center of the building openly invited visitors, who now were flowing in and out, chattering noisily about the treasures that lay beyond the doors. The entrance was topped by two crystal domes, rumored to be the largest in the world. Violet smiled, thinking how distressed Sam would be to see them if there wasn’t something comparable in America.