Shehadto tell the editor ofThe Rabble Rouserthat she would not be submitting further work at this time.
One story could go unnoticed. However, if Mr. Oliver Aubord Twist continued to write, he would gain notoriety. The anagram of her name was not so well hidden. Someone of import would make the connection eventually.
Viola Brodure would be exposed.
And that fact would wound her father more than she could bear.
No matter her personal goals to live no longer adjacent—no matter the greater good she might do—Viola could not devastate the very person she loved most.
She picked up her quill and began to pen a polite refusal to the editor.
9
Malcolm did his best pondering among the tombstones in the kirkyard.
After all, the inhabitants were utterly silent and not bothered by the clamor of his thoughts.
Today, his feet took him unerringly through the graveyard’s soft grass, weaving in and out of markers to the wee corner behind the church.
The one place that Malcolm both loved and hated in equal measure.
He stared down at the tombstone.
Sacred to the memory of
Aileen Penn-Leith
Beloved wife of Malcolm Penn-Leith
Buried here with their stillborn son
July 19, 1839
Nearly five years since the day his reality had been forever altered.
He liked to come here. To be with Aileen and, in a way, exist with her in the confines of his grief-carved crevasse.
Sitting down on the sun-warmed grass beside her grave, he stretched out his legs, tilting his face toward the sky.
And yet, the moment didn’t soothe as it once had.
Even before Viola Brodure’s arrival, Malcolm had found himself going whole days, perhaps even a week, without thinking about his wife, without the horror of her loss cutting him down at the knees.
It was awful, that Aileen had somehow . . . faded.
As if her death had happened a lifetime ago to another person.
And in a sense, Malcolm supposed it had.
Just the thought swamped him with a wave of fresh sorrow.
Ah, Aileen,he thought. How have we come tae this, my love?
And yet . . . they had.
Because no matter how hard he resisted, his thoughts repeatedly drifted to another woman.
Four evenings now, Viola Brodure had been waiting for him at the swing. Four evenings of sparring wits and discussing increasingly philosophical ideas.
