“You wish a word with me?”
“Oh.” She had wanted to have a word with him, but the reality of what she’d come to say struck her with sudden cowardice. “I did. But… I can’t seem to remember what it was.”
Mr. Cockfield shoved one hand in his pocket and rested his hip on the table. “Perhaps if you take a moment, you’ll remember.”
A mischievous glint shined in the back of his disconcerting gaze. But, of course, he knew she hadn’t really forgotten.
And then she noticed. “You’ve removed your sling!”
The butler raised his right hand and flexed it before him. “Only for a few minutes. I need to work on getting my strength back.”
“But you mustn’t overdo it.”
“I’ll be careful not to.”
He appeared more formal than usual this morning, his black coat brushed, his shirt a pristine white, and was that a monocle hanging from his pocket?
But then he said the last thing in the world that she might have expected.
“You left London,” he said. “After your fiancé’s disappearance.”
“Yes. Rather a lot occurred that summer.” She strolled closer to him. This was what she’d wanted this morning—to talk to him.
Was that what had drawn her downstairs—the simple fact that she enjoyed the blasted butler’s company?
But he wasn’t only a butler. He was a person, and she hoped, at the very least… a friend?
“Your parents’ passing?” he asked.
“And my sister and her husband. And our grandparents. A ship set for France went down with quite a lot of my family on board.”
He swallowed hard. “You were very young.”
“I was Posy’s age. My mother and grandmother considered themselves great travelers—explorers.” It had been the first time Adelaide had ever traveled with them—the only time. “In the end, they failed to consider what might happen to those left behind if their vessel met with trouble on the high seas.”
“I remember,” he said. “It was in all the papers. You didn’t return the next Season—or the one after that.”
“Posy needed me, and I was happy to be there for her. She was just ten at the time. And although Greystone was old enough to have a ward, a young man of one and twenty is hardly fit to raise an orphaned girl.”
“Greystone could have hired someone.”
Violet shook her head. “No, Aunt Iris insisted. And having Posy to care for was… a Godsend.” Although she’d never been close to her parents, she had loved them. And she’d been devastated to lose Adelaide—especially so soon after Christopher’s disappearance. Violet frowned. “Why bring this up?”
“I wondered, that’s all, why you’ve never married.” He wasn’t the first to question her spinsterhood.
“I had my chance. And raising Posy has been an honor.”
“She is a lucky young woman to have had you.”
“The feeling is mutual,” Violet agreed. “Teaching her kept me…” She shook her head. She would not bring up how dark those days had been. “Aunt Iris was very involved as well.”
“I’m glad you had her then,” he said. “Both of them.”
“Yes. Family is important to me. I don’t want Posy to end up alone.” And she would do everything in her power to make sure Posy found a good gentleman to care for her—a good and proper husband. It’s what Adelaide would have wanted for her.
“Ah…” He nodded. “Did you remember what it was that you wished to speak with me about?”
“Oh. No.” Violet wrung her hands together. What had seemed like something that would be perfectly reasonable while she lay abed suddenly sounded vulgar and outlandish in her own mind. “I’m sorry to take up your time. It must have been nothing.” She began backing out of the room.
