Then a figure appeared. Alexander gasped, almost starting forward out of the shadow. It was Violet. She wore a thick dressing gown that showed a brief, tantalizing glimpse of white beneath. She reached to the curtains and pulled them closed. Alexander looked around, down at the ground. He found small stones, chips of gravel and gathered them from the surface of the road. Then darting quickly forward and with the practice oflong experience, he threw a handful towards the window. Not too hard or it would break the glass. Not too gentle or they would not reach the third floor where the window was located.
The gravel clattered loudly against the glass, most of them finding their target. Alexander looked around to see if any attention had been drawn by the sound. The street was deserted. There was movement within, a shifting of light and shadow. Then the curtains parted slightly and a pale face looked out. He could not see where her eyes were directed but he could see the movement of her head. One way, then the other. Then sweeping back before finding Alexander standing now on the opposite pavement. Feeling suddenly foolish, he raised a hand in greeting.
What now? You’ve woken her in the middle of the night with stones at her window. She’ll call the constables or scream bloody murder. She’ll no help you the noo, you fool!
For a moment, she was still. He could feel her eyes upon him. Then he saw her gesture and hope ignited within him. He came closer, crossing the road to the near pavement. She was pointing to the side of the house, crooking her finger as she did. As though to tell him to go around.
Behind the house. The gairden! The wall that I climbed. I hope I don’t break my fool neck trying to climb it with a skinful of booze!
Alexander nodded and hurried along the street, down Charlotte Street and then into the shadowy alley behind the houses. Hefound his place, hoping that it was the right one, and began to ascend the wall. He made too much noise and slipped more than once but he reached the summit. Then fell more than climbed to the ground, landing with a thud and a grunt as well as a crash of branches and leaves. For a moment he lay still, waiting to hear the raising of a hue and cry. Then he picked himself up and began to make his way through the undergrowth to the small structure in which Violet liked to read.
It was empty and he sat on a padded bench seat against one wall. Time flowed like treacle. He could not tell if he had been sitting there for an hour or a minute before he caught the sound of soft footfalls outside. He stood and Violet appeared in the doorway. Her hair was loose about her shoulders. Her stockinged feet peeked out beneath the long, thick dressing gown she wore. She peered in and by the light of the moon, Alexander saw her lips tug into a slight smile as she saw him.
Chapter 17
Violet had not been able to sleep after her conversation with Lillian and the revelation of the diary. She had devoured the book, reading it from cover to cover and then beginning again. This time she had consumed it more slowly, looking for any clues that she could find as to the identity of her father. Finally, she had put the book aside, her head spinning. The clues were there, she was sure of it, but she needed time for the information to filter through her consciousness for her to begin to make sense of it.
With sleep unforthcoming, she lay staring at her bedroom ceiling, mind whirling. Then had come the sound of something hard clattering against the glass of her window. Startled, she had sat up, looking toward the window screened from her view by the thick curtains. It had sounded like a handful of gravel, as though someone had thrown it against the window.
Or perhaps a speeding carriage had thrown it from the road with its wheels. Except I heard no carriage. No wheels and no horse hooves.
Moving to the window, she had at first peeked, then flung the curtains wide and stared down. Alexander stood there, looking up at her. For a moment she had stared at him, dumbfounded. Then, realizing that others in the house might have heard the noise and might, at that very moment, be moving to their own bedroom windows to investigate, she gestured to the side of the house.
I will meet him in the garden. I hope he remembers my garden lodge. It is well-screened from the house. None will see or hear us there.
It had not been difficult to avoid detection within the house as she walked in stockinged feet along the hallways, almost silently. The house was sleeping and so were the household staff. There was no-one to see her steal through the kitchen, collecting a bottle of wine from the collection brought up from the cellar for her Aunt and Uncle’s supper the following evening. She also took a glass. The keys to the house’s back door hung in a cupboard in the office of the butler.
That door was unlocked and she had soon let herself out of the house’s rear door and was walking through the garden. Though the path twisted and turned, she knew it well and had no difficulty following it in the dark. A sound from ahead brought her up short though. The sound of booted feet against the wooden boards of the lodge’s floor. A cough and then the sound of a body shifting, cloth moving against cloth.
There was someone inside the lodge. Invisible clouds parted at that moment to reveal the bright, white disk of the moon. Itlit her surroundings in stark monochrome. Harsh white light and sharp-edged shadow. It was then that she saw Alexander through a chink in the branches of a tree. The first stirrings of fear left her to be replaced by a tension of a different kind. She stepped from behind the screen of branches and approached.
Alexander’s head came up but she could not see his eyes as he sat within shadow. That it was him, she had no doubt. The silhouette was a man, powerfully built and with a mane of long hair.
“Alexander!” She gasped, stepping in front of the doorway.
A shaft of moonlight illuminated her and she was suddenly aware of her semi-nakedness. The dressing gown that covered her from head to foot was thick, hiding the lines of her figure. But beneath she wore a much closer nightgown. It was cotton but it clung to her hips and bosom in a way that would reveal their shape perfectly to an observer. The dressing gown felt a flimsy cover.
“Violet,” Alexander said, getting to his feet.
He seemed to stagger, steadying himself with an arm against the wall. Violet moved into the lodge without thinking.
“Are you quite well?” she asked, concerned for his health.
Perhaps his reason for being here in the middle of the night was that he suffered in the grips of a fevered delirium. The answercame to her as she got closer. The smell of ale and brandy reached her and she stopped dead.
“I see that you are not, but it is a situation entirely of your own making,” she said, flatly. “Might I ask why you are here?”
“I couldnae stay away, lassie,” Alexander said calmly.
Violet did not have much experience with drunkenness but she believed it made one slur one’s words. Alexander spoke with lucidity and control. He stepped closer, still supporting himself with a hand to the wall.
“You can barely stand as a result of drink,” Violet said accusingly.
“Aye, and the worst of it was done with two members of your House of Lords, trying to bribe them with drink to do the decent thing with their votes!” Alexander said, harshly. “As it is, I must vote for some bill soon to be proposed which will help rich men keep more of their wealth. In return, they will vote to free children from slavery. And move up their goddamned political ladder at the same time! I’m sick of it!”
There was angst in his voice, underlying the anger. Violet felt a pang of sympathy for him. She knew little of the political sphere in which he existed, but supposed it was probably not all that different to the murky currents she swam in as a member of the Ton. It could be exhausting, constantly maneuvering, and concealing one’s true feelings and thoughts.
“I see,” Violet said, taking a seat and placing the bottle and single glass on the table in the center of the room. “Sit down before you fall down,” she told Alexander.
