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The temper had crept up upon her before she’d even been aware of it lurking in the shadows. Violet hadn’t displayed temper since she’d been a child, so it took her by surprise. Unless this onslaught of emotion was something else altogether.
Surely it must be.
For why were the tears coursing down her cheeks as if she had no control of them?
Which she didn’t.
Angrily, she brushed them away as she bent over the board, trying to focus.
But she couldn’t. And then Max was by her side, holding her in his arms as so many suppressed memories found their outlet in her sobs.
She buried her face in his chest and breathed him in. Lemon verbena, sweat, horses. It was a good, honest smell that brought back the past even more strongly. “My dear girl, I had no idea. Truly, I am so sorry.”
She could barely take in what he was saying. The sobbing wouldn’t stop but he let her cry in silence, holding her and stroking her hair.
When finally she was exhausted from the emotion she leaned back, sighing deeply. “I should go.” She made a move to rise but he wouldn’t release her.
“Not until you’ve told me.”
She shrugged. “My parents are dead. So are yours. It’s all the same, in the end. The nature of their deaths is immaterial when you look at it like that. Grandmother ought to know,” she added in a whisper, bitterness flooding her at the memory.
“My parents weren’t murdered.” He was serious now. “That’s not something most of us have to live with. How did they die, Violet? Don’t think I won’t believe you,” he added quickly.
“Their throats were cut. We were in Cawnpore—”
“Dear God!” The spasm of his shock reverberated through him as he held her. “I’m so sorry. And you really were living there? Forgive me, Violet. I thought”
“That everything I said about my past was a lie?”
“I supposed I was thrusting you into my lie. I just expected to get more of the same back.” He touched her cheek. “I haven’t really taken the trouble to listen to you properly. I’ve only…”
After a moment he asked, “Tell me all you want to but nothing you don’t. I’ll not pry, but I do want to help.”
She chewed on her lip, the comfort of his arms around her transporting her back years to when she’d felt cherished. Safe.
“Please, Violet?”
She shivered. Could she bear to? Should she rake up the past? She’d never put any of this into words.
A tremor ran through her and his arms tightened around her. She rested her head on his chest and began to speak.
“My family lived in Cawnpore. My parents. Me. My sister.” The thought of her sister made her smile. What he was asking her to remember didn’t. “My father had a lucrative trading business and we lived well. A beautiful house, servants. I wanted for nothing.”
She’d been a privileged child, waited upon hand and foot. There’d been beautiful clothes and the lively tea parties her mother had enjoyed hosting.
It all seemed so long ago.
Closing her eyes and saying the words as Max stroked her face, felt like a dream. Before she’d even conjured the images, she remembered the smell. The damp earth smell that drifted through the half open window. The smell of the oil lamp on her father’s desk.
The rank smell of evil, unwashed bodies as men who had no right to be there stole into the house.
“My parents had returned from dinner with the Governor. I heard them dismissing the servants, downstairs, after they returned. And then I must have fallen asleep for I was awoken by a strange commotion. A muffled cry, I realised afterwards when I hurried downstairs and discovered two bandits had entered the house. They were looking for valuables, I suppose, but my mother must have got in their way. My father, who’d been in his study, came into the drawing room at the same moment I did. When he saw they held a knife to Mother’s throat, he had nothing with which to defend her. Or my sister or me. I’ve never seen a man look so helpless. We were all helpless. But Mother was like a lioness. She had a temper.” Violet smiled. “You should have heard the insults she hurled. No, she didn’t whimper in fright. But then my sister appeared. She’d been woken, too. She was only six and she didn’t understand.” Violet shrugged. “When one of the bandits came towards Emily, it was too much. Emily began to scream and Mother began to claw at her captor’s eyes. That’s when he sliced her throat. In the fight that ensued, I don’t know what happened. It was all over so quickly. The bandits left. They took a few valuables. Only what they could snatch as they ran. And they left our parents dead at our feet.”
Max’s breathing was soft against the crackle of the fire. A ghostly silence enveloped them as he held her close and stroked her cheek. “My poor Violet. What happened to you, then?”
“As my mother’s parents had died some years before, we went to live with my father’s mother. She’d never approved of Mother, so her reception was not particularly rapturous.”
Violet shuddered at the memory; at the flint in her grandmother’s eye as if she blamed Violet and Emily for being alive when her son was not.
