A Wildflower for a Duke, page 6
The duke seemed to take in her sudden resurgence of pride, and nodded as if he approved. “You were talking about my failure to introduce myself,” Northam said. “I believe I was talking about some kind of smelly and inventive, albeit faulty, rain gear, if I am to understand correctly.”
“Your Grace,” she sighed impatiently. “Why are you here? I would offer you tea but I never drink the stuff. Terribly un-English of me, I know. I am sure you lock people in your dungeon for lesser crimes.” Her eyes kept helplessly navigating their way back to the nearly-reflective shine of his boots. “And really, your boots are beyond distracting. It's like looking directly into the sun.” Belligerent inquisition of his presence, embarrassing, unsolicited personal information, and open hostility towards his footwear … off to a promising start, Violet.
Apparently unaccustomed to the rapidly-shifting conversations that were commonplace for Violet, he stared at her quizzically.
“I have water. And milk—plenty of lactating goats, so that's never a problem—but I don't believe I am supposed to milk ruminants in the presence of a duke. I’m certain that's an unspoken rule.”
Eyes the colour of cinnamon twinkled with mirth as he studied her. “Well, if not, it should be.”
After a disquietingly long gaze, he looked away. The moment that connection ended, his relaxed joviality diminished like the sun shifting behind a cloud, leaving a much cooler man in its place. But for that one breathless moment, she had experienced a crackling sort of energy vibrating between them. Something that seemed as if it should belong to two completely different people in a different place.
“I’ve come to return your son. It seems he has befriended my daughter.” Ah. Back to reality.
Zach? Her Zach, who melted like hot butter when cornered in conversation with a stranger? She almost snorted at the implausibility. Then his statement and all it encompassed sank deeper into her mind, and even that hint of a smile vanished. Oh, God. It’s a duke's daughter. He really is going to put me in the dungeon.
“I'm sure he didn't mean any harm. I'll talk to him.” She was certain she must have looked unreasonably frazzled. Without the benefit of knowing Zach, the duke would never understand the magnitude of sadness Violet was about to unleash on Zachariah. She was nearly trembling at the thought of having to tell her son, who had been incapable of establishing friendships, that the one child he had finally formed some kind of attachment to was, in fact, completely improper to befriend. Having all of these devastating thoughts while being swallowed ridiculously in this warm—and, my God, delectable-smelling—coat, was dizzying. She let the offending item slide off her shoulders and moved to hand it to him.
“Zach won’t be any further trouble. I will make him understand.” Violet forced the words out.
“No. Stop.” He thrust the coat back towards her. “Mrs Evans, wait. I liked it better when we were discussing fish skins and goat's milk. I’m not angry. I was … well, more alarmed than angry. But not any longer.” Eyes that had sparked with laughter moments ago were now gravely serious and beseeching. When she offered no response beyond burrowing back into his coat, he continued on.
“I think Zachariah must be good for Nora. She’s struggled terribly since my wife …” His voice trailed off. “She has struggled for a while, but recently, she’s been happier. More like herself.”
Violet played with the buttons on his coat, her index finger circling around and around like the hand on a clock. His eyes dipped down to follow the hypnotic motion, and she immediately halted.
He cleared his throat. “You're wet through and should get changed. I simply wanted to let you know that Zach is welcome to visit. I've instructed him that, should they leave the gardens, they are to take a groom.”
“That's very kind of you, Your Grace,” she demurred.
“Kindness has nothing to do with it. It’s self-preservation.” His smile made a heart-stopping reappearance as he continued on, “Life with an emotional eleven-year-old girl is like having an adorable kitten. No one warns you about their tiny needle claws.”
“Just so,” she responded with an understanding nod.
“You can send the coat back with Zach. Or better yet, I’ve promised to accompany them on a fishing expedition. Come along, since you are clearly a superior angler. Or was it your husband who collected your materials? Never mind. Let’s say this Saturday? I’ll send a carriage at eleven o'clock. I’ll even instruct my boot boy to ease off the wax for your benefit. They will be positively scuffed for the afternoon.”
Northam turned on his heel and leapt into the carriage, his long legs having no use for the lowered step. Two taps to the roof and he was off, careening down the road before she could even begin to invent a polite refusal.
Chapter 6
V iolet stood stunned for long enough that a chicken decided her boot would make a comfortable place to roost. Scooping up the hen, she flipped the indignant creature onto its back like a baby, stroking the feathers on its chest. The chicken glared and wiggled ineffectually before settling into her arms.
“I cannot possibly go fishing with a duke. It’s absurd. It’s terrifying. It isn’t done. I absolutely will not go.” The chicken blinked up at her. “Well, you’re no help.” With a resigned sigh, she gently plopped the hen back on her feet. “I guess I’m going fishing with a duke.”
After drying and changing her gown, she found Zachariah seated at the kitchen table, string bean body curled about his sketchbook. Reaching for a pile of potatoes, Violet picked one up and began to peel. Moments passed with only the scratching sounds of skins parting and flopping into a growing pile.
“Anything you would like to tell me about, Zach?” Violet grappled with the nearly overwhelming urge to expel all her questions in one breath. Instead, she allowed the silence to hang heavy in the room, broken only by the scraping sounds of the potato. Peel, plop. Peel, plop. Peel, plop.
“No.” Zach’s pencil nub continued to glide across the paper in short, energetic strokes. This was one of those times when Violet wasn't entirely sure if he was unaware of the significance of an event, or if it was simply easier to feign obliviousness.
“Would you tell me about your new friend?” He brought his pencil to the table, tapped it a few times, then balanced it vertically on one end, catching it as it began to wobble.
Violet funnelled her restlessness into potato peeling, casting about for some of the patience that had developed as a result of the many failures and subsequent resolutions to master her impulsivity.
When Zachariah had first come into her life, she found their very opposing personalities to be some kind of a cosmic practical joke. He needed time and space to consider his words, while Violet’s thoughts waltzed forth from her mind and into the world as easily as breath from her lungs. When wounded, Zach would brood and retract into himself. Violet flew apart in every direction until her soul was emptied of its turbulence. But as Zach grew, Violet became aware of an underlying sameness between them. While the material of which they were constructed seemed entirely contrasting, they were still more like one another than they were to the rest of the world. A chicken and hawk don’t seem very similar until they try to live amongst horses.
She studied the potato in her hands, keeping the persuasive power of her gaze far away from his.
“Her name is Nora.” He glanced up, then returned to his graphite circus act. In that half-second, she saw everything. He knew it was momentous, he was overjoyed with his friendship, and he was vastly enjoying toying with her.
“Are you truly going to make me beg for details, you scallywag!” She flung a potato peel at him, and it adhered to his smiling cheek for a long moment before losing its starchy suction and toppling onto his sketch pad below. “I know it's not been easy for you to make friends. You must be excited to have someone to fish and play with. Tell me about her!”
She used the word “play” loosely, as Zachariah had never really played. When he was small and the other boys immersed themselves in imaginative pretend, becoming pirates and highwaymen, Zach could never seem to detach himself from being just Zach. It was like music he couldn’t hear, and as hard as he struggled to play the notes alongside his peers, he remained three measures behind and syncopated. There were times her heart had bled for him; she could remember the effects of that isolation, how it would burn away every glimmer of self-worth.
As the village boys grew, they became less tolerant of his differences. He was an easy mark for ridicule. Once, when he joined a game of cricket, they had intentionally thrown the balls at him over and over, making excuses for their bad aim as they laughed maliciously. He took ball after ball—to the hip, the shoulder, the knee, the head. They thought, in his reluctance to walk away from the game, that he didn't understand their particular brand of cruelty. He did. And he stayed anyway, stoically enduring endless rounds of physical pain for the slim chance of acceptance. Returning home bruised and emotionally unlaced, he fell into Nathan's arms with haunting sobs.
It only became worse after Nathan died. With no father to accept and encourage him, he withdrew from anything remotely threatening. Unwilling to bet on the cards he was dealt, Zach folded hand after hand until he left the table altogether.
Zach picked up the potato peel and began to study it, stroking back and forth with his index finger. The ever-present solemnity softened on his face, a shy smile growing in its place. Dimples Violet hadn’t seen in months made an appearance. So often his expression was shuttered, but when he threw back the curtains and let the sunlight shine through, it was mesmerising. The problem wasn’t that Zach didn't feel emotions like other boys. It would be more accurate to say that he felt everything and more, and couldn't always make sense of it all.
“She’s a little thing. Silly and inquisitive and stubborn … and nice. She's nice to me. And she collects animal bones. She likes to explore and she climbs trees almost as well as me. She doesn't let being a girl stop her from anything.” He threw the peel back at her.
His introduction of gender into the conversation unleashed an entirely different flood of concerns. She remembered how her attachment to Nathan had transformed from childhood friendship into tender adolescent love. Even now, Violet could imagine the ease Zach would find in falling in love with her as they matured … and the broken heart she would be helpless to prevent.
“She sounds lovely.” Violet tapped the knife blade into the potato as she mentally floundered about, considering the conversation that—however ineffective it might prove to be—she had to attempt.
“You know, there are some people, some friends, that no matter how much we come to care about them, are destined to remain only as friendships.”
“Of course I know that, Mum, and she is only a child.”
“Yes, but she won't always be a child. She will always be the daughter of a duke.”
He nodded his understanding.
“His Grace invited us to picnic Saturday,” Violet began, trying for a light tone that she didn’t remotely feel. “Would you like to go?”
Zach crossed his arms and resolutely stared at the table.
“The duke is going to have to know you, Zach. If you want to remain friends with Lady Nora, he has to know you.”
Zach sighed.
“Oh come now,” Violet cajoled. “Today wasn't so bad. You met him and did splendidly.”
Zach’s mouth pulled tight in a grim expression. “Very well. If that's the only way I get to keep Nora.”
Violet was tempted to remind him that Nora wasn’t a piece of rose quartz to be kept, but decided it was better to pretend she hadn’t heard his comment.
The chicken alarm began squawking outdoors, effectively ending the conversation. “My, but we are popular today. Who now, I wonder? The queen?” Violet abandoned her potato pile and went outdoors.
Hamish, with his sky blue eyes, peered up from where he knelt at the bottom step of the goat loft. An inquisitive goat sniffed about in his mess of sun-bronzed hair as he nudged at her tickling, intrusive nose. One look into his familiar face, and all her anxiety diminished. Hamish brought the sort of warmth and contentment only present with someone who knows everything about you, and loves you still. After the day's unexpected emotional pyrotechnics, Violet hadn’t realised how deeply she needed to unburden, until she found herself at the centre of his scrutinising gaze.
As a child, at an age where being different was the worst possible thing one could be, Violet had befriended Hamish and Nathan, who inexplicably adored her despite—or maybe partly because of—her eccentricities. When her brain became bored by the ordinary and shifted to the implausible, they merrily followed her lead, leaping topics like frogs on a lily pad and considering the fantastic right alongside her.
It had been their love and acceptance that imbued her with the confidence to appreciate her eyes for the colourful world they saw, and to even feel a little sorry for those who drifted through life in shades of grey. The Duke of Northam, who likely thrived on the strangled rules of aristocratic life, was exactly the sort of poor sod she pitied.
“Apple Core got her foot stuck in the broken bottom step again. Do ye have any nails? I’ll fix it while I’m about.” He returned his attention to the obstinate goat, “Hold still ye smelly beast before I make stew outa ye,” Hamish chastised. Freeing the unappreciative creature, he stood and crossed the yard.
“Good afternoon, Hamish. Zach, fetch some nails and a hammer, please.” Fiddling with the end of her plait, she waited for him to approach.
“Oot with it, Violet. I’ve known ye yer entire bloody life. Dinnae ye think I ken when yer itchin’ to talk?”
She shuffled through four completely conflicting emotions in the time it took for him to finish speaking.
“Zach made a friend! With the Duke of Northam’s daughter … which may be catastrophic … but he made a friend, and I’ve never seen him quite so hopeful and happy, and … isn't that lovely? Mostly lovely except the duke part.” She rolled back and forth on her toes, information tumbling out in a blur of exclamation points.
“Friends with Northam’s bairn? Isnae that something? Northam is a widower, isnae he?” Hamish waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“Oh don’t be absurd, Hamish. He's the bloody Duke of Northam and I am Violet Nobody, daughter of the second son of a baronet and keeper of too many goats.” She tossed her braid over her shoulder as if it had wronged her.
“If ye think that’s what attracts a man to a woman then I have some educating to do.” Hamish winked.
“Yes, but we aren’t talking about a man at all, are we? We are talking about what attracts a duke to a duchess.” She was smugly satisfied with her logic. “And I doubt he finds fumbling scientific loquaciousness all that attractive.”
“Aye, I’ll grant ye that the English aristocracy is a different sort o’ breed entirely, but unwind that cravat and I imagine ye would find a man underneath.” His bravado slowed to a simmer. “I just hate to think o’ ye all alone.” He sighed and tugged at the collar of his loosely-fitted brown shirt. “I’ve given ye four years to find some charismatic pig farmer or fisherman to land. Ye’ve already missed oot on so much. I cannae help feeling like some o’ that’s me fault.” His Scottish brogue was thick with remorse and concern.
Violet rubbed thoughtfully at the slight bump along the bridge of her nose, where it had been broken a lifetime ago. “Nonsense. I had years with my very best friend. I was safe and loved. What else could a girl ask for?”
A devilish smile crossed his face, then fizzled away.
“So much more, Vi. You dinnae even know all ye missed oot on. And I want that so much for you. Nathan would have wanted it too. Ye know I'm right.” Hamish reached out and entwined his fingers with hers.
“I’m not alone.” She squeezed his massive hand, worrying her finger across a callus. “I have Zachariah. And I’m happy. I am. My marriage may not have been,” she paused looking for the right word, “conventional … but Nathan brought joy to my life in so many ways. And I have you.” She deployed her most dazzling smile.
“That ye do, and ye willnae be rid of me. All right, lass. I’ll let off harping ye for now. Where's that lad off to with the hammer?”
Violet wandered away to find the supplies. She hated that Hamish felt responsible for her somewhat lacklustre marriage. Most people didn't get to walk the exact path they would wish, and she refused to allow whatever sacrifices she had made to poison all the good in her life. So she buried those abandoned desires where they couldn't hurt her. She was a mother to a remarkable boy. She was comfortable, with enough food and a sturdy home. She was safe. No one had everything, and what she had was enough. And if those dreams unearthed themselves late at night, when she was alone with only the stars to see her longing, well, she wouldn't blame herself for that occasional falter of her pragmatism.
Violet pushed all the unwanted thoughts aside and continued her quest for the wayward hammer. Nothing was ever in its designated place, but she had only to look to herself for that source of frustration. When one task was complete, or sometimes even when it wasn’t, her hand simply forgot the tool where she stood and carried on with the next activity. Zach was much more orderly by nature.
By the time she returned with the hammer—which she discovered by the nesting boxes— and nails—which she remembered having shoved inside of an old boot—Hamish had rolled up his sleeves, prepared to work. He seldom wore a cravat or jacket, decreeing that they were too English, and he often shed even his shirt in outdoor work.
Her closest neighbours were accustomed to his very frequent visits over the years. And so, even with Nathan gone, they didn't remark upon Hamish’s perpetual presence, viewing him almost as a part of the family. It didn't hurt that he was a generous and thoughtful member of the community, always among the first to volunteer when help was needed. Not to mention, lethally charismatic.
Hamish ripped off the rotting wood, holding the new stair in place as he began to hammer, missing the nail entirely and almost bloodying his thumb.
