Dark Surrender (9 page)

Laughing, she stared up at him in delight.

He glanced away, as if disconcerted by her unfeigned pleasure. “Not what one might expect in an abbey, I imagine. The medical tomes are mine—there are hundreds more in my office—but all the other volumes are for Lillian. Every time I learn of a new book, I send for a copy. I have no idea what she might fancy once she does learn to read, so my goal is to have them all.”

“I am in awe,” she breathed, craning her neck for a better view of the volumes lining the balcony. “It’s perfect.”

“It is a work in progress.” He bowed and made his way to the door. “You are welcome to revisit this room as often as you’d like. Please, help yourself. Select as many titles as you wish, while I fetch Lillian to her new classroom. Mind the automatic locking mechanism—here, I’ll prop open the door with this stool.”

She bit back a sigh, once again reminded that this library was a splendid oasis within a well-fortified tomb. There must be a way to bring some light, some
life
, into Lillian’s dark existence.

Violet chose a slim volume of fairy stories, then returned to the prayer room to await her new charge.

Settling atop the wooden bench, she opened the book to the first page and began to read. A handsome prince upon a white stallion had just stormed a witch’s lair when the prayer room door swung open.

Lillian arrived meticulously dressed, as if she were being presented to court rather than sitting through her first morning of lessons. Mr. Waldegrave entered just behind, a blue porcelain inkwell in one hand and a blackboard perhaps a cubit square tucked beneath his other arm.

“I’ve ordered a larger board,” he said before Violet had even opened her mouth, “but I’m hoping this will do in the meantime.”

Violet held out her hands. “It’s magnificent. It also looks brand new.”

“It is.” Lillian set a small basked of candles upon the table. “What could I write, without knowing my letters?”

Mr. Waldegrave’s jaw twitched, as if the comment had scored a direct hit.

Violet, however, was heartened—the remark had been delivered matter-of-factly, with neither recriminations nor self-pity. Lillian was not precisely bouncing on her heels with anticipation of practicing her penmanship, but nor did she appear resistant to the idea. She simply seemed curious. At the Livingstone School for Girls, it sometimes took Violet months to coax new arrivals from despair to curiosity. This was a very good sign, indeed.

He pulled a quill and a handful of chalk from one of his pockets. He laid everything atop the table along with a small sheaf of loose parchment. “If you require anything else, please let me know and I will see it ordered immediately.”

“This will be wonderful for today. Thank you.” She patted the empty section of bench next to her. “Would you like to join me at the table?”

Lillian hesitated briefly before sliding up onto the bench alongside Violet.

“Very good. Now, would you like to thank your father for the supplies he brought for us to use?”

Two sets of eyes swiveled to face Violet. Mr. Waldegrave’s expression was pained, as if she had purposefully set him up for another public rejection. And his daughter’s face was suspicious, as if she wasn’t sure whether the new governess would cancel all the fun if Lillian refused to play nice.

Just when Violet began to think the awkward silence would stretch on forever, Lillian finally glanced away and muttered, “Thankyoupapa.”

Although her tone was resentful and her gaze never met his, Mr. Waldegrave’s dark eyes warmed. “Thank
you
, Miss Smythe. And you’re very welcome, Lillian. There’s a bell pull along the wall, should either of you require anything at all. Otherwise, I will return at noon.”

After he quit the room, Violet spent most of the morning demonstrating the use of the blackboard and drilling her charge on the alphabet. Once Lillian could write several letters to both her and Violet’s satisfaction, however, she quickly wearied of the squeak of chalk and its endless dust. Upon hearing “I want the feather pen!” for the hundredth time, Violet finally acquiesced.

Ink, however, was a far more challenging medium, and after half an hour of sticky fingers and scratched parchment, the nine-year-old looked a mere breath away from tears—or a tantrum.

“Let’s take a respite from the quill, shall we?” Violet suggested, keeping her voice light and pleasant. “There’s still a bit of chalk to use up. Would you be so kind as to hand me the blackboard?”

Expression thunderous, Lillian glared at the feather protruding from the inkwell, glared at the ink coating her small hands, then glared at Violet with tears in her eyes. Neither of them spoke. After a fraught moment, Lillian snatched up the blackboard and tossed it across the table.

“You can have the horrid—Oh!” Lillian grabbed for the board, but it was already sailing directly toward the inkwell . . . and Violet’s dress.

Instinct had Violet leaping to her feet, which only served to provide an even larger canvas for the flying ink. She fumbled to catch the porcelain bottle, succeeding, at least, in rescuing the handcrafted inkwell from shattering upon the floor. Her dress, however—her
only
dress—was irrevocably ruined.

No, not ruined. That was misplaced vanity talking. Stained from mutton sleeve to frayed hem, perhaps, but still wearable. It’s not as if she had ever looked particularly radiant in it anyway, she told herself. And at least the ink hadn’t gotten on Lillian’s finery.

At Violet’s assessing glance, Lillian’s lip wobbled and she burst into tears.

“Don’t leave! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, I promise. I’ll never do it again. I don’t like ink, anyway. We can use chalk forever and ever. Please don’t go!”

“Oh, honey.” Violet knelt before her. She knew that desperation well. Once she’d arrived at the Livingstone School for Girls, she would’ve done anything,
anything
, to be allowed to stay. She had been terrified her illiteracy and coarse ways would have her right back on the streets, and had been utterly gobsmacked when kind-hearted Old Man Livingstone had offered her a home. That had been the day—the exact moment—when her life had changed forever. “Lillian, shhh. I’m not going anywhere. It was just an accident. I’m not hurt—see? And who gives a fig about this old dress. It was a wash or two from the rag bin anyway. I’m not angry. I still like you just as much now as before.”

That last shocked Lillian out of her tears. “You . . . like me?”

“Of course I do,” Violet answered firmly. “If it wouldn’t ruin your pretty gown, I’d hug you right now just to prove it. How about we shake on it, instead?”

Lillian wiped her face with her sleeve. Her wide gray eyes blinked at Violet above ink-stained cheeks. Slowly, tentatively, she held out her hand.

Violet gave an exaggerated shake and, face solemn, kept pumping up and down rather than letting go. When Lillian realized she’d have to be the one to put an end to the interminable handshake, she collapsed into a fit of giggles.

They’d just turned their attention back to the blackboard when Mr. Waldegrave unlocked the door, fresh-cut roses in hand.

“Ladies, I’d like to celebrate your first morning of study with—” Upon taking in the scene, his expression transformed from jovial to horrified. The roses fell from his hands. “Lillian, what have you done?”

“I threw the blackboard, but—”

“That’s outside of enough, young lady. I don’t want to hear another word.” As he stalked into the room, his boots crushed the perfect blooms into shreds. He swung his daughter up off the bench and over his shoulder. “Miss Smythe, my deepest apologies.”

“Mr. Waldegrave, your daughter just—”

“No need to explain. I should never have left her unsupervised.” He swept out the door and into the passageway. “I will discuss Lillian’s behavior with her privately and then make a decision on proper punishment.”

With that, they were gone.

Violet stared, openmouthed, and then leapt up from the bench just in time to catch the door before it swung closed, locking her inside the prayer room.

#

Alistair allowed the sanctuary door to close securely behind them before setting his thrashing, kicking daughter down in the center of her bedchamber.

“You listen to me, young lady,” he said quietly, but firmly. “You
will
treat Miss Smythe with respect. It is high time you treat everyone who cares for you with respect, and I—”

“Why should I listen to you?” Lillian exploded, her pale face tinged pink with pent-up fury. “You never listen to
me
!”

He sighed. Some days it felt like all they ever did was relive the same timeworn arguments. He was so tired of fighting. “I will listen when you speak in words, not with fists and teeth. And the first words I want to hear are you apologizing to your governess for throwing ink at her.”

“It was an
accident!
I
did
apologize! It’s you who should apologize. You don’t care about
me!”

“Balderdash.” He couldn’t believe his ears. “Since the day of your birth, I have spent every moment of every day doing everything in my power to improve the quality of your life.”

Lillian kicked her chair away from her desk and dropped onto the seat with a huff.

“Your life is more important to me than my own,” he said softly, hoping his daughter could read the sincerity in his voice and eyes. “Don’t you know by now how much I love you?”

“I’ve known you hate me since I was five,” Lillian rejoined flatly, her thin arms crisscrossed over her chest. “I’ve still got the scars.”

“The sun burned you, not me!” he burst out, dropping to his knees before her. “I searched for you everywhere and carried you to safety the moment I heard you screaming.”

“
I
remember,” she muttered sourly. “I doubt you do.”

“How could I forget? I was terrified I’d lose you. I would have done anything to trade places. I feel guilty to this day that you were ever burned. Why do you think I had locking mechanisms on every door by the very next day?”

Her dark eyes pierced his soul. “To bury me in here, just like you wish you buried me outside.”

“The only thing I pray for is—” he broke off, sudden understanding clenching his stomach and turning his skin clammy. “What did you say?”

Lillian’s lower lip trembled. “Maybe I can’t read, but I know my own name. It’s embroidered on my pillows, sewn into my clothes, and etched right onto my gravestone. You wish I were dead.”

His heart seized. Horrified, he reached for his daughter. “Sweetling . . .”

She recoiled, nearly upsetting her chair in her haste to avoid his touch. “No. I tried the locks. I heard the whispers. Then I saw the grave. And I knew I could never, ever trust a single word you said ever again.”

His fingers cold and his breathing shallow, Alistair could barely think over the rushing in his ears. For four years, he’d believed his daughter hated him because he hadn’t saved her in time from the sun. He’d accepted her outbursts, her long silences, her teeth upon his skin, because he believed he deserved it. That any man who allowed his child to be harmed was unquestionably a bad father.

But it was ever so much worse than that.

Her burns had never stood between them, after all. The wounds were not those he could see, but those Lillian carried in her heart. For four years, she believed her own father wished she were dead. Whether or not she was too young to understand that love, not hate, had brought about that gravestone, it was far too late to expect her to believe any part of the explanation. But he still had to try.

“Lillian,” he began softly, his throat clogging from the pain evident in his daughter’s eyes. “I have never once wished you away. There are bad people out there who would have tried to take you from me—or, worse, to harm you—if they knew you were alive. That is the
only
reason for that stone. It means nothing.”

“Bad people like you?” his daughter answered dully, a sheen of unshed tears glistening in her eyes.

“Sweetling, I—“

“No more make-believe.” She swallowed hard but did not lower her gaze. “You may be my papa, but I don’t love you, either.”

CHAPTER SIX

Violet stood in the open doorway, half in the prayer room and half in the catacombs, and trembled at the unrelenting shadows.

Perhaps Mr. Waldegrave could see in the dark, but she was not so gifted. She turned to grab a candle, only to realize they were over by the table and well out of reach. Nor were there any convenient heavy objects with which to prop open the door.

With a growl of frustration, she spun back toward the hollow tunnel and picked her way through as quickly as she could in complete blackness. Her throat tightened. She did her best to tamp down the familiar panic crawling up her skin. If she had to feel her way in the dark, at least she wasn’t in the catacomb with the dead monks.

She finally reached the intersection with Lillian’s bedchamber. When her knocks went unanswered, she realized she’d have to traverse the catacombs after all, if she didn’t want to linger alone in the darkness.

Desperately modulating each breath to keep panic at bay, she inched down the musty passageway, keeping her mind from the bodies in the walls by concentrating on the many things she’d like to beat into the thick heads of both Mr. and Miss Waldegrave.

The first fable she’d read Miss Lillian would have to be
The Boy Who Cried Wolf
. Her charge had every reason to feel unfairly accused, but the first step to earning her father’s trust would be to stop attacking him at every turn.

The story she was saving for Mr. Waldegrave was being invented in Violet’s head with every hesitant step and gaining furor each time her ginger ankle unbalanced her into the moldering walls. She was titling this one,
Don’t Assume You Know Everything
, and it contained an extra chapter called,
Where The Bloody Hell Is The Governess’s Key?

By the time she reached the primary structure, sweat dampened her hair and her heart was in danger of imploding. She refused to reenter the catacombs without a pocketful of candles and a heap of keys.