In the afternoon, when the sun had dipped in the sky to cast long shadows over the valley, she made her way downstairs to meet the others. Father and Graham hadn’t come down yet, but Frederick was waiting in the entrance hall. He looked up as she walked down the stairs, and the feel of his eyes on her body made her giddy. A wave of heat rose up her neck. He extended a hand as she approached the bottom step, as if he were helping her down from a horse-drawn carriage in a romance novel.
‘M’lady,’ he said, kissing her hand. The brush of his lips against her skin was like an electric shock. She couldn’t tell if she liked it or not.
‘Aha,’ Father’s voice boomed down the stairs. Violet looked up to see a reluctant Graham trailing him. ‘Raring to go, I see.’
Outside, the valley was hazy with the afternoon sun. Midges shimmered in the sweet-smelling air.
‘Ugh,’ said Frederick, swatting at his face. ‘Don’t care much for midges, I must say. Not quite sure there’s any point to them, the blasted things.’
‘Oh, but there is,’ Violet said, excitedly. ‘A point to them, I mean. They’re a very important food source for toads and swallows, actually. You could say the whole valley depends on them, in the summer. And I think they’re rather pretty – they look a bit like fairy dust, in this light, don’t you think?’
Fairy dust? She chided herself. She was trying to seem grown up in front of Frederick. She hadn’t got off to a very good start.
‘Hmm. I’m not sure I’d go that far,’ he said, frowning. ‘Though they’re a damn sight better than Libyan mosquitoes. If I have to be bitten to death by insects, I’d rather they were bloody English ones.’
Violet flushed at the swear word. Father hadn’t heard: he was walking ahead with Graham, Cecil loping alongside. The occasional burst of their conversation floated back to them and it sounded to Violet as though Graham was getting a lecture about his shooting.
‘Terribly sorry,’ said Frederick. ‘Not used to keeping fine company these days.’
‘Are there no girls in Libya?’
‘None such as yourself,’ Frederick said. Violet flushed again. They walked in silence for a while. They were approaching the beech tree now. It looked rather majestic, Violet thought, with the sun dappling the green leaves and painting the branches gold. She waited for Frederick to comment on it, but he didn’t. They walked on.
‘I say,’ she began, ‘how is it that we’re cousins, and yet we have never met before?’
‘Oh, but we have,’ said Frederick. ‘I came to visit with my parents when I was a child. Though I expect you won’t remember – you couldn’t have been more than a toddler, then.’
‘Well, why did you come only the once?’ Violet asked. ‘I’d have loved to have a cousin around, growing up. It’s just me and Graham, and we … aren’t close, not anymore. Then, when he goes to school, I’m all alone.’
‘It’s all a bit fuzzy, to be honest,’ said Frederick. ‘But – and I don’t want to offend you – I think it was something to do with your mother.’
‘My mother? I barely remember her.’
‘You look like her,’ said Frederick. ‘She had the same dark hair. She was sort of – curious. Spoke like the servants. Mummy told me she was a local girl, from the village. Daddy was a bit put out by the whole thing, I think. Kept saying his parents would never have allowed it, if they’d been alive. Anyway. Sorry, I don’t want to offend you any more than I have already today.’
‘No – please,’ said Violet, grasping at his words. ‘Please, tell me more about her. Father never tells us anything. You said she was curious? What did you mean?’
‘Well, she … wasn’t quite well, I don’t think. For one, she was always going around with this ratty old bird on her shoulder. Some sort of raven – or maybe it was a crow, I don’t remember, but it was obviously diseased: there were these ghastly white streaks on its feathers. Anyway, she called it … what was it? Oh yes – Morg. Odd name. Mummy was rather scandalised.’
Here, Frederick paused and looked over at Violet. She kept her face neutral – afraid that if he could see the effect his words were having on her, he would stop.
A crow with white streaks. Could the feather she found have belonged to Morg? Violet’s heart sang. Her mother. So she had loved animals too – just as Violet had suspected.
‘She couldn’t take meals with us,’ Frederick continued. ‘She’d start off but then she’d begin to make strange comments, out of nowhere … “I’ll tell them,” she’d say, as if it were a threat. None of us had the faintest idea what she was on about, though perhaps she didn’t either, the poor thing. Anyway, your father would have to take her back to her room. Then she’d be ranting and raving, shouting … often, he had no choice but to lock her in.’
Violet started. ‘Lock her in?’
‘It was for her own safety, you see,’ said Frederick. ‘Just until the doctor came. She was – a danger to herself. And the baby.’
Violet shivered.
She had never met a mad person. She had an image of a waifish figure draped in white, speaking gibberish, like Ophelia from Hamlet.
Perhaps this was why Father never spoke of her mother? Because he didn’t want Violet to know that she had been mad. Perhaps he was trying to protect her memory. She frowned, then turned to Frederick again.
‘Well – can you tell me anything else about her? Was she … was she kind?’
Frederick snorted.
‘Not to me. Though she didn’t like me much – that was evident. I used to catch her staring at me and muttering to herself. And – well, the visit ended rather abruptly.’
‘What happened?’
‘One night, I found a toad in my bed. A live one. I remember touching it with my foot. It was cold and slimy. Horrible,’ he shuddered at the memory. ‘They probably heard me scream back in London. Anyway, then Mummy came, and saw the toad … and she got it into her head that your mother had put it there. She was hysterical. Your father kept telling her to calm down, that it had to be one of the servants – that your mother had been in her room the whole evening, with the door bolted, but both my parents got quite worked up really. They packed the car – we had a little green Bentley, I remember, new that year – and we left in the middle of the night.’
‘Oh,’ said Violet.
‘On the way home, my mother kept saying your father hadn’t been right in the head since the Great War … then our grandparents and Uncle Edward dying in that horrible accident … And then my father said …’ He paused to flick a midge from his shoulder.
‘What did your father say?’ Violet asked, scarcely breathing.
‘That Uncle Rupert had been bewitched.’
She didn’t know whether or not to believe Frederick’s story. She couldn’t imagine why he would lie. And yet … it was hard to believe the horrible things he had said about her mother. It was awful to think of her mother ranting and raving, needing to be locked in a room – and, worst of all, being unkind to Frederick. Perhaps she hadn’t meant to scare him with the toad? Violet wouldn’t particularly mind finding a toad in her bed. In fact, she was rather fond of them.