She did not answer his light rap, and—after glancing down the hall and verifying that it was, in fact, empty—Sebastian juggled the tray he was holding and opened her door.
The room was cozy and clean, the furniture simply made. A window looked out on an idyllic summer meadow, but Violet was not watching the view. She sat at her desk, her head bowed over a few sheets of stationery. She was writing at a furious pace. She didn’t look around, not even when Sebastian let the door shut with a bang. She had no idea he was even in the room. Typical. He found himself smiling.
He walked to her side, set down the tray, and pulled up a chair.
If he’d had any talent at drawing, he could have reproduced a picture of this from memory: Violet, unaware of her surroundings. Her lips were pursed; she focused on the paper in front of her with the singular intensity of a cat watching a butterfly. He’d seen her like this a thousand times—more than a thousand, actually. When Violet became engrossed in a project, she lost track of where she was and what she was doing. He’d often wondered if she found it disorienting to look up and discover half the day gone. One day, the house she was in would burn to the ground. When that happened, she would look up hours later, blinking, wondering why she was surrounded by charred walls and ashes.
He’d enjoyed the charade at first, in part because he’d enjoyed the work itself. But it had been more than that. When he’d been presenting her work, there had been moments when he’d had her attention. He’d practiced his presentations in front of her, and had found himself at the center of her considerable focus. She’d looked at him as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist.
He let out a slow breath. The only way he’d ever been able to catch her attention was when he’d talked to her about anything other than herself. Every time he’d hinted at more, she’d refused to see it—as if every aspect of Sebastian as a man was as irrelevant as…as…
As a building burning down around her while she was thinking about something else.
He could shout at her about it. He might as well shout at a kitten for having fur.
She was still writing furiously. Not just swiftly—now that he was watching her, he could tell that she was angry about whatever had caught her attention. Even from ten feet away, he could see the jagged lines her pen made, the grim set of her mouth. Her eyes narrowed at the page.
Maybe she was writing a letter about the cruelty of using steel traps to catch garden pests—one of the topics that occasionally occupied her time. Maybe she was writing a response to a fellow scientist.
That was the thing about Violet. You never knew what had caught her fancy, whether trivial or of the greatest importance. You only knew that she wouldn’t see anything around her until she’d finished with it.
Seconds of waiting turned into minutes. The light in the room shifted slowly; the shadow cast by his chair lengthened, inch by inch.
Her anger seemed to ebb as he watched, slowly changing into something he couldn’t quite place on the emotional spectrum. Resignation, maybe? Eventually, as he had known she must, Violet put down her pen and pushed aside her paper.
Watching her come back into a recognition of her surroundings was always something of a joy. She blinked as if she had just come out of a cave and her eyes needed to adjust to the light. She stretched: spine arching, arms extending, fingers spreading wide and then clenching into a fist. She drew in a breath and looked up.
Her gaze landed on Sebastian. For a few moments, she stared at him. “Oh,” she said in puzzlement. “I suppose I did hear someone come in. I should have known it was you when you didn’t disturb me.”
“I know better than to disturb you.”
She regarded him warily before finally offering a hint of a smile. “You’re one of the only people that I can work around. Being around you is like being around nobody at all.”
“Thank you,” Sebastian said gravely, trying to hide his smile in response. Only Violet would say something like that and intend it as a compliment.
She blinked again. “Wait one moment. I was trying to avoid you.” She spoke with perfect bluntness. “For God’s sake, I was writing you an angry letter.”
“Oh, really?” he asked. “That was for me?” He started to lean in so he could read her words, but she flipped the papers over.
“No.” She pursed her lips. “It’s much too rude for me to deliver.”
That didn’t normally stop her. He simply folded his arms and waited.
She sniffed. “And selfish. Also, I called you a great many names.”