Chapter Six
Violet had been a guest of the Stanhopes on numerous occasions. She’d attended dinners and Venetian breakfasts, balls, soirées, musicales. She’d also visited on less formal occasions and been upstairs to the family rooms, and she’d even been in one of the bedchambers, when she and Aster and Freddy’s sister had dressed each other’s hair with artificial flowers.
Violet hadn’t been into Freddy’s bedroom, but she knew it was at the front of the house, overlooking the square. It had a narrow little balcony with a wrought iron railing and a statue of a faun playing a pan flute. When he was younger, Freddy had several times used the balcony to tip water on the heads of his siblings, to their wrath and his amusement.
Freddy hadn’t tipped water on anyone for years, but Violet knew th
