Blue Roses

Chapter 1 - A Visitor

The daughter of the house, named Emily, had planted specifically all white roses in the front gardens but watered them with blue food dye in the water so the roses grew in shades of blue, from cerulean to cobalt. Her parents weren't exactly happy when the rosebushes bloomed blue that year but they simply couldn't explain it. At least they figured out that was the maiden's favorite color, as she usually picked dresses in those hues. The other young ladies in the village came out dressed in all rainbow shades but Emily was known to be the blue one. Even Emily's long waves of dark blonde hair were known to glint blue under a certain light, probably from the algae in the ocean water clinging to her strands after swimming on the seaside.

Emily was watering the aqua and azure roses with more dyed blue water when her mother, the lady of the house, approached her from the front door. "You are having a visitor today. His name is Lord Barkis," the lady said. "Young Lord Barkis. He claims to know you from your schooldays."

"Childhood friends?" her father called over from the parlor.

"Childhood sweethearts, more like," her mother replied. "She was always a wayward child."

"I'm sorry, Mother, but I'm afraid I don't know anyone by the name Barkis," Emily replied curtly as she put down her watering can, her long strands of hair trailing over the blue water. She picked up her skirts to walk to the front door but had to stop momentarily to disentangle her hair and skirts off the thorns of the rosebushes. Her mother became engaged with her father in conversation as she closed the front door, leaving Emily in the garden. Her head turned to see a horsedrawn carriage pull up the driveway to the house, pulled by a dappled gray horse. At least she had a moment of notice from her mother, a moment's warning.

Not really interested in meeting this Lord Barkis, she quickly re-entered the house and shut the door behind her, finding herself now alone in the parlor, her parents' voices drifting from another room. She pulled a few thorns off of her skirt and blue petals from her hair to make herself more presentable. She was standing there apprehensively, hands clasped, when the knock came on the door behind her. She almost always answered the front door as her parents generally ignored knocks.

She quickly pushed aside a lace curtain to see a head of dark hair through the window, though she couldn't see his face. She pulled the front door open to find a very handsome-looking stranger - or was he? Her parents said he claimed to know her. There was something familiar about him.

"Hello," said the stranger as Emily stepped back to let him enter. He didn't explain himself more than that.

"Please do come in," she said, waving an arm cordially to the parlor.

The stranger seemed the same age as her, merely a boy though dressed his best and with hair carefully parted to either side of his face. Emily felt his gaze wander her up and down as he took in the dress she was wearing, quite out of modern fashion but in her favorite shade of lavender. Her hair was loose though without even a bow in it.

A moment of awkward silence passed between them before Emily said, "How do you do, Lord Barkis?" She gave a small curtsy.

He looked slightly startled by the name before he explained, "Please, call me Victor. Victor Van Dort. I have only recently inherited the title of Lord Barkis, from an uncle. My parents call me a young lord, now," he said, rolling his eyes. "You may not remember this, but we were friends in our schooldays."

"Victor? How could I forget! It's been so long since I've seen you. Why, we were best of friends!" She stepped forward and threw her arms around him warmly. She had not recognized him dressed in a suit and with his hair neatly combed, and she had not known he went by the name young Lord Barkis now. As a girl she had left school earlier than him to have private lessons and then sadly hadn't seen him anymore.

Victor responded to her embrace by putting his arms around her as well. For a moment he could feel her warmth and beating heart.

Emily's skirts skirted the floor as she took the visitor's arm in hers without hesitation, leading him to the loveseat.

"Do sit down," she said, her arm still linked through his as they sat down beside each other, her skirts fanning out. "So how have you been? Tell me everything!"

"Well I recently turned eighteen."

"Well happy birthday!" the maiden retorted playfully. "I turned eighteen as well, and I'm going to visit the royal court to be presented to the queen in the springtime," she went on giddily.

"I as well," he replied. "Perhaps I will see you there at the palace."

"Undoubtedly so!" Emily said, clasping her hands together over her heart as she stood and walked away, almost absent-mindedly as if in a daydream. She brought back black currant tea and tuna sandwiches from the kitchen a few minutes later. Suddenly a blue-gray cat hopped up on the table trying to eat a sandwich.

"Oh, Lavender!" the girl exclaimed as she picked up the cat in both arms and squeezed it in a tight hug. "Lavie, I fed you your tuna already. Tell me, Victor, how is your dog Scraps doing?"

"As lively as ever," Victor said. "I had to leave him at home as he's almost impossible for me to train, or so Mother and Father say." He reached out a tentative hand to pet the cat.

"They say that about all of us, don't they?" Emily joked as the blue-gray cat leapt out of her arms and skittered away.

She sat herself at the piano and started to play an arpeggio up and down. She felt Victor's presence behind her as he flipped through the songbook with a hand. "Oh, an instrument. Tell me, do you play?" he asked.

"Yes, I've been taking lessons. Do you?"

"Hardly, but, how hard could it be?"

"I can teach you," she offered.

"I would like that."

He stopped on a page in the songbook. "This one." It was a song called "Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair." Emily played the song and sang over it for Victor's entertainment. Then she had Victor sit next to her on the piano bench and started to teach him how to play. They sat side-by-side like two birds on a treebranch.

Emily agreed to keep up Victor's piano lessons every week. Victor waved good-bye to Emily at the end of the visit and said he would come back soon, and often. Emily watched him depart in his horsedrawn carriage through the window. By the end of the day she was so in love with Victor or Young Lord Barkis that she whispered to her cat Lavie and the blue roses growing that she thought she would love him always in life and death.