The Typewriter Girl (20 page)

Betsey bit down on her lip, exchanged a quick, communicative glance with Mr. Jones. It was not an extraordinary notion; it was a damn good, logical next step. But she ought have kept it to herself a little longer.

“Speaking as a shareholder, I assure you a season makes a difference to me,” Mr. Jones said. “And clearly, it makes a difference to the board. It may make a further difference when they learn none of the excursionists were involved Saturday.”

“Innocent bystanders, all of them? Extraordinary.”

“Unless they were helping to break it up. It was provoked mainly by one fellow, as I understand it to have gone, and he’s a—an incorrigible blackguard, obviously, but the constable’s dealing with him, and he won’t be back.”

Betsey smiled to hear Mr. Jones use a priggish word like
blackguard
to describe Avery. It was surely for Sir Alton’s benefit, though that promise,
he won’t be back,
held more conviction than she felt. She added, “The rest were locals or others who had no call to be there. Mr. Seiler and I have already decided to post more staffers to make certain the gathering remains private.”

“A fine idea. I shall recommend the suspension of the scheme at the next board meeting, so our manageress here needn’t trouble herself with making new bookings.” He stood and extended his hand to Betsey, who in her confusion over this gesture, could only reciprocate. Patting her hand, he lilted cheerfully, “In fact, I absolutely forbid it.”

•   •   •

“Manager
ess
,” Betsey said, as though substituting the word for a good hard spit over the side of Tobias’s rig.

John could swear his eyes ached from all the darting they’d done, watching that duel of amity and good manners between her and Sir Alton. She couldn’t appreciate how well she’d come out.

“You were flirting with him.”

Her eyes widened in surprise, then it seemed a denial was forthcoming, but finally, she settled her hellion brows in a mutinous angle.

John said to Tobias, “You saw it, didn’t you?”

“Flirting? A small amount, perhaps.” Tobias considered Betsey, his affection evident. “A pleasant amount. Not an improper amount, I would say, but then, I am not British. Did it seem so to you?”

John shifted under their expectant gazes. Any answer seemed dangerous and he was sorry he’d said anything.

“A great deal of good it did me,” Betsey said. “He called me a trained monkey.
Your
trained monkey.”

“A compliment, it was.”

“To you!”

She turned her face aside, watching the trees clip by. She’d been roundly licked, she believed, but John knew better. That trained monkey remark revealed fear on Sir Alton’s part, some acknowledgement that his position was not as sound as he’d believed. Somehow, Betsey had made him listen. Those slim fingers of hers sliding over the paper, for one. But not all. A good mind, too, the tongue to share it.

The rig swayed, and with it, Betsey Dobson’s knees, more defined beneath her skirts than other women’s. The plainness of her gray tweed, perhaps, or what she wore under it. In her lap, her books slipped back and forth across her skirts. John watched her agitation play out in her thumb, tracing back and forth over the top corner of her ledger. Beneath her glove, her knuckles rippled.

“How long must I wait to make new bookings?” she asked.

“A little more than a fortnight until the next board meeting.”

Her thumb and knuckles stilled. She splayed her hand across the book cover and pulled the volumes close. Her face was still turned aside, watching the sea now that it had come into view. He wondered, suddenly, about her canary, whether the mending she had done to the cage with string and newspaper had held.

She was calculating, he guessed. How many bookings could she have made in a fortnight? The weeks left to the season. Commissions lost. The wages of other jobs she might get in Idensea. The cost of a move back to London.

His chest felt peculiar. Blown to smithereens. Was she sorry she’d come? Had he been wrong, persuading her to leave everything behind?
Y ferch a wnaeth wayw yn f’ais,
an old Welsh lyric began.
Girl who struck this pang in my side.
He remembered it now, remembered his young brother Owen, too, for trying to say goodbye to that child was the last time he’d felt his chest blow apart.

To both himself and Tobias, Betsey said, “I was awaiting a few confirmations. If they come, they wouldn’t really be new bookings, would they?”

“No reasonable person, in my opinion, could consider them so,” Tobias answered.

John nodded his agreement. Neither of them would promise Sir Alton to be reasonable, but they would back her if necessary. “And you need to plan on that board meeting, prepare yourself to speak as you did today.”

“I? Address the board?”

Tobias asked, “Would you prefer the question framed to the members by Sir Alton alone?”

She exhaled. The word
hell
might have escaped. “Certainly not. But won’t they—I’m only—”

“Speak as you did today, girl. I know it’s in you.”

Her blushes. When they rose, he wondered if he’d ever seen a girl truly wear one before.

Here was the Kursaal already. But in a few hours, when he went for his music lesson, he would see her.

He needed to practice; he needed to settle things with Lillian. His impatience for proficiency, for the days before Friday to pass, was on him again, a burst like a breaking balloon.

•   •   •

“He works hard. A great many ambitions.” Mr. Seiler spoke quietly. “The right steps, he may realize them.”

Betsey was watching Mr. Jones stride back to work, thinking,
He will come for his lesson tonight
. “I expect so.”

“Miss Gilbey has much girlishness in her yet, but she will mature into her natural gifts. But you have not met her, I think?”

She suspected he meant to protect her as much as John. The wound was the same. “I have met Miss Gilbey, actually,” she replied, and because his reminder had served its purpose, and her ability to feed and house herself was a more pressing concern, she changed the topic.

“I shall begin preparing my address to the board right away. But what else? Sir Alton has stripped me of a good portion of my duties for the next fortnight, but I cannot sit in the office and twiddle my thumbs.”

“It may be for more than a fortnight.
Die Schlägerei . . .
” He shook his head. “What happened at the pavilion Saturday could sway the directors to Sir Alton’s side. Even if it does not, what they decide for this season may not hold true for the next, or the next. Are you prepared for those possibilities, Miss Dobson?”

The mere words planted a choking vine of panic in her throat. But that was not for Mr. Seiler to know. She smiled at him. “Not
in the least. I am only prepared to do whatever necessary to keep those possibilities from coming to pass.”

“I little doubt that, my dear Miss Dobson.” He discreetly consulted his pocket watch. “Until then, the submanagers and I examine the complaint books each afternoon at half-two. As we rarely have enough hands to carry out the resolutions, join us when your duties permit, and let the others in the office know you are available to assist them with correspondence and such. You will find yourself relieved of vacant time soon enough, and shall find it valuable education, in any event.”

In any event. One such being the permanent suspension of the excursions scheme.

She couldn’t let it happen, that was all. And why couldn’t she persuade the board? It was the simple difference of less money or more, after all, and she didn’t know a more persuasive argument than that.

Sir Alton notwithstanding.

As in music so in type-writing; it is the repeated practice of the same thing that brings improvement.

—How to Become Expert in Type-writing

T
ruly, Lillian disliked bullying her mother. The lady was so reticent and sweet that during parties like this, Lillian was resigned to allowing her to inhabit some far corner and have extended, sincere, and thoroughly unpartylike conversations with those who cared to seek her out. Lillian’s father had recognized early his daughter possessed the talent for circulation his wife lacked, and since then, Lillian had served as the auxiliary hostess for the Gilbeys’ functions, removing the burdens of warm wit and innocuous gossip from her mother.

So Mama owed her, didn’t she? And it was not as if she’d been asked to give a speech before everyone or to be the belle of the ball. One conversation with one person she liked anyway, merely the communication of one piece—a
snippet,
really—of bad, or more accurately, just
somewhat
unfortunate and otherwise
insignificant
news.

It had to be done, that was all, and her mother was the only one who could do it.

From her place alongside one of the columns in the salon, Lillian watched for some sign her mother had delivered the message. Mrs.
Gilbey had already been successful in drawing aside John Jones for a tête-à-tête, but that was no surprise. She and John had ever got on well; John always able to put her at ease. They occupied the same settee and appeared quite as cordial as they had a few minutes ago, when Lillian had turned away to speak to some of her guests.

Bother. If her mother failed in her duty, Lillian would be forced to tell John herself, which wouldn’t do. She couldn’t have John associating her with unpleasantness.

“Pray tell, who’s the quarry?”

The voice was low, playful, and next to her ear. Noel Dunning. “Quarry, sir?”

“This is obviously a spy mission. Now who—ah! Mister—”

Their faces nearly brushed together as she turned to him. He straightened quickly, but it flustered her, almost as much as his accusation. “Spying! Don’t be absurd, Mr. Dunning.”

But Mr. Dunning was too good to question her. “A thousand pardons, then.” He lifted a cup of lemonade, offering it. “It’s hot,” he cautioned as she sipped. “I asked that it be warmed for you.”

Lillian licked the inside of her lips. “Honey?”

“For your voice.”

Their duet would close the festivities tonight. The lemonade might have been best offered nearer that performance, but she didn’t mind. “How very thoughtful you are, Noel.” She smiled at him, sincerely pleased, though she itched to steal another glance at her mother and John. “You appear quite untouched by nerves. You don’t mind, then, that I put you first on the program? I meant it as a compliment.”

“Honored, of course. Though I admit, surprised.”

“What better way to introduce you?”

“And John—” Mr. Dunning held up between two fingers the printed program, on which John’s name did not appear. “Is he not to be introduced?”

“Mm.” She sipped her lemonade to suppress the urge to look over her shoulder. “He changed his mind. I suppose he thought it best to give way to . . . trained performers.”

Mr. Dunning looked baffled, and Lillian could tell by the way his gaze shifted that John was still on the settee with her mother.

She wished she could snatch back her lie. It would be found out as soon as Mr. Dunning and John spoke.

“But I thought he’d been practicing, at least here and there, a bit.”

“Well, perhaps,” she murmured, now fearing Mr. Dunning’s disapproval as much as John’s.

“May I say, Miss Gilbey . . .”

“Lillian.” She’d been thinking of this all week. “Once in a while. It could do no harm.”

“How especially lovely you are tonight, Lillian. It’s provoked this phrase in my head . . .” He hummed. The shine in his eyes shimmered along with a smooth, pretty ribbon of notes.

“A recent composition?”

“Exceedingly so.”

“And the next part?”

“I’ve no idea, I’m afraid.”

“I cannot but think it would be worth finishing.”

Across the room from them, the piano bounced out “Syd, Syd, Sydenham,” a preposterous tune one of the society members had composed as a call-to-order for their meetings. Lillian took Mr. Dunning’s arm and felt a swell of satisfaction as they moved toward the performance area. Everyone looked so merry, gathering around the low platform she’d had installed for the evening, chatting and joking. Behind the platform, all five pairs of French doors were flung open to the terrace, and Chinese lanterns bobbed on lines of wire from the garden right into the salon as though the difference between indoors and out bore no significance.

She had gone to a great deal of trouble to achieve a careless, unfussy effect, eschewing the usual rows of straight-backed chairs and instead instructing the servants to bring a thoughtfully mismatched assortment of furniture from all corners of the house and directing the placement of each piece into a spontaneous-
looking arrangement. Even the rugs were askew and overlapping. Some of the more bohemian amongst the guests might be enticed to sit right on the floor, and wouldn’t that be a thrilling effect?

The sight of John coming in from the drawing room with her mother disrupted her happy appraisal of the scene. It was no effort to smile at John. He looked dashing in his evening clothes, though she recognized his coat and saw her hint about having the lapels freshened had been too subtle. She disengaged from Mr. Dunning and claimed John from her mother.