The Typewriter Girl (46 page)

“I’m going with Sophie when she leaves,” Sarah added, referring to her older daughter. Betsey nodded, glad. The only times she’d seen Sarah somewhat at peace since Charlie’s passing were when she was with Sophie’s children, an infant and a plump toddler.

“Perhaps I won’t come back.”

“Oh, Sarah,” Betsey sighed, aching for her.

She asked if Betsey would oversee the management of the house until she decided what she would do. None of the servants could do the account books, and Dora Pink, well, Sarah would not say a word against her, but Betsey understood Sarah’s reluctance to give Dora official authority over the house and the rest of the servants—she claimed enough as it was.

“And Charlie’s room . . .” she began, but got no further. Betsey closed her umbrella and climbed into the carriage, circling her hand over Sarah’s back as she promised again and again that of course Charlie’s room should not have boarders, of course it was his room, his room alone.

Eventually, Sarah calmed. With the whistle of the London train sounding in the distance, she refused to allow Betsey to see her home but did accept the company of the hotel page Betsey had along to assist her.

After the page and Betsey had changed places, Sarah pursed her lips at the depot. “I hope he returns before I—in time for me to—”

“Sarah,” Betsey said firmly. “If John believed you were spending a moment of worry over how he cares for you or whether he forgives you, it would kill him.”

But she understood Sarah’s anxiety, her desire to speak the truth, not let it exist in implication only. Since Miss Gilbey’s sudden departure, Betsey feared John might not come back at all, that she would never again have the chance she had squandered before.

It felt lonely, frightening, to see Sarah drive away. She’d promised to take care of the lodging house, but what would it be, deprived of Charlie and Sarah? What would Idensea be to her if Sir Alton forced her dismissal from the hotel? And if John—

Not now. Not until Baumston & Smythe had concluded its most pleasant outing ever and was headed back to London. So resolved, she hoisted her sign welcoming Baumston & Smythe, Insurers to Idensea and drilled her attention to the rail station.

And there was her sister. Betsey caught her breath, seeing Caroline on the top step of the entrance, so far ahead of the other passengers in disembarking that it seemed she might have been the only one aboard. Caroline saw her, too, and cried out and came dashing down the steps, heedless of the rain.

“You wrote me Richard would not hear of coming!” Betsey exclaimed as they embraced.

“I made him hear it!” Caroline stepped back to look at her. “I wanted to surprise you, and oh, don’t you look splendid, all your brass buttons! But are you well? Your eyes—”

They hugged again, and Betsey felt she could stay in that embrace for ages. But Baumston & Smythe employees were fast gathering round them, Richard leading the way.

“For pity’s sake, Caroline!” He stooped to collect Betsey’s discarded umbrella and shielded his wife with his own. “Will you please remember what company we are in?”

“Look at Elisabeth, Richard!” Caroline sang. “Look how well she’s done for herself!”

Whatever this long-dreaded day held for her, Betsey experienced a moment of victory now, meeting Richard’s eyes, his expectation that she would come running to him and Caroline for help defied. She thanked him for bringing Caroline and realized she would be able to pay the last of her debt to him, this very day and in person. Happily, and with a touch of mischief, she kissed his cheek as his coworkers gathered near.

She circulated the printed schedules amongst the crowd, then climbed up on Ethan Noonan’s char-à-banc to offer an official
welcome. In their curiosity to discover what had happened to the scandalous type-writer girl who’d fled the premises back in May, they were the most attentive group she’d addressed all summer.

She concluded by reminding them the Kursaal offered plenty of indoor diversions while the rain held.

“Don’t you mean to warn us against the unsavory sorts that frequent watering places?” someone in the group called. “Thieves? Confidence men? Women of dubious morals?”

There was a gasp at the last suggestion, probably from one of the wives. As for the question itself, Betsey knew exactly from whom it had come and precisely where the inquiring bastard stood. She didn’t look at him in the beat of silence which followed. She avoided looking at Caroline and Richard, too, dreading the sight of her sister’s face, bound to be fraught with fury and sympathy. No, she glanced once more at the rail station entrance, and then, from beneath her umbrella, she gazed down at them all with a Sunday school smile.

“I’m afraid Mr. Wofford is correct,” she said. “Pickpockets down on the Esplanade aren’t unheard of. But do inform me if you come across some fellow who puts his fingers in the wrong place. I shall tell you how to make short work of him.”

She let the laughter ripple for only an instant before she wished them all a pleasant visit. The island of umbrellas began to break apart. Betsey let her gaze rest on one unmoving spot: Mr. Wofford’s scraggly-bearded face, pink with his seething.

•   •   •

Whatever had caused Lillian to throw the book, John had missed it. He’d been staring out the rain-splashed window, lost to anything occurring within the train carriage, until Lillian’s sharp cry had roused him and he’d turned in time to see Noel Dunning get clouted in the shoulder by a volume of sermons. At the very next stop, Lillian’s aunt threw protective arms about her niece, and the two women left the first-class coupé—Dunning’s money, that—for the dining car.

“What did you do to her?” John asked.

“Offered to read her book aloud,” Dunning confessed.

John returned to the window, willing the passengers outside to alight or to board more quickly so the train might resume its journey
now-bless-God
. He could have advised Dunning to expect all his groveling to be met with rejection—sermons flying at his head, gazes from the depths of January—for some time yet, at least until Dunning and his new fiancée were forced to present a united front to their parents, and probably for a good while after.

He didn’t, though. He had little interest in alleviating Dunning’s personal hell just now. He was only glad Dunning had obeyed John’s wired demands to depart Vienna for London without delay.

Now, at last, they were bringing the good tidings of Lillian and Dunning’s great joy to their parents. The train, should it ever happen to
move-again-damn-it,
was bound for Idensea, where Lillian’s parents were finishing their summer holiday.

Where Betsey was facing the Baumston & Smythe excursion alone.

Finally, the conductor gave his all-clear, and the train resumed its journey. For a while, at least. This was a stopping train, stacking stones of time in his way back to Idensea, back to Betsey.

“She despises me.”

Dunning looked like something you’d find in a ditch and leave there. He’d been traveling the better of three days, John supposed, sleeping but little. The greeting he’d received from John upon his arrival in London showed redly below his left eye.

“She’s stopped weeping, at least,” John offered as comfort.

“She’s been crying?”

“Not since you came.”

“Too busy despising me.”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t think so.

“My father will despise me.”

“Not forever.” John closed his eyes. As ever, he saw Elisabeth, this time as she had been that Sunday dawn, on her stomach,
sprawled in sleep, her slight, strong hand at rest on his arm. He had leaned over her and kissed the small of her back, something in him moved to lay some protection on that vulnerable shallow of flesh.

Dunning broke the momentary quiet. “But
she
.
She
thoroughly despises me, enough to last forever.”

He spoke of Lillian, of course. But John’s heart tightened anyway. A rise of fear, the squeeze of uncertainty.

“If I could just have her alone for a minute or so—Jones, I swear to you she never told me about the child.”

“She said you knew.”

“I didn’t. I didn’t! She is lying, for some reason, or—or else perhaps—”

John opened his eyes. Dunning’s ears colored.

“What?” John said.

“She was so awfully innocent . . . that is, of course she was . . . but I mean of
everything,
Jones! I didn’t realize . . . I don’t believe she even understood . . . where things were going, you might say, not until . . . you know . . . it was happening. That is,
happening
, you see. Lord, but it was wretched. Not quite
all
of it, because of course, we’d been getting on swimmingly right before—”

John wished he hadn’t asked. He wished Dunning would shut up.

“But then we came to the
act
, and, oh,
God
, what a mess—she just turned hysterical, began weeping, for God’s sake, and her parents just in—”

“
Dunning.
”

With a gulp, Dunning shut up. “Right. Sorry, old chap,” he whispered, and sat fidgeting with Lillian’s book as the rails rattled beneath them. “It is only that I need a smoke. So frightfully bad.”

“Forty shillings, you can have it,” John said unsympathetically, speaking of the fine Dunning would have to pay if he were caught smoking on the train.

Dunning shook his head. “It makes her sneeze.”

“Ah.” John had not known this. He closed his eyes again.

“The thing of it. What I meant to say, that is . . .”

Dunning paused, perhaps for encouragement to continue, which John didn’t offer. As it turned out, he didn’t need it.

“I meant only to say that perhaps she told you I knew about the child because, in her innocence, or what have you, she is under the assumption that to . . . to
engage
in . . . in the
act
is to . . . to
conceive
. Inevitably, as you might say.”

John felt inclined to believe this. Dunning had, after all, proved cooperative in every respect since getting John’s wire—departing Vienna immediately, accepting John’s fist in his eye as a reasonable greeting, protesting his sudden engagement not even a little.

“Let us not speak for a while, Dunning.”

“Very well.”

And Dunning was very quiet for nearly a full minute before he pleaded with John to find some way to distract Aunt Constance so he might speak privately to Miss Gilbey before they faced their parents.

For he loved her, it seemed, and wanted her to know.

•   •   •

On the pavilion, Betsey chafed her hands over her arms as she stole a moment from the dinner dance to look toward the hotel. She could make out lights on the upper floors only; a white mist had all but swallowed the grounds tonight, and fine points of moisture blew into the pavilion. Soon it would be too chilly altogether to have entertainments here; soon the board would decide the fate of the excursion scheme.

Someone touched her arm, and she turned to accept the compliments of one of the type-writer girls, Julia Vane, who wanted to say again what a lovely outing they’d had, never mind the dratted weather. Betsey thanked her, and Julia was swept again into the dancers as a staffer came to murmur in her ear, “Sir Alton wishes to speak with you, Miss Dobson.”

Sir Alton, putting in an appearance tonight for the sake of the
business between the pier company and Baumston & Smythe, was already looking her way.

Earlier, she had entertained a fancy that tonight, Sir Alton would note how well things were going, how capably she managed this job. Now she knew she would have been luckier if he’d continued to overlook her, for there existed the very unlikable likelihood someone had by now told him about her last day at Baumston & Smythe. Forgery. Wofford’s broken fingers. Flight.

Sir Alton greeted her with a bow and a lilting good evening. “You have heard from our Mr. Jones,” he stated. “A telephone call! Rather urgent of him, true?”

Betsey, in town for Mr. Seiler, had missed the call, but it had created a stir in the office. The switchboard operator had personally delivered the message that there was no message and attempted to engage Betsey in guessing what the message might have been, had one actually been left.

“Something regarding Mrs. Elliot’s house,” Betsey had offered to end the game.

The past two days, she’d spent more time than she would ever admit making up words for John to say from miles away, but Sir Alton’s interest in the call was limited to one aspect.

“You surely would have informed me had his plans changed,” he said. “He still will move on to London, and you . . . you will remain here.”

It was a sideways confirmation that John had thrown her over, wasn’t taking her with him. Considerate of him.

Betsey waited with her hands clasped behind her, watching the dancers twirl through a polka. Old Mr. Baumston and Lady Dunning, Julia Vane and the type-writers, the clerks and the underwriters—heavens, even Richard with Caroline—they were all turning, smiling as they skipped, pale flames against the wet night beyond the pavilion.

She wished Sir Alton would see it, how beautiful, how
worthy
it all was.

She took a breath, about to be as open as she dared with him, to tell him she wanted to stay in Idensea, that she had done fine work this summer and knew she could do even better with more time. But the breath caught at the sight of Mr. Wofford across the way, making no secret of the fact he was watching her with Sir Alton. He nodded at her, his mouth smug.

“So many, many prospects as you must have, Miss Dobson,” Sir Alton went on, “and you wish to stay on here? My gratitude for your loyalty. Still, I would have thought—if you’d wanted to keep your position—you would have made yourself more . . . valuable. Particularly in matters close to me.”

Such as keeping John in Idensea. Betsey turned her gaze from Wofford to find Sir Alton appraising her as he might a worn garment: Burn? Or cast off to the beggar outside the gate?

“I expected too much, of course” was his bland conclusion, and Betsey crushed her lip between her teeth, for she had, too. In all sorts of ways, she had expected too much.