The Typewriter Girl (47 page)

How young Caroline looked! She beamed at Betsey as she and Richard spun by, and Betsey knew Caroline’s pleasure in the dance was exceeded only by her pride in her sister, standing in her smart blue uniform beside Sir Alton Dunning. Even Richard regarded her with warmth; he had accepted Betsey’s final payment to him with more grace than she might have expected, and nodded with apparent sincerity when Caroline hoped Betsey would make a visit to London soon.

“Curious, how hope will insinuate itself,” Sir Alton murmured as Caroline waved to her, as Wofford lurked like a jackal waiting his turn at the carcass. “Even in the bedrock of logic. I hadn’t realized I was such an optimist.”

Betsey tightened the clasp of her hands behind her back. Very well, damn it. She had expected too much. But of him. She’d expected too much of him, while of herself . . .

Not nearly enough.

She bent her head for a moment, long enough to glimpse her buttons, long enough to make a vow: Whatever happened this
night, at the end of it, she would be proud of everything she’d said and done. She concentrated on her remaining duties for the night, ordering a mental list of dances, refreshments, speeches, and, oh, the favors, the paper frames and tobacco. She had left them on her desk at the hotel. She would have to fetch them, or send someone—

“You did, I presume, permit him to fuck you with sufficient frequency?”

The folding of a letter is a matter of no little importance.

—How to Become Expert in Type-writing

T
he timing, the pleasant, offhand notes of Sir Alton’s voice—the vulgarity—it was all calculated to take her breath away. His reckonings were true, and Betsey reeled. Without warning, the pavilion lights dipped and swirled like eddying currents. She blinked hard, looked up and swallowed, and the tears subsided and the lights stilled.

And her voice was clear. “You presume too much, if you imagine I did anything to help you except to make money for your company and show it to advantage. If you imagine you’ve any right to ask for more than that, you presume far too much, Sir Alton.”

A light, fine interest dusted Sir Alton’s features, as though he found the sound of her voice a mild oddity. Apprehension brushed along her spine. Sir Alton reached inside his coat and produced a letter, which he offered. Expecting to see her own foolish work, the forgery she’d made at Baumston & Smythe, she opened it.

It was indeed a typed letter, but John’s scrawling signature drew her eye first. She frowned, skimming back up to the salutation. John had written Wofford? So it seemed, though Betsey recognized the fluffed-up language of the company secretary as she read:

We appreciate the apparent concern prompting you to contact Idensea Pier regarding Miss Dobson. Pray be assured your warning will be remembered should future circumstance warrant. As for your monetary claims, you will please understand a letter from your physician is necessary to verify any sum Miss Dobson may owe.

John, her ally from the start. Far more than the implications of the letter in Sir Alton’s possession, the ache rushed out to her—she missed John. Where would she find such extravagant trust and kindness again?

She returned the letter to Sir Alton, who wished her a pleasant evening as he slipped it into his coat, his needs regarding her met. What else had they to discuss? He would no doubt present the letter and Wofford’s version of the story when she gave her report to the board, and even if the report persuaded them to continue the excursions scheme, the letter would do little to convince them that she should continue to manage it.

Caroline, rosy and breathless, came to her with arms extended.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” Betsey said into her sister’s ear, hoping the unsteadiness she felt in her hands would go unnoticed. They tingled, her hands, as though they’d been deprived of blood.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes. I only have to go back to the hotel and fetch the party favors.”

“I shall come with you, then!”

“No, stay. I’ll manage, and look—I think Richard could be cajoled into another dance. Stay and enjoy yourself.”

The path from the pavilion to the hotel was more mud than pebbles and crushed shells, and belatedly, Betsey realized the mist had turned to rain again, her umbrella left behind on the pavilion. She turned to go back to get it, only to find Wofford nearly on her heels.

“God damn you,” she hissed, as startled as she was furious. “You’ve done your worst, haven’t you? Now let me alone.”
She reverted to her original direction, deciding to forgo the umbrella.

“Come back here,” Wofford ordered, quite as if he had the right, and not at all as if he meant to offer the use of the umbrella he carried. Betsey kept walking, wriggling out of the fitted jacket of her uniform as she tried to dodge the worst of the puddles, not easily visible in the night. She heard a plunking splash and realized he was following her.

Holding her jacket over her head, she kept going and trusted the length of her legs to outpace him. Still, she could hear him behind her, each footfall an irritation when all she wanted was the refuge of the empty office at the hotel, just for a few moments, to breathe and to gather her grit for the rest of this night.

“You will return to the pavilion with me, Miss Dobson! Stop where you are.”

Not stopping, she snatched a glance over her shoulder, prepared to mock him, but felt a small bell of alarm instead, seeing the determination with which he was bearing down on her, realizing she was being chased. She didn’t like it; she hadn’t meant to be running away.

She stopped and turned on him so quickly he fell back a step in surprise.

“I’ve said for you to let me alone. And you are even more of a sodding fool than I knew if you think you can compel me to go anywhere with you.”

“You owe it!”

“I owe—? I owe you nothing, nothing you’d want, at least. I owe Mr. Jones, perhaps—he paid your doctor, didn’t he? Likely too much—Julia Vane told me there’s been some doubt as to whether your fingers were, after all, broken. Perhaps Sir Alton owes you—what a shame for you he isn’t more given to spectacular scenes—but I assure you, you’ve reaped your revenge all the same.”

Wofford advanced. “That’s not the end of it. You disgraced me before everyone, and you will go up to that pavilion and beg my pardon before everyone—”

“Hush!” Betsey threw her fingers in front of her lips, ignoring Wofford’s outrageous demand in order to listen to the path. She let her jacket slip down from her head and shushed Wofford once more as she turned from him, listening.

Then, two words, escaping the mist from far down the path, over the splatter of raindrops, reaching her plainly, piercing her.

“
Bless God!
”

Someone else was with him, a man. She lifted her jacket again, blocking the rain and whatever Wofford was trying to say. A staffer, or Mr. Seiler, perhaps? She couldn’t catch enough of the words or the voice to be certain, and they were still too far inside the mist for her to see them.

Then came a feminine wail of distress she instantly recognized. Miss Gilbey.

Stumbling, Betsey left the path, intent on little more than seeking invisibility in the mist and darkness of the grounds, but when Wofford followed, she thought better of going too far from the path. She stopped beneath a tree, too slender to really shield her but enough cover for this night.

She lowered her jacket again; Wofford’s voice hit her ear. “Have you considered what it’s been like for me, working there after such humiliation?”

“Not even once,” Betsey assured him in a ruthless whisper. “Have you considered what it will be like for you, if you are discovered in the dark, sharing your umbrella with Miss Dobson?”

He jerked the umbrella away but did keep his mouth shut. Betsey touched her forehead to the tree trunk, pressed a thumbnail into the damp, spongy bark, and listened as the gritty noise of footsteps grew closer. Miss Gilbey was talking about her shoes—to herself, it seemed—for John and the other man weren’t answering. When they had passed without noticing her and Wofford a few feet away, she indulged—punished—herself by watching John’s back disappear into the mist.

And so much for her vow. She was too much a coward to face Miss Gilbey and her fiancé.

“Now then,” Wofford began.

“Are you still here?” she said dully, dullness spreading like spilled ink inside her, a thick and thorough soaking into her spirit.

“You can’t just ignore me.” One syllable was touched by a whinging, almost childish note. “You owe me an apology, in front of everyone.”

“What I owe you would keep your beard from growing.”

She started for the path, but Wofford yanked at her arm to make her face him, the force of it suggesting he’d expected more resistance. And yet, she hardly felt it. When she said, “You had best let me go,” it was with a coldness unattached to anything she felt for him.

Briefly, his expression flickered, let slip a trace of something like uncertainty or discomfort, but he didn’t let her go. “You ruined everything for me at Baumston and never paid for it—just swept off here, didn’t you? And now you believe you may look down on us all, as if you matter, you in your . . . your . . . uniform.”

His eyes dipped, and he seemed to run out of words.

“Like my buttons, do you?” Betsey asked softly, prompting another look from Wofford. “Well, they’re nothing but tin, but I worked for them, and they’re mine, and they’re much too good for the likes of you to breathe upon.”

She didn’t tell him again to turn her loose. She wrenched away but didn’t quite free herself, and a tree root put off her balance as she tried to get her knee to the crucial locality. Another hard wrench, and she was staggering backward, Wofford coming along with her.

Business letters should consist of short, clear, terse sentences.

—How to Become Expert in Type-writing

F
uck!
”

The word soared from the mist, stopping John dead on the path. He smiled and said, “Elisabeth, that will be,” and broke off from Lillian and Dunning to go after her.

He found her in the grass, crawling out from beneath a groaning fellow she was cursing far past the devil’s good taste. Amongst John’s reactions, surprise did not particularly register.

What did register was the groaning fellow’s efforts to sit up, his arm stretching toward Betsey, his fingers about to grasp the hem of her skirts as she scrambled on hands and knees away from him.

The man’s groans burst into a shout as John launched into him, but after that, he went still, submitting to John’s weight pinning him to the ground, his eyes saucered.

John didn’t ease up his force as he glanced over his shoulder. Dunning had followed him, and John saw with an unreasonable irritation and sense of loss that Dunning was taking Betsey’s hand, helping her to her feet. He took it out on the man under him, his fists bearing down on his chest just enough to provoke a squeak.

“Did he—” John began, but the question triggered a snap of self-consciousness. He couldn’t ask if this coward had hurt her,
not before he’d had a chance to ask her forgiveness himself. “Are you all right, Elisabeth?” he amended, and with Lillian proffering her pocket handkerchief with shy concern, Betsey assured him she was fine. It might have relieved him but for the ragged edge in her voice, where her anger was fraying into something else.

John looked down at his wide-eyed captive. “Good evening, lad. And who in hell might you be?”

“Just—just Wofford, sir.”

“That supervisor at Baumston and Smythe,” Betsey said, and John knew instantly whom she meant.

Wofford seemed to realize the identification did him no favors. He lifted his head from the ground defensively. “She—”

John pushed him back down. “Don’t trouble yourself, lad. Miss Dobson will tell me everything I need to know.”

“Just take him away,” Betsey said. “He doesn’t matter, only keep him away from the pavilion. I don’t want the dance spoiled, so please just take him somewhere.”