Chapter 10
“Betsy?” Verbena removed her bonnet, shaking her red curls.
She wanted to be out of her visiting gown as quickly as her maid could manage it.
Several invitations had been issued following the conclusion of the archery outing, and she’d diligently seen them all through that very morning and into the afternoon.
She couldn’t let any opportunity to bolster her supposed romance with étienne slip away.
“Betsy, are you in?” she called once more. The words echoed around the foyer and up the staircase, but Verbena received no reply.
At least, not the one she wanted.
Her mother swept in from the study wearing a light cream day dress and her usual cross look.
“Where have you been?” Mrs. Montrose demanded.
“Visiting acquaintances. I told you.” She stripped off her left glove and placed it on the side table next to the doffed bonnet before going to work on the fingers of the right one. “Where is Betsy? I should like to dress for dinner.”
“We have more important things to think of,” Mrs. Montrose said. “What’s this I hear about you and a French tailor?”
Verbena dropped her other glove on the pile.
“Mother, surely you don’t listen to gossip.
” She was aware of her mother’s opinions on ladies and sarcasm, namely that one should never wield the other, but she could not help the acid that laced her words.
Mrs. Montrose had trained Verbena from a tender age to keep her ears open, her whispers continuous, and her chess pieces all ordered in her mind.
And yet the word “gossip” inspired in Mrs. Montrose a virulent protest. It wasn’t gossip, she had always said, to merely communicate information from one person to another for the purposes of better understanding and moving through one’s world.
Verbena, on the other hand, had no qualms about calling a spade a spade.
Right on cue, her mother’s face darkened with a sour look. “Mrs. Albee and Lady Key told me today at tea—separately, mind you—that they’d heard from Mrs. Watts that you’re being courted by some—some upstart!”
“Oh, Mother.” Verbena sighed. This was rather earlier than she’d planned to inform her parents of her imminent engagement.
So inconvenient, when things did not go to schedule.
She lifted her gaze to the main staircase that sliced through the house’s foyer.
“Betsy!” she called. Why didn’t her maid come?
She lifted her skirts and started up the stairs.
Mrs. Montrose followed at her heels. “They say he runs a shop. That he makes a living sewing coats together. Are you really allowing such a man to press his suit with you? We can do better than that.”
Verbena paused on the landing, not turning even when she felt her mother being caught up short behind her. “Can we really?” she asked the staircase. “For the last few months, you have been urging me to find a husband. ‘Any man with breath in his body would do,’ I believe you said.”
“Well, I meant any man with breath in his body and a known family,” said Mrs. Montrose. “Even a dull girl like you should know that goes without saying.”
Perhaps at one time, the hurled epithets had caused Verbena great pain and engendered in her a desire to prove her mother and father wrong. Now, though, they were only a tiresome feature of her home life, like the faded portraits of Montroses past that lined the walls.
She turned to face her mother on the landing, one hand propped on the banister. In this position, she was a full head taller than Mrs. Montrose and was not above using it to loom.
“étienne Charbonneau is a good man,” she said evenly. “He has recently come into a fortune. His address is excellent. His manners and bearing are beyond reproach. And he is, most pressingly, eager to be in my company. I believe he means to propose. And when he does, I mean to accept.”
“But his origins—” Mrs. Montrose protested.
“—are humble, and therefore worthy of admiration, given how far he’s come.
” Verbena turned on her heel and stalked up the staircase to the first story.
“Be reasonable for once in your life, Mother. There is no duke waiting in the wings to be our savior. There is only Monsieur Charbonneau, and he is perfectly adequate.” She continued up the stairs, her mother following.
There was a long stretch of silence punctuated only by their two sets of footfalls. Finally, as they reached the door of Verbena’s room, Mrs. Montrose said in a low whisper, “You are certain his finances are in order?”
“And more robust than half the gentry can claim,” Verbena said.
She flung open her door, hoping to find her maid occupied with some task that had kept her from coming when summoned, but the bedroom was empty.
Not only was Betsy absent, but there was no dinner gown draped over the bed in preparation for Verbena’s return.
That was very unlike Betsy; her stalwart companion always had such things readied far in advance.
Verbena turned to her mother, who stood in the hall with her hands clasped tight. “Where has Betsy gone?” she asked.
Her mother dropped her hands to her sides and lifted her chin. “Your maid,” Mrs. Montrose said, “has been dismissed.”
Verbena could hardly form a response for several moments.
“Whatever could you mean?” Betsy had been with the Montrose family since she was a little girl, her mother having been one of their chambermaids before being taken by a ravaging fever.
Verbena and Betsy had grown up together, played together.
Betsy had been a fixture in every one of Verbena’s adventures.
They were, if not friends, then something closer to sisters, if one sister paid the other’s wages. “She can’t have been dismissed.”
A loud thump came from the floor below them. Both women glanced down toward the sound. Another thump, followed by what sounded like glass breaking and muffled curses.
Mrs. Montrose sighed.
“Your father made the decision early this afternoon,” she said, regarding Verbena coolly. “Though I doubt you would have been consulted even if you had been here.”
“But…why?” Verbena groped for a seat before her knees gave way, perching on the edge of her featherbed. “Betsy has been nothing but excellent. And given how long she has served our household—”
“Your father can no longer afford her services.” Mrs. Montrose strode into the room and plucked the most minuscule piece of lint from Verbena’s skirts.
“You know our situation. Your father looked over the ledger this morning and saw there was nothing that could be done. Sacrifices must be made if this family is to survive.” She flicked the lint to the floor.
Verbena wondered wildly if it would ever be cleaned up, if any maids still remained. First the footmen, now this? “Did she—was there no note from her? To say good-bye, at least?”
All those years together, from girlhood on, and now they were to be strangers.
Mrs. Montrose sniffed. “I don’t believe there was any time for her to put pen to paper, if she was even capable of doing so.”
“She is more than capable,” Verbena said, seething. All those years, and her mother hadn’t even bothered to know the girl who was Verbena’s constant companion.
“Be that as it may.” Mrs. Montrose waved a hand. “Once a servant is dismissed, it’s best to allow them only enough time to collect their meager belongings and depart. All under the watchful eye of your father, of course. Can’t have these people stealing the silver.”
As if Betsy had ever stolen a thing in her life! If anyone was a thief, Verbena mused, it was the Montrose family, stealing away a young person’s best years in exchange for a pittance of a salary.
“Your father furnished her with a reference, of course,” Mrs. Montrose added. As if that made up for all the rest.
Verbena stared at the lint on the rug. Her mother and father would probably never find it in their selfish hearts to feel outright sympathy for Betsy’s plight—a good, solid worker dismissed for no reason but her employer’s own faults—but there were also the more practical pitfalls of such a rash decision to consider.
“I wonder,” she said lowly, “how on earth you expected me to win the heart of a noble gentleman without Betsy to assist me in dressing, arranging my hair, and presenting me to the world as an elegant young lady? You should be knocking on Monsieur Charbonneau’s door with invitations to dinner; you should be kissing the hem of his coat.
How dare you question my acceptance of his suit when you have hamstrung me so terribly? ”
Mrs. Montrose’s cheeks went scarlet at this insolence. “You—!”
A loud banging echoed from downstairs. The iron knocker on the front door was being put through its paces. Verbena waited a moment in the cold silence that followed.
“Are there any servants left to answer that?” she asked. “Or shall I go see who it is?”
“Oh, don’t be silly. We didn’t dismiss anyone else today, only Betsy.”
So her parents had retained their own maid and valet. Of course. Sacrifices were for Verbena to bear, not them.
Someone indeed answered the door; she heard the thing creak open and a quiet exchange of murmurs, followed by a tread upon the stair.
It seemed that Mrs. Montrose did not wish to be seen arguing with her daughter, leaving off their conversation to instead fuss with the brushes and tonics on Verbena’s vanity table.
She was ruining the careful order of everything when Stevens arrived.
“A letter for Miss Montrose,” he said.
“I’ll take that.” Her mother crossed the room in two strides and plucked the creamy missive from him. “That will be all.”
Stevens gave Verbena a single fathomless glance before departing, shutting the door as he went.