Chapter 9 - Stephen #2
Stephen finished his bite and gulped water from his glass. “I have, actually. I ordered some supplies today, and I’m going to start replanting the greenhouse. Are you sure that there’s truly a need in the village?”
“Once word gets out, you’ll have more work than you know what to do with.”
Stephen couldn’t help it—his eyes slid to Vera, who was studiously ignoring him. “Well, I might have some assistance in that quarter. I’m thinking of hiring a nurse.”
“Oh?” The baroness tilted her head. “Do you have someone in mind?”
Vera nodded at her plate as if coming to the decision right then. “Me, actually. I’ve accepted Doctor, er, Lord Winthrop’s offer of employment.”
Relief sliced through him—quick and pure, as if he’d jumped into a cool lake on a hot summer’s day. It was all going to be all right. He could make up for his momentary lapse, for the injury he’d done the lady. This would work.
“Good heavens, Vera. Why on earth would you want to do that?” Jacqueline scrunched her face.
“Excuse me—” Stephen began, affronted.
His mother waved her hand at him, never once glancing away from Vera’s face. “Yes, yes. You’re excused. From this conversation, from the table altogether, whatever you like. Vera?”
Vera lifted her head, and for the first time since the blasted dinner began, she met his eyes. Hers were hazel, he realized, the colors the same as a canopy of fall leaves just turning color. Browns and greens, flecks of orange—all the colors of autumn collected in her pupils.
She swallowed deeply and Stephen was momentarily distracted by the motion of her throat. “It’s a wonderful opportunity.”
Jacqueline kept her eyes on Vera but said, “Benjamin, go to the kitchen and have Mrs. Portence cut you a big slice of cake. But you must eat it there.”
The boy whooped and pushed back from the table so quickly his chair nearly toppled. The second the oiled hinges of the dining room door swung in his wake, the baroness turned to Stephen.
Her eyes narrowed; her lip nearly curled. His eyes widened in response—he couldn’t remember his mother ever looking at him with such seething ferocity.
“You did this. You made her feel she had to earn her keep. Didn’t you?”
Stephen leaned back. Guilt threatened to swallow him. He had done that. That, and worse.
“Not at all,” Vera said calmly, surprising him. “He offered me an opportunity for gainful employment, and I took it. This cannot be such a surprise to you—I told you I was thinking of taking a position.”
“As a governess or a lady’s companion. Not as a nurse.”
Stephen wrinkled his nose at the way his mother had spat the last. “What’s wrong with being a nurse? It’s an honorable thing to do, a wonderful way to be useful.”
“Vera doesn’t need to prove herself to you. She’s my guest. She’s already useful.”
“I think it will be an interesting endeavor,” Vera said.
“There’s going to be blood, Vera. Other bodily fluids. Viscera.” Jacqueline threw up her hands.
“It’s rarely as dramatic as all that,” Stephen said, his eyebrows high.
The ladies at the table both ignored him. His mother stared at Vera, eyes wide as if trying to impress her thoughts through expression alone. Vera’s face was calm, but a tightness at the corners of her mouth spoke of her discomfort.
“It isn’t a position a lady typically takes,” his mother pressed. “It will be difficult for you to overcome such a thing when it comes to society.”
Vera’s face flickered in understanding. “You’re exceptionally sweet to be worried about such a thing, Jacqueline, but I fear such concerns are far behind me.”
If anything, Vera’s calm response seemed to infuriate his mother more. She sat up straight, her features smoothed into arctic rage that Stephen had only witnessed several times in his life.
“Vera, I think you’d better go ask Mrs. Portence for a piece of cake, too.”
A sad little smile played at the edges of Vera’s mouth as she picked up her plate and her wine goblet and headed toward the far door without uttering a word.
Once she was gone, his mother rounded on him. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.” He spread out his hands as if to prove his innocence, but his single word of defense hadn’t been quite as firm as it should have been.
She jabbed a finger in the air between them. “If she does this, it will be nigh on impossible for her to marry someone worthy of her.”
“Good heavens, Mother. Was that your intention for the lady? She’s not going to find someone cloistered all the way out here.”
“That isn’t for you to decide, Stephen.”
“She hardly seems concerned with marriage; she’s looking for employment. I heard it from her myself.”
In a round about way, of sorts.
“Society looks down upon those in the medical profession—”
“I’ve survived their judgement.”
“You’re a man. A titled man. It’s completely different, and you know it.”
“I admit I’m shocked at your scruples.” He twirled his fork in the air before cutting into his fish once more. “Aren’t you always the one going on about following one’s heart, one’s passion, and that society can go hang itself?”
“This isn’t her passion; it’s yours.”
He rolled his eyes. “If nursing is good enough for the sisters of mercy, I daresay it’s good enough for Miss Ashbury.”
His mother brought a hand sharply down upon the table top. His empty water glass jolted right along with him. “She is under my protection, and this will ruin her prospects.”
“What prospects?” he asked gently. He canted his voice low so there was no chance his words would seep through the hall to the kitchen and injure Vera further.
“The lady is unattached, as far as either of us know. As you’ve pointed out, if home were a safe place to be, she’d return there.
As of now, she’s being shuttled from friend’s house to friend’s house, but that cannot last forever, Mother. ”
Jacqueline chewed her lip.
“Will you really deprive her of the chance to gain a reference and secure her chance for future employment, over the scruples of a society that you don’t give a whit about?”
She pressed her lips together and blinked.
“Besides, I doubt anyone will even find out. Who’s going to tell them? You? Me?” He exhaled a scoff. “She’ll work her three months and be back to London in a more genteel position before anyone has an inkling of what’s going on.”
“I want her accompanied.” She lifted her chin. “Despite what you say, I won’t have her traipsing all over the countryside in the company of an unmarried man. Regardless of her choice of employment, at least grant that would be inappropriate for both of you.”
He sighed. “There’s nothing less romantic than a medical setting.”
“I won’t hear otherwise. She’ll take a maid with her.”
“Which maid will you send to keep us from ravaging each other over pustulant wounds?”
“Don’t you mock me at my own table, Stephen. And don’t mock me for wanting to preserve what slim chance at a future Vera has. Just because her family’s detestable doesn’t mean she is. There are a hundred gentlemen who’d be lucky to have her as wife.”
“So you say, and yet I look around and see none.”
“I won’t have you sinking her lower just because you don’t believe someone would want her.”
“That’s not at all what I’m saying! She’s pretty enough, I suppose, though she is well on the shelf—”
“You men and your shelves,” she hissed, as if Stephen had been the one to coin the phrase.
He held up his hands. “I’m not the enemy here. She wanted gainful employment; I offered it.”
“And how did you know she wanted a position, Stephen? You two aren’t exactly close.”
The understatement of the century, Stephen thought. His foot still throbbed from where Vera had slammed it in her door. Repeatedly.
“She’s been sending dozens of letters from the village. It was only a matter of time before word got out. You know how nosy the innkeep is.”
It wasn’t quite a lie, but it was as close to one as he dared. His mother had a nose for such things. Even now, her slim nostrils flared as if scenting the half-truth on the air.
“Very well. I cannot stop either of you. However, she will travel in the company of a maid at all times. She’s under our protection, Stephen, and even if that means little to you, it means a great deal to me.”
“Fine—I suppose the maid can roll bandages or something.”
“Oh no.” She held up a finger and gave a brittle smile. “The maid is there for Vera. Not you.”
Stephen recognized her expression well enough to know it was no use arguing. “Fine. The maid can follow her around and whack me round the head if we lose ourselves to passion in between emptying buckets of vomit.”