Chapter 23
When Vera came down to dinner several nights later, there was an odd current in the room.
She paused upon the threshold, her eyes narrowing slightly.
Benjamin shifted in his chair, refusing to meet her eyes.
She wondered if he’d snuck a lizard into his trouser pocket again, or perhaps he had Sheldon clasped to his chest beneath his shirt.
But that didn’t explain why the baroness had a pleased lilt of a smile on her face.
Smug—that was the word for how Jacqueline looked.
Vera’s gaze swept the table. Everything appeared much the same as any other night—the plain stoneware service that the baroness preferred when it was just family, as Benjamin and china were a combustible mixture—though the only empty chair was the one right next to Stephen.
As for him, Stephen looked…nervous. Which made Vera nervous. She scanned the room again. Perhaps she’d interrupted an awkward family conversation.
Yes, that must be it. For there was no other reason she could think of that would produce this strange tableau of expressions.
“Good evening,” she finally said.
Stephen stood from his chair with alacrity. “Good evening, Vera.”
Benjamin began to giggle. He clasped his hand over his mouth. His mother shot him a quelling glance that did little good.
“What on earth is going on here?” She paused, her eyes warily travelling across the tabletop again.
Had Benjamin put a small creature upon her chair? If so, why were the two adults acting very nearly as strange as the child?
“Nothing,” Stephen replied, just a bit too quickly to be convincing. “Here, come have a seat.”
He gestured at the chair next to him. Vera rounded the table and stopped with a gasp. Her eyes went wide at the large, lidded picnic hamper atop her chair. The moving picnic hamper.
As she stared, a distinct, high-pitched whimper rose from the basket.
“Is that…”
“Please open it. I think she’s frightened of the dark.”
Vera rushed to flip the lid back; she gasped. A puppy stared up at her with soft brown eyes. Her coat was a beautiful black with tiger stripes of reddish fawn. Vera bent and lifted the puppy from the basket, noting the pale pink ribbon tied in a bow at her neck.
Vera grunted under the puppy’s solid weight. “She’s huge.”
“It’s Seamus’s daughter; of course she’s huge. Happy birthday, Vera.”
“I don’t understand.” Vera’s words were momentarily muffled by a pink tongue licking at her chin. “My birthday was weeks ago.”
Stephen frowned. “You can hardly fault me that your present wasn’t finished on time. I wasn’t the one in charge of making it.”
Vera laughed; the puppy snapped playfully at one of her dangling curls. “Thank you, Stephen. She’s wonderful. Does she have a name?”
“Not yet.”
Vera frowned suddenly. She’d never heard of a governess who brought a dog with her. What would happen when she got a position elsewhere?
“But…” she started.
She looked to the baroness for support. Jacqueline was a supremely practical woman—surely she’d sussed out the problem with this arrangement already. The baroness was studiously ignoring her, going so far as to examine the chandelier to avoid Vera’s eyes.
“I cannot possibly accept,” Vera finally said.
“Whyever not? Do you not like her?”
“Don’t be daft. She’s gorgeous, but I can’t take her with me when I go.”
Jacqueline gave a delicate cough, then quelled the tickle in her throat with a sip of water, still avoiding Vera’s eyes. When Vera looked back to Stephen, he was frowning.
“She’ll always have a home here.”
Vera couldn’t read his expression, but his tone was grave, as if he were making a solemn oath.
Vera smiled. “Thank you.”
“I thought we’d call her Miss Beets.”
“Miss Beets?” His mother wrinkled her nose even as Vera’s eyes went wide and her cheeks flushed. “What an odd name for a dog. Besides, it’s traditionally the owner who gets to choose, and you’ve given the dog to Vera. I think it ought to be her decision, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” Stephen turned to Vera; he appeared to barely be able to keep a straight face. “My apologies, Vera. What would you like to name her?”
Benjamin leaned forward, his eyes bright. “I would name her Pickles.”
Vera laughed and looked at Stephen. “I like Miss Beets.”
Vera had slept late, owing to her new roommate, Miss Beets.
Though she’d insisted that the puppy sleep in her room, the poor thing had cried piteously from its basket half the night.
Vera thought that perhaps the dog’s distress was a warning of impending bathroom needs—during that time, she and the pup made several sojourns to the cold back garden.
Vera, bleary-eyed and wrapped in her robe, started to suspect that the puppy hadn’t been intended as a gift at all but was some sort of recompense for a perceived slight.
At one in the morning, Vera finally pulled the large puppy onto her bedcovers, desperate for sleep.
Miss Beets briefly snuffled her cheek, turned several times upon the blankets, and curled into a warm ball.
The puppy’s sigh a moment later as much as said, Finally.
They both slept quite soundly until the puppy placed a subtle paw on Vera’s forehead at eight o’clock.
It followed then, that Stephen and Vera arrived at Mr. Douglas’s house later than usual. Stephen frowned up at the house and leapt down from the carriage.
“Stay here,” he said, trying to shut the carriage door on Vera.
“Why?”
He was already striding for the front door. He knocked, then entered, closing it behind him. Vera searched the house’s facade, wondering what on earth had made Stephen act as he had.
There’s no smoke from the chimney, she thought.
The implications dashed over her like a bucket of cold water, and she was running for the front door before she realized she’d exited the carriage.
Anne, she thought. Mr. Douglas.
She didn’t know who she was more concerned for—the small girl or the elderly man. But he’d been doing so well.
Stephen was climbing back down the stairs, a large bundle in his arms, by the time she stood in the front doorway. Vera could see her own breath in the cottage. Vera’s chest kept ratcheting tighter and tighter, then the bundle moved and Anne peeked out at her from beneath a thick blanket.
Vera wanted to collapse with her relief, but she was afraid that would frighten the girl. “Mr. Douglas?” she asked.
Stephen’s grim expression, the shake of his head, told her all she needed to know. “Take her to the house. Run her a bath and feed her. Get her warm.”
“Come, Anne,” she said, pulling the girl—blanket and all—from Stephen’s arms. “You and I shall go for a little carriage ride and have some biscuits on the way.”
Within minutes, Vera and Anne were heading back toward Bertforth House. Stephen had taken the two footmen back inside the house. Vera distractedly plied Anne with biscuits, trying to ignore how her throat felt like it was closing around her grief.
Mr. Douglas, gone.
Never again would she hear him tease her in that chiding way of his. Never again would he complain half-heartedly about the floral steam she made him inhale, about how the towel over his head was just so she could have a laugh at his expense.
Vera sniffled and swiped a tear from her cheek. She must be strong, for Anne’s sake.
“Miss Vera sad?” The girl patted her cheek.
“Yes.” Vera smiled through the tears that she was doing a poor job of hiding.
The girl offered up her half-gnawed biscuit, and Vera smiled. “Thank you, but I’m full. You’d better eat that one.”
Anne promptly complied while Vera murmured to her about all the things they’d do once they arrived at Bertforth House, about all the things they’d see there. She told her about her new puppy, Miss Beets, and of the hedgehog, the fox, and the raccoon that were friends.
If Anne had seen anything she shouldn’t, she didn’t seem all that disturbed. Vera fervently hoped that if Anne had seen Mr. Douglas’s body after he’d departed, that the girl thought he’d only been sleeping.
“Did you and Mr. Douglas have supper last night, Anne?” she finally thought to ask.
“Yes.”
“But no breakfast?”
The girl shook her head, her golden curls bouncing. “Mr. Douglas tired.”
It had probably happened sometime in the night, then. Vera prayed it had been quick, that the old man hadn’t suffered alone with no one to help him.
What would become of the girl?
Vera thought back to all those weeks ago, when Mr. Douglas had asked her to look after Anne once he was gone. If she had the means to do so, she would do it without a second thought. But as it was, the house she resided in wasn’t her own. She could hardly presume to advise Stephen on the subject.
When their carriage wheels crunched upon the gravel of the driveway, the front door opened and Jacqueline stood in the doorway. She took one glance at Vera, who’d emerged from the carriage and then turned back to take Anne into her arms, and seemed to understand the situation without being told.
“Roland,” Jacqueline said, “please roust the staff. Prepare the nursery. Have a bath brought up to the blue guest room in the meantime. And send a tray with soup and warm milk.”
Roust the staff he did. No more than a quarter-hour later, Anne splashed happily in a copper tub that was far too large for her before a cheerful fire, a maid carefully monitoring the water depth and temperature.
“Did Stephen say what took him, then?” Jacqueline murmured over her tea.
They sat in the corner, close enough to observe the girl’s bath, but far enough away that their conversation wouldn’t be overheard.
“No, though I daresay he wouldn’t have sent her here with me if there was any danger of contagion, if that’s your concern.”
“Stephen’s too smart to make a mistake of that magnitude. I doubt he’d even let you handle her if that were a worry.” Jacqueline tsked and shook her head once more. “The poor dear. First her parents, now Mr. Douglas.”
Vera frowned. She could only see the top of Anne’s head from this vantage point, but the girl’s happy chattering and the sound of splashing belied her contentment.
“Do you think it’s too much for her to overcome?”
“Not at all. Children are resilient, and she’s at such an age where her pain may yet be overwritten. She’ll need firmness, kindness, and constancy moving forward.”
But who would give it to her? Vera wondered.
By chance, Vera happened to be coming down the stairs just as Stephen returned to the house. She took him in at a glance—the tired lines of his face, the mud upon his boots.
“How is she?” he asked, collapsing in a chair and yanking off one boot, then the other.
“She seems fine. I was about to ask the same of you.”
Stephen shrugged. “Tired, mostly. And inexplicably starving.”
“What happened?”
“There’s no way for us to know. My best guess is he suffered an embolism during the night, or his heart simply stopped working. He appeared to go quickly, peacefully. There was no evidence that he even woke.”
“That’s good, then.” She nodded.
It was good that Mr. Douglas hadn’t suffered. It was a weight off her mind. So why were tears gathering on her lower lashes? Why did her hand come up to hide her wobbling chin?
“Ah, Vera. Don’t cry.” Stephen stood, and before Vera could quite reconcile what his intent was, he’d pulled her into his strong arms, her face cradled against the starched cotton of his shirt. “It’s all right.”
“Did we miss something?” She sniffed as she tried desperately to control her hitched breathing. “Did we do something wrong?”
“Not at all.” One large hand began a soothing trek up and down her spine. “Sometimes, there’s nothing we can do. He was quite old; perhaps I should have listened when he said he was dying, but I didn’t think it was more serious than a very stubborn cold.”
“I just keep thinking that maybe if we’d gone yesterday…” Here, her voice warbled and she couldn’t continue.
“It doesn’t work like that, Vera. What took him—it would have happened, even if you had been sitting at his bedside.”
That warm hand continued its slow path up and down her back. It was a soothing comfort, to be held in strong arms. Vera felt safe there. It didn’t hurt that she couldn’t help breathing in the scent of him. Soap, medical disinfectant, and a whiff of cedar—probably from the lining of his wardrobe.
They stood there in a comfortable silence. Vera couldn’t remember the last time she’d shared a hug of this length with anyone. There was something uniquely restorative about it—the mutual solace of shared warmth, the gentle heaving of their breaths, the shared moment of grief for Mr. Douglas.
It was more effective than any tonic she’d sipped, and far more enjoyable. This was what friends did for each other, she supposed. They held each other, consoled each other, when terrible things happened.
Except, if Vera were being perfectly honest with herself, this simple hug had the danger of meaning too much to her. Her confusing feelings lurked just behind her grief, and as the moments slipped by, they threatened to whisper dangerous ideas into her ear.
“Thank you,” she said, suddenly embarrassed.
She pushed back from the embrace and Stephen let her go. Vera dared not look into his eyes until she’d stepped back a careful distance.
“I’m sorry for—” Vera began, before she realized she didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
Sorry for crying on your shirt? There was a patch of dampness on his chest.
Sorry for feeling things you didn’t mean the hug to evoke? She could never admit to that.
“I’ll have Mrs. Portence make you a tray,” she finally said lamely.
Vera gave a tremulous smile and turned her back to head to the kitchens.