Chapter 2
Vix shouldn’t have opened the letter.
She had known that, of course, when she broke the seal. Apparently she was drawn to suffering in a way that overpowered sense.
“It was all bundled together on the stoop this morning,” her sister-in-law said to her, the instant she’d arrived at breakfast. “Forwarded from Reading.”
“Lovely,” Vix replied with a wrinkle of her nose. “I wonder how long my former employers sat on my private correspondence before deciding to bless me with its return.”
“A few months at least,” Hannah said with a raise of her red eyebrows. “There’s a bit of mistletoe glued to one of the envelopes. Christmas greetings, I’d wager.”
“Yes, that sounds right,” Vix replied, and had chosen an egg and the most burnt slice of toast before deciding upon which missive to open first.
“Don’t you want butter?” Hannah asked, her spoon half raised over her halved egg, which was bleeding a dribble of yolk down onto the tablecloth. “Or jam?”
“No,” said Vix, and held the other woman’s eye as she snapped the burnt bread in half and bit into the dry crust.
Hannah blinked, cleared her throat, and dabbed at her lips with a cloth in what looked suspiciously like an effort to hide a smile.
“This letter doesn’t have the royal mail stamp on it,” Vix observed, pointing with her pinky finger at the one on top of the stack. “It must be directly from the good family Tolliver. An explanation, you think?”
“Surely an apology,” Hannah returned, her eyes glinting with mischief. “Attrition for stealing your post.”
“You would make a terrible seer,” Vix said, and then used her spoon to decapitate the egg of her choosing. “This is undercooked.”
Hannah shrugged. “I like a runny yolk.”
Vix resented how much she liked her brother’s wife.
She dipped a bit of her burnt toast into her own wet yolk and dragged the unstamped letter closer with her pinky finger. She pinned it with the edge of her teacup and flicked away the seal with a little sigh.
“This is going to be terrible,” she said. “Shall I read it aloud?”
Hannah lifted her own teacup like it was a glass of champagne at a ship launch. “Go on, then.”
Vix smirked despite herself, withdrawing the letter and shaking it free of its folds. It was full of slanted, overly looping script and far too many commas to be grammatically sound.
“I shall abridge where necessary,” she said, clearing her throat as she flattened it in front of her. “I expect it to be often necessary.”
“I know the type,” Hannah said solemnly, taking up another bit of bread and dab of butter with a respectful softening of her movements to dampen any interrupting sounds. “Proceed.”
“Miss Beck,” Vix began. “This letter is official and permanent notice of your dismissal from your post as governess in the Tolliver household. Though by the time you will receive this missive, you shall already have left our employ for some months, with your official date of departure falling some five days prior to the conclusion of your final pay period. In the name of our good Christian standing, we have chosen not to pursue legal recompense for the wages you unlawfully stole from our coffers.”
She paused, closing her eyes briefly, exhaling through her nose, and forcing herself to swallow.
“Because we do not know where you absconded to in the dark of night, we have only your nearest relation to send along your remaining belongings to, a brother at a house of ill repute in London. For the sake of your eternal soul, we pray that you have not gone to live in such a place, Victoria, but if you have, God save you. In the event that you went elsewhere, perhaps having eloped or otherwise fled into a new and rash life in the way young women do, we have sent along letters expressing our concern and an accounting of our last sighting of you to both your brother, Mr. Thaddeus Beck, and to your former headmistress, Mrs. Deborah Baxter. To the latter, we have also outlined your shortcomings as a governess, to protect the good woman from endorsing you to another family at the risk of her own professional reputation.”
“Good Lord,” said Hannah, dropping her fork.
Vix gave her a humorless little smile, her body perfectly still while internally something inside her was screaming and shattering glass. She lowered her eyes to the final paragraph and drew in a short little slip of air.
“Our children were devastated by your abandonment and shall never trust a governess with the same innocent wonder again. You may retain with pride responsibility for robbing them of that innocence. As a family, we have all suffered in our own little ways at the mistake of bringing you into our home. I blame myself. I ought to have known from the outset that a girl in service should never present herself with such insolent comport and haughty disposition. I caution you to think carefully of what you do next and what you choose to say about your time in our home. May you find peace and a more righteous path in the life ahead of you, Miss Beck. Many blessings, Jacqueline Tolliver.”
There was a long, long silence in the dining room as Vix curled her lip and tossed the letter away, letting it flutter right off the edge of the table and down onto the floor.
After a moment, she looked across the table at Hannah and shrugged.
“Insolent comport?!” Hannah exclaimed, her face gone pink and splotchy. “What a horrible, horrible cow!”
Vix laughed then, a surprised little rattle of the frigid rage that had taken up the space between her ribs. “You know,” she said, blinking at her sister-in-law, “she is rather bovine in comport herself.”
Hannah appeared at a loss for words, opening and closing her mouth several times with her knuckles gone white around the butter knife she was still gripping.
Vix tilted her head, curious about the strength of this reaction from someone she’d only known for a short time and had not been particularly endearing toward besides.
“It isn’t the worst I’ve gotten,” she said, shifting in her seat with an odd discomfort prickling between her shoulders. “Truly, I’ve had much worse.”
It only deepened Hannah’s frown.
At that moment, Teddy chose to return to the apartments, his boots on the stairs leading to the landing echoing loudly enough to turn both of their heads expectantly toward the door.
It was a welcome interruption, Vix thought, and as soon as he emerged into the room, shrugging his coat off and dropping it on the hook by the door, she lifted her chin toward him and said, “Teddy, be a dear and ignore any mail you got today from Reading.”
He paused, turning to her with a frown. “What does that mean? It’s too early for your riddles, Vix.”
“No, she means it literally,” Hannah said, rising from her seat to cross the room and greet her husband with a lift to her toes and a kiss on his cheek. “You’ll be getting a letter from Reading soon, and it should go immediately into the fire.”
He looked from his wife to his sister and shook his head with a sigh. “Fine.”
“Where were you off to, so early?” Vix pressed, watching him scan the table for the most appealing offerings. She immediately reached out and snatched the other charred piece of toast for herself, winning a glare from him.
“I was seeing to your business, as it happens,” he snapped, feinting toward her like he was going to take the toast back by force. When she startled, even just a little, he smirked in victory and settled for another piece, dropping himself onto a chair next to his wife. “At Hannah’s behest.”
“Which business?” Vix asked, perking up. “I’ve decided I should like a very large dog, by the by.”
Teddy groaned, reaching for the little pitcher of cream for his tea, and did not look up. “No.”
“Well, I shall have one anyhow,” Vix said with a sniff. “And I will name her Teddy.”
He continued to ignore her, going for the bowl of sugar cubes next.
Hannah, however, was grinning. “A bloodhound, perhaps?” she suggested. “Or a mastiff?”
“Perhaps something that is actually some manner of mutt that could potentially be part bear,” Vix mused, leaning back in her chair. “A great, shaggy thing that shall growl if anyone looks at me sideways.”
“I was at the Flaming Fox,” Teddy said through his teeth, plucking an egg from the bowl. “This morning.”
“Why not just adopt a bear directly?” Hannah said to Vix before registering what her husband had said.
“Now, that is a thought,” Vix agreed, touching her cheeks with a grin of her own. “It would look very fine in a jeweled collar.”
“Mr. Aster was still asleep on the chaise!” Teddy barked, louder than any dog. “This morning at the Fox!”
“Oh, Mr. Aster,” Hannah repeated, her eyes going wide.
“Aster,” Vix repeated. “Of the Canterbury Asters?”
Which, for some reason, made her brother grimace rather ferociously.
“Yes!” he snapped, making both women startle. He cleared his throat and gave an apologetic wince. “Yes. He will be coming to dinner tonight.”
Vix frowned. “Why was a ducal legacy asleep on a chaise in your lesser gambling den, Teddy?”
“Now, lesser is not quite fair,” Hannah demurred with a click of her tongue.
“Is he a castoff cousin?” Vix pressed, ignoring the irrelevant commentary. “Some embarrassing byblow?”
“He is the duke’s son, actually,” Teddy said primly, snatching up the fig preserves. “Not the heir, I’m afraid, but a direct progeny. And he is open to your … aspirations, Vix.”
“My …” she paused, her eyebrows creeping higher. “Are you being quite serious?”
“Yes!” Hannah said, so exuberantly that both Beck siblings frowned at her. She did not seem to mind, clapping her hands together. “Oh, Vix, it is perfect, you will see!”
Vix was skeptical. “Is he deformed? A drunkard? Why is he agreeing to this? What did you offer him, Teddy?”
“Just you, actually,” her brother answered, flashing his teeth at her. “Which I believe is a reasonable thing to expect.”
She huffed. “Vague. I will not be some tethered boudoir attendant, if that is what you are implying.”
Teddy almost dropped his tea, his face immediately reddening. “Vix!”
“Vix!” Hannah repeated, sounding somehow delighted rather than offended.
“Well, I won’t,” she said, giving a one-shouldered shrug.
“I would … I … never …” Her brother blustered. “I couldn’t fathom …”
“Yes, calm down,” she said, rolling her eyes at him. “Explain what you meant, then.”
“Tethered!” he repeated, still red in the face, making Vix sigh impatiently.
Hannah placed a soothing hand on her husband’s forearm, clearly swallowing down an urge to laugh, and met Vix’s eye across the table. “If I may?”
Teddy sagged, blowing air out of his mouth, and nodded.
Hannah smiled then, patted his arm, and leaned over to refresh his teacup as she spoke.
“Mr. Aster is about to be knighted for heroism,” she said to Vix.
“He is feeling rather inconvenienced by it. Last night, he said to me that he wished for nothing else in all the world but to have someone to manage all the particulars of his social expectations and appearances so that he would not have to.”
“Is that how he said it?” Teddy mumbled into his teacup.
“Shush,” said his wife. “I think that the two of you could be a very good match, Vix. You each have to offer what the other is in search of.”
“I see,” said Vix, squinting at the other woman. “He has status and money and I have … what? The desire to deploy status and money in a functional and coherent manner? He could hire a servant for that.”
“But he hasn’t,” said Hannah, bouncing in her chair.
“Well …” said Teddy, frowning. “Perhaps we should stop trying to define the thing so exactly. Instead, let us just have this dinner and see if the match is something that interests both you and Mr. Aster at the conclusion of the meal.”
“Did you offer a dowry?” Vix pressed, still squinting, still suspicious. “What did you say to him?”
“I said that you were competent,” he said with a sigh. “And tall.”
“Tall?!”
He sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Vix, how exactly do you expect me to find you a rich, respectable husband without offering anything in return? Of course I am happy to assemble a dowry for you, but the type of man who is going to be convinced by that alone is not going to be able to keep you to your own exacting standards for any long-standing period of time.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Not if he controls the finances, I suppose.”
Teddy stared at her. Silently. Until she dropped her arms and sighed.
“Fine,” she said. “Dinner.”
“Dinner,” he agreed.
“Dinner!” Hannah said, and clapped her hands again for good measure.