Chapter 23
Vix did not know where to put her rage.
First she looked for Teddy, but he was dancing with Hannah. Evidently, he did know how to waltz, no matter how much he insisted otherwise. She watched that for a time, glowering prettily, before she turned to look for alternative quarry.
Rosalind and Mae, sadly, had been cornered by the Duchess of Canterbury, and Vix herself had already had her fill of that particular woman tonight.
She did pass close enough to hear a snippet of their conversation, however.
“My dear, you have the most unusual complexion,” the duchess was saying to Mae. “Do your people hail from the West Indies? Or perhaps directly from Africa?”
“Oh, far more exotic than that, I’m afraid,” Mae said somberly. “We’re four generations of native London.”
“I see,” said the duchess, in a voice that indicated she very much did not.
“I’m from Scotland,” volunteered Rosalind in an unambiguous Aberdeen brogue. “If you were wondering.”
“Is that so, my dear?” said the duchess, sounding very tired.
It was a small balm, Vix thought, but one all the same.
And then she remembered, turning abruptly toward the hydrangeas, and the original terror of her childhood.
Mrs. Baxter was older now, yes, but still just as fearsome, still just as flinty-toothed and scaly as any hydra or gorgon.
And if Vix could not defeat her, perhaps she could at least get her to lecture her appropriately for just announcing to her husband that she loved him as though she were telling him he had a bit of spinach in his teeth.
Yes, Baxter. Yes.
She took up her skirt in her hands and marched across the ballroom floor toward the matron who’d made her tremble as a girl and had repeatedly corrected her pronunciation of Worcestershire.
“Victoria Beck,” said Mrs. Baxter before Vix could even finish walking. “Gracious, girl, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Have you?”
Vix hesitated, much of the wind immediately blowing in the wrong direction, directly out of her sails. “I don’t think so,” she said, faltering from one foot to the other, “unless you yourself have passed prior to this event.”
Mrs. Baxter huffed, glancing down at her own hands in black net gloves. “I don’t think so,” she said wryly, “but one can never be certain.”
Vix blinked. She had the oddest impulse just then to burst into tears and immediately averted her eyes.
“You’ve done a fine job here,” said old Baxter, looking around with a sniff. “Very fine. I imagine you could sponsor three girls rather than just one, if you had a mind to, after tonight.”
“I thought about that,” Vix admitted, sounding rather small to herself. “But I thought the additional money could go toward new clothes and particulars for the whole of the charity wing. They deserve better than fraying books and shared petticoats.”
“Do they indeed?” said Mrs. Baxter, giving her a sidelong look. “No one ever thought so back when I was a charity girl.”
Vix balked. She stared. She ogled.
“You never were,” she announced, because it could not be true, but the old bat only chuckled.
“Of course I was,” she said. “Why do you think I was personally involved with the lot of you? And I always told you true, didn’t I? I did my best.”
“You were often quite mean, actually,” Vix returned, crossing her arms. “Often much harsher than was required.”
“Ah, well,” said Baxter, shrugging. “The eternal challenge of being a good mother, I suppose. Do you think anyone ever manages it?”
Vix frowned and glanced across the room again at Helena Aster. “No,” she said. “Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“Neither am I. I never had one, myself,” said Baxter. “I saw your friend, the vicar’s boy, earlier. He looks much the same as he did when he was a lad, doesn’t he?”
“Does he?” said Vix, looking for Matthew in the crowd. “He is the vicar proper now. His father died some years ago.”
“Is he indeed?” Baxter asked, chortling. “I greeted him directly and asked him how fared the Archbishop of Liverpool. He turned red as a turnip.”
Vix paused, turning with fascination to gaze at the older woman. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, Victoria,” said Mrs. Baxter, cutting her a glance. “Did you really think I believed that was a real person?”
“Yes,” said Vix, outraged. “You did believe it. You accepted me.”
“Those two things are not dependent on one another,” Mrs. Baxter said. “Did you see these hydrangeas? Some fool messed up the alkalinity of the soil.”
“Mrs. Baxter!” Vix cried, half a breath away from stomping her foot like a child. “You could not have known! You never had a sliver of patience for falsehoods.”
The old woman gave a short, barking laugh, tilting her head as she turned her gaze back to Vix. “Girl, if that were true, you wouldn’t have made it a week. You are the most prolific liar God ever put on this earth.”
“I am not,” Vix protested.
“Ah,” said Baxter, raising her brows. “Another lie. See how easily they come?”
Vix clamped her teeth together, her cheeks heating. “You claimed—”
“I punished the lies that were unnecessary,” Mrs. Baxter said, raising a finger.
“And ignored the ones that protected you. Learning to spin a good falsehood can protect a woman, especially if she’s quick about it.
The more I let you do it, the cleverer and wittier you became. It was a kind of lesson, in the end.”
“The more you let me,” Vix repeated, aghast.
It made Baxter chuckle again. “Have you spent much time around young girls? I believe your charges at the Tolliver household were just toddling lads, weren’t they?
Try them nearing the threshold to adulthood, with all the edges and cleverness of femininity, and come back to me. You might change your tune.”
“Oh, the Tollivers,” Vix said, grasping for anything that might give her her footing back. “That is another thing.”
Mrs. Baxter made a disgusted sound, flipping her hand to the side.
“I should thank you,” she said, “for freeing me of the most tedious, performatively pious annoyance I have ever had to tolerate in the name of paltry annual giving. You do not have to give me the details, of course, but I am curious of what went so terribly wrong.”
Vix wondered if she was visibly trembling.
Her entire body felt as though it were vibrating, bursting with disbelief and indignation.
“She hated any time I was visible,” she said.
“If she could see me, I was being insolent. If anyone else could see me, I was being hostile. If anyone remembered me, I was being violent. Oddly, this also extended to the children.”
Mrs. Baxter sighed and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “That sounds right.”
“You knew she would be like that?” Vix asked, looking for something, anything, to restore her righteous fury. “And you let me go anyhow?”
“One hopes certain girls grow out of their childish foibles,” the older woman answered with a shake of her head. “There was no way to know for certain. You were her first hire from the school.”
“And last,” Vix replied, watching in frustration as yet another boiling point evaporated into useless steam.
They stood side by side for a moment, listening to the music change tempo yet again and watching as the dancers swapped into a new formation, swirling about in their bright colors and joyous faces.
Vix wondered how many of them could even remember the reason why they were here tonight.
“Is that your husband, by the by?” Mrs. Baxter asked. “Dancing with that exuberant young woman?”
“Hm?” Vix blinked, scanning the crowd until she found Ambrose standing opposite Dinah Lazarus, laughing at something the young woman had said to him as they held their hands up to begin the first stanza. “Oh. Yes, that is Sir Ambrose.”
“He is very pretty,” observed Mrs. Baxter, tilting her head. “Are you not jealous of that young girl taking him from you?”
“Of Dinah?” Vix asked with a laugh, glancing back at her old headmistress. “Absolutely not.”
Mrs. Baxter began to smile, an odd, twisting thing that looked unnatural on her stern face. “You are not sharpening your teeth, planning that girl’s downfall, Victoria?”
“Vix,” she corrected without thinking.
“Vix,” Mrs. Baxter amended, tilting her head to the side. “Yes, you always were Vix, weren’t you? And it seems some girls do grow out of their foibles, after all.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I suppose.”
“Yes, you do,” Mrs. Baxter agreed. “Terrible shame about those hydrangeas.”