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 girlsdogrow out of their foibles, after all.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I suppose.”
“Yes, you do,” Mrs. Baxter agreed. “Terrible shame about those hydrangeas.”
CHAPTER 24
If Claire Hightower found anything amiss in Vix’s request, she did not express it. Perhaps their brief acquaintance had been unusual enough thus far that any further queerness was simply stoking an already raging fire.
In any event, Vix found herself in the ballroom, some time after parting from Mrs. Baxter, searching out the corners for Roland and Matthew with a borrowed thimble clutched in her fist and her heart much steadier in her chest.
Ambrose was still dancing, she saw, this time with Hannah Lazarus, and he appeared very happy in the endeavor. She stopped for a moment to watch him, admiring the pink flush to his face and the shine to the apples of his cheeks as he and Hannah performed delicate hops to the sides of one another before clasping hands again for a spin, and she felt her heart ache, just a little, at how beautiful he looked in his joy.
In contrast, her childhood chums were skulking in a far corner, watching the dancers from shadow and silence, a single glass of punch between them.
She shook her head and crossed the room toward them, spinning the thimble over the tips of her fingers as she went, and sighed the instant she reached the edge of their shared table. “Aren’t you going to dance?” she demanded, by way of greeting.
They blinked at her with equal expressions of affronted innocence.
“We might,” said Matthew. “If you stand close enough to Roland, the women come to you, you know.”
“It’s true,” Roland put in, leaning an elbow on the table. “And some of the men.”
“I suppose that is true,” Vix said with a roll of her eyes. “But not the ones either of you want, hm? Don’t think I’ve missed your vantage.”
She turned over her shoulder and gestured across the room to Rosalind and Mae, still attending the refreshment table, glowing like gems set against the ivory of the white tablecloth.
“You’re both pitiful,” she concluded, turning back to them. “What’s stopping you?”
Matthew grimaced and Roland shook his head, looking away.
