And then he was gone.
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 dayspriorto 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 goodwoman 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.
