But a little harmless flirtation with an exquisite creature of the name of Verena Chaceley would certainly enliven his visit. Besides, Osmond seemed to think he must inevitably fail, and that in itself was a challenge. He must find a way to meet her as speedily as possible.
Miss Verena Chaceley, unaware either of having been observed or of being a subject for discussion, was hurrying home to Mama. She was feeling more than a little guilty, for she had been gone over an hour, forgetful of the time in her preoccupation with the children’s games. She hated to leave Mama, even for this short time — although Betsey might be trusted to see to her rising. Only the fresh brisk air had beckoned, and the children’s joyful cries had drawn Verena like a magnet.
How different from her own childhood. Laughter had been rare. Oh, she and Adam had played, yes. Had forgotten even, sometimes. But the shadow had pervaded their lives and could not often be set aside.
She had hoped to eradicate it here, thinking that with distance the scars would heal, the fear die. She was wrong. Mama seemed to be worsening, and Verena herself, instead of being reassured by the passing of time, felt every day more hunted, more at risk. She shivered, her gloved fingers clasping tighter within the brown muff that hung from a cord about her neck.
Then she set her teeth, annoyed with the little loss of control. Well might she shiver, she told herself with defiance. It was cold, was it not?
Thrusting the thought away, she sped lightly in her snug kid half-boots across the snowy square of ground that separated the Ruishtons’ house from her lodging.
It had been Verena’s deliberate choice to move up here once she got the lie of Tunbridge Wells. The Ruishton property lay between two other plots on the one side, while closest to the lane — a curved departure from the main London Road that led down past the common towards the centre of the town that clustered about the chalybeate spring and the Pantiles — were a number of houses with smaller areas of land about them.
The lodging house, of which Verena and her mother had hired the better part, lay more or less opposite the Ruishtons’, largely hidden from general sight within some fencing against other houses round about, yet open to the fields. It had the merit of isolation, Verena felt. For although it had not been possible to remain aloof in a town like Tunbridge Wells — and for Mama’s sake Verena had overcome her own disinclination for company — people were discouraged from forming a habit of visiting.
Several gentlemen had done so at first, but Verena had, she flattered herself, so well succeeded in damping any hopes of her interest that they now contented themselves with clustering about her when she went down into the town.
It was Betsey, whose fierce loyalty had frustrated the landlady’s attempts to pry into the mysterious circumstances surrounding her peculiar visitors, who let Verena into the lodging house. Mrs Quirk’s own apartments comprised the ground floor of the house, and she provided such services as the ladies required under the forbidding eye of the faithful Betsey. Although she was able to report abroad that the ladies’ linen was of the appropriate quality for the gentility, she could not satisfy Wellsian curiosity as to why these ladies had come to the spa town.
“They won’t believe as you’re here only for the mistress’s health,” as Betsey had informed the daughter herself, “but you needn’t fear me, Miss Verena. That there Quirk won’t learn nothing from my lips.”
Verena had every trust in Betsey on that count. She was much of an age with Mama and had maided Verena since her childhood. She had come with them on her own insistence — “As if I’d leave you both to fend for yourselves, Miss Verena! If not me, who’s to look to your needs, I’d like to know?” — cheerfully taking on the burden of Jill-of-all-trades to them both. She was bustling and sharp, a buxom dame with a hectoring manner, and more than a match — as she pridefully boasted — for any number of Quirks.
Verena accepted her loyalty without question, but could be little comforted to hear of the gossip. The hard necessity of defending her very small island from prying eyes only added to the strains and stresses that beset her: the well-nigh impossible task of keeping Mama’s spirits up, and the haunting dread that Nathaniel might find them out.
“I was on the watch for you, Miss Verena,” Betsey whispered as she let her in, softly closing the door.
“Oh, dear. Is she up already, then?”
“If you can call it that,” uttered the maid in a severe undertone as she hustled the easier of her two charges towards the staircase. “I tried to make her stay abed, indeed I did, Miss Verena. But she would insist on dressing. Now she’s in a fair collapse on the day-bed, like I knew she would be.”
“She had a bad night, then,” Verena guessed, hurrying up the stairs.
“Tossing and turning,” confirmed Betsey, who always slept on a truckle bed in her mistress’s room. “Twice she woke up crying. And I’m that sorry, Miss Verena, to have to add to your troubles, but she must have been at the laudanum again, unbeknownst.For when I woke and found her flat out, snoring, I looked at the bottle, and the level is down.”
“Oh no, Betsey,” Verena groaned, stopping on the landing to turn and gaze at the maid in distress.
The maid nodded, setting the frill of her large mobcap dancing. “Oh yes, Miss Verena.” She set her arms akimbo of the unrelenting black bombazine gown, its strict severity relieved only with a white apron. “If you ask me, we should up and throw that bottle in the dust cart.”
Verena sighed, untying the ribbons of her bonnet. “I would, Betsey, except that there are any number of physicians in this town only too ready to supply her with another.”
“Physicians!” snorted Betsey, relieving Verena of the bonnet as she removed it and brushing automatically at the flecks of snow still adhering to the bronze velvet. “Much they know. It ain’t any bodily ill that ails the mistress.”
“I know. Not now, in any event.” In an absent-minded way, Verena ran her fingers through her honey-coloured tresses to fluff out the crushed curls. “I had better go in to her.”
The accommodation that served for the ladies’ parlour was a large chamber to the front of the house, which looked out of a square bay upon the short drive below, and from a rather smaller window to the far side of the room upon the vista of trees that sat in the square Verena had just left. Before this window, to take advantage of the light, stood a small writing bureau that was Verena’s particular domain, for she always conducted any business there might be. Two large armchairs facing the larger window took up most of the space in the bay, and set to catch the warmth from a small fireplace opposite was an old-fashioned gilt wood day-bed with worn damask upholstery, just now occupied by the frail and exhausted frame of Mrs Abigail Peverill, thin with prolonged griefs.
Verena’s entrance seemed to sweep a breath of freshness into the stuffy atmosphere, and Mrs Peverill turned her head from contemplation of the fire and put out a wavering hand. “Dearest!” she uttered. “I am sorry — so sorry.”
“Don’t be, Mama,” Verena said on a bracing note, swiftly crossing the room and leaning down to plant a kiss upon her mother’s cheek.
It was a faded cheek, upon which the faintest traces of the beauty it had once held remained, eroded by long years of suffering. Furrows were etched into features once smooth and a sallow shade now overlaid that peaches-and-cream perfection. About the eyes a haunted look had chased away all vestige of joy, and the myriad tiny lines that nestled there gave the lie to the lady’s forty summers.
Mrs Peverill groped for her daughter’s hands and a rim of redness gathered about her eyes. “So good to me … I am so very sorry, my dearest.”
“Mama, pray hush,” Verena begged, perching beside her mother on the day-bed, and lifting the folds of the dove-coloured swathes of muslin gown that were slipping to the floor.
It was like Mama to forestall criticism by a show of contrition, Verena thought. She would guess that Betsey would see and report on the lowered contents of the laudanum bottle.
