The Typewriter Girl (13 page)

Because I have said so.
Of all the stupid—

He quelled his distraction well enough as he and Brues inspected the railway and Brues told him of California and the expansion of his interests along the coast, but when they returned to the hotel grounds and found Mrs. Brues and her daughters having tea in the shade of an oak, John lurched without grace through
the introductions, his attention diverted by a glimpse of deep blue against the grass.

It was Miss Dobson, crossing the grounds toward the hotel pavilion where her day-trippers would have their dinner and dance tonight. She was not alone. She carried her baskets of pipes and frames, and some fellow was doing his best to slow her progress, trotting into her path, nearly walking backward at times. Certainly not a staffer. One of the trippers? He did have that brushed-up-for-a-day-out air to him, an attempt to look smart that fell short of fitting into the elegant surrounds. It took money, not just soap, to rub out the marks of working-class life, and even then, secrets remained which neither this fellow nor John himself would ever master.

Mrs. Brues was insisting he join them at the table, John realized, and he accepted the invitation. It was as he was taking his seat that he saw Miss Dobson halt. She and the fellow held one basket in tug-of-war fashion.

John bolted up. The man didn’t fit. He didn’t fit there next to Miss Dobson; he didn’t fit here at the hotel. “Pardon me,” he murmured, and turned in Miss Dobson’s direction.

But then it was over. Miss Dobson resumed her pace, baskets in tow, and the fellow, trotting backward, stumbled and fell back on the ground. He got himself up quick enough and strode off in another direction, while Betsey Dobson marched onward to the pavilion without a backward glance.

The man had taken the sharp side of that wicked tongue of hers, John had no doubt, and he would have given a great deal to have been close enough to hear.
Go after her,
said the voice he trusted.

Here was the millionaire, though. His two daughters of marriageable age. And a most delectable-looking tea. He sat down, a nagging unease curling in his shoulders.

•   •   •

Perhaps that unease was what made him play such ferocious croquet with the American girls once tea was done. The younger—just sixteen, John discovered, and thus not of marriageable
age—only laughed at his cutthroat play and served it back to him in a way he couldn’t help but admire, but when he knocked the older daughter’s ball nearly to the tennis courts a second time and she looked to be on the verge of tears, he was appalled at himself. He’d trade colors with her, and it would please him very much if she would take his next two turns, he said, exchanging his blue mallet for her red one.

He trotted off to see where the ball had got to, found it under an azalea, got the devil stung out of his hand by a bee when he reached in to retrieve it, and there the afternoon’s recreation hobbled to a halt.

He’d be disinvited from the dinner party, John was certain as he delivered the young ladies back to their parents, the younger with her hair fallen and her white frock sullied with grass stains, the elder silent and sulky over being forced to quit the match once it had begun to go in her favor. Rolly Brues, however, only recommended his elder daughter “buck up,” while Mrs. Brues undramatically instructed the younger to follow the maid back to their rooms to change.
Again?
girl and maid complained.

Thus, some hours later, there John sat in one of the hotel’s private dining rooms, sharing a meal with several of the hotel’s wealthiest guests along with Sir Alton Dunning, recently returned from a trip. Sir Alton gave him a wry smile to hide his surprise at John’s inclusion in the party. John’s connection with the pier company and hotel had provided such opportunities before, but with his work in Idensea coming to a close, they mattered more than ever now. A single conversation with the right person could lead him to his next position.

His earlier unease had almost gone. Still, he was not much surprised when a staff member spoke low into his ear: “Mr. Seiler asks you to come, Mr. Jones. Trouble at the pavilion with the trippers.”

Pushing the keys blurs the printing. Strike them squarely, with a light, springing blow of sufficient force to make a clear impression, and no more.

—How to Become Expert in Type-writing

J
ohn followed Tobias Seiler’s cool example as the two of them traversed the great hall and the Palm Lounge, but he broke into a run as soon as he cleared the hotel’s rear terrace, which was crowded with nattering, speculating guests, all their faces turned toward the electric glow of the pavilion. Thankfully, the distance between the buildings ensured the glow was all they’d be able to make out. A few people hurried along the path leading to the pavilion, intending to get a first-class view of it all; John sprinted ahead and trusted Tobias to tactfully herd them back to the hotel.

But the pavilion was bedlam anyway, shouts and cries where there ought to have been music, writhing knots of people who seemed uncertain as to whether they witnessed horror or entertainment. John recognized hotel guests and Idensea locals, and knew the crowd to be much larger than it ought.

He looked over his shoulder to make certain Ian and Frederick, the most brawny of the staffers who’d followed him from the hotel, were still on his heels, then plowed through the throng, now
hearing one voice above the rest of the confusion. “Avery Nash, you goddamned fool,” Miss Dobson was crying, and she sounded not the least confused.

It blinked in his mind then, the certainty that in the midst of this chaos, he’d find that jack he’d seen her with this afternoon. John didn’t bother to consult her, or to think whether Ian and Frederick were close behind as he broke through the crowd. He saw the men grappling on the floor and went for the one currently on top, grabbing collar and coat and yanking with all his strength.

He nearly fell back with the weight, then pitched forward as the man he’d grabbed tried to pull from his grasp. The man reared, flailing, and his elbow cracked into John’s mouth. John lost his grip, then regained it as the man’s balance faltered. Again, the man flailed wildly. John heard a sharp cry accompanied by a gasp from the crowd, and when he risked a quick look, he saw Miss Dobson, her face bloodied.

John spun the man around, served a quick punch to his gut, another to his already bloody face. The second dropped him. John came down with him, planting his knee in his chest and gathering his coat in his fists. The fellow was gasping, a barking cough at the end of each hard breath. It was the man from this afternoon, John was certain.

“Finished here, you.” To make sure the fool understood, he repeated, “Finished. You don’t belong here, and you’re finished.”

Frederick had taken care of the other fighter and now held him back. Apparently, there’d been quite a brawl—John noted several others standing about, disheveled and gulping air while their subduers kept wary hands upon them. Miss Dobson crouched down beside him, saying, “Mr. Jones, John. John, he isn’t well,” and when John saw the red smearing her mouth, he jerked on the lapels balled in his fists and gave his captive another good shove into the brick floor of the pavilion. “Mr. Jones!” he heard her say again. The man had struck her in his heedless flailing, not intentionally, but John couldn’t convince himself that this mattered.

“Get the constable. See to Miss Dobson.” He spoke to no one in particular, but feet scurried around him nevertheless. Miss Dobson rose, and John heard her instruct someone, “Tell the musicians to play a galop.”

Then she was at his ear again. “Must the constable come?”

He stared at her. She touched a finger to her bleeding lip, catching the gist of his dark thoughts.

“He isn’t well. And the constable, on the hotel grounds? It won’t look good.”

Beneath him, John’s captive—Avery Nash, Miss Dobson had called him—reached the conclusion of his coughing fit and groaned, “Lizzie.”

“Shut your face, you,” Miss Dobson hissed. “Every damn bit of this is your doing.”

The music started up with fierce cheer. Miss Dobson swiped at her mouth, stood, and joined the crowd shuffling its way back to merriment. John’s consternation waylaid him only a moment before he hauled Nash to his feet. Nash was a mess, and John felt rather disturbed to realize he didn’t know how much of the damage he’d done himself. Nash’s teeth showed pink when he smiled at John.

“The picture of refinement, is she not?” Nash said. “Fortunately, she’s apt to forget her manners ‘in the middle of her favors.’”

Still clutching the man’s coat, John drove Nash back to the low balustrade of the pavilion with such violence that they both nearly flipped over it. John couldn’t have even articulated the reason for his rage but for the vague feeling he’d had some filth forced upon him. He was relieved to hear Ian at his side, suggesting Nash and the fellow he’d fought with be taken to the stables until the constable arrived. He let Nash go, and had a hard time not planting his boot in Nash’s backside as Ian and Frederick led him off the pavilion.

Miss Dobson. He finally caught sight of her in conversation with one of the hotel’s watchmen. Approaching, he found her doing what he himself should have thought to do earlier—asking
the watchman’s aid in politely but efficiently removing the locals from the hotel grounds. The watchman glanced up at John: He wanted approval. John didn’t even nod. The watchman did, though, and made his way to a group of young men making a poor job of blending in.

Miss Dobson started to move. John caught her arm. “Come, you.”

She obeyed until she realized he meant to lead her off the pavilion. “I can’t leave—the dance is nearly through, they’ll be going to their train soon.”

“You’re hurt.” He urged her forward.

“It’s nothing.”

He stopped. Her top lip was puffy, tender-looking, jutting over the bottom one. It gave her an appearance a touch comical and fully infuriating, and his fists itched again for Nash’s flesh. He wanted to lick his thumb and dab at the traces of red she’d missed.

She touched her mouth, not that tender upper lip but its mate, at the place where his own mouth had begun to smart a right bit. “Oh,” she said. “Do I look half a fright as you?”

They left the pavilion. The path leading back to the hotel was still lively with to-ing and fro-ing, so John steered her off into the grass. “You know him,” he said.

She continued to match his pace across the shadowed lawn but said nothing.

“A good man, our constable. He’ll have the doctor if it’s needed. A crowd like that, there cannot pass such a scene without having the law, not if the hotel hopes to keep a good name.” But doubt needled him even as he spoke. Loosed from whatever had possessed him up at the pavilion, he wondered if he should have heeded Miss Dobson and revoked the call for the constable.

“Hell. Hell and hell. What have I done?”

It was hard to say. He understood the dread in her voice; he felt it himself. A damn sorry mess, this, the excursionist scheme blown to bits on its first try, Sir Alton and Rolly Brues and every guest in the hotel to witness it. His chance to dine with Brues and his
wealthy friends gone as well. And the worst of it was how simply it all might have been prevented. He’d seen Miss Dobson with Nash and persuaded himself out of following them.

“Best you tell me who he is, Dobs. He’s not a local.”

“No. From London.”

“And all this way he’s come for you? Your—your husband?”

She laughed. “No, Mr. Jones. Avery wouldn’t marry me, and I—I’ll not marry anyone. I don’t know what he means coming here, for he could hardly answer himself when I asked him. I only know he seemed very put out when I told him Sarah Elliot would not be so lenient as our former landlady.”

Landlady? For some moments, he didn’t understand her meaning, and then the chill of realization left him without words. Nash’s insinuations had some truth to them, then. He felt shocked, as though he should have known such a dramatic fact from the beginning, just by looking at her.

“And now you know how it was,” she said softly.

The grass whispered the count of their steps. Louder than that was the rustle of her underskirts. He couldn’t unhear it, suddenly couldn’t keep himself from imagining what they looked like.

“A way of going along, it is.” He still didn’t know what to say.

She halted, laughing again, but she’d clapped a hand over her eyes. “That’s right. Going along. Managing. A roof over the head, some bit of warmth.”

“Dobs. Miss Dobson.” He regretted shaming her, and his tongue felt heavy with questions and comfort, but he struggled with them and too much time passed. At last, he simply said, “Betsey, I know what it is to want a roof, a meal.”

“’Twas more than that.”

“Loved him, then?” For John had already made up a story for her: She loved Nash, thought she’d marry him. Probably he was capable of all sorts of rascality and she too naïve to realize it. He’d lured her into his house, told her they’d go for the marriage license within the week, when what he planned all along was a free maid and convenient nick for as long as he’d have her. A story like that,
an innocent duped by the wolf, was easy to understand. A story like that allowed pity.