The Typewriter Girl Read online

  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.

  But Betsey Dobson, her eyes still covered, razed his story with a shake of her head. She dropped her hand, picked up her skirts, and strode away toward the rear terrace of the hotel.

  John didn’t know what to make of it; it was like being informed he’d been looking at a building plan upside down. He was inclined to let her go. But a glance at the terrace told him more trouble waited ahead.

  He ran to catch up with her. He thought how long her legs must be under those rustling skirts, to have taken her so far so quickly. He touched her back to slow her down and said into her ear, “You are about to mee
t Sir Alton Dunning.”

  Her tension, already palpable in the tips of his fingers, ratcheted like an overwound music box.

  “I am with you,” he said.

  Sir Alton stood on the terrace, his bland smile masking his intent examination of the grounds. He put his glass of port to his lips upon catching sight of John and Betsey emerging from the shadows, then made his way down the steps. No matter how leisurely he took them, John did not miss the fact Sir Alton was too agitated to wait for John to reach him. Noel Dunning straggled behind his father, nothing about his indifference contrived.

  “Well, well, well! Such excitement, and now we reach the conclusion of that little experiment, don’t we!”

  Sir Alton’s tone rarely varied. He could have been reciting “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” he might have been delivering a death sentence to a condemned man; it all swung to the same serene, cheery inflection, relentless as that metronome Sarah kept telling John to mind during his piano lessons.

  “Who should have guessed my hypothesis to be confirmed in such a stirring fashion?” Sir Alton said. “Excepting myself, I admit. I trust you’ll pardon some gloating on my part—I cannot seem to help myself.”

  He settled his gaze on Betsey. No one would have described his smile as anything but pleasant and civil.

  John wished he had prepared her. “You’ve not met Miss Dobson,” he said. “She is the young lady we hired to oversee the excursions scheme. Miss Dobson, Sir Alton Dunning. And,” he added, noting Noel Dunning’s languid arrival at his father’s side, “you’ve met his son, Mr. Dunning, already.”

  Sir Alton’s bow was courteous, if subtle. If Betsey offered her hand, she’d be required to reach out an awkward distance. Sir Alton generally made limited efforts in that regard. Dunning had once said he remembered his father being one of the most effusive conductors he’d ever watched, but John could only ever imagine him directing his orchestra with shifting gazes and nose twitches.

  Betsey didn’t so much as nod.

  “Miss Dobson,” Sir Alton said. “Delighted. Though I regret a young lady has been forced to witness such boorish behavior from our—heavens, I was about to say guests, but that isn’t quite accurate, is it? How dismaying for you, finding yourself supposedly in charge of such a frightful group of ruffians.”

  The first strike. John checked Betsey in a sidelong glance to see how it landed. Pale as a cloud she’d gone, her fine straight back as rigid as Sir Alton’s, though with terror rather than self-restraint. Picturing the demon-soldier he’d seen this afternoon, John thought it a sorry comedown for her. Their moments alone would have been better used to bolster her confidence rather than crosshackling her about Avery Nash.

  “Noel.” Sir Alton addressed his son without turning to him. “How sly you’ve been, keeping your good fortune in meeting Miss Dobson all to yourself.”

  Dunning fumbled with his cigarette case. “I suppose—well—it slipped my mind, Father, I suppose. It didn’t seem terribly relevant, so I suppose—”

  “No, no, it doesn’t matter at all.” Sir Alton reached back to draw his son beside him, giving him a clap on his back. “My asking you to pay attention whilst your stepmother and I were away was mere habit. I hardly expected you in fact to do so.”

  Another clap on the back, and cigarettes rained to the ground. Dunning jerked awkwardly, as though he would stoop to pick them up, but then did not and instead curled the case into his hand, his face brilliant with heat, his eyes fixed to the darkness beyond the terrace. Betsey Dobson made a tiny sound in her throat. Her hand clutched the placket of her vest, half those brave brass buttons of hers crumpled up in her palm.

  John touched her elbow. “Miss Dobson, you ought to go on to the kitchen, get some ice on that wound so you can finish your duties for the night.”

  She gave him her wary, magic-beans look. She would be only too happy to escape this confrontation, John could see, but she didn’t trust what might happen once she was gone. His smile made his injured lip smart, and he received naught but a scowl in return. He squeezed her elbow. “Yes, Mr. Jones,” she muttered, and took a wide path around Sir Alton on her way to the terrace.

  “She came from Baumston and Smythe, sir,” John said as he stooped, picking up the cigarettes and passing them in one smooth motion to Dunning. “You know they take on the top people.”

  “Indeed I do. If you don’t mind, what duties, precisely, did she perform at Baumston and Smythe?”

  “She . . . she was a type-writer girl, as it happens.”

  If the paper does not run in straight but one side feeds faster than the other, one of the rubber bands may have slipped off one of the pulleys. . . . This is generally the cause of the paper’s feeding crooked.

  —How to Become Expert in Type-writing

  It was not that Sir Alton’s face went untouched by whatever he thought or felt. All of it showed, all of it—but fleetingly, palely, the fluid meeting of warm and cool.

  After a moment, Sir Alton said, “My ignorance of typewriting must be profound indeed, to be unable to imagine—but of course, the girl’s character must have detailed a great many qualifications.”

  “Mr. Seiler and I have been pleased,” John answered, hoping to skirt the issue of Betsey’s character letter. If Sir Alton pressed it, he’d not be able to explain, far less justify, his recommendation to hire Miss Dobson. I saw her, and I just knew, he couldn’t say. Neither: She came with a perfectly fine character, except for stealing rail rides and living with a man not her husband.

  “Never think I meant to question you, Jones. Whatever is in the girl’s reference, whether she is a type-writer or a chair caner or Thomas Cook’s own twin, as long as she’s capable of canceling the remainder of these day-tripper bookings, it satisfies me.”

  Having seen Betsey Dobson’s accounts this afternoon, John felt nothing less than ill—and goddamned furious—at the thought of all that revenue lost, money turned away as if it weren’t just as good as any other money, and when the hotel had yet to make a profit.

  John grinned at Sir Alton, grinned though it sent pain streaking from his smashed lip. “Monday, perhaps, we can discuss how to present that to the board? As soon as we have their approval, we will put an end to the entire scheme.”

  Sir Alton, who was never pleased to be reminded he had a board of directors to whom he must answer, said, “Excellent, then. Come to Iden Hall. By Monday, I should have a good sampling of newspapers—we’ll read all the accounts of what went on here tonight over a pot of tea. Won’t it be fascinating to see Idensea’s reputation transform right before our eyes?”

  You’d better learn to give Father’s sarcasm back to him, Noel Dunning had advised John soon after he’d arrived in Idensea. Otherwise, he’ll think you a stupe.

  John had altered certain things about himself over the years for the sake of inspiring confidence in the Englishmen for whom he’d worked, chipping away for any advantage because everything about his background seemed to work against him. He’d learned to speak with hardly a trace of his Welsh accent. He’d changed his name, for God’s sake. Dunning’s advice, however, he’d rejected outright, so contrary it felt to his soul.

  Dunning had been wrong, as it turned out. Sir Alton didn’t think him a stupe; Sir Alton had come to rely on him. So when John simply replied, “Monday afternoon, then,” Sir Alton put his port glass to his lips and, over the rim, considered John with respectful suspicion.

  “Very well,” he said. “Noel and I shall go to the smoking room and talk the entire debacle down to a minor inconvenience. Noel, it’s a task to suit you, shrugging it all away as though it were of no consequence. And you—”

  “Smooth things out amongst the excursionists,” John guessed.

  “Precisely.” For a moment, Sir Alton’s smirking mask seemed wistful. He glanced at his son, but though Dunning stood beside his father with the steadiness of a sculpture, he was otherwise quite gone. “But don’t be long about it. Brues asked particularly after you, and
wants you to rejoin us as soon as you might.”

  Rolly Brues! There might be some salvaging of the night, after all.

  “And”—with a gesture of his eyes, Sir Alton indicated John’s bloodied mouth—“you’d better do something with that.”

  • • •

  Betsey obtained ice from the restaurant kitchen, where the hectic atmosphere forestalled most curiosity, then fled to the offices and used a small looking glass on the wall to check her appearance. The convex mirror was a comfort; the injury to her mouth could not be nearly as grotesque as reflected there. She snatched some hairpins from her desk drawer and left the office, trying to put her hair to rights.

  She expected and dreaded Mr. Seiler at any moment. This was a mistake uncorrectable; this was a failure; this was her disaster, and she did not expect to survive it.

  But it was Mr. Jones, not Mr. Seiler, she encountered in the empty corridor. They both stopped dead. In the shadows, his hair appeared like a cut-paper silhouette of fire, wildly mussed from the fight. The sight filled her with caution and anticipation, held her in place with her hands in her hair as she pictured him driving Avery to the floor.

  She fixed the last pin, lowered her arms, and braced herself for immediate dismissal. But at the base of her spine, she felt, too, the press of his hand, how he’d spoken strength and alliance through the tips of his fingers.

  She liked him to a terrible degree. A staffer had told her Ethan Noonan suffered a crippling injury during the construction of the pier, and all her frustration over Mr. Jones’s obstinacy in the matter dissolved upon the discovery—dissolved, and wore another tender place for him inside her.

  “I was about to return to the pavilion,” she said. “If I’m not sacked?”