The Cautious Maiden

by Dawn Crandall

  “I’m sure it isn’t,” Mrs. Ward said, degradation lacing her every syllable. “Put your clothes on.” She reached around for the doorknob and pulled the door closed a little more, silently urging Francie out. “And do wake your friend. The two of you have an urgent meeting with Mr. Blakeley, in his office, right now.”

  “But he’s Mr. Blakeley’s—”

  “I don’t care who he is. You both are a disgrace.” She slammed the door behind her, but not before I saw a half dozen pairs of curious eyes peeping in, trying to get a look at Vance tangled in my bedcovers.

  And Vance had slept on despite having convicted me, with his mere presence, of something I hadn’t done. The crowd at my door would ensure that the rumors would begin.

  I numbly sat down on the edge of the bed. I didn’t know how I’d be able to leave that room, walk down the hall and to Everston, without dying of shame. And Vance would be there right beside me. Stomping my name through the mud with every step.

  If I’d thought I would lose my job before, there was no doubt what Dexter would be forced to do once he heard about this.

  The thought of meeting with him, alongside Vance and trying to explain what had—and what hadn’t—happened made me sick to my stomach.

  Shouldn’t Mrs. Ward have pulled us out of bed and made a spectacle of us, forcing us to face everyone in what little clothing we’d been found together in? That’s what I’d always imagined such a situation would demand, but I was perfectly happy that’s not what had happened. Having to get dressed in the same room as Vance and then walk out together would be mortifying enough.

  Opening the door to the shallow corner closet, I hid behind it as I dressed.

  I didn’t care about everyone finding out about my hair now, and I left it as it was, a mess barely reaching my jaw.

  Dreading the thought of even glancing at Vance again, I wondered how I would wake him. I almost wished Mrs. Ward had hauled us out of the bed—to save me from having to do such a thing! But perhaps she’d thought—since it looked as if I’d already done so much more—that waking him would be an easy thing for me.

  I peeked around the closet door and studied my small disheveled bed. How had I been lying there beside him and not known? But then I remembered the odd heaviness of my sleep, the uncommon warmth, how difficult it had been to get out of bed.

  Yes, it was no wonder I’d been warm. I felt my face flush at the thought. Had we been drugged? Gradually the details of the previous evening came back. I remembered that some shadowy figure had pummeled Vance to the ground, someone else had pressed a hand to cover my face, and I’d blacked out. I could only assume that they’d done the same to Vance.

  Eventually I stepped out of my closet and made it to the edge of my bed. Vance’s bare arm was still draped over my pillow, and honestly, it was difficult to look away. My gaze traveled over his muscles, on and on from his upper arm to his shoulder, to his back.

  His blackish brown hair was a mess, which oddly only made him look that much more attractive.

  Oh dear Lord, what would I do now? What would Vance do? Would he care that my reputation was ruined? He hadn’t seemed to care the many other times I’d heard about, but then again, he’d married Giselle. And he claimed to be a Christian now.

  Recalling our talk at the hollow, I had a hard time imagining him having any part in getting us into the situation. He’d seemed sincere and hadn’t his last words to me the night before been to dissuade me from thinking anything relational could ever happen between us? The embarrassment I’d felt then was nothing compared to what I had to face now!

  And would he ever wake up?

  Just then a loud knock came upon the door.

  “Miss Hawthorne, I suggest you make haste toward your meeting with Mr. Blakeley,” Mrs. Ward bellowed from the hall. “You cannot stay here one minute more. Do get your things and be off.”

  I hadn’t thought of that! That I’d have to move out of the dormitory that instant!

  Sucking in my breath, I lightly poked at Vance’s bare shoulder, scared of what he might do when his eyes opened, and he saw me standing over him. He didn’t move beyond turning onto his stomach and pulling my pillow farther under his head, displaying too much of his bare upper back and shoulders to me. I turned from him, hot with embarrassment and all kinds of strange nervous feelings. I grabbed the rest of my clothing, my writing box, my books and what little else I had and threw them into the small trunk I’d brought to Everston upon leaving The Hawthorne Inn. And because I didn’t know how else to wake him, I lifted the trunk and plopped it onto the bed beside him.

  “Ow! For all the—” He sat up, twisting the covers, losing them down to his waist.

  I spun around quickly, as if I had something else to collect from my empty closet.

  “What the…where am I?”

  “My room,” I squeezed out, along with all of the air from my lungs.

  “Your room…your bed?”

  Not knowing what to answer, I didn’t say anything as I heard him rustle the covers.

  “Where are my clothes?”

  I bent forward, grabbed the pile from the floor and tossed them onto the bed next to my trunk, which he’d shoved over to one side. “You’ll need those. We have a meeting with Dexter.” There wasn’t a thing of mine left in the room for me to gather, but I couldn’t just stand there and face a practically unclothed Vance Everstone!

  Another knock pounded against my door. “Are you presentable yet, Miss Hawthorne? Let’s do get going.”

  I stepped toward the door. “Almost, Mrs. Ward.” I glanced in Vance’s direction for just a moment and realized he’d not moved a muscle since seeing where he’d awoken—how it all must have looked to him! “Do hurry, Vance. We need to explain—” I motioned toward the general space between us, “this to Mrs. Ward and Dexter.”

  “What happened?” he asked the question almost to himself—and with a pained look on his face.

  “I’m not really sure. I believe we were attacked on our way into the dorm last night and possibly drugged and then situated into this circumstance on purpose.” Another quick glance behind me revealed that, while he still sat in my bed, he’d at least slipped on his shirt.

  “A rather compromising circumstance, don’t you think?” he added cryptically.

  “Yes.” I swallowed hard. Would he blame me for getting him into this mess? What if it was some plan my brother had concocted to go along with whatever else he was doing? I opened my closet again and hid behind the door. “For your privacy.”

  “I’m so sorry, Violet.”

  I didn’t know exactly what he meant by apologizing, but his softly spoken words nearly brought tears to my eyes. I blinked them away, wishing I’d kept a handkerchief handy.

  “I’m not sure what happened, but I don’t blame you.” I spoke from behind the door. “You’ve been so preoccupied with protecting me—it’s not your fault that they’ve used it against us.”

  “Who do you mean by they?” I could hear him slip on his trousers and sit back down upon my bed.

  “Don’t you think it could be Ezra? He told me last week to stick near my friends—that I needed to—”

  “It very well could be, now that you mention it.” He sounded relieved.

  Mrs. Ward knocked again, and before she could say a word, I heard Vance open the door. I hurried out from the closet, desperate to stand between them.

  “I heard I have a meeting with my brother-in-law this morning?” Vance asked. He carried my trunk and stepped right past her. “I suppose you’re the one who’s orchestrated this meeting?”

  “Well yes, you must answer for—your brother-in-law?” Mrs. Ward’s face blanched, but the sudden look of fear in her eyes quickly turned to anger. “It doesn’t matter who you are. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Oh don’t worry. I usually am.” Vance walked right out of my room, as if he owned the place.

  Now that the morning shift at Everston had already begun, there we
re only a few girls left in the hall to gather what juicy bits of rumors they could.

  “And you too, Violet Hawthorne,” Mrs. Ward continued nastily, “for sneaking a man in here, inviting him into your bed. You have no place here. This is a respectable hotel, where we have respectable employees, not—”

  “Turns out Violet’s just like one of the harlots from her brother’s brothel!” Someone down the hall called the words, and they stabbed as deeply as any knife could.

  Vance turned back for me, switching the small trunk to only his right arm as he hurriedly used his other to take my hand and tug me down the stairs to the front door. “Don’t listen to them. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  “Don’t they?” I sobbed. “They might as well be right. I’m never going to be respectable again—not after this morning.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  I didn’t know how Vance and I had come to be found together in my room, but I also knew it didn’t matter. My reputation—despite my strict morals, and despite all Dexter’s help during the last year—was ruined just the same.

  ***

  “You what?” Dexter Blakeley couldn’t have looked more stunned. Obviously Mrs. Ward hadn’t exactly informed him of why one of his employees needed to meet with him—not even that it was me. She’d left everything completely open-ended, using every detail she’d gathered that morning to incriminate us the moment he realized who he was dealing with.

  His own disreputable brother-in-law and the poor girl he’d taken pity upon almost a year ago and given one of the most coveted positions at his hotel.

  “Mrs. Ward, thank you,” Dexter’s voice was more gruff than usual. “That’s all I’ll need of you this morning. I’ll take it from here.”

  “Are you certain, Mr. Blakeley? They’ll likely string together a bunch of lies for you. I’d rather be able to discuss the details—”

  “No, Mrs. Ward. That will be all, thank you.” And with that, she was forced out of the room by obligation. For the longest time after Mrs. Ward quit the room, Dexter sat with his back to us, facing his small roll-top desk against the wall, his fingers pressed to his temples. I had a feeling his eyes were closed, and that he was either gathering his courage, or perhaps that he was too mad to speak. I didn’t know which I preferred. Finally, he swiveled his chair around and looked only at me, ignoring Vance’s presence completely.

  “I have noticed that you two have been getting better acquainted in the last week, but this…this is definitely not what I expected. Violet, I’m going to ask you first. Please explain to me what happened.”

  I couldn’t tell if he disbelieved Mrs. Ward, or if he simply wanted to, but the way he’d asked the question begged for a different answer than her incriminating testimony provided. And it gave me the courage to start from the beginning, although the truth included my seeing Ezra the week before, which I knew Dexter wouldn’t like.

  He had his fingers interlocked together in front of him, his elbows resting on his chair’s wooden armrests, the entire time I spoke.

  When I was finished, he turned his eyes to Vance. “And do you have anything to add?”

  After a few moments of silent, dreadful waiting—when I honestly didn’t know what to expect from him—he quietly said, “I know Violet won’t be able to keep her job after this. She likely has nowhere to go besides back to her brother.” Vance still looked at me, but his enigmatic eyes hid whatever emotions he might have been feeling. “Isn’t that right, Violet?”

  “I guess so.” My stomach turned at the thought, but really, besides the estranged aunt I had somewhere in Massachusetts, I didn’t have any other option. No one would have me now. Not to employ or to marry.

  “So I have a proposition. Actually, it’s more of a proposal. I think Violet had better marry me.” He looked at me squarely, and I could only stare back.

  “Marry you?” Dexter asked. His shock mirrored my own.

  Vance looked serious; no cocky lift to his lopsided smile, no glint in his black eyes. He actually looked a bit miserable, to be honest…which sent a dagger through my heart. I would be forced to marry someone who only yesterday had told me he had no interest in marrying anyone, least of all me.

  “I’m headed to Boston soon. I was actually supposed to be there yesterday, but I decided to come back because of a strange sense of foreboding that wouldn’t leave me. And understandably so.”

  I’d stopped looking at him by then—it was too difficult. But at that point in his explanation, I could tell he’d turned to me.

  “We can all go down together, Violet as my fiancée. And we can have Talia and Stella plan the wedding for sometime this summer, after my fathers’ wedding to Madame Boutilier.”

  It all seemed so straightforward, as if he’d been thinking up these plans for weeks. But when had there been time? On the short walk from the dormitory to Everston? In that short time he’d decided to give up his freedom for the sake of my reputation? When it wasn’t even his fault?

  If it was anyone’s fault, it was mine—for not running far away from my brother. Why ever had I thought twenty miles would be far enough? I should have went in search of my aunt right after my parents died.

  “That’s probably best, Vance. It says a lot about your character that you’d do so much to repair Violet’s reputation when it seems you’ve been roped into all this against your will.” Dexter’s heavy gaze collided with mine. “Violet, I think it best you accept Vance’s offer. Like he said, you won’t be able to stay on as an employee at Everston, but I think it’s a fair trade to have you become my sister-in-law. You’ll be well-taken care of, at the least.” He gave me a small grin, though I didn’t know how he’d achieved it. Why would anyone be happy to have me forced into their extended family by way of scandals and rumors?

  “Will you, then?” Vance scooted his chair back and dropped to one knee before me. “Will you marry me, Violet?”

  “I—um…I don’t know.”

  “Violet,” Dexter urged, “As surprised as I am by Vance’s valiant offer, it is the best option. Otherwise you would be….”

  “I know…there isn’t anything else to do.” I glanced down at Vance—his dark eyes were focused on my face, as if willing me to give him an answer. “Besides going back to my brother, and that’s—”

  “Not an option,” Vance finished for me.

  I couldn’t believe he still knelt before me, as if he actually wanted to petition for my hand. Which, I was sure, he didn’t. He was only being forced into another loveless marriage, and this time, it would be to me.

  “Well then,” I said. “I guess I don’t have a choice.”

  6

  Change of Plans

  “No man can sincerely help another without helping himself.”

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  A little later, Dexter delivered me to Estella for safekeeping—he’d insisted that I stay in their extra guest room until we left for Boston. Hidden away, of course. It surely wouldn’t do to have the scandalously fired front desk clerk seen staying in the company of the owner and his wife—no matter if they had been extending their friendship beforehand.

  Vance had seemed even more ill-at-ease when he’d walked into Dexter and Estella’s apartment with my small trunk. Had he already wished he hadn’t offered for me? Or perhaps that I wouldn’t have agreed?

  Estella and I sat in the front parlor while Dexter and Vance met in the back study to discuss details about the trip. She’d already assured me that she believed my every word—and that she was more than happy to welcome me into her family. I could also tell that she thought there was much more going on between Vance and I than we’d let on. I didn’t feel like bringing up the fact that she was wrong.

  I knew the reception I would likely receive from Boston society, including Vance’s family, would be far from inviting. Who was I, after all? And would the event of our engagement really trump the circumstances of why we were engaged?

  “I never kne
w Vance well growing up, but he seems to have changed a lot in the last year.” Estella took a sip of her blueberry tea, and I remained silent. There didn’t seem to be much else to say after such a morning. “He does seem to like you. Perhaps he doesn’t mind the idea of being married again.”

  “Perhaps,” I allowed for her benefit. But I didn’t think so. And I remembered how miserable he looked when he’d decided to propose.

  I hadn’t touched my own tea. I was much too troubled to have an appetite. Although everything was seemingly put into order, and I was set to marry Vance, I still couldn’t come to the point of thinking we were actually engaged, that I was his fiancée. The idea turned my stomach into knots. Trust him completely? Commit our lives to each other? We hardly knew each other!

  When Dexter and Vance finally joined us, we spoke a little about the plans to leave for Boston. We would be leaving that evening instead of Monday, as had been their plan. I would then stay with Vance’s wealthy family at their Back Bay estate, Everwood.

  After the plans for the journey were settled, the four of us sat and an awkward silence permeated the room.

  Vance abruptly stood and walked to the great window overlooking the calm, blue lake and the surrounding mountains. “If you don’t mind, may I have a word in private with Violet?”

  “Of course!” Dexter and Estella said in unison, and both immediately stood.

  “Take your time,” Estella insisted as she took my hands in hers. Dexter waited for her by the pocket door to the dining room. “I’m sure you have so much to say to one another.”

  Once they’d left and securely closed the doors behind them, I turned to Vance, who still faced the view. Allowing myself to study his profile for the first time since he and Dexter had entered the room, I couldn’t deny he was literally the most handsome man I’d ever met. And now, I would marry him?

  I suddenly recalled the vision of his bare arm and shoulder sprawled across my pillow that morning, and my stomach did a funny flip. The thought of being there again, in his arms, caused a small tremor to race through me. But he wouldn’t want me there—it was all just a mean trick, and I had my no-good brother to thank for it.