by Merry Farmer
Had that moment come?
Taking a deep breath and steeling her courage, Flossie marched through the front gate and up the hotel’s rose-lined path to the front door. It was still summer, still warm enough to keep the door open. Pinpricks broke out along her skin as she crossed into the lobby, eyes trained on the door to Jason’s office. It was open, but as she approached the front desk, she could see it was empty. Relief mingled with outrage in Flossie’s gut. She wouldn’t have to face him quite yet, but how dare he lark about with Lady E. when there was work to be done?
“That the mail?” Samuel asked as she lay the pile on the desk.
All Flossie could manage was a nod. She took her letter and started off toward the dining room. She would read it in the staff sitting room off the kitchen.
“Not so full of yourself now, are you?” Samuel called after her. “Not now that the boss has nabbed the golden hen.”
She fought to ignore the jab, but her heart burst into unexpected grief at the thought. Who was she if not Jason’s favorite? What position could she hope to have if his attention was diverted elsewhere? Was she just another faceless, generic maid, lost in a sea of others exactly like her? What would become of her hopes for her life?
The staff sitting room was blessedly empty when she entered. It sat on the side of the hotel facing the back gardens and had tall windows, like the dining room. She sank into one of the chairs facing the windows and tore into her letter, taking her frustration out on the paper.
The letter was written in the crisp, clear hand of her friend Gemma from home. Gemma had occasionally formed a threesome with her and Polly, but when Flossie and Polly left to make their fortunes, Gemma had stayed home and married the baker’s son.
“Dear Flossie. What a pleasure to hear from you. It has been too long, but then, I find little time for writing with my young ones. Forgive this letter for being so short. I will write again as soon as I find the time.
“In answer to your inquiry, things are perfectly fine.”
A sharp, prickling sensation struck Flossie in the gut and began to spread through her. Her pulse sped up.
“I was surprised when you asked me to report on your family,” Gemma’s letter went on. “I thought Betsy was corresponding with you. She should have told you that there is no illness at your home, though I hear rumors of influenza in the west. Your parents are hale and healthy, Betsy is glowing—and being courted by a dashing field-hand, I might add—and your nieces and nephews have never looked better. We’re all dazzled by the good fortune Betsy has stumbled upon. It’s that government pension, of course. The one she earned when her poor Edward died. We’re all mightily impressed by how generous the crown has been to her. Not a week goes by when she doesn’t strut about town in some fine new dress or treat half the town to pastries from—”
Flossie couldn’t read on. She let the letter and her shaking hands drop, letting out a heavy breath. She sucked in another one behind it, then another and another, until she was sitting stiff on her chair, panting as though she’d run a race. Heat infused her body as it shook harder and harder. Her panting breaths took on sound, becoming sharp, high-pitched, barely-contained shrieks of rage.
Betsy had lied to her.
The whole thing was a lie.
Everything that she’d done, ever sacrifice she’d made, was nothing but a fabrication. She’d martyred herself for nothing. She hadn’t been brave or noble in offering herself to Jason’s bed as a way to help them all, she’d been a fool, a dupe. Every night that she’d sighed and moaned and let herself be carried away with pleasure hadn’t been making the best of an unfortunate situation, it had been making herself into a slut for no reason at all.
And now she stood at the brink of losing that too.
Her gaze darted up at a flicker of movement on the other side of the window. Out in the sun-kissed garden, Jason wandered by.
Used. Everyone used her. Betsy, the footmen at Crestmont Grange, Polly, if her suspicions were correct, and most of all, Jason. She’d poured her heart into her life, but she was nothing but a dupe.
All restraint snapped in Flossie’s chest. She flew up off the sofa, fists clenched in rage, one of them squashing Gemma’s letter. She darted for the door to the kitchen, shooting past alarmed cooks and maids to the open door leading out to the garden. Her head spun with fury as she shot along the path in the direction Jason had gone. She could barely see straight, so pitched was her anger. Her lungs burned and unshed tears stung at her eyes as she chased after him.
“It’s all been for nothing,” she shouted as she caught him near the fountain in at the center of the back garden.
Jason turned toward her. He swayed slightly, his face pale with flushed splotches on his cheeks. It took a moment for him to focus before an expression close to relief slackened his face. “Flossie.”
She ignored his weak greeting, surging to him, Gemma’s letter held up in her fist. “It means nothing. All of it. It’s all been a lie. A horrible, horrible lie.”
“What are you talking about?” He raised a hand to rub his temples, squeezing his eyes shut.
Flossie raged on. “Do you know what this is?” She shook the letter, and without waiting for an answer said, “It’s a letter from my friend Gemma at home, telling me all about the good fortune my family has been blessed with. All about how my sister has suddenly become a woman of means, buying new clothes and treating her neighbors.” Hysteria inched its way up her spine, far beyond the reach of the good sense which could have held it back.
“I don’t understand.” Jason squinted, his hand shaking as he lowered it. “I thought—”
“That they had no money? That they were in dire straits?” Flossie rushed on. “It’s a lie. All of it. Every cent I gave her has been a lie. Everything I did to earn that money, meaningless.”
“But I—”
“And what for?” she rode over him. “What was it all bloody well for? Not for me. For you? You have everything you want now. You have your glorious hotel and more business than you expected. You have the admiration of the county. And now you have the great and glorious Lady Elizabeth Dyson, wrapped around your finger, panting for a marriage proposal and a slice of everything you have to offer. Or would it be more accurate to say she has you wrapped around her finger?”
“What?” Jason barked. The color in his cheeks rose to feverish levels.
“I was a fool not to see it sooner,” Flossie continued. Her sense drifted farther away from its broken moorings as weeks of trapped emotions shoved her on. “You have precisely what you set out to capture and everything I’ve staked my life on for these months has crumbled to pieces.”
“Lady E. does not have me wrapped around her fingers.” Jason blinked rapidly, several steps behind.
“Oh no?” Flossie latched onto his statement, pouring all of her aching, hopeless rage into the crux of the matter. “You do her bidding at the crook of her finger. She tugs you about, here and there, to her parties and audiences and who knows what else.”
“I have business connections,” Jason replied, pausing at the end of the statement to frown at his own words.
“Is that what it is?” Flossie laughed. A voice at the back of her head warned her to be cautious, to see the other side of the matter, but the rage had built up too long, been stifled too much to be still now. “Have you bought her a ring yet?” she shouted.
“A ring?” Jason balked, taking a step back and stumbling. “What do you mean?”
“You intend to marry her, don’t you?” She stepped forward in pursuit of him, vaguely aware that there were other people in the garden, staff and guests alike, and that they were watching. She should lower her voice and pull Jason aside to a quiet corner, but she was tired of being tucked aside and whispered about in secret. She was tired of being inconsequential to someone else’s plans. “Isn’t that what you’ve wanted all along? Since you were young? To marry Lady E. and be the grand lord?”
“I… How…” Jason
stammered, blinking rapidly and raising his hand to his forehead. He took in a breath, jaw tight. “She won’t let me have a moment’s peace,” he hissed.
“And you won’t take it. You won’t stand up to her and you won’t give in to what she’s demanding.”
“She’s offering to introduce me to society,” Jason shot back with a sudden burst of temper of his own. “Balfour. Gil-something. There are people that I can’t reach without her.”
“So you would marry her for social status?” Flossie balked.
“Isn’t that usually why people marry?” Jason fired back.
“You would stoop so low?”
“I could become one of the most powerful men in England.”
“If you sold yourself to her.” They were both shouting now, standing face-to-face, toe-to-toe, bristling with fury on both sides. More than a few people were watching their confrontation, but Flossie was beyond caring. She was helpless against the demon of fury inside of her. “You would cast me aside, make my life and my choices even more meaningless than they already are,” she held up the letter once more, “for power? For prestige?”
Jason flinched. “Who said anything about casting you aside?”
A new flowering of rage filled her, blinding her. “So you would keep me as your mistress then? While married to her?”
“Who said… I don’t…” Jason sputtered, mouth working, but words not coming. His eyes were wide and glassy, and a sheen of sweat had broken out over his face. “I’m trapped and I see no way out,” he shouted at last.
“So in the meantime, you use me?”
“What? I don’t—”
“I don’t want my life to be meaningless.” She shook her fist containing the letter. “I want to do something, to be someone. I want to accomplish things. I want to make a difference.” The tears that stung in her eyes escaped at last. “I don’t want to be another meaningless nobody. I want to be important, important to you.”
Jason’s jaw dropped. He stared at her, eyes not entirely focused. “You mean everything to me.”
“Then why are you swanning about with Lady E. every chance you get? And why do I feel as though I’m losing you every time you walk out the door?”
“I—”
She cut him off with a sob as the full shame of her situation struck her, and clutched her free hand to her aching chest. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she cried. “I wasn’t supposed to love you. I knew this would happen. I knew you would win her somehow and that that would be the end of me. The complete and utter end of me. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”
“I haven’t won anything,” Jason shouted, though his words were breathless and failing. “The closer I get to what I have wanted for my entire life, the more I feel as though I am losing everything I have always needed.” He pressed a hand to his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut.
“Then why do you give in to every little demand that woman makes?”
“Because she can… Because with her I could… I’m not at liberty to….” He tilted to the side, catching himself at the last minute and snapping his eyes wide. “I love you.”
“But it wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Flossie insisted.
“I can’t do anything to change that,” he whispered.
The sudden shift in volume took Flossie aback. She gasped, the short, tight breath, clearing away a measure of the emotion that had enveloped her. She blinked, staring at Jason, taking in every detail of him and forming a sudden, frightening image that she’d been too enraged to see before.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Jason squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t feel well at all.” His shoulders dropped, and with them, every last ounce of the tension their argument had whipped up.
As soon as that tension deserted him, Jason sagged. He tried to right himself, but the effort was too much. His eyes rolled back, and with sickening slowness, he fell to the ground in a heavy faint.
“Jason!” Panic flooded Flossie. She dropped to her knees, Gemma’s letter forgotten, and reached for him. Dear heavens above, he was burning up. “Jason, what’s wrong?” she demanded, stretching half on top of him, feeling his face with her free hand. His skin was clammy and hot. “Jason, wake up. Jason!”
Fear punched holes through all the anger and frustration that had gripped Flossie so hard mere moments before. None of that mattered now. She grabbed Jason’s shoulders and shook them, but he didn’t budge. He was sick, far sicker than she’d noticed. She should have noticed. She shouldn’t have let her pride get in the way of caring for him. Her stomach ached at the thought that if she had been able to see past Lady E., if she had let him hold her that morning, if she hadn’t let her rage and jealousy build up walls around her heart, she would have seen that he wasn’t well. Her mind reeled. How long had he been like this? When had his symptoms started? How bad were things?
“Is everything all right?”
Flossie flinched and looked up to see Donald, one of the hotel’s staff, approaching with cautious steps. Beyond him, Dora and a few other members of staff, as well as a few guests, looked on.
Flossie’s mind clicked to action. Jason was hers to care for—hers, and damn the consequences.
“He’s ill,” she said. “Dora, run to the hospital and fetch….” Dr. Pycroft was gone. “Fetch Dr. Dyson. Bring her to Jason’s rooms at once.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Dora curtsied, then rushed off.
“Donald, can you carry him?” Flossie asked next.
Donald winced. “He’s a big man.”
“Find Richard or one of the other male staff.”
“I’m right here, ma’am,” Richard answered from closer to the hotel itself.
Flossie straightened, standing and motioning for Donald and Richard to take her place. “Get him up to his room.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the two of them answered.
Flossie stepped back as the two men closed in and scooped Jason up under his arms and knees. With Flossie in the lead and a whole audience of guests and curious townspeople visiting the hotel gardens watching, they carried him to the door leading from the garden to the dining room. One of the maids had opened it to see what the commotion in the garden was and now held it so that they could rush through.
They carried Jason through the dining room, past alarmed guests, and into the lobby.
“What’s all this?” Samuel asked from the front desk, in the middle of helping a pair of guests.
Flossie ignored him, motioning for Donald and Richard to carry Jason on then running ahead of them up the stairs. She fished Jason’s key from her pocket and unlocked the door to his rooms, gesturing for the two men to carry Jason in and on to his bedroom.
As soon as they lay him on the bed, Flossie pushed them out of the way and rushed to the foot of his bed to remove his shoes. Once they’d been dropped to the floor, she started on his coat, vaguely aware of Donald and Richard taking in the room with wide eyes.
Her clothes hung alongside Jason’s on the open wardrobe door. A few of her cosmetics sat side-by-side with Jason’s brush on his bureau. One of Jason’s condoms lay on the bedside table, not yet put away. A blind man would have been able to judge her and Jason’s relationship with the barest sweep of the room. Donald and Richard exchanged knowing looks, though with Jason passed out with fever on the bed they didn’t gloat over what they’d discovered.
But even as she worked to remove Jason’s coat and smooth the damp hair back from his feverish forehead, Flossie knew that the moment they left, the rumors would begin to spread like an epidemic. The battle in the garden hadn’t helped either. By sundown, all of Brynthwaite would know that Flossie Stowe was Jason Throckmorton’s lover.
Episode Ten - A Confession of Love
Alexandra
For days, the summer heat had been relentless. Even as far north and at such an elevation as Brynthwaite, the temperatures had been oppressive. It hadn’t helped the scores of people suffering from influenza at al
l. But at last, there was a hint of coolness in the air, a lessening of the humidity that had pressed down on them all, and a taste of refreshing rain in the wind.
Alex rubbed her forehead with her free hand—the other carrying one of the hospital’s medical bags—as she made her way back to the hospital from The Dragon’s Head hotel. A dull ache had formed at the back of her eyes and her neck and shoulders were stiff and sore, but one quick assessment told her that she wasn’t in danger of coming down with influenza. No, her pains and exhaustion were because she had been the primary doctor in town able to treat sufferers of the outbreak.
She stepped down from the curb to cross the street with a sigh. The fact that so many citizens of Brynthwaite had relied on her and entrusted her with their care should have elated her. Dozens of people—from the high and mighty Mrs. Crimpley to the lowliest street sweeper—had allowed her to examine, diagnose, and treat them in the last few days. In less than a week, she had gone from being an oddity, the strange, potentially unstable woman who thought she could be a doctor to a competent, skilled physician in the eyes of Brynthwaite. This one outbreak of influenza had done more for her reputation than any number of lectures or debates or discussions ever could have.
She should be resting on her laurels, gloating to her mother at finally gaining the respect she had wanted all along.
Instead, she was consumed with dullness, desolate in her failure. She had gambled at love and lost, and in the process she had forfeited her pride. Shame was a bitter pill to swallow, and as she hopped up on the curb at the end of the block from the hospital, Alex was forced to admit that she had no one but herself to blame. She had set her expectations too high. She had been blind to the truth. She had taken the fall.
Still, a part of her rebelled at the idea that finding love with George Fretwell had been impossible from the start. Hadn’t she just seen a shining example of how brilliant love could be in spite of a vast difference in situation?
