At first, Verity thought that at any moment she might receive notice that she was not, and never had been, married. But weeks passed without any further notice on the matter. She half-believed the Earl of Albroke had given it up, though Neil always looked away with pursed lips when she suggested it.
In June, summer arrived, late as usual, in the sleepy little valley. Neil went away for two weeks, to Albroke, to argue with his father. It was the first time he had seen him in eight years, and he was only seeing him to have an argument. Verity didn't like it, and had wished to go with him, but he had flatly refused to allow her. He had so many good reasons why she should not go too: it was the first time he had seen his father since he was a boy; the journey was a long one and the heatwave unpleasant for her; she must maintain her presence in society; his father would greatly abuse her. Nevertheless, watching the forlorn slope of his shoulders as he left, looking like a dog who had been beaten by its master, she could not help but think he needed someone to support him. But no. He did not want her.
Instead, Verity stayed home. It was true: she chaperoned Clare and a few other younger village girls to a picnic; she went to tea with her grandmother; she bought herself two new ribbons at the village haberdashery store, a frivolous indulgence like she had never been able to afford until now. But apart from those interludes, she prowled around the house, upsetting Mrs Roper and the butler Perkins, who had begun a sort of civil war over the housekeeping duties and certain accusations of disloyalty. Recently Verity had begun to suspect that the butler, who had always been superior, as is bred into butlers, was beginning almost to be contemptuous. It irked her. So when he knocked on the door of her bedroom that day, put a finger to his nose, and said,
"A visitor."
Verity replied sharply, "You may call him by his name, Perkins. And take your finger from your nose. You look ridiculous."
The butler removed his hand from his nose with dignity. "I had an itch, my lady. And the visitor is a lady. She has given me her card."
He presented the card on a silver platter, and Verity took it up with confusion. She had assumed it would be Richard Armiger again, come while his brother was out. She had been expecting somehow that he would.
Mrs Walter Walthrope presents her compliments
Jane Walthrope!
Verity dropped the card in her lap, as though it was a rat. The instinctive reaction did not pass the butler by, and a faint smile hovered on his flat-cheeked, long-chinned countenance.
"She is here now?" Verity snapped, and he drew himself to attention, the emotion fading like mud drying up in the sun.
"In the drawing room, my lady."
"Then I suppose I must see her." Verity stood up, and tossed the card in the waste paper basket. "You are dismissed."
Verity did not like dismissing servants, as a general rule, but Perkins seemed to need it. He bowed, ever so slightly, and turned and left. She went down to the drawing room alone.
When she got there, Jane rose from the couch, held out her hands and said, "Verity," very warmly. For a moment, Verity could do nothing but stand still and stare at her. She had only met her twice, and neither time had she liked her. Moreover, an echo of emotions of betrayal and horror came to her at the sight of those deep blue eyes. Perhaps sensing it, Jane let her hands fall to her side.
"You weren't at the Thompson's ball!" Jane prattled. "Or the Merritons', or the Kimberlys'. I didn't know where I would meet you if I didn't come by – and Neil isn't here either! But that's alright. We don't need men. It's you I wanted to see."
"Why?"
The word seemed to cut through Jane's consciousness like a bullet. Her hands stopped fluttering, her mouth stopped moving.
"Why?! Well, I mean..." Jane looked around, and then sat down again, and looked invitingly up at Verity. "Well I want to be friends with you of course! Aren't we already friends?"
In a small country town, you do not refuse to be friends with people on so shallow a reason as disliking them. But Verity was inherently truthful. She sat down slowly opposite Jane.
"What are you doing here?" she evaded.
"I live here now." Jane smiled charmingly at Verity. "I've been trying to meet you, but you never seem to go out. So I did the unmannerish thing and simply came over. It seemed more practical."
"You live here? In Greater Hough? Mrs Walthrope – you didn't come here because of – us did you?"
She managed to make it 'us' and not 'Neil' at the last moment.
"I thought a country change might be nice for me – and of course I would want to stay where I had friends."
A woman like Jane, Verity thought calculatingly, would have friends and enemies all over the countryside. She didn't need to come to Houglen, away in the middle of nowhere. A faint shadow of suspicion flickered across Verity's thoughts. She did not consider Jane someone to be jealous of, but she aware of her heavily flirtatious manner, and suspected that with Neil there might be more depth to the flirtation than there was with other men. And Neil was friends with her.
"And do call me Jane, dear," she added, as though reading Verity's thoughts.
Verity smiled weakly at her. "I suppose I should ask you how you find the neighbourhood."
"It's very charming, very quiet, very good for my health I'm sure. And there's so many interesting people to talk to - really quite as many as in London. You will come to the Kipling's supper party won't you – and bring Neil, if he's back."
"I didn't know they were having a supper party. I suppose we haven't been invited. We don't know them very well."
"Oh, but that doesn't matter! I've never met them – I'm coming because Miss Simpkins said I simply must, and of course Maria agreed, and there you are – I'm sure you must come too. You would be the life of it!"
"I'm not the life of any party," Verity said firmly. "I prefer the part of the wallflower."
"No you don't," Jane said equally firmly. "You just need some coming out. You're a very pretty young woman, and it's a shame to hide yourself away from people. Why, one day you'll be old, and wishing you'd flashed some ankle while you still had ankles worth flashing."
Verity laughed, despite herself. "I can hardly invite myself to the Kiplings. I'm sure if you're staying in the neighbourhood, we'll run into each other soon enough. But I'm a homebody, you see, and I don't go out much."
Jane lifted and dropped a hand dismissively. "But what is there to do at home all the time? Apart from drink tea. Do offer me tea. I'm dreadfully thirsty."
It was a very charming sort of rudeness, and Verity was affected by it, despite herself. Her earlier distrust of Jane was beginning to fade under the woman's charmingly inappropriate manner; only her inbuilt reserve kept her from losing her inhibitions completely and opening up.
Nevertheless, she rang the bell for the housekeeper, and asked for tea. Mrs Roper, perhaps sensing another potential battle about Perkins, came in with the housekeeper and the tea tray, a vase of flowers in her hands.
"Has Perk-" She began, but broke off, seeing Jane. Her ruddy, round cheeks turned pale, and her eyes grew bright. She put the flowers carelessly down on a table. "Jane – dear Jane."
Dear Jane froze in her seat. "Nursie." For a moment, even Jane seemed beyond words. But it was only a moment. Verity watched her recover, the surprise covered by a scream of joy as Jane jumped up and threw her arms around Mrs Roper. "Why, haven't I missed you!?"
Jane made a big deal of hugging and kissing the older woman. It was somewhat, Verity suspected, too much of a deal, even for Jane. She poured tea while the reunion took place, and invited Mrs Roper to sit down with them. Jane tapped nervously at the ceramic of her cup.
"I didn't know you were living with Neil. I didn't know where you were. How lovely."
"Oh yes," Mrs Roper said placidly. "Neil was very good to me. He paid me an annuity, all those years, and when he returned to England, he came to find me and offer me a home and a place. Though I've nought much to do here, with no children to look after." Mrs Roper gave Verity a gentle sort of smile. "Not yet."
Verity flushed. But she noticed that she wasn't the only one flushing. Jane was also pinker than normal. She put down her tea on her saucer.
"Mrs Roper helped bring me up, as well as the boys," she explained, speaking too quickly. "My mother died when I was young. There was no one else."
But the relationship between them was not, Verity thought, even close to that of mother and child. And it was very strange to see the self-composed Jane nervous. She must have realized it too. Something went over her then, a ripple of movement, through her face, and arms, and hands and chest and legs, every muscle tensing, and then suddenly slacking. She smiled at Verity: a perfectly composed, controlled smile.
"So you see, Neil and Richard are almost like brothers to me. I am very fond of them."
"Naturally." But Verity wondered why it was Mrs Roper who had brought that sudden loss of composure to Jane.
The loss of composure did not return. Jane chattered charmingly about all manner of things, especially village gossip, of which she was rather more well-informed than a recent transplant to the neighbourhood would be expected to be. She was very, very amusing. Verity suspected that she was being deliberately charmed, but even that suspicion could not prevent the charm from taking some effect. When Jane left an hour later, she had almost forgotten why she disliked her.
Mrs Roper and Verity watched Jane's carriage down the drive. Her white hand fluttered goodbye to them out the window.
"That poor girl," Mrs Roper said in undertone. "Poor, wicked girl."
Verity was surprised. That Jane was wicked she could easily believe. That Jane was poor did not seem so understandable.
But Mrs Roper, who staunchly refused to hear, see or speak evil, would say no more.
Neil returned from Albroke a few days later, grimmer and more broken than the day he had left. He did not talk much of his interview with his father to Verity, but he did admit that nothing he had said seemed to have effect. The suit of annulment would continue, even though he had sworn blind that he would marry her again in January if it succeeded.
"He just likes to hurt people," Neil said miserably, the evening of his return, when they were together in the library. "As a child, I used to love him. When he was pleased with me, he would give me all sorts of nice things. But if I did something that displeased him, he would take them away again, and lock me in my room, and whip me. He can no longer whip me. He only wants to hurt me as much he can, in other ways. Even if it's pointless."
Verity put her arms around him and kissed his temple. The words came unbidden to her lips, to tell him that she loved him. She smothered them by kissing him again.
"We'll get through this," she promised. "And when it's over, you'll never have to speak to him again. You can have your lawyer handle the case. You needn't take part."
And then, to distract him from his sadness, she began to tell him how Jane Walthrope had taken a house in the neighbourhood.
It was news that brought the ghost of a smile to his face and the shadow of joy to the tone of his voice. He asked questions, and she continued to talk to him about Jane. By the end of the night, when he kissed her goodnight at her bedroom door, he almost seemed cheerful.
"We'll have to have a supper, and invite her," he decided. "It will be fun. And I haven't been very sociable of late."
"Of course," Verity said, despite the faint feeling of misgiving that crept into her heart. With the effects of Jane's charm faded after several days, she remembered more clearly now the effects of her casual, cruel words, the first time she had met her. She kissed him again, and drew him inquiringly closer through her door.
He pulled back, and smiled down at her.
"I don't think we can risk that yet."
"I want you," she persisted, with the sudden desperate conviction that she did not have him.
He kissed her again, but went no further. "I know."