Lady in Rags

Chapter Twenty-Three: She Did Not Look Back

It happened without Verity realizing that Jane Walthrope became an indelible member of her social circle that summer. At first, her distrust over their first two meetings lingered, but Jane was so charming, and friendly and amusing and clever that this passed over into some sort of strange friendship.

It was a strange friendship indeed, for Verity, now that she knew she loved Neil, could not help but be struck by an impotent jealousy at the woman who engaged so much of his interest, if not his affections. It was a jealousy made all the worse by the observation that Jane never once flirted with Neil, though she made free game of the rest of the village men with scant regard to their eligibility. Verity knew that if Neil had not been important to Jane, she would have flirted as recklessly with him as she did the others. Try as she would, Verity could not contain her occasional thrills of fear or anger when she saw Jane and Neil being, damnably, respectably, friendly to one another. But knowing her jealousy for what it was, she forced herself to be extra generous and affectionate to Jane, who responded in kind, and so she found herself in the very strange position of being bosom friends with a woman who gave rise to her worst nightmare.

Or not quite her worst nightmare.

The letter from Mr Colbert, Neil's lawyer, came towards the end of summer. A trial for the annulment was to be held in September, in the London Consistory Court.

Neil read the letter aloud to her at the breakfast table, with some notable silences where Verity was sure he was redacting the most uncomfortable phrases. She silently thanked him for it, and sipped her coffee from trembling fingers.

Neil put the letter back down and sighed.

"Colbert is a good lawyer, but my father can afford the best. Verity, I don't think we can stop this."

She looked down at her plate, at the food untouched.

"No. We can't."

She rose, bent to kiss him, and went to her room.

She knew that they could not stop it. The power lay in two men: their respective fathers. Well, she thought as she dressed in her oldest, least expensive gown, Neil tried his and that didn't work, so now, I'll try mine.

She didn't tell him she was going, nor the servants. She quit the manor through the side entrance and walked the three miles to Lesser Hough, to the street where her father's cottage lay.

It was not yet noon, and she did not bother knocking. She walked through the unlocked kitchen entrance, bile rising in her throat at the old smell – how had she never noticed how much it smelled? It smelled of gin, and sickness, and damp. There was a woman from the village who came weekly to scrub and cook and slap the house into something resembling order. She was paid well for her troubles, Verity knew, because Neil was the one who paid her, but Verity pitied her all the same. The cupboards were splintered and warped, and the tiles crooked and broken, the grime of years seeped into every crack and fissure.

The dining room was worse. Verity swallowed, and steadied herself against the wall a moment, remembering what had happened to her the last time she was here. For a moment, she thought of fleeing – and might have if it hadn't been for her father's snore, coming down from the rickety stair case. She hurried through the dining room, and up the stairs to his room.

It was dark in here, the curtains drawn across the windows, and she could only just make out his form draped over the bed, the rags of blankets all trammelled up against the walls and the foot of the bed, as though he had fought them in his sleep.

He had gained weight in the belly, she noticed with disgust, too much weight – yet the rest of him was sinewy and bony and undernourished. His arms were bare to the elbows, and his shirt was open down to his sternum, revealing the sinews, and coarse greying hairs. He snored again, the sound uncomfortably loud, and Verity grimaced.