Lady in Rags

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Flood and Steel

It took Verity some weeks to believe it. She went back to Houglen in a daze, and spent weeks refusing any company but her own. Her grandmother came to offer her condolences and advice, and Verity saw her for only long to summarily reject both of them. Mrs Walthrope begged interview, and was flatly refused. The letter she left behind expressed her regrets at leaving Houglen on such short notice, without the chance to say goodbye, and left a forwarding address. Verity burned it apathetically. Even comforting old Mrs Roper was shunned every time she tried to entreat Verity to a cup of tea or a game of cards. Instead, Verity took long, aimless walks around the grounds, wrapped up against the winter chill. She never went out of sight of the gates. It seemed to her that at any moment another express might arrive, saying that Neil had been found safe.

The express never came.

She came to believe it only that day in mid-December when Richard Armiger called once more. It was a mercy to her that he was too awkward to attempt to be kind.

A funeral had been held in Albroke, with an empty coffin as centrepiece. A stone would be laid in, when the ground settled. When the legal processes were through, the estate in Houglen would be turned over to the running of his father. At that point, she would be evicted.

"I have come to give you fair warning," he said stiffly. "I am not ignorant of the predicament my actions, and those of my father, have put you in. I can only soften the blow."

"It is feather light," said Verity, with more than a trace of Neil's irony in her tone. "So very kind, I'm sure."

"My father believes it would be best if you returned to your father's house."

"Your father believes?" Verity laughed. "Your father is either the stupidest or the cruellest man on earth – perhaps both. I will be out of here before he claims the property. Don't worry. I have no wish to ever lay eyes upon that man." Her gaze encompassed Richard's diminutive, twisted form. "Or for that matter, you."

And she rose and left, unable to bear it any longer.

Christmas she spent, of all places, at her grandmother's table. There seemed no good reason to refuse the invitation. She tolerated the cutting remarks of her crueller aunts, and was cut deeper by the patronizing kindness of her cousins. The day after, there was a family conclave. The topic was what was to be done with Verity. Her reputation was altogether tarnished, and completely without hope of redemption. It was, everybody agreed, not entirely her fault. The actions of the Armiger clan had been unjust, even cruel. The matter remained that Verity's reputation did not just reflect upon her life, but upon those of her unmarried cousins. What was to be done? To cut Verity from the family now would of course be best for the family – and the unmarried cousins. And yet her family were the only people she could rely on now – she was at their mercy.

Various suggestions were made. Each was more unpleasant than the last. A thousand pounds and a ticket to America. A nurse to crotchety old Aunt Agatha. A governess to Edith's spoiled children. A nunnery in Scotland.

"I think," Verity said finally, "That I am quite capable of relying on myself as it happens. In fact, if I can be honest, I am enjoying my ruination more than I ever enjoyed my honour."

She smiled at her family. She was getting used to a certain kind of smile these days. It went only skin deep, and hurt less than tears.

She did not know what she was going to do. It seemed that there was nothing she could do, except helplessly tread water in whatever direction the flood took her. In sum, then, as she had done her entire life.

The new year came in, and Verity returned to her isolation, wandering the halls and grounds of Neil's manor, losing herself frequently in the memories of the happiness she had found there. Sometimes she lost herself so deeply that for days at a time reality seemed a foggy nightmare, one she had had long ago, as perhaps only a child. On coming back to it, to find that happiness had been the dream and that the nightmare was true and inescapable, she felt anew the pain of her heartbreak, as deeply and physically as if her body itself was shattering into pieces.