“And yet every sense revolted against the idea of it,” said Hugh. He sat beside her. “To go to war for the advancement of one’s career seemed wrong somehow.”
“And your surgeon’s daughter?” she asked. “Surely she must have suffered at the idea?” To her surprise, she felt a bitter sorrow that he would be in harm’s way, and she chided herself for being such a poor patriot as to wish her own acquaintances exempt from service.
“Miss Lucy has such enthusiasm for recruiting that Lord Kitchener should put her entreating eyes on a poster,” said Hugh. “Out of loyalty and affection, I suppose I must allow her to claim me as her recruit.” He gazed across the lawn at the Professor and Celeste. “But in truth, it was going to the docks yesterday that changed my mind; the dozens of refugees, the wounded, the chaos…” His voice trailed away, and she could see in his eyes that he was replaying pictures of the scene.
“I imagine it was very difficult,” said Beatrice. But as she spoke, she knew she could not imagine. The exhaustion, dirty clothes, and pungent smell of the few refugees crowded into the Town Hall had been overwhelming enough.
“Grandmothers with bleeding feet from walking for days in wooden clogs,” he said, his voice brimming with emotion. “Babies thrust into the arms of complete strangers just to get them to safety, women desperate for news of detained husbands pinning their information to every fence.” He paused and then shook his head as if to clear the images from his mind. “All other considerations melted away and I knew I had to go where I can be at least useful.”
“No one who knows you would doubt that duty is uppermost in your mind,” said Beatrice. “They will all be proud of you.”
“Thank you for your kindness,” he said. He held out his hand, and she gave him hers to clasp. “I know you always speak your mind, Miss Nash, and therefore I value your kind words all the more. I hope I have not offended you with my descriptions?”
“I appreciate your frankness,” she said. She looked over to the tea table, where Agatha was laughing at some remark of Daniel’s. She knew the pain Hugh’s news would bring. “When will you tell your aunt?” she asked.
“No sooner than I have to,” he said.
Two letters arrived on Beatrice’s breakfast tray, one from Lady Marbely’s solicitors and one from her father’s publisher, Mr. Caraway. She set them aside on the small table while she ate in order to prolong the pleasing sense of anticipation that all her worries, both financial and aspirational, might be laid to rest. A week or so after Celeste’s arrival, she had written to Aunt Marbely with a polite request that she be allowed to draw a slightly larger monthly allowance from her trust now that she was participating, in a modest way, in the war relief efforts of the town. With much chewing of her pen over the need to combine modesty with selflessness, she had described the recent taking in of her young refugee, and all the patriotic teas, committees, and events which they would be expected to attend, at some considerable increase in her personal expenses. She enlarged shamelessly upon the famous Mr. Tillingham’s gratitude, embroidered upon Lady Emily’s continuing patronage, and made sure to mention in passing that Agatha Kent’s husband was intimately connected to the highest echelons of government. Describing a life of almost missionary simplicity, yet one in which an increase in dress allowance was vital to maintaining a suitable reputation, the finished document was so satisfyingly manipulative that she was forced to bargain with her pricking conscience, promising to make up for such amorality at a later date.
As she ate her porridge and sliced green apple, she tried to concentrate her excitement on the envelope from the publisher, which was too thin to contain a returned manuscript and therefore promised an answer to her literary dreams. But she was distracted by the fat one from the solicitors, which might contain a bank draft. Setting aside literature, she spent a pleasant moment choosing between purchasing a straw hat of Agatha Kent quality and buying a three-volume set of the works of Jane Austen, bound in dark blue morocco and hand-tooled gilt, which she coveted at the local bookshop. She was grinning in rueful self-awareness that the books would always win against personal adornment as she ripped open the heavy envelope.
The letter and enclosed agreement were thick with legal terms, and yet even as she struggled to decipher the words with accuracy, she understood enough to feel a flush of rage in her cheeks. It appeared that, upon Lady Marbely’s suggestion, the executors felt it necessary to maintain a paternal watch over a woman of such tender years. There was language as to the limited feminine capacity for financial matters and to the loyalty to family honor—the upshot of which seemed to be that, in order to provide an increase in her allowance, they intended to engage a local solicitor to oversee her financial life and that she would be expected to deposit her salary with them as well as submit all accounts and seek advance approval for any expense above usual weekly necessities. To add the last note of humiliation, it seemed that her trust would be responsible for the expenses of maintaining such oversight. The enclosed agreement required her signature—her agreement to pay for her own jailers—and the letter closed with assurance that upon its signing and presentation, the local solicitor would make available an immediate draft of ten pounds.
The suggestion that she might be bought for ten pounds made her eyes water with humiliation. The small parlor, so recently scrubbed and furnished for her independence, blurred and became insubstantial. She blinked hard and, crumpling the letter in her fist, tried to focus on finding it amusing that a woman who had run her father’s household accounts on several continents should need supervision of all purchases other than ribbons and tea cakes. She bade a silent farewell to the new books as the envelope contained no drafts and the letter indicated that she would have to wait to hear from whatever local solicitor was provisionally engaged.
Turning to the thin envelope, she now wished she had asked for an advance and wondered whether it would have occurred to Mr. Caraway to offer one of his own volition. Her father had always complained of the man’s tightfisted ways, so she had little cause to expect it. As she opened the letter, she reminded herself that it was more important to the writer to have work than money.
The letter from her father’s publisher was scarcely less disappointing than the missive from her Aunt Marbely’s solicitor. Mr. Caraway was pleased to remember her, and sent warm thoughts and a cheerful anecdote about her father. But on the subject of her volume of her father’s letters, he wrote to tell her that her father’s archive having been left to the family trust, he had been contracted by the family to find a suitable editor and to publish an official volume.
…I hope you will be pleased to hear that, at the suggestion of your father’s family, we are in negotiations with an illustrious writer of the greatest possible reputation to undertake the editing and the introduction to such a volume. You will agree that your father’s reputation will be immeasurably enhanced by a work of this scholarly nature and that his legacy demands an editor of international renown. As you seem to have some correspondence not in your father’s archive, and your own introduction contains one or two charming insights, we have taken the liberty of forwarding your manuscript as a valuable piece of research. Lady Marbely assures us that the project will meet with your approval and that you will be glad to send us, by return post, any original letters missing from the official archive. I remain yours faithfully…