By The Sea, Book One: Tess (12 page)

"Mr. Hillyard has declined to join us
tonight," the valet calmly explained to Tess.

"That Hillyard is a damned villain,"
muttered a chauffeur near her. "Never saw such an outrageous scene
as this afternoon in the Casino."

"
I've heard he left immediately
afterward for Saratoga," a woman's voice said.

"And a bloody good thing, too, before he got
run out of Newport on a rail—damned misanthrope."

"You're too hard on him, darling. It's only
women he has no use for."

"Why is she wearing a mask, do you
think?"

"Ashamed to be seen with him, I
suppose."

Everything. Tess heard every word. Like a
trapped animal whose senses are on full alert, Tess saw and heard
everything, despite the fact that her mind was reeling from a sense
of its own stupidity.
Vain, blind creature! Now, can you
see?

"En tout cas,"
her host the valet was
saying, "I'm sure we'd all be charmed to have you join our
festivities." He offered her his elbow. "Will it amuse you to leave
on your mask? I'll not reveal your name, and we shall let the
company guess who your people are."

"Oh no, sir," Tess said in anguish, "you
misunderstand—"

There was not a doubt in her mind that she
was the only genuine article there; the rest of the party was made
up of the usual collection of jaded society, who tonight had
decided to ape the ways of simple folk.
That
was the
masquerade.

"Come, come," her host was cajoling. "Take
off your mask then, if you prefer, and let us bask in the beauty
that promises to shine forth from behind it."

Tess found herself being led into an
anteroom by the valet, while behind them trailed a giggling,
whispering knot of elite society in shambling costume.
This has
to be a dream,
she thought, utterly at a loss how to escape.
A horrible, endless dream.

They were in the dining hall now. Half a
dozen "servants" were arguing and chattering noisily over the
proper way to set a table. Tess, still in an unnatural state of
awareness, had begun to pick out and recognize faces. Tessie
Oelrichs, Mamie Fish, Oliver Belmont—the gayest and most
influential members of Newport Society were here. She saw Harry
Lehr, the self-appointed major-domo of practical jokes and arbiter
of high fashion, pouring wine: he knocked a stemmed glass over onto
the tablecloth, and a red stain widened as one part of her mind
took it in.
My blood,
she thought bleakly,
mine and
Maggie's.

Behind her she felt a light tug at the
ribbons of her mask. Do unmask, Miss Moran; we're dying to
know."

"Who
is
she, do you think?" someone
whispered.

"Teresa Moran—the name means nothing."

Another tug.

"Harry, make her take it off."

One more try, and the mask fell from her
face. A murmur of male approval went up among the guests. An equal
but quite opposite murmur went up among the females: this was
competition of a serious kind.

And then, from the other side of the room
came a low, shocked gasp which was clearly her name.

"Tessie!"
The word was vibrant with
scandal, as though Cornelia Winward had seen her maid cavorting
naked at the Sunday service.

Tess stood quite still, filled with a sense
that she was; indeed, playing out the role destined for her. It
would be too absurd for her to apologize, and equally absurd to
rail at the cruel and insensitive trick that had been played on
her. Not now, anyway. Not here.

"Ah, Cornelia. Come here and identify this
mystery maiden for us," said the valet-host, but some of his urbane
manner had left him.

Cornelia had dressed quite predictably as a
lady's maid. She was wearing one of Tess's best black dresses and a
white apron. Tess saw that the sleeves and the hem of her dress had
been cut back to fit the shorter woman and the raw edges left to
show. It was hard to say who was more amazed at that moment, maid
or mistress.

"Tessie! How
could
you? I can't
believe my eyes!" Cornelia went suddenly faint. She looked around
helplessly at the company. "My maid …. This is so shocking …."

Several men rushed to her side.

There was no hope for Tess now. She knew
it.

"The shock is all mine, I can assure you,
ma'am," Tess said clearly for all to hear. Something exploded
inside her. She felt like a bottle of champagne just blown its
cork. "I suppose I was bid here as part of the evening's fun. I may
not have amused, but
clearly
I have entertained." She threw
her host a reckless smile, then lifted the hem of her dress and
turned it out for everyone to see.

"My
dress is hemmed and fits, you
see; it's inexcusable for a lady's maid to have scissored hems or
turned up cuffs," she added dryly.

With both hands on her hips she circled
slowly before the astonished company.
"This
is how a lady's
maid should look." Then she dropped into an offhand, graceful
curtsy.
"This
is how a maid curtsies." Finally, she dropped
her gaze in a discreetly modest look. "And
this,"
she said
with deadly softness, "is how a maid averts her eyes from
spectacles to which she should not, would not, be privy."

Then she raised her look defiantly, blazing
at each embarrassed guest around her. "Surely there are some among
you with the wit and intelligence to master the fine art of
domestic service. See what you can do."

She spun on her heel, her skirts whirling
around her, and began walking away from them with a hammering heart
and burning cheeks.

"The wench belongs on stage," someone
laughed, but Tess didn't care.

To bloody hell with the lot of 'em,
she thought furiously, and she turned for the hall door.

But she had turned the wrong way. So much
for the grand exit. She looked around her. There were no real
footmen to direct her, of course, only the mincing, masquerading
kind.

Tess retraced her steps and swept past them
all. When she reached the door, it was held open for her by someone
in a goatee and wearing a gardener's outfit.

"Allow me," he said. He was graying and
rather slightly built and looked vaguely Mediterranean. He had a
hawkish nose and carefully absent look. In one hand he held a small
hand-rake.

She turned on him, ready for battle. "I
don't suppose for a moment that you're a real gardener," she
snapped.

"I'm a complete fraud, my dear," he agreed,
closing the door behind them.

They were standing under a starless sky, and
for the first time it occurred to Tess that she was several unlit
miles from a house she dared not return to. No moon, and her new
shoes hurt. A wave of despair, as sickening as her recent fury had
been exhilarating, rolled over her.

"God. What now?" she whispered.

"I can hardly wait to see," the gardener
offered.

She looked at him with contempt: another
idle hanger-on, like Edward Hillyard. Newport was crawling with
them. "Go away."

"Oh, my."

Was that a drop of rain? Tess hugged herself
close. Her cape had been left behind, her best cape.

Let it rot.

She stepped gingerly into the drive. If only
it weren't so dark. Her father would have to take her in, but she
couldn't stay; there was no room. Tomorrow she would look for a
job, but not in Newport. No one would hire her now, anyway.

"You understand that you'll be soaked
through and run into a ditch before you're halfway to town, I
assume," said the helpful gardener.

Portsmouth.
There were large estates
in Portsmouth. But no. Too close still. Providence. But how to
watch over Maggie? Another drop of rain; and another.

"You might allow me to drop you off wherever
it is you think you're going. At least you'll avoid pneumonia."

She turned to him in a daze. "I don't have
pneumonia. What are you talking about?"

He was strolling beside her comfortably.
"I'm talking about your prospects, my dear, which at the moment
seem rather cheerless."

"Thank you so much for the information. I'm
sure it will come in handy." She strode out ahead of him. He
quickened his pace.

"All right!" he said, and stopped suddenly.
There was such bedrock authority in his voice that Tess
automatically stopped too. "You've had your moment in the
spotlight, Miss Moran, and you were magnificent. Now it's time to
face reality. You have no place to go and no way to get there.
Short of striking out boldly into the night,
do
you have a
plan?"

"Don't
condescend to me," she nearly
shouted. "I won't stand for any more of it. It's absolutely none of
your business but yes, I do have someplace to go. My family lives
on the harborfront."

"I'll take you there."

"Oh dear! And leave the merriment behind? I
wouldn't hear of it!"

"I've told you," he said quietly. "The time
for grand gestures is past."

He put his fingers between his teeth and
whistled, a night-splitting sound that startled Tess, used to more
genteel behavior in Newport. She jumped. She heard the droll smile
in his voice as he explained, "It's the only way to get a cab back
in New York."

Somewhere out of the blackness behind them a
brougham emerged: black, shiny, unadorned by the family crests so
favored by Newport's fledgling dynasties. The coachman wore no
livery. Tess, whose father so recently had been a groom, was quick
to see the spit-and-polish elegance of the rig, almost English in
its understatement.

She turned to the man in gardener's clothes.
"Just who
are
you, anyway?"

"My name is Aaron Gould. Yes, I'm from New
York and no, I don't have a little gilded cottage in Newport. I do
enjoy the town, however, whenever I can. I'm an observer, and
Newport is filled with spectacle. Where would you like to go?"

"I ... all right. Waite's Wharf."

He gave his coachman their destination and
helped Tess into the brougham. Coach lanterns threw a golden glow
over varnished cherrywood and polished leather. It was a
beautifully cared for coach and reminded Tess of Wrexham, where
she'd sometimes helped her father buff and shine Sir Meller's
coach.

"This is very nice, Mr. Gould," Tess said
pleasantly, and then she burst into tears. It was all over for the
Moran family. Maggie would be dismissed for certain, and they would
all end up in the almshouse. Keeping up a defiant, brave facade was
not only pointless now; it was impossible.

"As bad as all that, is it?" Gould asked,
not unkindly.

"It couldn't be worse," she cried between
bitter tears. "It couldn't be worse."

"Do you want to tell me about any of it?" he
asked, handing her a fine silk handkerchief.

So she did. Everything. From her mother's
troubles in Wrexham to her brother's cruel mishap. It came out in
bits and pieces, with long stretches of weeping as Tess reexamined
each bitter blow in turn. Everyone in her family had looked to her;
she was the strong one, the steady one, and now she had failed them
all. The silk handkerchief had practically dissolved under her
repeated nose-blowings; Tess stared at the stringy wet rag with a
look of horror, and Aaron Gould laughed.

"I don't mean to seem callous," he said
quickly. "It's just that the last time I saw a look like that was
many years ago, when our young governess dropped our little
daughter on her head. The child survived, and so, I expect, will
the handkerchief. "

The hint of a self-conscious smile played
over Tess's tear-stained, swollen face. She was not used to crying
and had not learned to transform the act into an alluring appeal
for help and sympathy. "I'm being so stupid," she murmured,
realizing that she'd just poured out her soul to a stranger. "I
don't even know you."

"It may require a certain leap of
imagination," he said dryly, "but think of me as a surrogate
priest. You needed to get something off your chest, and regular
confession probably isn't until next Saturday. So? Feel
better?"

She nodded and tried to smile, but new tears
welled up, this time for no particular reason. The brougham rolled
to a stop. Apparently they were at Waite's Wharf; she recognized
nothing through her tears and in the drizzling dark. Sudden panic
took over as she thought of facing her family with the news.

"What will I tell them?" she wailed. "I
can't let them see me like this."

"Do you want more time?"

"Oh, please."

Gould thought for a moment, then leaned out
the window and said, "To the launch." The brougham clip-clopped
south along cobblestoned Thames Street.

"I need a plan," Tess said, almost fiercely.
"I don't mind telling them about tonight, if only I can hold out
some hope for them."

"Admirable psychology. What are your
options?" He was leaning back in his seat now, facing her. The
fingertips of his hands were pressed together in a considering
gesture; the hazel eyes above them flickered with a
let's-hear-your-offer interest. He might have been buying a piece
of Manhattan.

"My options? I'm ... not sure. I have to
find work. I'm very skilled with a needle, but a position as lady's
maid is impossible now. Once I hoped to have my own shop, but I
have no money. I could try to find work in the Fall River mills,
but that's too far from home, and jobs are scarce now anyway. I
could try finding work in New York—I have distant cousins there—but
then I'd never see my family. And without a reference anyway—"

"What kind of shop had you hoped to set
up?"

She looked away. "A milliner's shop. That
was a silly dream; I never should have mentioned it, only—well,
I've told you everything else, haven't I?"