Page 17 of The Secret Identity of the Lord's Aide
“Are you calling me old?” Bess asked, giving Irene a mischievous look.
“I don’t believe you’re getting any younger,” Irene returned, cackling.
“Fair enough. I suppose that’s what we all have to bear with, now.” Bess sighed. Already, her thoughts turned back to the speech she was busy writing up for Lord Linfield. She’d been lingering in the kitchen less and less.
“There she goes again. My strange ghost,” Irene said, giggling. “I can’t trust you to hang around, can I?”
“I have to get to work, Irene,” Bess stated. “Or my boss will fire me.”
“You’re entirely right; I’ll fire you!” Irene called as Bess clacked through the door and closed it behind her.
On the other side, Bess could hear Irene continue to titter to herself. The angst behind her words had grown in recent weeks since everything had seemingly crumbled with Lord Charles. Bess’s heart was heavy with this knowledge, knowing that Irene just needed a shoulder to cry on. But the woman was far too strong for admitting such a thing, and instead blazed ahead—willing to crack jokes about Bess’s “potential” suitors and not pay any attention to her own pain.
It was part of the reason she liked Irene. But it also filled Bess with her own sadness, knowing Irene could never cure herself in all the ways she needed to. Bess supposed that nobody really knew how to do that. Certainly, not herself.
In fact, in the wake of her fiancé’s death—his death by capital punishment, something that many, many people thought he deserved—Bess hadn’t been able to talk about it, herself. She’d hardly mentioned Connor’s name in the years since that horrendous day. She still remembered the day of the hanging: the sound of his neck breaking, the shrill cry from the crowd. Many people had applauded his death, knowing him to be a conman and a crook. But Bess had known a far different side to Connor. She’d known the man who could dance for hours with his hand at the base of her back. She’d known the man who’d mentioned how excited he was to have children with her. She’d known the man who’d cackled with her father, that first night they’d been introduced, in a way that made Bess believe that their families would unite with love.
Bess perched on the edge of her office chair, her quill in her hand. Lord Linfield’s notes were splayed just to the left of her, scattered and ill-conceived. However, Bess was a good judge of character and had a sense of what he’d “meant” with several of his notes.
Bess felt that to craft any good speech, one had to have a view of the audience. She closed her eyes, envisioning herself at the podium, with one hundred faces peering up at her. These were men with families, men with careers, men who looked to “Lord Linfield” as one to lead them to a more profitable existence. A life of happiness and kindness and comfort.
She used this tone as she wrote, articulating what she knew Lord Linfield thought, yet doing it with allusions to poetry and beautiful artistry. As she read it back to herself, she marvelled at her own abilities—almost second-guessing that it had come from her own mind. How could she, a shamed Lady, have any sense of what Lord Linfield might say? And yet, she could hear his voice in her head as she read it in a whisper.
“What are you up to, my dear?”
Bess blinked up at one of their newer writers, a man named Winston, perhaps 25 or 26 years in age. Irene suspected that Winston had a bit of a crush on Bess, as over the previous week of his new employment he’d approached her desk several times to ask little, benign questions. He’d ask what the time was, for example, or whether or not she knew a good place for lunch. Bess was flattered, of course, yet always turned her attention back to her work.
“Oh, Winston. Hello,” Bess said, slipping a white piece of paper over the top of Lord Linfield’s speech. “Just a bit of bookkeeping,” she stammered.
“Was that really bookkeeping?” Winston said, his eyes sparkling. He leaned closer, his voice becoming a whisper. “Because I think something different.”
Bess felt irritated to be drawn from her work but knew she had to appease him—if only to get out of the situation faster. She leaned closer, her eyes becoming slits. “What are you talking about, Winston?”
“I think you’re a bit of a wannabe writer, if I’m being frank,” Winston said. His smile became crooked, mischievous. “Perhaps Miss Irene in there isn’t the only woman writer around here. I sense something in you, Lady Elizabeth. Something a bit—enriched, if you know what I mean.”
Bess batted her eyelashes, trying to make herself appear youthful and innocent. “I’m afraid I don’t know a single thing about writing.” She sighed. “Although I would love to. In fact!” Her voice became hushed, holding Winston rapt with attention. “In fact, it’s the truth that I didn’t even learn to read until I was perhaps fourteen. I was a bit of an idiot, you see. My mother would rap my knuckles with a whip until I would sit with my books.”
It was clear Winston hadn’t thought anything like this would happen. He took a step back, his eyes turning to the ground. Bess's heart pattered wildly. She had to force herself not to grin like a Jack-O-Lantern. Truly, she loved toying with him.
“Well, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Lady Elizabeth,” Winston said, taking yet another heavy step back. “I only meant …”
“Oh, Winston. It’s really all right.” Bess leaned against her hands, tilting her elbows against her desk. She felt girlish and young, in these moments—younger than she’d been since Connor’s death, since her father’s disappearance. “It really is wonderful to be regarded as such. Oh, you and my mother, always pushing me higher and higher!”
Winston didn’t say anything to this. He spun on his heels and sauntered to the door, placing his hat on his head and entering the grey world outside. Rain pattered across his shoulders. Bess grinned, turning her eyes towards Irene, who had been watching the entire incident from her office. Irene rolled her eyes back and then dropped her quill back on her pad of paper.
So often, Bess felt that she and Irene lived in a world of their own creation. One with its own language. Which was why it had been strange to have Lord Linfield there the other night, seemingly a part of it. The handsome, angry Lord Linfield, who demanded so much more from his life than most.
Hours later, all of the writers and Irene had taken their leave from the paper. But Bess remained at her desk, patching up the final notes of Lord Linfield’s speech. He was meant to deliver it the following afternoon to a crowd of more than 200 people. Bess knew that the Rising Sun had a hefty circulation—that “L.B.’s” words had been read by a wide variety of people. Yet it was truly something else to have her words spewed out across a crowd, in real time. It was like being a playwright, perhaps.
A shadow at the doorway of the newspaper offices made Bess lift her chin rather abruptly. Mentally, she’d been several dimensions away, in her “word world.” When she spotted Lord Linfield on the other side of the glass, her heart dropped into her stomach. Beside him was his right-hand man, his assistant Richard—a brooding man who’d been at Lord Linfield’s home the previous week.
Bess felt a strange shiver go up and down her spine. Her palms were immediately sweaty as if she was about to catch cold. She shot up from her desk and opened the door, bowing her head slightly to Lord Linfield, who bowed his in return.
“Please, come in. Before someone sees you,” Bess said, rushing back from the door. Richard and Lord Linfield entered, their strides long. Richard closed the door behind him and waited, his hands behind his back.
“You know that my speech is tomorrow, don’t you?” Lord Linfield said, speaking in a stern voice.
Bess felt the words like a smack. In what world could she possibly forget this fact?
