Page 22 of The Lost Heiress
Ransom sighed. “Yes,” he said. “I know what happened in New York.”
He couldn’t afford another fiasco like that. He might not be able to keep it out of the papers this time.
“I can take care of the details, make the arrangements,” Bass said. “I just need your blessing.”
As his godfather and his father’s best friend, Bass had been a constant fixture in Ransom’s life, a presence at every birthday party, every Thanksgiving, every family Christmas celebration. It was as if, in lieu of having a family of his own, Bass had become a part of theirs. Now, with Ransom’s parents gone, Bass was the closest thing he had left to a father. After the plane crash, Bass had been the one to break the news to him and his brother and sister. Bass had arranged the funeral, sat next to them in the front pew during the service, stood vigil at the reading of the will. He had always had their best interest at heart. He wouldn’t steer them wrong.
Ransom sighed. He didn’t like it, but perhaps Bass was right.
“Very well,” Ransom said. “Make the arrangements.”
Part Two
Chapter Seven
1948
Idon’t know how she could have found out about it,” Mrs. Abbott said as she rolled out the dough for the morning bread on the center prep table. She had flour in her hair and dusting her temples, and her apron was tacky from where she had wiped her hands after making the mix.
“She must have overheard one of the maids talking,” the housekeeper, Mrs. Wilson, said.
Florence watched them from her place a few feet farther down the prep table, where she stood polishing the silverware. One of the kitchen maids had found a milk crate for her to stand on so that she was at the appropriate height and didn’t have to stand on her tiptoes to reach the forks and spoons.
“Now she wants to see the girl,” Mrs. Wilson said, rubbing the back of her neck, as if it ached. “She asked me to bring her upstairs.”
Florence had become accustomed over the last several weeks to people speaking about her as if she wasn’t in the room, or as if she were deaf and mute and couldn’t understand what they were saying. But Florence was six, and she could understand them very well.
“I never would have hired that woman in the first place if I’d known that she was pregnant,” Mrs. Wilson said. “But once the baby was here, I couldn’t very well just turn them out into the street, now could I?”
“Of course not,” Mrs. Abbott said, slicing the dough vigorously with her bench scraper. “That woman put you in a very unfair position.”
“And now she’s gone and left me with her mess,” Mrs. Wilson said, and Florence understood very plainly that the mess Mrs. Wilson was referring to was her.
Florence had always felt Mrs. Wilson’s dislike of her, noticed the way the corners of her mouth pinched together tightly anytime Florence came within her sight line. Florence tried to stay out of her way, to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible. Until six weeks ago, she had lived with her mother in a small cottage on the edge of the estate. She followed her mother like a shadow—a small, quiet shadow—as she worked. When she was very small, Florence slept in a laundry basket swaddled in old towels in the kitchen while her mother washed dishes. Now that Florence was older, she’d sit on the stone floor near the sink, playing with the doll that her mother had made for her out of straw and a dress she had sewn out of a cast-off dinner napkin.
Thinking of her mother now made Florence’s insides squeeze together painfully; it made her whole body ache. She missed her mother desperately, missed sleeping next to her each night in their cottage’s one bed—how, when it was cold, Florence would press her toes into the warm flesh of her mother’s calves to warm them. She missed her mother plaiting her hair into twin braids after her bath, humming strands of Bing Crosby’s “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Since her mother had died, Florence had been forced to sleep on the floor in one of the maids’ rooms; no one made sure she bathed, and when she did bathe, no one plaited her hair, no one sang. Everywhere she went, people looked at her with a mixture of pity and irritation and asked what should be done with her. She’d heard talk of a convent up north, and it made Florence sick to her stomach to think of being sent away. To lose, in the space of less than two months, not only her mother but also the only home she had ever known. To have her whole world taken away.
“This is how she repays my kindness,” Mrs. Wilson said.
Mrs. Abbott shook her head. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
“Well, I suppose there’s nothing to be done about it now except to take the girl upstairs,” Mrs. Wilson said. She turned to Florence. “Come along now; get down off there.”
Florence obediently set down the spoon she was polishing and climbed off the milk crate.
Mrs. Wilson surveyed her from head to toe with that familiar pinched-lip look, as if she could find nothing about Florence that she approved of.
“Stand up straight,” Mrs. Wilson said. “Shoulders back.”
Florence did as she was told, and Mrs. Wilson took her firmly by the hand, not in the way her mother had—there was nothing comforting or reassuring about the gesture—but rather to tether Florence to her, as if she might wander off and get into mischief if she didn’t. They stepped out of the kitchen and into the dining room. Florence had never been in this part of the house before. She had been in the kitchen and the cellar and the servants’ quarters, but never in the part of the house that the family lived in. She marveled at the tall ceiling, the big windows, the fine upholstered chairs.
“We don’t have time to dawdle,” Mrs. Wilson said curtly and pulled her sternly along. Florence did her best to keep up with Mrs. Wilson’s brisk pace as they wound their way through the labyrinthine halls to Doris Oppenheimer Towers’s private parlor. It was a beautiful room. Florence’s mouth gaped open when she saw it. There was forest green wallpaper with gold embossed flowers, a mahogany fireplace, and velvet sofas. On one of the sofas sat a woman who Florence could only assume was Doris Oppenheimer Towers herself, based on the way Mrs. Wilson reverently angled her body toward her from the doorway and gave a little bow of her head. Doris was dressed elegantly in a taffeta tea-length dress that nipped in at the waist, and she held a book in her hands, which she set down in her lap as soon as Mrs. Wilson and Florence entered. Next to her was a younger woman—pretty, but in an understated way, with dark hair and dark eyes and a fine silk dress that was modest and elegant in its simplicity. She wore a gold crucifixaround her neck, and Florence guessed that this must be Scarlet Towers. She’d heard talk in the kitchen that Scarlet was very religious. She never ate meat on Fridays during Lent, which meant the cook had to prepare endless fish dishes, something he complained about because of the smell. There was another woman sitting in an armchair off to the side. Florence recognized her. Her name was Maggie, and she was Scarlet’s lady’s maid. Florence saw her sometimes in the servants’ quarters, and she was always kind to her. Maggie smiled at Florence now, as if to reassure her and give her courage.
“This is the girl, ma’am,” Mrs. Wilson said to Doris, dropping Florence’s hand and pushing her forward for inspection. “Florence Talbot. Her mother passed six weeks ago. Tuberculosis.”
Doris examined her sharply.
Florence clasped her hands nervously in front of her and tried to stand up straight, as Mrs. Wilson had instructed her. Her hair was unwashed and hung lankly down her back, unplaited, uncombed. Her dress was a hand-me-down and two sizes too big, dwarfing her, making her look even tinier in her petite frame. It was worn, the edges fraying and rumpled because she’d slept in it the past two nights. There was grit beneath her fingernails and a smudge on her forehead from where she’d scratched an itch. In short, she looked every inch the destitute orphan that she was.
