Page 79 of Miss Dramatic
Timmens took a few steps forward, as if she’d shake a finger directly in Gavin’s face, then stopped and speared Rose with an exasperated look. “Will you send me to fetch them footmen, or am I supposed to stand here, being insulted to my face while you keep mum? This ’un ain’t never been nothing but trouble, and here he is again, stirring up more trouble.”
Gavin pushed away from the windowsill and walked a slow circle around Timmens. “I hear no insult… to you. I hear a reasonable question, but I have yet to hear a reasonable—much less respectful—answer. Mrs. Roberts is your employer, and you will not disrespect her.”
“Timmens handled the vails,” Rose said. “In London, in Derbyshire, everywhere, until today. I gave the butler a tidy sum this morning and asked him to use his discretion in its disbursement.”
“I coulda done that,” Timmens said. “You had no need to take that on yourself, missus.”
Gavin ceased his perambulations just behind Timmens’s left shoulder. “In Derbyshire, you found a small fortune in Mrs. Roberts’s jewelry box, didn’t you, Timmens?”
“I’ll not stand for this,” Timmens said, crossing her arms. “Missus, you’d best call him off, or you’ll regret it.”
That was a threat. The old Rose, the one who’d tried to read Wordsworth, would have done anything to smooth over the moment.
“You stole from me?” Rose asked.
“Heleft that money in your jewelry box,” Timmens said, chin jerking in Gavin’s direction. “Making a common strumpet of you, he was. You were fair gone on him, and he treats you like that. Nobody else coulda done it. Of course, I took that money.”
An odd sensation enveloped Rose, of having had the same discussion at many points in the past and of hearing the words clearly for the first time.
“You committed this substantial act of larcenyfor me?” Rose asked almost pleasantly.
“I couldn’t let him treat you like that, and it’s not as if I don’t work hard.”
Gavin made another slow circuit around Timmens. “Mrs. Roberts, exactly how much jewelry has gone missing?”
“Not that much. A locket, a bracelet, earbobs, a few rings, some nacre hairpins, a pair of silver shoe buckles…” Quite a lot, actually, one or two pieces at a time.
“Widows are forgetful,” Timmens said. “Everybody knows that. And those actors were underfoot in Derbyshire, or Missus wouldn’t have crossed paths with you. Actors are beggars reciting verse. One of them doubtless took the bracelet, because they earn even less than a lady’s maid does.”
“Everybody knows that too?” Gavin asked, starting another circuit of Timmens’s person. “I wonder, then, why a mere maid can afford this gold chain about her neck.”
He delicately lifted the clasp of a slender chain peeking above the collar of Timmens’s dress.
“You leave me alone,” Timmens shrieked, wrenching to the side.
Gavin held fast to the chain, which broke when Timmens jerked away. He held up the broken links and the locket dangling from them. “I believe we’ll find the late Dane Roberts’s miniature inside, and I suspect that coin, jewelry, and trust were not the only valuables Timmens purloined from you.”
He pried open the locket while Timmens glared daggers at him.
“I earned that locket,” she spat, her tone venomous. “He promised me we’d be together, promised me that he’d set me up in Town. She wanted babies of him, and he pitied her too much to leave her.”
“Iwanted babies?” Rose’s voice sounded oddly calm to her own ears. “I wanted babies?”
“Sons. Every woman wants sons. You left him no peace on the matter. You never treated him right, never gave him the respect he was owed. You never understood him, how delicate his nerves were and that he drank because you drove him to it. I loved him, andhe loved me.”
Rose felt the absurd urge to laugh, except that in Timmens she saw another woman trying to convince herself that she was—after her fashion—fine. Lovable, valued, desired.
“Timmens, Dane was a sot by the time he came home from public school. He was all but drunk when he proposed to me, and if you believe for one moment that I wanted to bring children into a household headed by a chronic inebriate… Give her the locket, Mr. DeWitt. She’s right—she earned it.”
Gavin obliged. “Shall I summon the magistrate?”
“Wot? You’ll bring the law on me after all I’ve done for you, Missus?”
Timmens even had Dane’s ability to become the tragic victim in dramas of her own creation. “I will write you a character. You can keep your treasures as severance, and I never want to see you again. Mr. DeWitt, if you’d see that Timmens is on the afternoon stage at my expense, I’d appreciate it. She had best never set foot back in Hampshire.”
Gavin went to the parlor door and bellowed for a footman. A stout young blond fellow soon appeared.
“Please take Miss Timmens to the servants’ hall and ensure she remains there until somebody can get her to the Crosspatch Arms. She’s to be seen onto the late stage, inside fare, along with her belongings and a packed hamper. Pay her fare to any British destination outside Hampshire. And I do mean put herbodilyinto the coach.”
