Page 3 of Miss Ashbury and the Anatomy of Mending a Heart

The baroness sipped her tea and arched a bold eyebrow.

“That is, I’m not quite sure at the moment?”

She laughed. “I appreciate your honesty. It’s a rare trait in young ladies.”

Vera wanted to wrinkle her nose. She wasn’t young—she was quite firmly on the shelf. In fact, if one were to ask anyone in noble society, Vera Ashbury was so far on the shelf, she was toward the back of the bookcase.

“I’ve been thinking,” Vera started, before faltering into a pause then continuing once more, “about going back to London.”

She couldn’t bring herself to call it home. Not after that dreadful letter.

“Oh?”

Vera nodded. “Do you know anything about how to obtain…employment?”

If they’d inhabited one of the silk-wallpapered drawing rooms of nobility that Vera had previously spent hundreds of silent, miserable hours in, she never would have mustered the audacity to utter such a scandalous question. But here, in the baroness’s animal parlor, where there were no rugs because the formerly wild pets thought the world their privy, she felt it safe to ask.

“Why do you ask?”

It was an honest question, not an unkind one.

“I don’t wish to return to my parents’ house.”

Vera winced at the lie. Half-truths were lies, no matter how often people employed them, but she’d used the majority of her courage in broaching the subject in the first place.

“Ah.”

The baroness sipped her tea and seemed to consider Vera’s question. It was one of the things Vera loved about her friend—there was no rush with her. If Jacqueline wanted a moment to consider something, she took it freely. She was firmly unconcerned with what others thought about her, and it showed—in conversations and in her appearance, all the way down to her well-oiled boots.

She finally met Vera’s eyes. “A young lady like yourself would have several options for work, if you wanted. You might become a governess or a companion for the elderly.”

Vera nearly snorted into her tea. That was what her mother had planned all along—that Vera would never marry, never have a family of her own, and never leave home. Lady Ashbury had deigned that Vera was to be her companion and caretaker as she grew old.

Never mind what Vera wanted.

Jacqueline continued, “Or you might support yourself by writing under a nom de plume. Do you have any special talent with the written word or the arts? Painting, perhaps?”

Vera wrinkled her nose, shook her head.

“That’s probably out, then. I’m curious—when did you decide to take up a profession?”

About an hour ago, when I received notice I’d been disowned. Vera tamped down the hysterical laughter that bubbled in her throat.

“Fairly recently, but it’s something I’ve considered in the past.”

“Have you given up the thought of marriage altogether, then?”

Vera couldn’t help it—she gave a little exhale of derision. As if marriage were an option, a selection upon the menu that Vera simply required the courage to order.

Whatever expression was on Vera’s face, Jacqueline read it. “Despite what the cotton-headed ton think, a lady’s value doesn’t steeply decline once she passes the threshold of twenty-two. There are many men who’d be honored to have a lovely, intelligent, kind wife like yourself.”

“I’ve heard that, many times, but I’ve yet to meet one.” Vera had aimed for breezy lightness in her tone, but had fallen far short and landed in a grumble instead.

“A pity that Canterbury’s guests had to go so soon.”

The Duke of Canterbury had recently hosted a hunting party with the thinly veiled object of inviting his single gentlemen friends to the countryside to meet Vera. Of course, he would never be so inelegant as to say it directly, but there was nothing a single lady could sniff out more quickly than a well-meaning friend trying to arrange a match.

“I’m not sure who wished for their departure more— Canterbury or the guests themselves,” Vera said.