The Cautious Maiden

by Dawn Crandall

  Before anyone could say anything more, I stepped over the threshold of the stairwell, pulled the door shut and locked it behind me, shutting myself in darkness. I sat down on the wood steps—just as I had the last time I’d been there—and waited. There was nowhere else to go.

  I heard shuffling feet, a long silence, and then a light knock upon the wooden door. “Violet, are you still in there? Are you all right?” Vance asked through the crack.

  “Yes.” It was all I could make myself say.

  “Will you let me in?”

  “No.” And before I knew what was happening, tears were running down my cheeks.

  “Violet, are you crying?” he asked gently. I could tell where he stood as he blocked the light from coming in through the crack of the door.

  It didn’t escape my notice that the situation was very much like the first time Vance had ever spoken to me—me in tears, sitting on some steps, with my hands covering my wet, tear-covered face.

  But this time there was a barrier between us, and I didn’t answer.

  Ava’s last question repeated over and over in my mind, an echo of my own recurring doubt. How had I ever accomplished snagging Vance Everstone’s attention? And had I, really?

  Having her put it to me so bluntly made me wonder if Vance would have ever truly wanted me if it hadn’t been for the scandalous circumstances surrounding that morning at the dormitory.

  Quite suddenly, I knew the answer.

  No, he wouldn’t have. He would have eventually become engaged to someone more fitting than me. For as Ava had said; I was, indeed, completely unsophisticated. I’d tried to fit in, with finery and horse-riding and tea-sipping, and I had lulled myself into believing that Vance’s world could be mine. That he could be mine.

  But I was still just Violet Hawthorne, a girl from nowhere, with nothing but a string of scandalous rumors and a few passionate kisses attaching me to him.

  And suddenly, I feared it wasn’t nearly enough.

  20

  A New Mission

  “…it strikes me with anguish to be torn from you.”

  —Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

  Saturday, June 11th, 1892

  I spent the week after the wedding at Hilldreth Manor, sequestered from everyone, claiming a headache, not wanting to deal with the rumors that Ava Cagney had so efficiently and effortlessly spread about Vance and me. When I thought about Vance’s family and closest friends having to confront the rumors, deny them, or explain them away on my behalf regardless of whether they believed they were true, I really did feel the blood pounding in my temples. I no longer expected anyone to truly think we were innocent.

  Vance’s siblings had presumably left town; I’d already said my goodbyes the night of the wedding. Instead of the incessant visiting and chatting that had been my life for months, my time was now consumed with my books, the ones Mr. Culver hadn’t seen and contracted yet.

  I hoped and prayed that the rumors wouldn’t change Lippencott’s decision to publish my books.

  There were mere days left until my wedding, and yet my fiancé hadn’t felt the need to speak to me beyond sending written messages that were far from lover-like. Each time I opened one of the rather distant, factual missives, it only had something to do with cancelling the plans we’d had for that week.

  I was mulling over this when a knock sounded on the door of my temporary bedroom. After some minutes debating whether to answer or not, I asked, “Yes? Who is it?”

  “Vance is here to see you,” Roxy replied through the closed door.

  “Is he?” I sat up from the edge of my bed, scattering my books on the floor.

  He’d come, finally, after all? How was I supposed to act?

  He wouldn’t be happy with me since I’d hidden myself away in the stairwell at Everwood during the ball, and shut him out. I hadn’t known what to do, how to deal with the situation, so I’d hid. When I’d finally felt composed enough to rejoin the party, I’d gone up the stairs and then come back down the main staircase.

  And to my surprise, everything had seemed as normal as ever. But Vance had been nowhere in sight, and Miss Abernathy and Roxy had both tired of the festivities by then and wanted to go home. I hadn’t been able to tell if they’d heard about Ava’s tactics or how she’d aimed her attack to drag my name through the mud. They hadn’t said much on the way home from the ball, and hadn’t endeavored to really try to speak to me at all during that week.

  After examining myself in the mirror, I opened the door. I was afraid to see Vance again, but still a little hopeful that he’d forgiven me for shutting him out, since he’d come.

  “He’s waiting for you downstairs in the back parlor.” Roxy moved out of my way. Her solemnity didn’t bode well for what I expected to find in the back parlor. With every step as I went down the stairs and through the dark-wood-paneled back hall, my courage wavered. The pocket doors to the room were open just wide enough for me to sneak through.

  Vance stood right away, but didn’t come to greet me. “Please shut the door behind you; I’ve asked them not to disturb us.”

  “Oh, all right.” I swiveled on my feet to close the doors. It was far from an amorous request, more like a command, and my heart sunk a little lower, which surprised me was even possible.

  I’d had a feeling ever since the ball that things between us had changed; that they’d been irreparably damaged by the scene Ava Cagney had created and my cowardly response to it.

  “I’ve come to make a serious request of you,” Vance began. “It’s something I’ve thought long and hard about all week, and I think it’s for the best.”

  For the longest time neither of us said anything, both of us not moving from what seemed to be our designated spots on the floor.

  “I know Ben’s in love with you.”

  My gaze suddenly locked with his. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You should marry him, not me.” Vance took a few steps, but in the opposite direction, toward the far end of the room. “Ava has been spreading all kinds of rumors all over town since the ball, and I think it is best that—”

  “But I don’t want to marry Ben,” I replied impulsively.

  “You didn’t want to marry me two months ago either, and yet you eventually warmed to the idea. And Ben is the better choice, by far. He can take you to Tennessee, away from Ezra, away from Rowen Steele, away from everything for a new start.” He still spoke facing the other side of the room, and I hadn’t moved from my place by the doors. I was too stunned by his suggestions, practically numb with the pain spreading through me from my bruised and broken heart.

  “You don’t really want to marry someone like me, Violet. Believe me. I have too many skeletons in my closet for a good girl like you to have to deal with. Everything they’re saying about us is believable because of who I used to be. You shouldn’t have to go through such degradation—”

  His humility shamed me. “It’s not your fault, and I don’t care. I thought because we would marry, everything would be fine, that no one would care about the rumors—”

  “That was before Ava brought everything front and center at a ball given in celebration of my father’s wedding…my father, one of the most influential men in all of New England. People are still talking about it.” Vance raked his fingers through his thick, cropped hair, evidently exasperated by the turn of events. “The brunt of the drama happened while you were hiding, and then no one knew what to think because you’d disappeared.”

  I made my first move to cross the room, hardly able to stand by the door any longer. What could I do or say to change his mind back to wanting me? “I’m sorry; I should have opened the door for you—”

  “It doesn’t matter now. It helped me to see how useless it was for me to pretend I could come to Boston and fit in to the society my family’s been a part of for generations. No one will ever believe I’m a gentleman, and no one will respect you as they should.” He paused, and took a deep breath. “However
, if you marry Ben and move to Tennessee, you would be the respected wife of an esteemed missionary.”

  Vance walked over to the game table we’d played at with Miss Abernathy and Roxy the day before the ball. How could so much change in such a short time? He leaned back against the edge of the table, bringing his arms across his mid-section. He looked like a guard dog, and I had a feeling it was his heart that he was again barricading from me.

  “But we’ve announced the wedding. It’s in less than a month. Surely it would be more dishonorable to break it off now; what would people think?”

  “That you’ve come to your senses.”

  “I don’t want Ben, I want you.” I wrung my fingers, nervously. Was he really so ready to foist me off onto someone else? “I’m grateful that it was you Ezra shackled me to, and not a hundred other different men.”

  Vance shook his head slightly, his eyes closed for a moment before darting open. They were leveled straight at me. “Grateful…to be stuck with me?”

  “Despite your past, you’re becoming a better man, I can tell. I don’t know what else I could think to ask for in an intended husband. If you are willing to fight these rumors—if you truly don’t care what society thinks, then why should I? I have lived without Boston’s approval my whole life! Why should I begin to care now?” When he didn’t reply, I added, “I don’t care what anyone else thinks—only you.”

  He looked noticeably agitated for a moment, as if I’d penetrated the barrier, and he didn’t know what to think about it. But then he said, “Ben has everything you really need. I should have told you before now… that he told me he was in love with you long before I ever found you on the steps of Everston sobbing about your hair. I should have stayed out of it. I should have pretended I didn’t see you there and simply gone into the hotel a different way. Go with Ben; he and the distance he provides will safeguard you.”

  I could only stare at him, stunned; the tears behind my eyes burning to let loose. “But I didn’t love him. I still don’t love him now, I—”

  “You would have, if not for me. If I hadn’t become involved and tempted Ezra to reinforce the connection we’d made, what happened in your dorm room wouldn’t have happened, you would have continued working at Everston until Ben came back from his meeting with the mission society, you would have said yes to his proposal, and you would have loved him.”

  Yes, what he said made sense. Those things very well could have happened. But they hadn’t. And instead, there I was in love with someone who didn’t seem to want me in the least, though he’d done a pretty good job convincing me he did for those last two months.

  “And he would still marry you now.”

  “I know.”

  “He would take you to Tennessee in a heartbeat.” Vance uncrossed his arms and edged off the game table. “Did he mention anything to you at the ball—?”

  “He asked me to marry him,” I stated, much more calmly than I felt. “He asked me to reconsider my engagement to you, but I told him I wouldn’t. I told him I wanted to marry you, and that you wanted to marry me.”

  “Well, he’ll be happy to find that you were mistaken.”

  I couldn’t have formed an answer if I tried, and I struggled to keep my tears hidden as I crossed the room toward the door.

  Had I been mistaken? Everything about those last two months in Boston flitted through my mind, reminding me of a way of life I’d only dreamt about, and it wasn’t because of the mansions and fancy dresses—it was because of how I’d felt with him.

  Vance, although I’d only really known him since the end of March, was the one person I felt safest with. He’d done so much for me; made me care for him, made me fall in love with him, made me want him, only to now throw it all back in my face. What was wrong with him, that he would be so cruel?

  And what was wrong with me that I didn’t want to let him go? He was right. He didn’t deserve me. He deserved to be alone, and he knew it. I’d been foolish to think that his good intentions could someday come to mean more. He’d never loved me. He would have told me if he had.

  I had been deluding myself that a happy marriage would be possible. And now…now I really didn’t know what to think. Or do.

  As I came to the double pocket doors, I forced myself to breathe, to catch just enough breath to say, “So, I would—you would have me break our engagement in order to marry Ben, and you don’t think I would run the risk of permanently ruining my reputation doing so?”

  “You’ll be unknown to anyone in Tennessee. Your reputation will be based on your character, not your past circumstances. And, most importantly, Rowen Steele will never find you.”

  “How does one go about breaking an engagement?” I could hear the tears in my voice, and was certain he could too, but there was nothing I could do about it.

  “I’ll tell my family you had a change of heart, after realizing you could have someone like Ben Whitespire instead of me.”

  It wasn’t true, but it sounded believable, at least.

  I tried to think beyond the fog in my head, but the only thing that seemed right to do was to turn around, throw myself into his arms, and force him to hold me—to love me.

  But I couldn’t. He would just stand there, stoically, keeping his hands to himself and his heart shut away from me.

  There was nothing I could do. Nothing but keep my chin up high, show him a strength I didn’t feel and walk away. He hadn’t even given me a ring to return, only two sweet months that had permanently changed my heart forever.

  21

  The Train Station

  “I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.”

  —Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

  It didn’t take long to break my engagement to Vance.

  No longer than it had taken to create it out of practically nothing in Dexter’s office at Everston.

  I didn’t see him again after leaving the back parlor that awful Saturday afternoon when my world had come tumbling down around me.

  Again.

  Miss Abernathy and Roxy said little when I told them I’d decided to marry Ben instead of Vance. A silence seemed to descend over Hilldreth Manor for the next weeks. Roxy shut herself away in her room most of the time, and when she did emerge, she barely had two words to put together. Miss Abernathy only chatted with her new Pomeranian puppy, Winston, who accompanied her everywhere.

  Perhaps they thought me foolish, indecisive, even cruel—breaking Vance’s heart.

  I wanted to scream that it was really quite the opposite.

  Vance had, for whatever reason, changed his mind about marrying me, but he wasn’t about to go around telling everyone that it was his doing. If it were known by the public that he’d found some fault with me, it would have truly ruined my reputation more than ever.

  It hurt deeply that he had stood by me, protected me, told me he would do anything for me and acted as if he were in love with me. And that he then did this.

  I was now more lost than ever—more than when Ezra had forced me out of my parents’ home and turned it into a brothel. Even more than when he chopped off my beautiful locks and then drugged me in order to be sure I was placed under the powerful protection of Vance Everstone.

  Soon after I told Miss Abernathy and Roxy my news, I wrote a letter to Mr. Culver at Lippencott about my changed circumstances. I also sent a message to my aunt and cousins regarding my plans to move to Tennessee, but each day brought no news. It seemed they had disappeared—even Miss Abernathy hadn’t seen or heard from her new friend since they’d missed the wedding at the beginning of the month.

  I did count it fortunate that Vance’s family was safely in Bar Harbor, where they could receive his news however they chose.

  Because of the implications concerning Rowen Steele and the integrity of the mission society, the plan was for me to quietly make the move cross-country. Everyone thought i
t would be best not to bring undo attention to myself before taking the train down to meet Ben at Roan Mountain Station, the town where the mission would be settled. He’d already started on his way down to Tennessee in hopes of finding someone to marry when the mission society contacted him by telegram that I’d changed my mind about his proposal, and that I would be down to meet him—to marry him soon.

  The Boston Inland Mission Society had recently acquired another young couple headed to the same mission, a Dr. and Mrs. Hatfield, who were to be my escorts. Sending me to the mountains of Tennessee seemed fitting; it was over a thousand miles away from both Rowen Steele and Ezra, and from what I’d heard, it was similar to the terrain of north-central Maine. It really did seem to benefit everyone, having Ben marry me, especially since I was the one he’d wanted all along.

  My heart was broken, but there was a numbness that had taken over since my last glimpse of Vance.

  I’d come to realize I’d put too much trust in him and his protection; too much faith in his feelings for me. Somehow I’d lost sight of my true Savior, Protector and Lover of my soul, the Lord Jesus Christ.

  And somehow, through it all, Vance had kept his sights straight with what little practice he had, and I had failed miserably. His rejection of me even came from him trying to be more conscientious, and more Christ-like. I wanted to hate him for it too, but I couldn’t. He had done what he thought was best for me.

  ***

  Monday, June 27th, 1892

  The morning of the day I was to meet the Hatfields at the train station for our trip to Tennessee, Miss Abernathy suddenly took an interest in speaking to me again. “Violet, you haven’t packed half of your gowns. You’ll want them; there’s nothing wrong with taking them. They’re yours.” She pointed her cane to the giant pile of dresses on the chaise longue in my room.

  I eyed the chiffon-layered, gauzy heap. “But they were part of my wedding trousseau, but for when I’d planned to marry someone else; someone very different than a missionary. Is it proper for me to keep them?”