“I can’t lounge around all day pretending to be the lady of the château.” Aunt Bessie winked at Amelia while slyly tucking a few letters between the sofa cushions.
“What are you hiding?” Wallis rarely missed any detail.
“Whatever do you mean?” Aunt Bessie shifted on the cushion to try and conceal the evidence beneath her ample bottom.
“You’re keeping letters from me when you know I want to read them.”
“They’ll only upset you.”
“But they’re so educational.” Wallis held out her hand. “Every day I learn a new word for whore.”
With a resigned sigh, Aunt Bessie handed Wallis the letters and Amelia’s stomach tightened. Wallis was already irritated. The fan mail would make her a brute.
Wallis slid a dagger letter opener into the first envelope and slit the paper with a quick flick of her wrist. She tugged out the letter and pursed her lips at what must have been a particularly spicy note. “Amelia, what other good news do you have for me this morning?”
“A letter from Mr. Ernest Simpson.” Wallis and Aunt Bessie exchanged a look. “Should I open it?”
“No, I’ll take it and any others from him. His letters, like the safe in my closet, are off-limits to you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He shouldn’t be writing to you at all, and you shouldn’t be writing to him,” Aunt Bessie said.
“It’s about our divorce. There are a few loose ends to tie up.” Wallis slid the unopened letter in her suit pocket and returned to reading her fan mail.
“There’s something from a Joachim von Ribbentrop.” Amelia read the return address on the letter with the Berlin postage stamp.
“Another person whose letters are for my eyes only.” Wallis took the letter and tucked it away with Mr. Simpson’s.
“Another person you shouldn’t be corresponding with,” Aunt Bessie muttered. “But you will have your way, won’t you?”
“Don’t be such a worrywart.”
“It’s not as if you’ve ever given me anything to worry about.”
Wallis frowned but had enough respect for Aunt Bessie to not bite her head off. Amelia was another matter. “Well, get on with it. I don’t have all day to review the morning post.”
“Here’s your dry cleaning bill.” Amelia held out the bill.
Wallis didn’t even look at it, too engrossed in her fan mail to bother. “Mrs. Bedaux will see to it. When you speak to her, request another laundrywoman. My sheets must be ironed every night and my pillowcases changed every day. Dirty pillowcases are ghastly for the complexion.”
Amelia tucked the bill in her jacket pocket, amazed at how Wallis and the Duke thought nothing of running up exorbitant bills and then casually handing them to the Bedaux to settle. That the Bedaux never failed to do so was even more astounding. Amelia wondered what they were getting from this arrangement.
“Don’t put the bill in your pocket,” Wallis snapped. “Put it in the notebook I gave you so you can enter it in the accounts the way I taught you.”
“The notebook’s in my office. I-I didn’t have time to get it after I came back from the post office.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I-I . . .”
“You attend to my affairs. The mailman sees to the mail. I need help, not hindrances. Keep the notebook with you at all times.” Wallis set aside the second letter and began the third, the contents making her frown. If she wasn’t careful, those sheets would spoil her complexion faster than a dirty pillowcase. “Has Lady Selby cabled about her arrival time?”
“Lady Selby?” Amelia tried to remember who that was.
“The wife of the British Attaché to the consul in Vienna.” Wallis glared at her from over the top of the letter. “Didn’t that school of yours teach you anything?”
Amelia bit back a curt reply. She’d spent a year at the Gibbs School learning to write thank-you letters to distinction, manage guest lists and correspondence, but no, she did not know who the wife of the British Attaché to the consul in Vienna was.
“Be kind, Wallis,” Aunt Bessie gently scolded. “I doubt you knew who any diplomatic officials were when you were Amelia’s age.”
“No, but I quickly learned who was who and what was what when it was important.” She fixed Amelia with a hard stare. “I suggest you do the same. Now, when Lady Selby arrives, assuming you can determine when that is without my help, she must have lilies for her room. Her husband isn’t joining her so we needn’t worry about him. Make sure the lilies are fresh and not drooping. I won’t have people saying I’m as much a second-rate hostess as I am a”—she read from the letter—“‘paltry companion to Britain’s glorious king.’”
“I think that’s enough of these little gems for today.” Aunt Bessie slid the letter out of Wallis’s hand; she was the only one brave enough to approach her when she had that murderous look on her face.
The clock on the mantel chimed the hour and Wallis rose and straightened the pussy bow on her dark green blouse. “I must speak with the cook about the wedding luncheon. His menu is too extravagant. Food should always be perfect but simple. Too much of it makes people sluggish and boring. And no soup. It’s the most uninteresting liquid and it gets you nowhere. Amelia, if it isn’t asking too much of you to attend to your duties, finish the thank-you letter to Lady Williams-Taylor. I want it sent with the afternoon post, and make the writing sound more like my voice this time.”
Wallis marched out of the room, her heels banging over the wood-plank floor.
“Which voice should I write in, the one Wallis uses with us or the sweet one she uses with her guests?” Amelia complained to Aunt Bessie. “How am I supposed to know who all these people are if she won’t tell me?”
“You’re smart. You’ll find a way to figure it out. Now, off to work. You won’t learn anything by standing around complaining.”
Amelia trudged into Mr. Bedaux’s study and the mahogany desk in the corner. She fell into the hard banker’s chair and studied the stone fireplace in the corner and the large, turned-wood daybed where Aunt Bessie slept. The maids had pulled the bedspread tight and tucked in the corners. Amelia’s trundle bed, like her portable typewriter and paperwork, had been put away. Wallis hated things to be out of place or cluttered.
Just like Father.
His office hadn’t been as formal as Mr. Bedaux’s but warm and inviting with blue walls and white chair-rail molding instead of this heavy paneling and red brocade. After he’d died, his associates had taken away the drawers full of files and Mother had changed it into a closet for her gowns, erasing all traces of him.
Amelia picked up the fountain pen and turned it over in her hands, the light from the window behind her reflecting in the black resin barrel. If Father hadn’t died, everything would’ve been different. Mother wouldn’t have launched herself into society in search of another husband, abandoning Amelia and her brother, Peter, to find their own way. Mother’s indifference had been a mere annoyance for Peter. Father had planned his future so he could eventually take his place on the railway’s board of directors. He hadn’t done the same for Amelia. He hadn’t even included Amelia in his will, leaving it to Mother to decide what money Amelia received, which had been nothing. Mother had said her future husband would take care of her. So much for that plan.
“This arrived for Mrs. Simpson, or should I say, Mrs. Warfield.” Mr. Forwood walked in and handed her the official papers marking the change in Wallis’s name from Simpson to her maiden Warfield. Wallis could change her name but there was no erasing her past. That would haunt her forever, just like Amelia’s. “She filed the paperwork before you arrived.”
“I see.” At least she’d found out before she’d typed today’s letters. She didn’t want to be up all night redoing them.
“Mrs. Bedaux would like to see you.”
“I’ll go to her at once.” Amelia gathered up her notebook, the bill, and the request for another laundress, feeling more like a beggar with her hat in her hands going to the chatelaine than she had the day she’d arrived on Aunt Bessie’s doorstep. However, this was her job and fresh hell waited for her if she didn’t do it Wallis’s way.
Amelia passed the library, where Sir Walter and Mr. Metcalf, the Duke’s longtime friend, onetime equerry, and best man, sat hunched over a half-finished puzzle, more involved in their whispered conversation than finding pieces.
“I’ll pass on what I think is helpful but even I’m not privy to everything.” Mr. Metcalf ran one hand through his wavy brown hair set over a long face. “Ever since the Duke became chummy with that Bedaux fellow, I’ve been all but shut out.”
“I understand, but do what you can. We don’t wish to be caught on the back foot,” Sir Walter, the slender, bespectacled royal attorney with his dark hair parted in the middle and slicked down on either side, encouraged before noticing Amelia.
Both men stood. “Mrs. Bradford.”
“Please, carry on.” Whatever they were discussing, it wasn’t for her ears.
