One person would be awake, Nurse Dixon knew, and that would be Manus, and he was the only person she wanted to see. At first light she left her bed and made her way to the stables where he was saddling Mandrake, impatient to be off for the eighteenth day in a row on his daily dawn search for Victoria. As soon as he saw Dixon’s tearful face, he guided her into the tack room on the southern side where they could talk without fear of disturbing the lads asleep in the room above the stable on the northern side.
She told him that Miss East, full of jealousy, was getting rid of her while Her Ladyship’s back was turned. Dixon would have to wait around for a month until Lady Blackshaw returned to give her back her position, which she would do, as she thought so highly of her. Meanwhile Miss East had removed Charlotte from the nursery the night before, and was no doubt making up nasty, untrue stories which she would later spread to justify her action and everyone would believe them because she was the housekeeper.
“I can’t stay at the Park to be pointed at and whispered about.”
“No one will be pointing at you and whispering.” Manus showed relief that the news wasn’t worse. He took Dixon’s hand, saying that she must have misunderstood Lily East, who was kindness itself, and if Dixon liked he would speak to Lily and sort out the mistake.
“No, don’t talk to her. That’s the last thing I want you to do. Believe me, there were no mistake. You don’t know her like I do. She suffers from child hunger and would do anything to get her hands on the girls. Girl. And this were her chance. She said Her Ladyship gave her the authority.”
“I can’t credit this sudden turn of events. And you so good with the girls. Lily must have got the wrong end of the stick. I wonder what got into her.” He shook his head in disbelief. “You must let me talk to her.”
“No.”
“There must be something to be done.”
“There is something. I was hoping you would mention it.” Dixon paused to make sure she was selecting the correct phrase. “I thought that, seeing that . . .” She took a deep breath. “Can I come and stay with you?”
“Stay with me?” Manus was taken aback. “You mean until Lady Blackshaw returns?”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I mean to come and live with you permanently.”
“I don’t think that would be proper. Even with my father there.”
“I mean as your wife.”
“Wife?” Manus made an explosive sound of disbelief that sounded to Dixon like a jeering laugh.
Dixon blushed all over her face and neck into her hair-line and hung her head. “I thought you liked me.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to react like that. You took me by surprise. I do like you,” he said, removing his hand. “Very much. But not in that way.”
“Do you have a sweetheart in the village?”
“No, I don’t.”
“What is it then?”
“I’m sorry. I’ll help you any way I can with Miss East and Lady Blackshaw, but I can’t marry you.”
He reached out to take her hand again.
She snatched it back, kept her eyes averted, and stumbled from the room.
Now dry-eyed and purposeful, Dixon went back to the house and made her way along quiet corridors, up staircases and along further corridors to Lady Blackshaw’s bedroom in the south wing. All was quiet. It would be an hour before the first servant began early-morning duty.
She thought back to one day recently when she and the girls had followed Teresa into Edwina’s room to collect a worn coverlet that needed to be mended. While they were there Teresa pointed to an open ordinary-looking box on the dressing table containing necklaces of diamonds, rubies and emeralds tangled around matching rings and bracelets. Dixon couldn’t believe beautiful things like that were jumbled together in such a careless fashion and felt a desire to lift out all the pieces, untangle them, and sort them out. Before she’d had time to touch a single jewel Teresa said with authority it was time to leave and, scooping up the coverlet, led the way out.
Dixon remembered being miffed that Teresa knew all about the jewels and was at home in Edwina’s bedroom whereas she, senior in service if not in age, had never seen the jewels or been in the bedroom before.
This morning the wooden box was in its previous position. The pieces of jewellery were on view in the same state they’d been in when she last saw them. With care she extricated a diamond necklace and its matching ring, along with a sapphire bracelet and its matching ring. She slipped them into her pocket, left the room and went back to the nursery to relive the shock of the previous night.
After Miss East and Charlotte escaped, she’d lost control, howling and raging in a fury that she felt was strong enough to kill her, and at the time she wished it had. A young kitchen porter, obviously sent up by Miss East, had almost fallen backwards with fright when he saw her, but waited around long enough for Dr Finn to reassure him that everything was under control and he could leave with a clear conscience.
Dixon relived all the humiliations at the orphanage where she wasn’t deemed worthy of an education, good enough only for minding infants, but they were as nothing compared to being publicly declared unfit to do even that by a woman who came from the same part of the world and same stock as herself. Dr Finn, whose kind perceptive gaze unnerved her as she felt he had an ability to see through her mask and read her thoughts and still think well of her, stayed for over an hour to reassure himself she was calm enough to be left alone and there was no fear she would do anything rash. He apologised for treating her roughly and offered to fetch someone to stay with her, but she said she didn’t need his help as she would be leaving the Park first thing in the morning and had no intention of returning. In fact, only for it being dark she would leave this very minute.
And now, all those collective humiliations at the orphanage and in the nursery the previous night were as nothing compared to being laughed at by Manus when she offered herself to him as a wife. She felt a stab in her chest when she thought of it, and she thought of it every few seconds.
To distract herself, she picked up the envelope she had earlier thrown at Lily East and opened it. Inside was a letter, written on Blackshaw notepaper like the one Teresa Kelly received before she left. The Blackshaw family crest and address were at the top of the page and it was signed by the steward on behalf of Lord Waldron at the bottom. “It’s a reference,” Teresa had explained about her own one. “Worth a fortune for the likes of us.” She had read out words like ‘honest’, ‘trustworthy’, ‘hardworking’. She was particularly pleased because, even though she had worked at the Park for only twenty months, the steward had included the long years of devotion to her father to explain the missing years. “What a thoughtful man!” she’d said.
Dixon would have to wait until she found someone to read hers to her, but judging by the generous amount of money the steward had enclosed, he was being thoughtful once again.
Marrying Manus had always been her ambition. She wouldn’t have wasted eight of the best years of her life in this morgue if she hadn’t thought she would overcome Manus’s awe of her and claim him in the end. That look of pleasure, intensified during the last two years, that showed on his delighted face every time he saw her and the girls approaching had sustained her hopes and quietened her impatience during all those dreary months.
She couldn’t have misread the signs of love.
It was the timing that had wrecked her plans. He felt so guilty about being unaware that Victoria had disappeared when he was so close by, and was so worn out from searching all hours, that he was not his usual self. What had happened that terrible day had knocked all the stuffing out of him. He didn’t seem to know what she was talking about, looking at her as if she were making a joke when she proposed marriage to him.
And now time had run out. Betrayed by Charlotte, outsmarted and outmanoeuvred by Miss East. Who would have thought a young girl and an old woman would defeat her in the end?
Soon the Park would be awake and news of her dismissal would spread. Would anyone take her part? Not likely, not with the hold Miss East had over them all. Would Manus keep to himself what had passed between them?
There was little enough to pack. She secured the jewels and money in the lining of her coat, then stamped on the uniforms she had tossed on the floor as a final gesture.
One last look around the large room, then down the three flights of stairs. The dawn chorus accompanied her along the back of the house, passing Miss East’s door, then around the house and down the avenue past the stables where she looked straight ahead for fear she might see Manus.
No one saw her as she made her way through Ballybrian to the station and sat waiting for the first train to Dublin. When it came she felt a stirring of relief that it would take her away from here, the backdrop to her embarrassing miscalculations.
Would the young Constable Declan Doyle, who had taken such an obvious shine to her, be sorry for his missed chance when he heard that she was gone?
More to the point, would Manus regret letting her go when he came back to himself and realised how much he had loved her?
Her mind began racing through scenes of returning in triumph to avenge herself on those who had wronged her, but for the moment she must control it and try to concentrate. A young woman travelling on her own needed a protector. What she must do was keep her wits about her and find a gentleman, a companion or a family to attach herself to as soon as possible.
One other thing she needed was a new name. She had already chosen ‘Elizabeth’. No more ‘Cry Baby’ or ‘Baby’ or ‘Nursie’ or ‘Nurse’. Because of the name on the reference, ‘Dixon’ couldn’t be changed, but she didn’t mind that – at least it was a real name. ‘Elizabeth’ had a ring to it, a seriousness that would match the new image she intended to invent for herself.
Elizabeth Dixon. Not Eliza, or Betty, or Lizzie or Beth Dixon. Elizabeth Dixon. That would do nicely. No one else had bothered to give her a proper name, so, while she was giving herself one, she might as well make it a royally impressive one.
By the time the train to Dublin pulled in an hour later, Elizabeth Dixon was still imagining returning to Tyringham Park, not in her present form as a disgraced nanny, but as something else entirely. What exactly she didn’t know yet, but it would be something worthy of her new name. Something to make Manus and Lily East sit up and take notice, and something to send shivers down the spine of that rich brat Charlotte who by then would be older and wouldn’t have Lily East’s authority and protection to hide behind.