By The Sea, Book One: Tess by Antoinette Stockenberg Page B

she added in a lower voice, "but then
...." And she lifted her eyes heavenward in a sweeping indictment
of the excesses surrounding them.
    The young friend tapped Cornelia's wrist
with her fan. "Cornelia, you're such a cat," she chimed.
    The two women took chairs at adjacent
dressing tables and their maids got down to business. Owing to the
skill with which Tess had arranged and pinned Cornelia's hair, it
was holding up remarkably well. Cornelia's friend was not so lucky:
her brown hair, very fine and distressingly limp, trailed off
exhausted in different directions, and not until Tess got drawn
into the reconstruction did an appealing effect result.
    "Marvelous!" gushed Cornelia's friend.
"Cornelia, hold onto this one, or I'll snatch her from you the
first chance I get!" she warned.
    Cornelia managed to look amused, but Tess
saw the telltale vein in her temple begin to throb. "Yes ... if
only her manners were as nimble as her hands," Cornelia said with a
languid look at herself in the mirror.
    Maid and mistress exchanged glances: Tess's,
calm and apparently unruffled: Cornelia's, pouty and angry. The two
debutantes rose to rejoin their partners and be announced by the
butler to the dazzling assembly circling to the music of two
orchestras in the glittering gold and white ballroom. Tess was on
her own.
    The night, as ball nights go, was in its
infancy; Tess and hundreds of other attendants had a long wait
ahead of them. The more seasoned of the maids had retired to quiet
corners or to the servants' hall with their needlework, conserving
their energy. The younger, livelier ones jockeyed for glimpses of
the new arrivals and dissected their gowns with cruel deliberation.
Tess, as usual, did not feel comfortable in either camp, and
besides, her ankle, though better, was still painful.
    For an hour or two she sat quietly, mulling
over the future of the Morans, until at last an older maid, Mrs.
Nevins, came up to her and said, "Tess, you look quite done in. Are
you ill? Too much excitement?" She was a matronly woman, plump and
kind and well liked, even by the younger, ruthless ones.
    "I am a bit ... off, just now," Tess
said with a tentative smile.
    "You come with me, my dear. A cup of tea and
a breath of air is what you need."
    Tess, limping slightly, let herself be led
downstairs; the idea of tea sounded irresistible.
    "You ought to have that ankle wrapped, you
know," Mrs. Nevins said after Tess explained the coach
accident.
    Tess refused, but Mrs. Nevins was
unimpressed. Her satchel contained repairs for any emergency, and
she produced a bandage and a collapsible tin cup. "Now wrap the
spot up snugly—go on, right over your hose is fine. And while
you're doing that, I'll get you tea."
    Tess did as she was told—it was heavenly,
being attended to, for once—and in a few minutes Mrs. Nevins had
her settled in nicely on a long bench of pine in a quiet corner of
the servants' hall, sipping tea.
    "I'll return your cup when I'm done," Tess
promised as the woman took her leave.
    She's a saint, Tess thought.
Something about her reminded Tess of Lady Meller, and tears of
homesickness welled in her eyes. She did not want to be stared at,
so she took her little tin cup of tea and slipped outside for a
little air. Although most of the footmen were out in the Vanderbilt
stables with the coachmen exchanging stories, a dozen or so of the
bolder maids and younger men were lounging near the servants'
entrance, laughing and flirting in the dark.
    Tess stood a little away from them, nursing
her hurt, nursing her sense of injustice. She despised herself for
giving in to self-pity, but still the tears welled. Amid the gaiety
around her, her tears seemed unbearably stupid; she brushed them
away angrily. It's my time of month, that's all 'tis. It's true,
what they say; it is a curse.
    When she brought herself under control and
looked up, he was there: talking to a footman, being pointed in her
direction. Even in the dark there was no mistaking him,