“I have the creeping suspicion that an impromptu tooth extraction could be more pleasant than this.” He sighed and wandered into the room. “How can I help?” he asked and managed a polite smile as he sat down. Was it a coincidence that all the seats closest to the door were taken?
His mother was blinking rapidly as though she were about to be overcome with tears. He turned his gaze to his soon-to-be mother-in-law and wished he hadn’t, as she was scowling at him like he was a naughty puppy who trashed her rose garden. And she was, apparently, no lover of puppies.
Amelia leaned closer to him. “You remember that conversation we had in the carriage? Where you told me to behave and were quite rude about Charles?”
“Oh God,” he murmured. There could only be one reason that all three of them would be here, staring at him as if he were a two-headed beast.
His mother-in-law was the first to start in on him. “Rumors of your conduct, or rather misconduct, are all over London. I am quite shocked to be having this conversation with you, but you are about to be married, and to have taken a mistress at such a time is not just vulgar but hurtful.” He spared a thought for Katherine, although he couldn’t imagine that it was more than her pride that felt any injury.
It wasn’t like she wanted to sleep with him. At least, he assumed she didn’t; it was like trying to find desire in the expression of a fish—not that Katherine looked like a fish, far from it, everyone knew how beautiful she was; everyone talked about it and congratulated him on his good fortune. But when he looked at her, it was almost as though they spoke different languages, felt different emotions; that she lived in the water while he lived on land, and the fact that they were being thrown together was something that was just happening to the both of them.
Both caught by society’s net. And he certainly felt like he was about to be gutted.
“I insist that you give her up immediately, this woman, American no less.”
Amelia blinked and leaned forward, “She’s American? She’s the—”
Edward interrupted her, not wanting her to suddenly blurt out that Helen had visited their home, then he’d really have to hear about it. “Why are you here, Amelia? An unmarried woman does not belong in this conversation.”
“My nerves,” his mother said feebly. Fury, out of proportion to the situation at hand rose within him. “I see. This is too stressful for you, so you’re delegating your motherly duties to your unwed daughter?”
“Do not try to shift the blame to me; we are here because of you and your wanton disregard for society,” her voice trembled at the end.
“Wanton disregard,” he said the words slowly as if he’d never heard them before, trying them out to see how they sounded.
“She must go. This whore. I insist you give her up this instant, and that you try in the coming years to be more discreet in your liaisons,” his dragon of an almost-mother-in-law said. “Of all the things, Edward, carrying her out of a…den of iniquity!”
He supposed it was actually a fairly reasonable demand. But there was something woefully sad about the idea that all this woman wanted for her daughter was for him to be more discreet in the future. That she was willing to confess that over the years many more women would come and go; sharing the duke’s bed while her daughter was either pregnant or shopping, or perhaps even having her own affairs, and so the only request she would make was that he try to stay out of the papers.
“I can promise you, I will certainly try to make sure you won’t hear another rumor about her or me.” “Very good, dear,” said his mother and stood up, clearly satisfied.
His mother-in-law was not. “Are you giving her up?”
“I will not discuss her with you,” he said, holding on to his calm by a thread.
“Oh Edward!” his mother said, her voice breaking. Amelia’s mouth dropped open in shock and his mother-in-law was turning red, a flush spreading up her neck and into her cheeks.
“I demand—”
Edward stood, throwing a malevolent glare at all of them. “Do not forget who I am. You will demand nothing of me. Is that understood? I am sorry that tales reached you, and I will do my best to make sure that does not happen in the future. But my liaison with Miss Foster will not be ending.”
“How dare you say her name to me!” Katherine’s mother hissed.
“Do you want to call the wedding off? Would you prefer to break the engagement? I can speak to the attorneys, there will be no penalty; Katherine can say whatever she likes about the break, she can blame me and drag my name through the mud, and I won’t say a word to contradict her. But tell me now, because my private life is not up for discussion and never will be again.” He felt a little lightheaded as if the very possibility of the marriage not happening was enough to lift a weight off of his shoulders. A broken engagement? Did he really not care?
There were a few murmured responses before Katherine’s mother said, “No….we have no desire to end the engagement.”
“Then ladies, I will bid you good day,” he said, and he walked out, fully aware that no one was happy with the outcome.
Chapter 15
The moment Helen walked in the door she knew there was trouble. Mary looked up from the couch, making a strange face, her eyes wide. She said in a stage whisper, “Jonathon is pissed! Think of something—”
Helen closed the door behind her, unbuttoning her coat. She needed to change, her gown not appropriate for the day, plus it had not been improved by lying on the floor all night. It was odd how doing the walk of shame was the same in the future as it was in the past. She heard footsteps as Jonathon approached and Mary grimaced.
“We thought you were dead. We were coming up with a plan of attack, preparing to go back to the gambling den—which, I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, is actually a Nazi stronghold—when we just so happened to glance in a shop window. I assume you know what we saw? A cartoon of you and the Duke of Somervale leaving the gambling den last night.” His eyes glittered he was so angry. “His fiancée’s mother’s carriage has been parked in front of their house all morning. And you know how I know? Because everybody knows! That is what Victorian London is like! He’s a goddamned celebrity, and you are infamous! Everyone wants to know who the duke went crazy for.” He was advancing towards her, his fists clenched at his side. “Heinrich is dead—
“Well, that’s good!” Helen said.
“No, no it’s not. It’s already been mentioned that you spoke to him last night. And do you know why? Because people want to know who the woman is that the Duke of Somervale is willing to make a fool of himself for! This was never supposed to happen. How could you be so irresponsible?”
“It will be okay,” she said weakly.
“No. What if she doesn’t want to marry him now? The insult to her family,” he seemed speechless as he shook his head, “it’s mind-boggling! Or what if he decides not to marry her?” he was practically yelling.
“He will!” she shouted back, having to defend herself. “He’s not stupid! He knows his obligations! His whole life is about rules.” I know he’s not mine! But if she’d said that she might have started crying.
What a puss.
“No. His whole life was about rules. When they get married, they become the richest family in England. The money he gives changes the world. It’s not just his money, it’s her money combined with his money!”
“Nothing will change!”
“Put your coat on. Let’s go.”
“Where?” she asked, startled.
“I’m going to show you what he does. Let me show you what you are jeopardizing, the people you could kill.”
“Surely you are being a bit dramatic,” Mary said. She hadn’t moved or spoken the whole time, but her eyes were wide. Jonathon stalked up to Helen, grabbing the coat she’d just hung up and threw it at her. “Let’s go,” he said, shoving into her hard with his shoulder as he moved past her. He stopped in the doorway and turned, stabbing a finger towards Mary, “You stay here
,” he said angrily.
Helen put on her coat and followed him out the door. They walked in silence, his anger palpable, people casting them nervous glances as they walked down the street. What the hell was he going to show her?
She didn’t dare ask. They kept walking, past streets that got busier and busier the deeper they went into the heart of London. And suddenly something was off. This part of London, smack in the middle of town, should have been filled with people, but it wasn’t. It was like a ghost town, eerily quiet. A strange oppression surrounding them. The smell of death was worse here. This wasn’t just excrement and rotting food, even the occasional dead animal; this was death on a larger scale.
It wasn’t a smell one could forget.
Jonathon hadn’t said a word to her since they left; he’d just walked at a furious pace and expected her to follow. He took her to the middle of an empty square. Her eyes watered at the stench, and she wrapped her elbow over her nose, trying to block out the smell of sewage and death. “This is Broad Street. Does that mean anything to you?”
She shook her head, swallowing down a gag. The buildings here were rickety, some of them looking as if they were on the verge of falling down or leaning in a way they shouldn’t. There was a brewery here, and she could smell the fermenting hops mixed with the smell of offal from an abattoir, and all around that were houses. In the middle of the poor, gray cobblestoned square was a water pump, a drain running along down the street. “This is where the last large cholera outbreak takes place—is taking place—in London, and the first time science is applied to an epidemic.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
He took in a deep breath and exhaled, crossing his arms as he started to talk to her in a more reasonable tone. As if she were a child. A really naughty child. “People still believe in the miasmatic theory, the idea that disease is spread via smell. If something smells this bad, how can it not make you sick? That’s the rationale. It’s been the predominant theory for well over a thousand years. They can’t see germs, can’t understand why sometimes one person might be sick and not the rest, why an entire family might die but not the people next door. To us, it’s obvious that it’s not smell; think of all the people who live near a sewer. They don’t die. A scientific revolution is happening, and it starts here. John Snow, a doctor, takes samples of the water, interviews everyone, and is able to prove that the people who died here drank the water. He gets that pump shut down. And even then, there are still outbreaks. The infrastructure for London is a disaster. The water companies take water from the Thames, and if it kills people, they can’t deal with that. They are private companies with no social responsibility and no money to do it. The duke does, Helen. He has the money and the clout, and when his son dies because of this water, he will make those changes happen.”
He grabbed her arm, staring into her eyes, willing her to keep paying attention when all she could think of was Edward having a son who died. “What if he doesn’t get married? What if on the night he should be fucking his wife he’s fucking you? If she doesn’t get pregnant that month, if there is no son to die, thousands of other people, maybe tens or even hundreds of thousands of people will die. Hundreds die from the pump here in Golders Square. Do you smell it, Helen? That’s death, and he can stop it.”
Helen saw spots in front of her eyes, her body swaying slightly. If she didn’t sit down she might fall down. And she didn’t even know what was the most upsetting – the reality of what she was doing and why it was wrong; the realization that she would, in fact, have to break it off and never see him again, or how many people might die because of her foolishness. Because all she could see, all she could really see, was Edward having a baby and that the little baby would die.
As if it were timed, a little girl came out of a house carrying a bucket. She went up to the well and pumped the handle, Helen’s tension and nausea rising each time the handle went up and came down. At first, nothing happened, the suspense becoming awful. And then the water came out, started filling the bucket and Helen wanted to scream. She was thin, her hair blonde and lanky, her eyes large and blue. The little girl picked up the bucket and Helen opened her mouth. “How can you not stop her?” she asked. “How do you let her die when a word will save her life?” she asked, because it all sounded good in theory, it made sense not to interfere. But how could she live with herself if she let it happen right now?
Jonathon stepped in front of her blocking her view, rage contorting his handsome features.
“We don’t know what she’s going to do with that water. Maybe it’s for laundry, maybe it’s for cleaning. Maybe she’s taking it home so that her mother can give it to her baby sister, and they will all be dead by nightfall.”
“You know she dies,” Helen said, licking her dry lips.
“I don’t know,” he said, soft as the devil, “but hundreds die, so it’s very possible she does too. She looks thirsty to me, doesn’t she look thirsty to you?”
The little girl walked to her front door, set the bucket down to open it and Helen thought she could hear the sounds of a crying baby coming from within. If she’d had time to think, she might have reacted differently. Wouldn’t she? She might have been smart enough to be cruel; merciless enough to let a little girl and her family die, but she couldn’t.
“No!” she shouted, needing to stop this moment from happening. Maybe he was right, maybe he was, but— “Stop, stop—“ she yelled, and tried to jerk out of Jonathon’s grasp. She was so busy pulling, yelling, trying to get the little girl’s attention that she didn’t see the fist coming at her face at all. But she felt it, heavy, shattering, and then black.
Chapter 16
“Helen, It’s time to get up, it’s time to go.” It was Mary’s voice and Mary’s hand shaking her. Helen opened her eyes, barely able to see out of one side. She could taste blood in her mouth, and her face throbbed, her head ached. Mary was looking at her with concern, face slightly pale. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and her first instinct was to cry. She could feel her throat closing up with tears. As though her body had been waiting for her to wake up so she could break down.
“You have to get up, and we have to go, Helen.” Mary’s eyes were a little wild, and Helen could see the constant shift of her gaze from her eyes to her bloody, throbbing face and back again. “The good news is we get to go out in pants; the bad news is it’s because we’re gonna go and kill a whole bunch of Nazis,” Mary said.
“What?”
“Heinrich, the head doctor, is dead. That worked. Jeremy says it’s protocol that they will all get together to regroup. We are taking them out tonight.”
Helen pushed her tongue against her tooth and felt it wobble. That motherfucker. “He hit me.”
Mary stood up, put her hands on her hips and went to look out the window. “He went out, said to get you ready to go. He said you were compromised. What the fuck happened, Helen?”
She sat up, groaning at the pain in her head. “What does that mean?”
“He says you disregarded a direct order and jeopardized the timeline while you were out. Is that true?” she asked, and Helen could practically see her begging to deny it.
“His direct order was to let a little girl poison her family. The timeline he’s trying to protect is people dying. What are we doing here, Mary?” her voice wobbled.
“Oh no, you don’t,” she said gruffly. “I’m the one who’s got the monopoly on having a breakdown about being sent back in time. I’m the one who gets to be confused about why we’re here. You’re supposed to be the one who has her shit together. Unless that damned duke is around, and you apparently become a total idiot.”
“His,” she could barely say it, “baby is going to die. And it’s…avoidable. I can tell him to get married; I can tell him to give money to fix the goddamned infrastructure and he would do it. He’d do that for me. This can all be avoided.”
“Oh, Helen,” Mary said, and her voi
ce was flat with condemnation. She came back over to her and sat down on the bed, ignoring the tears streaming down Helen’s face. “This has all happened. It’s already happened. We’re not involved; we shouldn’t even be spectators.”
“It’s one thing to say we won’t change the timeline; it’s another to let people die when they are right in front of you and you can stop it. You couldn’t do it either, Mary. No one with a heart could.”
“Jonathon says it’s the only way. Maybe you’re right, I don’t know. Just…let’s go. Let’s get up and do this and think of everything else later. Please, Helen.” Helen saw the fear in Mary’s eyes. “If he can let an innocent girl die, what might he do to someone who’s jeopardizing the mission? Get up and let’s do this.”
“You think he’ll kill me?” Helen asked, and instinctively reached down for her gun under the mattress.
“No. I don’t, not really. But Helen…please.” Mary grimaced. “Come on, you have to get up. And you have to be smart, Helen. You can’t go into a fight distracted. You have to put everything aside.” She nodded. Clothes were on the bed. Black pants, black boots, black hat and even a black turtleneck.
“I’m seeing a theme,” she said and slowly got dressed, wincing as she pulled the turtleneck over her head. As she dressed, her head spun with thoughts and feelings. Anger and grief the primary ones.
When she went into the living room, Jonathon was there, an assortment of weapons on the table. He smiled at them wolfishly and gestured to the knives and guns. “Here are your toys,” he said. “You need something for distance and something for hand to hand.” She could see that he had more than a few knives on him. He pointed to the wall where a map was. “There are nine Germans left. Protocol requires them to shut down the gaming establishment for the night and meet. If we’re lucky, we won’t fight anybody. Are you familiar with the Gunpowder Plot? Guy Fawkes Day?”
A Lady Most Dangerous (Helen Foster) Page 9