by Quenby Olson
Odd that I should still feel as if I’m being watched. Like a small irritation, buzzing and retreating from the nape of my neck before I can swat it away with my gloved hand. I look round, to the left and the right, but it’s only dusky shadows on all sides, occasionally broken by the glow of a lamp through a neglected back window.
It takes less than a minute for the paranoia to burrow in, not quite beneath my skin, but deep enough to lend a burst of speed to my wandering pace. At the same time, I try not to draw any additional attention to myself. But my body and my mind, always at odds with one another, are having a difficult time finding a state on which to agree. Without making something of a spectacle of myself, I walk faster for several paces, head down, elbows poised and ready to drive against any impediment to come my way.
Ahead of me, thirty feet or so, a huddle of persons—Three, I think? In the gloom it’s difficult to say—are occupied in taking up a good portion of the narrow roadway. Though "huddle” could be the paranoia speaking, for they’re not huddled at all, but standing in the most casual of groupings. And as I approach, I hear their voices, one of them boasting an accent that is strange but not unfamiliar.
I stand still, listening. A small amount of time has passed, enough that my stillness has begun a slight swelling in my feet, the blood pooled below my ankles until my toes press against the inside of my shoes. I know that I must move, and so I take a step, wriggle my foot beneath the hem of my skirt and wait for the prickling sensation that is a mark of my slumbering limb’s return to life.
Another step now, and I'm near enough to a woman and her two companions to hear what they’re saying. I don’t know what I expect to overhear, some great conspiracy or plot, no doubt. Dark dealings of the vilest sort. And here I would be, a witness to their nascent plan.
But, no. It’s nothing as interesting as that. There are a few remarks on the weather—the most shopworn topics of conversation to be had nowadays—and a query as to the health of a certain Miss Crowden, and that is all. Before I’m aware of it, the three are already making their farewells, proving it to be only chance that brought them all together on this particular occasion.
I stare after them, dazzled. Having come upon them in a group, I find it difficult to watch them move their separate ways. The two men remain together for a few steps, but soon break apart before passing out of sight. The woman, however, hangs back for a moment, fixes her bonnet, tucks a brown sprig of hair behind her ear. A rustle of fabric, the scuff of a slipper on the pavement, and she, too, takes her leave of the place.
It’s nothing more than a reflex that sets my feet into motion behind her. The rest of my surroundings are static, so why should I not anchor myself to this elegant creature, all thrush and whisper as she glides before me?
Some part of me feels a covetousness as I trail in her wake, for her beauty—undeniable, truly—seems to cast a wider net of shadow all around her, so that every other figure, every other face—my own included, I'm humble enough to admit—are unable to garner even the smallest measure of attention necessary to be forgotten. But here is the benefit to my lowly status, for as she makes her way from one street to the next, I close the distance between us, until I'm near enough to hear the soft strike of her heels on the roadway, the soles too thin and too delicate for such a walk as she’s chosen to undertake this evening.
Indeed, I'm left to wonder what has brought her to this neighbourhood, alone, and with all respectable business hours long passed. The obvious conclusion the mind leaps to is also one of the most base: She is a prostitute. The two gentlemen—if such a complimentary title should be applied to them—her customers. But after such hasty labelling, one is forced to look closer. Yes, she is beautiful. But should that be enough to condemn her? Her dress is bold, every woven inch designed to allure, and yet there is nothing in the woman’s posture that says what lies beneath the clinging fabric is for sale.
Most remarkable of all is her confidence. Shoulders held back, chin high, eyes disregarding whatever demons may hide in the darkness, she shows not a single ounce of fear as she navigates the deserted streets. And another truth soon becomes clear: she’s travelled this way before.
It takes less than a minute to remember where I am, about twenty minutes’ brisk walk from Waterloo Bridge. Too far yet to hear the ships, but the stench is enough to mark my approach, stronger each day as the water recedes. For it’s the water that evaporates, leaving the muck, the filth, and the garbage, until I wonder if the Thames will soon be nothing more than a ribbon of rotting sewage and stranded tugs.
And there is the woman, not fifteen paces ahead, an aberration in this dismal place. I watch as her fingers—long, tapered, the drudgery of menial housekeeping tasks apparently unknown to her skin—flutter for a moment after she removes a soft brown glove. Those same fingers curl into a small fist, two knuckles pushed out beyond the rest to sharpen the sound produced as she knocks on a plain wooden door.
I wait with her, though with enough distance between us to allow me the freedom of breathing, of dabbing the perspiration from my eyelids, without being seen. She maintains her perfect posture as she stands before the closed door, her spine drawing a line that would make the strictest schoolmistress proud. Her hands find themselves in front of her waist, one gloved, and the other bare, her fingers laced together so that the contrast between pale skin and dark glove brings to mind the stripes of a zebra.
A minute slips away, followed by another. My thoughts toy with several possible futures. She will knock again. She will break the door down. She will turn and walk away. Will I follow her if she does?
But before I’m allowed to ponder my own question, a shuffling noise, a loud click, and the door swings free.
Another woman looks out onto the street; barely a woman, her soft face still carrying the roundness of an easy youth. Her mouth catches my attention as she smiles, a splendidly full bottom lip curving downward as her cheekbones gain prominence. A broad smile for her unexpected visitor. The two women embrace before stepping apart again, hands still clasped, smiles unfaltering. The second woman is backlit by a grainy yellow light, and I blink as the light seems to shift and change before my eyes. And then she steps aside to allow her visitor to enter, and I see an oil lamp on a table, its poorly trimmed wick sending a profusion of swirling smoke into the air.
The door closes softly after them, and with their exit from the scene, I'm once again left with my former question. Will I follow her?
It is the closed door, of course, that gives me my answer. Alone again, I feel a familiar tiredness leech into my bones, an exhaustion I doubt any amount of sleep will fully dispel.
I want to rub my eyes, my forehead, and I raise my hand to do just that, gloved fingers brushing loose tendrils of hair from my face, sliding back until they’ve grazed the vicious knot of muscles at the nape of my neck. A fleeting desire takes hold of me, to return to Mrs. Selwyn’s, to return to my room, undress, lay across my mildewed bed. Not to attain any kind of rest, but only to cease wandering, for a time.
Move along, the old voice reminds me.
And I nod in agreement with such sound advice. "Move along," my voice cracks. "Nothing more to see."
***
It is still night when the message arrives. Indeed, the faint light of dawn is only beginning to illuminate the crooked square of my window when I hear a soft tread on the stairs, and a creak of floorboards, before a whisper of sound—no, hardly even that—and a slip of paper is pushed through the narrow space beneath my door.
I feel no inclination to move from my bed, at first because I’ve no wish to begin an audience with another person at such an early hour, and also because the burgeoning day has finally allowed me a chance of rest. But it takes only a minute for my curiosity to send my feet skimming over the floor, one hand pushed out at my side for balance as I bend down and pick the small square of paper from the floor.
Marta’s handwriting is unmistakable. There is no salutation, nor even the eviden
ce of one begun and as swiftly abandoned. One line is all she has bothered to communicate, the ink smeared in her apparent haste to have the correspondence delivered to my hands.
Thurs. night, Ryall’s house in Grosvenor. He’ll expect you, and your friend.
Not ten hours have passed since I first spoke my request in Marta’s ear, and here, scrawled across this sheet of paper, is the culmination of what must have been a great deal of contrivance on her part.
He’ll expect you.
I fold the note in half before tossing it onto the end of the bed. My gaze skips from one corner of the room to the other, this single sweep taking in all of my earthly belongings where they lay, draped across a few meagre pieces of furniture or left to moulder in damp heaps along the wall. The starkness of these surroundings serves as a reminder of all I will need before I can make any attempt to turn up on Ryall’s well-swept doorstep. A fine dress, I think. And gloves. Proper gloves that show no evidence of having been repaired with such regularity they no longer carry any resemblance to their original form.
And, of course, my friend. A friend who will need to be informed of his intention to escort me to the home of Lord Geoffrey Ryall in less than three days’ time.
Chapter Eleven
* * *
* * *
The house stares down at us, a motley collection of building materials stacked one on top of another—bricks, mortar, bits of wood, chiselled stone—all of them shaped into something that could stand as a monument to confusion. Every architectural style of the last century is displayed on the face of the three-story house. A bit of Greek Revival around the front door, a touch of Gothic marking the cornices that edge the roof, and there, overwhelming half of the building's public side, a multi-storied window that catches the glow from the streetlights, reflecting it, and creating a pool of golden light on the pavement below.
We are not the first guests to arrive, Chissick and I. A line of carriages precedes us, the stamping of hooves, the groan of slowing wheels an overture to our humble approach. There is no sleek cab to deposit us at the door, no coachman leaping down to lower the step. We are on foot, near enough to touch each other, but when Chissick offers his hand to help me up the building’s front steps, it soon returns to his side, unused.
It’s not my intention to offend him. A simple attack of nerves has made me forgetful of my better manners, but by the time we arrive at the top of the stairs, with Lord Ryall’s man staring down at us like a hawk on his perch, I summon up enough confidence to clear my throat in anticipation of any speech I may have to make.
The man—is he a butler? I’m not familiar enough with such amenities to recognise the various members of a house’s staff on sight—renews his glare, in fact, seems to draw upon some hidden reserve of energy that only narrows his eyes to two dark slashes beneath his creased brow. I produce a small card, the hard-won invitation delivered from Marta only a few hours before, and the severity of the slashes begins to relent. A bit.
The man only glances at it. He will not reach for it, as if touching the document may sully his pristine white gloves. But I can feel an urge radiating from him, the strongest desire to rip the invitation from my grasp, to examine it, hold it up to the light as if searching for a telltale watermark. But the aforementioned glance, followed by a nod, is all we receive. The way is now clear before us. Chissick touches my elbow, and we move inside.
The front hall is an obstacle course of people, all of them bedecked and bejewelled in every sort of finery. Even in my new gown—more than a month’s rent exhausted on its acquisition—I'm out of place, and Chissick beside me, with his face neatly shaved, his suit brushed and his shoes buffed to a shine that would render any available mirror obsolete, only barely brings us to rank above the average philistine. But if it is a fear of being discovered as an imposter among London’s lesser members of the peerage, I’ve little to worry about. For by the time we make our arrival, the first round of glasses has already been emptied, the second only half-full. Chissick nods at a man dressed in a suit nicer than his own, a silver tray of crystal cups balanced on the tips of all five fingers, but turns down the proffered refreshment.
From somewhere, I hear music trickling out, the sound for a moment pushed back by a sudden swell of conversation, and louder again as a break in the press of bodies allows the melody to drift through. Some piano, I think, and something else. A cello, perhaps. Or it could be a violin, considering the paucity of musical knowledge contained inside my head.
Chissick remains attached to my side as we struggle to make progress through the house.
"Ryall always enjoyed a crowd," I tell him, raising my voice to be heard over a raucous peal of laughter so close to my ear that I wince at the spray of warm saliva that lands across the back of my neck.
But even this, I must admit, is nearer to Bedlam than an evening out with London society. The amount of bodies, the heat that must at this very moment be accumulating above our heads; a mingling of exhaled breath, of hundreds of limbs politely wrestling for space, of too much light offering little more purpose than to highlight the perspiration decorating the forehead of every person too slow to reach for his handkerchief; all of it mixing together, a slurry of breath and perfume and silk, and I think—I find I must hope—that even Ryall cannot derive any pleasure from this.
"Miss Hawes."
I start at this pronouncement of my name, not because I had forgotten Chissick’s presence—how could I have? As he’s once again taken on the unspoken role of bodyguard since our departing Mrs. Selwyn’s together—nor because of his proximity, for I doubt he will allow more than an arm’s length of distance to pass between us until he’s seen me safely deposited on said doorstep once again, but simply because I had allowed my mind to wander.
"Miss Hawes," he says again, softer this time. "What is it?"
"Hmm?" I turn to look at him, all the while curious as to the expression that must have decorated my face for him to ask such a question. "Oh, it’s nothing. I’ve been here before." I hope he will not require a more detailed explanation, but he gives me a nod of the head as if he must understand.
There are memories here, I cannot deny it. I want to think back to the last time my heels scuffed across this parquet. The walls are a different colour now. And the staircase… I don’t recall such a dark wood for the railing. Less furniture over here, a more vivid brocade beyond that door, but it is the play of sound off the ceiling, off those subtly altered walls that lingers. Ryall’s house always had a gift for sound, for capturing it, seeming to amplify certain noises while dampening others into silence. I glance towards the stairs again, and I feel a pull of sorts, as if something beckons me to the upper levels of the house.
I reach out to grasp the edge of Chissick’s sleeve, finger and thumb poised to pinch the heavy fabric and gently steer him through the crowd, but a voice calls out to me, stalling my progress before I’ve even begun. This particular voice doesn’t sound from the chorus inside my head, nor does it have its roots in the ether. It comes from a body of flesh and blood, a body that moves towards me with great haste, while all the other figures in the room show hardly a ripple as they break before him.
"My dear, dear Thea."
Ryall has aged little since I saw him last, a few additional lines flanking his mouth, a bit more plumpness rather skillfully hidden beneath a starched collar. His eyes are the same, still little more than shards of blue ice beneath dark brows. Yet all of the chill melts away as he grasps my hands, cupping both of them within his own.
I wait for the smile I'm certain will appear. A softening at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes narrow as his cheekbones push upwards. The smile does indeed make a fair showing, but there is something else, a kind of eagerness fueling it from within. But I read more than a desire to voice the welcome due to me. I feel a most overwhelming want to watch the back of me leave his home once and for all.
For a moment, his head seems to bob on his neck, and I fear he may be abo
ut to brush a kiss across my cheek. But he checks himself in time. So the smile grows tighter, the light behind his eyes darkening as he gropes for better control of the situation I’ve presented to him.
"You’re looking well," he says, his hands still encircled round my own. "Ah, so very well! But how impolite of me to stand here without a single word of acknowledgement for your companion?" A glance at Chissick before his gaze returns to me. And with the return of his attention, I'm struck with the sensation that he and I are two actors in a play, that the lines already spoken were taken from a script, and now the burden of the spotlight has suddenly shifted onto me.
"Mister Julian Chissick," I say, a turn of my hand presenting the one man to the other. "This is Lord Geoffrey Ryall. A very… Well, I’ve known him for some years, at least."
This introduction spurs Ryall into releasing my hands, only to tuck his fingers into the crook of my arm. I wonder if Chissick notices the possessive hand now pressing on my elbow, but I fear he’s too overwhelmed by his surroundings to witness such a small movement.
"Pleased to meet you, Sir." Chissick nods once. And, no. He does not see Ryall’s hand, does not know how the man’s fingernails dig into the paltry amount of flesh I possess.
"Ah, any friend of Thea’s is more than welcome—most welcome here!" There is something to Ryall’s tone, a thickness he lends to the word "friend” that does not agree with me. Or perhaps I'm too glutted with suspicion to take anything from his mouth at face value. "Have you had something to drink? Some punch? No! Ah, it cannot stand for another minute!"
Before either Chissick or I can speak, three glasses are procured. Chissick holds onto his as if the liquid contained inside might have been ladled from one of the Thames’ more questionable tributaries, while I take a perfunctory sip, enough to wet my lips, and enough to know that I will not want a second dose.