Nanette laughed. “Nobs are so helpless.”
Bianca stiffened and her mouth went straight into a pout. A moment later, she sucked her lip in and frowned at herself. “I refuse to be helpless,” she said. She scooped more batter from the bowl to determinedly make more cakes.
Nanette reached out to rub Bianca’s back. “It won’t be like this forever,” she insisted. “Jack’s already got his eye on that place in Earl’s Court and Danny said he’d sell it at a discount, since he and Jack go way back and all. And your family’s just in a snit right now. They’ll come around, you’ll see.”
Bianca glanced sideways at her. Nanette was far kinder than she would have guessed, far kinder than Bianca felt she deserved, after the way they’d met. And she was right when it came to Jack’s determination to move as soon as possible. She’d already been down to Earl’s Court to see the lovely, terraced house Jack’s friend, Mr. Daniel Long had offered to them. It was pretty and roomy, and with the raise Jack had been given to go along with his ridiculous promotion at Scotland Yard, they’d be able to furnish it nicely and hire a second maid to assist Nanette.
But it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the life she was used to. Not a single one of her old friends had called on her or sent their congratulations on her marriage. She hadn’t realized how much she depended on her subscription to the May Flowers newsletter, Petals, until it stopped coming. She hadn’t accounted for how much she enjoyed taking tea at the fancy cafés in London’s fashionable neighborhoods or dancing all night at the balls everyone ached to receive invitations to. Worst of all, the election was in full-swing, due to reach its conclusion within days, and she had no idea which candidates had already been elected or how the new parliament might look. She had sinned, and therefore she was shunned completely.
But even worse than that, a thousand thoughts pressed in on her from all sides, thoughts about important things she was forgetting, matters of life and death, but her exhausted, addled, pregnant brain couldn’t remember them long enough to do anything about them.
“Let me,” Nanette said, breaking into Bianca’s thoughts with a sympathetic voice. She took the tongs Bianca didn’t remember picking up and began turning the cakes she’d let sit too long.
Bianca stepped away from the stove, hating how oily and miserable she felt. “All right, Mama,” she said as though her mother were standing there with crossed arms and a frown. “Your point is taken. I am unforgivably wicked. But there’s nothing any of us can do about that now.”
She would have sat and sprawled dejectedly, but there were no chairs to spare in the makeshift kitchen. All she could do was stand uselessly where she was.
Nanette finished with the cakes and turned a pitying look on her. “You’re not as wicked as I am, that’s certain.”
Of all things, the comment made Bianca want to smile. “No?” she asked, stepping back to lean against the doorway.
Nanette broke into a grin. “There’s some that insist working girls are forced into the trade to survive. And it’s true and all. But I like a bit of cock now and then, and I don’t mind saying it. The bigger the better.” A glint formed in her eye that reminded Bianca so much of Jack that it left her wondering whether they really were siblings by birth in some way.
“I like a bit of cock myself,” she said, matching Nanette’s grin. “But I’ll stick to Jack’s, thank you very much.” Her mischievousness flattened and she sighed. “I hate that we’ve both been too sick and too annoyed since marrying for me to get any.”
Nanette’s eyes went wide. “Blimey. If you haven’t gotten your leg over since you and Jack was married then something is horribly wrong.”
Bianca laughed aloud in spite of herself. She liked feeling like she had a friend again, and she liked Nanette’s honesty. She liked being able to talk openly about the things that would have made her aristocratic friends blanche.
“Everything is horribly wrong,” she confessed. “And I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Well,” Nanette started, paused to move the pan of oil off of the stove, then faced Bianca with arms crossed. “If you ask me, the only thing you have to fix is things with your family. Friends come an’ go, but your family is forever.”
“My family hates me,” Bianca said, sagging against the doorway.
“All of ’em or just your ma?” Nanette asked.
Bianca tilted her head to the side in consideration. “I suppose Natalia doesn’t hate me, but I’m so furious with her for blabbing things to Lady Persephone.” Her brow pinched into a hard frown, but she forced herself to smooth it a moment later. “I don’t think Cece hates me,” she admitted at last.
“There you go, then,” Nanette said with a nod. “I bet Lady Cecelia doesn’t hate you at all. So start there.”
Bianca glanced warily at her new friend. “Start what?”
“Start rebuilding things,” Nanette said as though it were obvious. “Like when Rhoda an’ I were at each other’s throats after she stole one of my best gents right out from under me. Literally, as it happens, since he liked two at once. I were so barking over the whole thing that I refused to so much as look at her for weeks. But in the end, that only made both of us miserable, and since it were better for us to be mates than to let any sort of cock and bull get between us, we patched things up right quick we did.”
Bianca blinked. The onslaught of words took its time sinking in. Nanette had lived a colorful life indeed, if she was translating the cockney right. Either way, she had a point. “I don’t think Cece would turn me away if I showed up at Campbell House,” she said.
Nanette broke into a broad grin. “Then what are you waiting for? Get over there and show your sister-in-law that you’re just as good as you ever were.”
“But there’s so much to do here.” Bianca bit her lip, wondering if she was brave enough to go to Campbell House. If Cece turned her away, she wasn’t sure what she’d do.
“I’ll do the chores here,” Nanette told her, marching over to take Bianca by the shoulders and push her out through the main room toward the door. “You go do what nobs do.”
In the end, Bianca mustered her courage to do what Nanette said, although she steered away from the door so she could wash the grime of work from her face and body, change into the clothes of her old life, and style her hair. It did feel good to resume at least the trappings of her old self again.
She was able to hail a cab to take her to Mayfair without a problem, and sooner than she was ready for, she was stepping down at Campbell House’s front door.
Bianca considered it one of the biggest surprises of her life when Mr. Galston informed her that Lady Cecelia was, in fact, home and escorted her down the hall to the morning parlor.
“Bianca.” Cece greeted her with a genuine smile as she entered the parlor that immediately put Bianca a fraction more at ease. “It’s so good to see you. We’ve all been so worried, since we haven’t heard a thing from you in weeks.”
Bianca let her sister-in-law waddle forward—she was surprisingly larger than she had been just weeks before—to hug her and kiss each of her cheeks, but she didn’t believe for a moment that everyone was as worried as Cece said.
“I’ve been settling into married life,” Bianca answered, giving as little information as she could.
She glanced past Cece’s shoulder to find none other than Henrietta rising from the settee. Henrietta wore a welcoming smile, but Bianca’s gut clenched all the same. She hadn’t spoken with Henrietta since receiving the short letter ending her membership in the May Flowers.
“Lady Clerkenwell,” Henrietta greeted her, stepping forward.
It took Bianca a moment to remember that was her name now. Neither she nor Jack had mentioned the blasted title since it was so ignominiously doled out. “Lady Tavistock,” Bianca answered, dropping to a small curtsy.
“There’s no need for that,” Henrietta laughed, greeting Bianca with kisses to her cheeks as Cece had.
Bianca frowned in confusion.
“Careful, my lady,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to soil yourself with a scandalous pariah like I am now.” She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice.
Henrietta laughed. “Nonsense. It’s a lot of fuss over nothing. Well, admittedly, it’s not entirely nothing, but this is eighteen eighty-five, almost eighty-six, after all. I’m just happy you and Jack finally discovered a way to get what you wanted. Come. Sit. Cece and I were discussing plans for a party the May Flowers will be hosting next week, once the election results are announced.”
“And you’ll never believe it,” Cece went on, ushering Bianca over to the settee and cluster of chairs in the center of the room. “Lady Claudia and her band of rebels have offered an olive branch to us.”
“They have?” Bianca asked, suspicious to her core.
“It was a remarkable turn of events, really,” Henrietta went on as the three of them sat. “Just over a week ago, Lady Claudia and Lady Jane showed up at my house requesting a meeting.”
“I was there for tea,” Cece added, leaning close as though the three of them were old friends with not a thing in the world between them, gossiping like schoolgirls.
Bianca’s chest squeezed with longing to be a part of her old world again. “What did Lady Claudia have to say for herself?”
“That the danger to the Liberal Party is too great for our two sides to continue clashing,” Henrietta said. “The Conservatives are making too many inroads, according to early election results, and that if we want to have any chance of opposing them in Parliament, we need to work together. Her brother urged her to make peace with us for the sake of the nation.”
Something about the story didn’t sit right with Bianca, particularly considering Denbigh’s involvement.
“She’s offered to host the election results party at her brother’s new house in Kensington,” Cece went on. “You’ve been there once before, of course. It’s the same house Lady Davenport just sold.”
More prickles of alarm raced along Bianca’s skin. “Kensington High Street,” she said, half distracted. The details of everything that had been dropped because of the wedding flooded her once more.
“No, it’s a bit farther north than that,” Henrietta said. “Closer to the palace.”
“I only meant—” Bianca stopped herself. Brickman had been at the house. She still hadn’t been able to gather her thoughts long enough to remember to tell Jack about that day. It hadn’t seemed coincidental that Denbigh had purchased the Kensington house.
Her breath caught suddenly and she pressed a hand to her stomach. Brickman had been at the house, and now Lord Denbigh owned it. Was it possible they were storing the explosives that neither Jack nor Mr. Poole had been able to locate there? Was the house truly the target after all? She wracked her brain for details, but it had been so long since she’d been able to put any thought into Jack’s investigation—an investigation he’d been unsuccessful at wrestling back from Mr. Poole since being given his useless promotion—that the details were fuzzy. All she knew was that she had to speak to Jack as soon as possible.
“Is something the matter, dear?” Cece asked.
Bianca blinked out of her thoughts. “This party,” she said. “When is it to be held?”
“The day after the election results are announced,” Henrietta said. “We’re hoping it will be a celebration for another Liberal victory.”
“And who has been invited?” Bianca asked on.
“The May Flowers,” Cece said, her concern for Bianca slowly melding into confusion.
“And our friends in Parliament,” Henrietta went on. “Your brother, Rupert, and his lot will be there, of course, and Lord O’Shea.”
On any other day, Bianca would have thrilled at the flush that came to Henrietta’s cheeks over the mention of Lord O’Shea, but her mind was spinning in other directions.
“Lady Claudia specifically stated that they would have strong footmen on hand so that his chair can be brought into the house,” Cece said.
Bianca’s frown deepened. “That doesn’t sound like Lady Claudia at all.”
“As I said.” Henrietta shrugged. “Lady Claudia seems to have turned over a new leaf in the last week or so. I think it’s the alarming reports of potential election results.”
“And I think it’s because of her interest in Lord Rushworth,” Cece added with a knowing wink. “Rumor has it he’s increased the intensity of his affection for her.”
Bianca sat a bit straighter. “Or it could be that she’s heard you’ve disposed with the riff-raff that infiltrated the May Flowers.”
Cece and Henrietta instantly went silent. They glanced to her with guilty looks. Cece lowered her head.
Henrietta was a little braver. “You know that it wasn’t my decision to remove you from the May Flowers,” she said, looking genuinely contrite. “Several of the members insisted I take action when word of…your marriage became public.”
“Word that a lower-class man of no consequence got me with child, you mean,” Bianca said, facing the whole thing head-on. “Far be it from me to offend the delicate sensibilities of ladies who, in all likelihood, have never been fucked properly, as I have.”
Cece blanched and Henrietta’s regretful expression hardened into shock.
“I understand completely,” Bianca went on, knowing her voice was too harsh and her energy too off-putting. “I wouldn’t want to associate myself with anyone whose conduct so diametrically opposes my own beliefs either.” A half second later, she cringed at her rashness and went on with, “But you have to secure me and Jack an invitation to this election party.”
Cece let out a breath of disbelief. “After what you just said?”
“I’m afraid it would be out of the question,” Henrietta agreed, far less kindly disposed toward Bianca than she’d been moments before.
“Are you surprised that I am indignant at the way I have been treated, simply because I stayed true to love and my own principles?” she demanded. “Should I be shunned for standing up for what I believe, for standing up for myself?”
“Discretion is—” Henrietta began.
“Don’t lecture me about discretion,” Bianca rode over her. “It is irrelevant in this situation. Jack has been working on an investigation into what could be a bloody attack on unknown persons once the election results are announced. I have reason to believe that this party could be involved. It could be a target. So forget your bloody discretion for just a moment. Lives could be at stake.”
“Do you have any proof of that?” Henrietta asked, frostier than ever.
Bianca opened her mouth to insist that she did, but stopped herself. “Jack was removed from the investigation when he was given his ridiculous promotion.”
“A promotion that made him suitable to marry you,” Cece attempted to remind her.
Bianca silenced her with a withering look. “He could have solved this case by now and saved the lot of you if you’d just considered him good enough the way he was.”
“It’s not that Jack wasn’t good enough,” Cece began, her face going red.
“It’s just that I wasn’t,” Bianca finished her sentence, standing. “It all comes back to the same thing, doesn’t it? I am not good enough for the rest of you.” She glanced to Henrietta. “I’m too blunt and too outspoken. I use vulgar language when it suits me. I break too many rules and refuse to compromise myself to fit in. I chose love over propriety. I understand. But I may be right about this party. Are you willing to listen to a fallen strumpet of whom you’re embarrassed long enough to save your own lives? Are you willing to entertain a whore in order to stop a mass murder? Or are you more concerned with discretion and how it would look to your precious society friends?”
“Bianca, I’m not—”
Bianca didn’t stay to listen to what Cece had to say. She knew she was right, but she knew no one was going to listen to her. It wasn’t just her reputation that had been demolished by her indiscretion with Jack, it was her credibility. She marched
out of the room, not waiting for Mr. Galston before throwing open Campbell House’s front door and stomping into the street. Only in this case, her friends’ refusal to listen to her wasn’t just uncomfortable or unkind, it could prove deadly. She had to find Jack and tell him what she knew. She had to get his investigation back on track.
Chapter 15
“You’re lucky that I was able to pull a few strings to convince The Tower Club to extend an invitation of membership to you,” Rupert told Jack with an uneasy smile as he escorted him from the front hall of the blasted club. “They’re extremely choosy about who they extend those invitations to.”
“You don’t say,” Jack grumbled, following Rupert and seething with indignation.
The Tower Club had extended an invitation to him, all right. Extended it as reluctantly as possible, accompanied by a two-finger salute. Jack was under no illusion that either Lord Malcolm or Rupert himself was responsible for the so-called honor. As he strode through the halls of the grand and stuffy establishment with his brother-in-law, nobs of every description stared at him as he passed. Half wore expressions of shock and surprise. The rest had their eyes narrowed in suspicion and muttered about the club going downhill as they did.
Jack pushed it all aside by studying the details around him. The Tower Club was decorated with stoic elegance. Its halls had minimal decoration, but the marble floor clearly cost a fortune, and the few furnishings were of the finest make and design. There weren’t many paintings on the wall, but those Rupert could see were masterworks that half the museums in Europe would have gone to war to include in their collection.
The nobs that stopped what they were doing and did double-takes as Rupert escorted Jack through a wide sitting room and toward the back of the building had the same self-aware refinement that the club had. Jack recognized suits that could only have come from Savile Row and caught the whiff of expensive cologne and tobacco. Even the servants that stood at the ready, serving delicacies on silver trays, were outfitted more expertly than most of the working men at Scotland Yard who dedicated their lives to keeping people safe.
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