Chapter Nine
Emily
There was a certain look given to Emily, when she told friends she was spending time in the city. The London Look. Since most of them rebuked things like fashion and society, it was typically social or political matters that brought them into town, and their outlook on the place reflected that in spades. The London Look was one that said, be careful. It said, how good of you to do this thing in such a place as that. It said, hold your nose, dear, and be sure to wear dark colors so you don’t spoil your dresses. While that look was overblown for Piccadilly Circus, Mayfair, or Fleet Street, where she spent most of her time, it was a little more fitting for Soho.
She had a sneaking suspicion that Mrs. Smith—or, rather, Miss Jo, as she’d signed her letter—suggested The Curious Fox to shock Emily out of the meeting, but Emily wasn’t as uncomfortable with the neighborhood as Miss Jo probably assumed. The Women’s Hospital was right in the main square, for one thing, a place she’d trained at just this past summer. And of course, Noah had turned himself into the very stuff that Soho was made of, living close to the area and apprised of anything interesting happening within it. The Berwick Street market was good fun, a chance to meet interesting people and eat interesting foods that came to the bustling street from all over the world. Artistic eccentrics and the sight of poverty outside the context of charity work might bother her suburban acquaintances, but it did not bother Emily save for making her wish that the poor and the eccentric had a cleaner and more spacious place in which to exist.
She refused to yield to Miss Jo’s assumption that she couldn’t handle it. However, she did find that coming to Soho with David and Noah was a different experience.
Once they’d passed the familiar fa?ade of the hospital and found vegetarian lunch fare from a Greek chap who’d parted with his cart’s offerings for half the price when David smiled at him just right, Emily’s escorts turned her down a little side street behind the market that would have had Emily giving the London Look to her own reflection—if, that is, any window or puddle had been clean enough to catch sight of it.
“There’s no need to worry,” said David happily, nearly tripping over a mangy little dog that growled like something twice its size until appeased by a scrap of their lunch that David had apparently tucked into his pocket for just this purpose. “I know it looks rough, but I promise you, the neighborhood is perfectly safe. Well, before sundown, anyway.” He chuckled like these filthy back alleys were his own pack of ill-behaved but charming toddlers. “The club by day will be a lovely meeting place. Very private. Very comfortable.”
“Perhaps,” said Emily, her arms tucked tight to her sides for fear of what might end up on them if they touched one of the buildings on either side of their path. “I simply hope we won’t be a disturbance to your usual patrons. It’s all fellows, isn’t it?”
“That depends on who you ask,” David muttered with a funny little sparkle in his eye. “But either way, I don’t have any patrons coming in at noon.”
“Davy’s hardly even awake at noon, most days,” said Noah.
“I brought a server in, though, don’t worry,” David went on. “To bring in your drinks or tend to other comforts. The fire. The lamps. Whatever comes up. I didn’t figure you’d want me popping in and out while you’re trying to get to know one another.”
“Davy,” said Noah. “I know you pride yourself on your hospitality, but do remember that this is an amends-making. Not a matchmaking.”
“Sure, sure.” David waved a hand, partially at Noah, partially in response to the flies gathering around a bin as they turned deeper into the maze of alleys. “But still. Just in case, wouldn’t want her own brothers popping in to do the service work, would she? That would cut off any possibility, however remote—”
Noah groaned. “David Forester, you are incorrigible—”
“Incorrigible? If you’re trying to insult me, love, you’re going to have to dig a bit deeper. I know I’m incorrigible...”
They went on in this way, but Emily lost track of the banter as David’s words pulsed softly through her mind. Her own brothers, he’d said. The two of them. The spirit of that was true enough, wasn’t it? Though decidedly an outlaw, David had become like an in-law to Emily over the past few months. There was some other version of this afternoon, wherein a sister-in-law might say to a spinster like Emily, “Still unmarried? We’ll see about that! Come to my house, and do meet my cousin...”
While the nature of their connection meant David could not bring her to a proper home to meet a proper match, Miss Jo’s mocking suggestion had let him bring her to the place he had. Not just the fragrant food carts, glittering theater fa?ades, and sturdy hospital doors of Soho Square, but into the alleyways that were largely quiet now, but soon would be the ones where actors went to smoke and take an undignified squat between scenes. The troughs and grates where the cart pushers dumped chicken bones and used grease at the end of the day. The shadowy corners where the painted women came down with the troubles that would bring them to the hospital in the end.
They finally arrived at a dingy doorway, which David proudly led them through to reveal his nightclub. His pride and joy boasted a draped ceiling, ostentatious decorations, and a truly shocking number of liquors lined up behind the bar (including, she noticed, heavier spirits like Irish whiskey and absinthe that she’d never seen in person).
As she’d suspected, the place was as decadent and morally dubious as the woman she was meeting here.
But she’d done this to herself. She was in a place so unsuited to her temperament because of her own ungenerous actions. So she swallowed her discomfort (and what felt like quite a lot of lingering incense and tobacco smoke in the air) and stood firm on a swirling, flowery carpet that probably looked a lot nicer under cover of evening and the red-shaded lamps that David ignored in favor of a few gas sconces.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think,” she said slowly, “that there are more strong spirits and fewer articles of clothing on the painting subjects than I’m used to, but I appreciate your unique hospitality.” A question popped into her mind so suddenly, so unbidden that she was blurting it before she’d decided to: “Miss Jo really comes here in the evenings? A place like this?”
“She’s an anomaly in the crowd,” David said. “But fits right in, in her own way.”
Emily had never been the sort who thought curiosity was dangerous, but for once, she could see how others may have gotten that notion. Treading the same paths that Miss Jo did made Emily’s curiosity about the woman hot enough to boil.
“How on earth did she find herself here?”
“Same as anyone.” Noah crossed to the bar to help himself to the beer tap. “Friends with a member.”
“Tagged along as a bit of a joke, I think,” David went on with a little smile, as if remembering something so amusing that Emily’s curiosity threatened to bubble over entirely. “The friend who vouched for her enjoys bringing a little novelty wherever he goes. Wanted to see what I’d do with someone like her.”
Someone like her.
“What did you do?” Emily asked. “With someone like her?”
Noah chuckled. “What do you think? Played the gracious host and the perfect gentleman, tried to set her up twice, and then overcharged her for cheap liquor like he would for anyone.”
“Equal treatment under my roof,” David said.
“Let me rephrase,” said Emily. “What am I to do with someone like her?”
“Well, that’s much trickier,” David went on.
Noah lifted his glass. “Indeed. You see, she’s a bit—”
A sudden knock startled him silent, even as Emily was desperately hanging on for the answer that might see her through this ill-advised meeting with this ill-tempered woman in such an ill-chosen location.
The knocks went on longer and with more deliberate rhythm than was natural. Emily watched David pass through the layers of jingling curtains that obscured the doorway without blinking once until he’d returned with Miss Jo by his side.
The woman was resplendent, fresh, and perfectly at ease as she walked into this odd place. She looked less bookish than she had before, not quite dandified, but leaning in that direction, with checked trousers and a black feather tucked into her hat band. A thick, black braid dripped from the nape of her neck to the middle of her back like some wickedly tempting escape rope from reality itself.
Comfortable as she was here, her eyes did not scan and dart around the room at all. Instead, they locked right on Emily’s, the entire scene so surreal that Emily began to wonder if she was in a dream.
“Afternoon, Doctor,” Miss Jo said.
“G-good afternoon,” Emily replied. “Thank you for coming. It was incredibly generous of you.”
“Maybe.” She smirked. “Or maybe I couldn’t resist the idea of these two dragging someone like you into their den of sin for the day.” Miss Jo reached into her coat pocket for a pack of cigarettes. “I’m sort of surprised you stuck it out. Especially once you saw the paintings.”
Emily pulled herself up straighter. She was intimidated, but that didn’t mean she had to show it. “I am a physician, Mrs. Smith. Would that every nude form I saw could be as healthy and strong as these fellows before us.”
Miss Jo snorted out a laugh, clearly against her own will and quickly stifled. She straightened the humor out of her countenance and turned to David. “So. I’ve actually never been to the back. Do we get the private parlor upstairs, then?”
David’s brows shot up. “The private parlor?” His gaze shifted uneasily to Emily, and he lowered his voice. “Look, Joey. I don’t know what you think we’re doing here, but Emily told me not to arrange anything too cordial.”
Miss Jo laughed again, though this one was more forced. She pulled David away a few paces, under the guise of getting a light for her cigarette, but Emily heard her whisper under her breath, “I confess that I wanted to shake her up a bit, but wasn’t trying to go so far as to put her in a bawdy house bedroom. I thought a private meeting would be in the private parlor.”
“What exactly have you been led to believe is the point of the private parlor?” David hissed back, eyeing the doorway in question meaningfully. “The biggest bedroom is the most proper room I have. Trust me.”
“Seriously?”
“What kind of place do you think I’m running here, Joey?” David rolled his eyes as he passed her a matchbook from his pocket. “You’re welcome to sit out front—”
“And have you listen to our every word?”
“I wouldn’t.” He tried, but completely failed not to laugh at the idea he’d ever mind his own business.
Miss Jo looked a little frozen by this turn of events.
David took Miss Jo’s hat and coat, heading toward the same nook he’d stashed Emily’s in. “Just...don’t overthink it. Go get comfortable. Last room on the right—it’s the one with proper chairs and everything, so you won’t even have to sit on the bed. There’s champagne on the table of course—”
“Champagne?” Emily blurted.
“—but I’ll send someone round with specific drinks in a moment. Your usual?”
“I guess,” said Miss Jo.
“And Emily?”
“I don’t suppose lemonade is a possibility?” she asked, trying not to glare too obviously at the liquor as she wondered which of those sparking poisons was Miss Jo’s “usual.”
“Certainly it is!” David gently guided them through a door propped open along the back wall. “And lemonade would mix just splendidly with that champagne.”
“I don’t often take spirits, actually, and I think that given the circumstances—”
“Oh, I know that,” said David, opening a second door and shooing them inside. “Goodness, do you think I don’t pay any attention? That’s why I just put out champagne, rather than brandy. And since I knew you wouldn’t want me barging in on you, I’ll have Bonnie come round with the other things in just a moment.”
Jo turned a skeptical eye on him. “Who’s Bon—?”
But with that, Emily’s dear brother-outlaw just smiled, patted them both on their shoulders, and closed the door behind him on his way out.