Chapter Forty-Five
Lady Mary
“There’s only so many times I can apologize.” I hadn’t even wanted to apologize the first time, but the bruised and puffy skin around Mr. Rollins’s eye had forced the grudging response.
Mr. Rollins held a slab of one of my very expensive steaks to his face as he sat back in the large wingback in my parlor. Eleanor perched on the armrest, her hand on his shoulder, seeming to want constant contact.
He glared at me from his one free eye. “Didn’t you see me coming? I had her. There was no need to drop a weighted curtain on my head.”
“Obviously I didn’t.” I drained my glass of brandy and contemplated another. It would be my third. On a normal night that would be excessive, but nothing about this night had been normal. I poured another.
“But how did you know to look for Miss Abbott at The Minerva Club?” Eleanor gazed upon Frederick like he was St. George after slaying the dragon. She brushed a lock of his hair off his brow. “You threw yourself on Miss Abbott right before she could shoot me.”
I refrained from pointing out that my dropping the curtain also saved her. Let the girl give all the praise to her beau. All the obstacles to their happiness seemed to have disappeared along with Eleanor’s memory of everything she and I had done to save ourselves.
“Her landlady came out to investigate who was pounding on Miss Abbott’s door.” Frederick wrapped his free arm around Eleanor’s waist and slid her onto his lap. “She said she saw her tenant get into a carriage with a….more mature woman.”
I snorted. I was certain those weren’t the woman’s exact words. No matter. If my white hair caught the notice of the landlady and led to Frederick’s precipitous arrival, then I was quite happy with its lack of color.
“It shouldn’t have taken me so long to realize Abbott was the culprit,” Frederick groused. “I knew there was something familiar about the posey ring found in the stash Bannister had taken from his mother’s house. Miss Abbott had been wearing a matching one the day I questioned her.”
I refrained from pointing out that if he had let me see all of his evidence I might have made the connection. “It also was inscribed with the words Je t’adore?”
“Miss Abbott’s read Je t’aime. She says they exchanged the rings a year ago.”
“I can’t believe Miss Abbott also liked to dress as a man.” Eleanor leaned back against Rollins’s chest and sighed. “I wonder if they all did.”
“How many members of my club do you think were involved with the blackmail?” My voice sounded peevish even to my own ears, but dammit, I had created my club so women could enjoy a bit of the freedom that men had, not so they could use it as their own little dens of iniquity.
Perhaps Mr. Ryder was right. Perhaps by giving women the opportunity to romp and rollick, I had given them free rein to indulge in their baser instincts.
“Unless Miss Abbott or Mrs. Sanders talks, we’ll probably never know,” Eleanor said. “I’m happy to assume that no one else was involved.”
I buried my disgruntled huff in my drink. If Bow Street couldn’t bring prosecutions against the blackmailers, at least I wanted to know their names so I could remove them from my club.
If I even still had a club. The fire marshal wouldn’t let me go in to inspect the damage, saying there could still be smoldering embers they needed to contain, and I hadn’t been willing to stand another couple of hours on the street to wait, especially considering the weather.
It had finally begun to rain.
“I still find it hard to believe she could do it.” Eleanor pressed her palm to her throat. “Choke the life out of a friend.”
“She was strong.” I swirled my brandy. “I saw the way she handled her horse. But she always had that alibi. I wonder why she had a cravat? Neither she nor Lady Richford were dressed as men that night.”
Eleanor twisted her lips. “I didn’t mean how she could have the physical ability. I meant how she could take her friend’s life. And maybe she used it as a handkerchief.”
Rollins rubbed his palm up and down her leg. “You don’t understand because you can’t fathom the mind of a killer, for which I’m grateful. She doesn’t think the same way you or I would.”
“Yes, she does.” I rested my glass on my abdomen, feeling more tired than I could remember. “We’ve all thought that way, it’s just been a long time.”
“What?” Eleanor asked.
I rubbed my forehead. “She was like a child. A vicious, nasty one to be sure. All she thought about was satisfying her immediate wants. She desired something; she took it. Someone angered her; she lashed out. Most of us are trained out of such puerile behavior. She never was.”
Eleanor frowned. “I’d rather think her mind was somehow defective.”
“Oh, it was that, too. There has to be something wrong in the brain of someone who admires the Reign of Terror.” I ran my thumb over the rim of my glass.
“Miss Abbott didn’t learn the lesson that most of the adherents of the Revolution did.
That the search for freedom without an acknowledgement of our responsibilities, as well, only leads to a different sort of tyranny. ”
“Are you going to rebuild?” Rollins tossed the steak onto the nearby plate. “The damage seemed more extensive this time.”
A part of me didn’t want to. I didn’t need the income, and building the club up the first time had been hard work. But when I did finally close its doors, I wanted it to be on my terms. Having someone else close it down was an insult not to be borne.
I smiled. I’d never shied from hard work, and I wouldn’t start now. “I think I will.” A new project. Yes, it would be tiring. It was also a reason to get out of bed in the morning. And it would make too many of the wrong people happy if my club failed.
“Good.” Eleanor nodded. “London needs The Minerva Club.”
“I don’t know if all of London needs it,” I said dryly, “but some of us do.” It was good to push the bounds of society. Good to question the roles society placed on us. The trouble came when you pushed too far, when you forgot that some of those rules served a purpose.
Lady Richford had learned that the hard way. Miss Abbott would probably never learn it, but she’d feel its effects just the same. Reality had a harsh way of asserting itself, regardless of how one felt life should unfold.
The trick was in getting the balance right.
I looked at Eleanor and her man and wondered how they would fare. Between their different stations in life, their dissimilar temperaments, they would have a hard time finding balance. But I wouldn’t bet against them.
“The blood is starting to seep through your bandages.” I stood and went to ring for help.
Eleanor’s wrists had been a mess. My own only had slight pink marks around them, making me feel as though I hadn’t tried nearly hard enough to escape my bonds.
“I’ll just send for some more wrappings and iodine. ”
Rollins stood as well, earning a small squeak from Eleanor as she was lifted into the air then set on her feet. “I’m taking her home,” he said. “You will need to come to my office to make a more thorough statement.”
“I’ll go on the morrow.” I walked them to the front door, noticing their linked fingers, the soft press of Rollins’s lips to the top of her head as he helped her into her coat.
There was something hopeful about seeing new love. It was a reminder that life went on, its never-ending cycles an argument against despair.
I rubbed my chest. It was also a reminder that part of my life was over. I was closer to the end of my cycle than the beginning.
Mr. Stavers closed the door behind the couple. “Milady, his grace sent this over.” He handed her a folded page of paper. “He said his contact at The Times gave this to him to warn you. It’s to be printed in tomorrow’s paper.”
I unfolded the page, a copy of tomorrow’s opinion page.
“That nackle-ass dog.” I stomped to my parlor, rereading Mr. Ryder’s latest piece. “‘…kindly lady led astray by the siren song of modernity…’ Ha!” I held the page closer to my table lamp. “‘…deceived by her naivety.’ What balderdash!”
“Milady?” Stavers had followed me in, his face a mask of concern.
“This calls for more than brandy.” I crumpled the page and tossed it into the fire. “Is there any more tart left in the kitchens?”
“I’ll check.” He left me to fume in silence.
Rebuilding my club would mean more than new wood and plaster. Its reputation had been damaged, too, and the continued opinion pieces from the president of the London Society for Morality and Decency wouldn’t help my cause.
“Deceived by my naivety. Ha.” I glared at the fire, the flames cheerfully devouring the vexatious words. It had been some decades since I had been burdened with naivety. Thankfully there were some compensations to aging. Wisdom was one of them.
The fire popped as I sank into a chair. Wisdom and acceptance.
I couldn’t force people to approve of me, just like Miss Abbott couldn’t force Lady Richford to love her.
The world wasn’t made to accommodate itself around our desires.
We had to find a way to live within the reality presented to us.
And if you could find a way to live happily, even better.
Lady Richford had just begun to understand that.
She had been killed before she’d taken more than a few steps on her journey to wisdom and acceptance.
That was the true tragedy. We all died. I rubbed at a vein on the back of my hand.
Some of us were closer to that eventuality than others.
But Miss Abbott had robbed her friend of her chance to grow.
To become a better person. Perhaps God could forgive that. I would have a harder time.
But the fact that the world was full of Miss Abbotts I had long ago accepted.
My challenge would be to never let it make me cynical.
And to that end I put all thought of murder and mayhem out of mind.
I concentrated on the work ahead of me that I could control.
My club. I would rebuild, and make it better than ever.
A charred corner of The Times lay on the stones before the hearth.
Could I convince Mr. Ryder to stop targeting my club?
Should I even try? He had gone from branding me a licentious libertine to now a witless dotard.
The man most likely thought he was being kind by attributing what he considered the evils of my club to a feeble mind rather than malice.
I sniffed.
I think I preferred being accused of organizing an orgy.
The End