Chapter Nine The Thursday Room #2
“What do you propose?” she asked.
“I go. I listen. I observe what I can.”
“You listen? In a room where every man alters his conversation because you enter? Your Grace, I do not deny your usefulness. You can cross thresholds I cannot. You can make men speak out of arrogance or caution. But you cannot become unnoticeable by deciding to.”
“No,” he said. “And you cannot become safe by deciding danger is unjust.”
The words struck, but this time neither of them flinched from the truth in the other.
Helena, who had watched them with the steady patience of someone allowing argument to refine itself into plan, said, “There may be another way.”
Marianne turned.
Helena drew a small notebook from Lady Theodosia’s drawer. “Not through the club’s front door. Not even through the side door. Through laundry.”
Sebastian looked baffled. “Laundry.”
“Gentlemen may shut women out of their clubs,” Helena said, “but they cannot dine, drink, spill wine, seal letters, smoke cigars and leave evidence without linen. Tablecloths, napkins, glass cloths, servants’ aprons. Someone washes them.”
Marianne felt the first movement of hope.
“There was a former Lantern House resident,” Helena continued, turning pages, “Mrs Nell Carter. Widow of a printer’s assistant.
She stayed here two winters ago after her husband’s debts were pressed upon her by a creditor who had no legal right to them but much enthusiasm.
Lady Theodosia helped settle the matter.
Mrs Carter now works with her sister, who takes in laundry from several gentlemen’s establishments near St James’s. ”
“The Corinthian Rooms?” Marianne asked.
Helena found the name. “At times. The accounts here suggest so.”
Sebastian stared at her, then at Marianne, then back at Helena. “You are suggesting Miss Vale examine laundry.”
“I am suggesting Miss Vale examine evidence men have already decided is beneath them,” Helena replied.
Marianne had already moved toward the drawer containing directories. “Bills. Wine stains. Wax stains. Laundry marks. Room labels. Counts of napkins, glasses, cloths. If the Thursday Room is used regularly, the laundry may know more of its habits than members do.”
Sebastian looked at her, and despite the tension, admiration moved into his face before he could conceal it.
“You found a door,” he said.
“No,” Marianne replied. “Women built one because men keep locking theirs.”
By afternoon, the plan had taken shape.
Sebastian would attend the Corinthian Rooms in the evening under the introduction of Lord Exford, an elderly peer who owed the Rookwoods a favour from a political matter and possessed the useful failing of assuming private clubs remained harmless so long as the port was good.
Sebastian would enter the public rooms, identify Cale if possible, observe Ashmont and any associates, and attempt to learn whether the Thursday Room was in use.
Marianne would not go near the club itself by the front entrance.
Instead, she would visit Mrs Nell Carter at the laundry yard off a narrow passage behind Jermyn Street.
The laundry collected soiled linen from the Corinthian Rooms in the late afternoon and returned some items the next morning.
If the Thursday Room had been prepared for that evening, evidence might already exist in counts and marks.
Clara would accompany Marianne in the carriage as far as the corner, with Tom and one of Helena’s trusted men nearby.
Marianne would be dressed plainly, not as a lady entering society, but as what men always overlooked: a woman with a basket, a shawl and no apparent claim upon anyone’s attention.
Sebastian disliked this plan intensely.
That, Marianne thought, spoke well of it.
“You will remain in the laundry rooms,” he said as the preparations were made. “You will not approach the club.”
“I shall remain where evidence requires me to remain.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It often is.”
“If anything seems wrong—”
“I shall leave.”
“Immediately.”
“I do know the meaning of the word.”
“You know the meaning and dispute the application.”
Clara, who was tying her bonnet ribbons near the study door, said without looking up, “You are both becoming predictable.”
Beatrice, forbidden once again from attendance, said, “It is almost affectionate.”
Marianne and Sebastian looked at her simultaneously.
Beatrice smiled. “Only almost.”
Mrs Finch thrust a wrapped parcel into Marianne’s hands. “Bread, cheese, ginger biscuits, and no argument.”
“I did not—”
“No argument.”
Marianne accepted the parcel.
Sebastian looked at it. “Does Mrs Finch feed everyone entering danger?”
“She considers hunger a sign of poor planning.”
“She is right.”
“I shall tell her you said so. She will suspect mockery and approve anyway.”
For a moment, absurdly, neither moved.
Then Sebastian said, more quietly, “Do not underestimate Cale.”
“I do not intend to meet him.”
“Men like Cale arrange meetings without asking.”
“I shall be careful.”
He looked as if he wished to say more, but something in her expression stopped him.
Perhaps he remembered the carriage in the rain, when she had told him not to make her safety a room with a locked door.
Perhaps he was learning the cost of trust: to let someone walk toward danger because their judgement was part of the work.
“Then I shall see you after,” he said.
“After,” she replied.
The laundry yard smelled of soap, steam, wet cloth, lye and labour.
It was a world away from the polished menace of Halgrave House or the candlelit cruelty of Lady Honoria’s ballroom.
Here there were no chandeliers, no silk fans, no men speaking of honour over stolen fortunes.
There were tubs, lines, baskets, red hands, bent backs, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and women who knew the weight of gentlemen’s dinners because they washed the wine out afterward.
Mrs Nell Carter recognised Marianne at once and embraced her before remembering that wet hands made such greetings inconvenient. She was a small, brisk woman with fair hair scraped under a cap, cheeks flushed by steam, and eyes that had grown harder since her stay at Lantern House but not unkind.
“Miss Vale. Miss Winslow. Lord, if Lady Theodosia could see you in this place.”
“She would ask who keeps the accounts,” Marianne said.
“She did, once. Frightened my sister half to death.”
Clara, who had agreed to remain in the front room while Marianne went farther inside, smiled faintly. “She had that effect.”
Mrs Carter led Marianne into the back room, where baskets were stacked according to house, club and hotel. Each bore a tag. Some were marked by street. Others by initials. The Corinthian Rooms basket sat beneath a shelf, already sorted in part.
“You said it concerned Lady Theodosia’s old work,” Mrs Carter said.
“Yes.”
“And dangerous men?”
“Yes.”
“Thought so. They always leave stains.”
Marianne looked at her.
Mrs Carter shrugged. “Men with nothing to hide still spill port. Men hiding something spill wax, ink, ash and panic.”
This, Marianne thought, Lady Theodosia would have adored.
Mrs Carter pulled out a ledger of laundry accounts and laid it on a rough table. “Corinthian sends on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays usually. Extra private rooms after large dinners. Servants mark the linens by room or steward. Most ladies don’t know how much a napkin can say.”
“Lady Theodosia did.”
“Aye. She was a terror for it.”
Marianne opened her notebook. “The Thursday Room.”
Mrs Carter’s face changed.
“You know it?”
“We know the mark. T.R. in red thread. Not always listed on the bill. Sometimes folded into Club Private. But the linen is better. Old damask. Eight napkins always, whether seven men dine or six or none.”
“Eight,” Marianne repeated.
“Aye. Eight places set.”
“Is one unused?”
“Not by the stains.”
Marianne looked up. “What do you mean?”
Mrs Carter took a bundle from the lower basket and untied it. “These came yesterday. Prepared for tonight, I reckon. See here.”
Eight napkins lay folded together, each with a tiny red stitch in one corner: T.R. Seven were marked additionally with numbers, done in laundry ink for tracking: one through seven. The eighth bore no number. Instead, in the same corner, almost hidden beneath the hem, was a small black dot.
“No assigned member?” Marianne asked.
“Or a seat no one names.”
Mrs Carter spread the tablecloth. Along one edge were dark flecks.
“Wax,” Marianne said.
“Black and red. Always the same. Club servants try to scrape it, but wax has pride. It clings.”
Marianne touched the edge lightly. “Documents sealed at table.”
“Likely.”
“And wine?”
“Port. Heavy. Eight glasses every Thursday when the room is used, though the bill lists seven bottles over the month in a way that makes it look like ordinary consumption.”
Marianne stared at the laundry account. Mrs Carter had marked the discrepancies in pencil.
“You noticed this?”
“Lady Theodosia taught me numbers do not blush.”
For a moment, grief moved unexpectedly through Marianne.
Lady Theodosia’s lessons were everywhere.
In hidden papers, yes, but also in women she had taught to see.
Whatever the lantern in the ledger meant, whatever compromise lay beneath it, this was also her legacy: Mrs Carter in a laundry yard reading port stains like testimony.
“Did the Thursday Room receive linen seven years ago?” Marianne asked.
Mrs Carter’s expression sobered. “My sister had the account then. We kept old books because gentlemen pay late and deny everything.”
She withdrew another ledger from a shelf, older, the cover warped from damp. Together they turned the pages.
There: Thursday Room. An extra collection after Lady Honoria Datchworth’s ball.
Marianne felt the air leave her.
“Why would a gentlemen’s club require extra linen after a lady’s ball?” she asked.
“Side supper. Private meeting. Or someone ill.”
Mrs Carter’s finger moved down the column. “Here. ‘Young lady taken through side.’ That is my sister’s hand. She wrote notes when something caused extra work.”
Marianne leaned closer.