Chapter 17
The day began, perhaps unlike other days devoted to women’s whimsy, with a pilgrimage to a worksite.
Ember and Millie accompanied them, stepping over piles of gravel and around shiny new pallets full of bricks and joistwork, chattering excitedly about the project that had come from ruin, while Hannah and Rosalind lingered behind, the latter asking many questions while the former scanned the horizon for Mae, who was to meet them there.
“I just know that isn’t the same chaise,” Ember was saying to her friend, ahead of them. “The old one was a goldenrod color. This one is more of a marigold. It’s as though someone absconded with it in the night and replaced it with a slightly nicer one. Who the devil would do that?”
“I don’t know, Ember,” Millie replied, squeaking delicately as she sidestepped a puddle of frozen mud. “But perhaps you should invite them back.”
Hannah smiled quietly to herself.
Thaddeus had finally found within him the ability to pen a letter to her in these past days, and in it, he had admitted to the chaise-swapping caper.
I could not abide the idea of anyone else sitting on it, he had written. It now lives in my bedroom. If Ember asks, tell her Aster bled all over the old one and I had to have it replaced.
Well, Ember had asked, and it pleased Hannah more to feign ignorance, thank you very much. She wondered if he’d shouldered the whole affair onto his broad shoulders and lugged it back to the Vixen by himself. Picturing it made her feel a little faint.
“Every time I think I’ve seen the edge of London, there’s more of it,” Rosalind Murphy marveled, her brogue hiccuping in the cold. “It’s like someone took half a dozen cities and stitched them together for the fun of it.”
“It really is like that,” Hannah said to her, blinking away her romantic images of a chaise across her lover’s back.
“Different food, different accents, sometimes barely a block apart from each other. Rivalries too. Very silly ones. Horses. Pugalists. This business with kicking a ball around. It’s something new every year. ”
“Oh! We’ve that too!” Rosalind said eagerly, grabbing Hannah’s hand. “Have you ever seen a spot of shinty?”
Ember tutted, turning her head. “Sweet girl. Don’t scare the English with talk of shinty.”
“Well, now I want to know,” said Millie.
“Mae!” Hannah called, raising her arm as she spotted the other girl cresting the paved walk over the hill, where the public house sat. “Mae, we’re here!”
Mae waved back, her laugh carrying on the air as she lifted her skirts and rushed toward them.
“See, now that color is goldenrod,” Ember said, pointing to Mae’s overcoat. “No orange in it. Do you see, Millie?”
“Yes, I see, Ember!” Millie snapped, rolling her eyes. “Gracious, you’d think someone took your strongbox.”
“Not marigold,” Ember muttered, shaking her head.
“You’re just in time!” Hannah said as Mae reached them, grinning and gasping for breath with little puffs of blue fog escaping her lips as she bent at the waist to gather herself. “They’re about to lift the frames!”
Mae looked up, her eyes catching the light as the workers pulled the first big series of slatted wooden beams to a vertical position and started walking it to the foundation, her smile growing until her dimples looked like to stick in her cheeks forever.
“The first wall!” she whispered, still out of breath.
They watched as the foreman shouted and several men rushed forward to drive large, heavy nails into the base, anchoring the thing to the foundation with sharp, startling clangs. Hannah had the oddest desire to applaud.
Mae straightened once the men began to back away and disperse, and smiled at them, pausing when her eyes fell on Rosalind, who was openly gaping at her.
“Oh,” she said, blinking. “Hello there.”
“Oh!” said Rosalind, immediately turning just as pink as her frilly coat. “Oh, hello! I … oh!”
Hannah glanced from one girl to the other, Rosalind stammering and Mae looking strangely cynical, her head tilted to the side with a knowing quirk to her lips.
“New to London?” Mae asked in a voice that sounded very pointed.
“I … yes,” Rosalind said, nodding gratefully, then sighing and shaking her curls out. “I’m ever so sorry, I must seem very rude. I don’t … I didn’t mean to stare. I’ve made an awful cow of myself, haven’t I?”
“A highland cow?” Mae asked, a tender teasing in her voice, getting a surprised raise of the eyes back from Rosalind. “It’s really all right. You’re not the first person to look at me like I sprung out of a fairy circle. I won’t bite.”
“I didn’t think you would!” Rosalind cried, bunching her fingers at her mouth.
“All right, that’s enough,” Ember said with a chuckle. “Don’t fret, duckling. I was new to the city once too. I met a man from China on my wedding day and made a right ass of myself about it. I’ll tell you all about it on the walk to the modiste.”
“You did?” Rosalind asked hopefully, blinking up at Ember like she might be an actual goddess.
Millie shook her head, ushering Mae and Hannah in the rear.
“Does that ever happen to you?” Mae asked quietly, once they’d rounded the block. “Once they find out you’re Jewish?”
Hannah laughed. “Yes. My first Season was an absolute disaster. I don’t think it’s quite the same, though.”
“It isn’t,” Mae agreed. “They can’t tell by looking at you. She seems sweet. Not … not intentional about it.”
“She’s only been out of the country for about the space of a breath,” Hannah replied. “And I think she was probably very sheltered there besides. Her mother’s an astronomer. I got the impression her upbringing involved a lot of telescopes and open meadows.”
“Hm,” said Mae.
“You told her you didn’t bite,” Hannah said with a giggle. “Did I tell you someone bit Mr. Reed recently? Do you know Mr. Reed?”
Mae bit her lip, looking quickly away. “I met him,” she said. “Briefly. How is your St. Thaddeus, though?”
“Oh,” said Hannah softly. “Mae, I think we may be getting married.”
“Married?!” she squealed, bringing around the attention of every other woman in their party with such abrupt, heart-stopping immediacy that Hannah thought she might simply dive into the snow and never emerge.
“Who is getting married?” Rosalind asked, tilting her curly head.
“My sister,” Hannah said quickly. “Esther. She … she is younger than me. It was rather a scandal. Even Mae was shocked by it, just now.”
“I was,” said Mae solemnly. “And really I ought to be past such things.”
Rosalind hesitated and then walked herself backward to join them in the second row, her hands folded in front of her. “My sister just got married too,” she said. “And Abe too, of course. It can be a lonely thing.”
“Oh,” said Hannah, trying not to wince at the direction this lie had taken her. “Do you have a beau, Rosalind?”
She blinked and gave a little shake of her head.
“I thought I did for a time, but no. He chose another. That is the way of things sometimes. I have thought I might stay on in London after Mama goes back north. Abe and Millie have asked if I might help with the bairn—” she paused, wincing and tilting her head.
“With the baby, I mean. I might stay and help with the baby, and I think there is a lot I could learn here. I think perhaps that is already evident, even in the short time we’ve spent together today. ”
Mae chuckled, reaching out to pat the girl’s shoulder. “Don’t lambast yourself,” she said. “Friendships have started off in worse ways.”
“Friendships?” repeated Rosalind with a little quirk of her lips. “Oh, I do hope so, Miss Casper.”
“Consider it done,” said Mae. “Doubly so if you can get me invited along to look through that telescope in Charing Cross with your mum that Hannah won’t stop talking about.”
“Oh, absolutely!” Rosalind said, brightening. “My mother will be thrilled. I’ve never met so many young ladies who want to look into telescopes with her. The girls in Aberdeen would give me a wide berth if it even got mentioned.”
“Did your mama not push you toward a life of academics yourself, Rosalind?” Hannah asked, reaching out to toy with the curled ribbons dangling from the other girl’s wrist pouch. “You seem ambivalent about it at best.”
Rosalind giggled, shaking her head. “My mother told us that we ought to be exactly what we wish,” she said.
“And I wished to be very ladylike. I still sat my lessons, of course, but she meant what she said, and when I wanted to spend my pin on ribbons and dolls, she let me do it and learned all their names and colors besides. She is a very good mama.”
“Yes,” Mae agreed, looking impressed. “It sounds like she is.”
By the time they reached Hannah’s modiste, any tension that had arisen around Rosalind’s surprise at Mae’s skin tone had been thoroughly and permanently dispelled.
They passed nearly three hours being measured and admiring textiles and dressforms, with Ember asking many questions about applications of brocade to undergarments that intrigued every other woman in the room past whatever else they were doing at that time.
“Can you do that?” Millie asked, her brows in her hairline.
“Of course you can,” Ember said with a wicked grin. “And it’s a delightful surprise if you undress in company.”
In the end, many orders were placed, for under and outerwear alike.
Hannah, privately, wondered what Mr. Beck’s favorite colors were.
“If my mam sees that order, she might drag me back to Scotland by my bonnet,” Rosalind whispered to Mae. “Might I should pick it up after she’s gone.”
“Nothing wrong with wearing pretty things just for yourself,” Mae reasoned. “She can’t prove you mean to do otherwise, no matter how much thread of silver you had embroidered.”
“It was the faux,” Rosalind protested weakly. “I wouldn’t spend for the real if no one saw it.”
“Someone might see it,” Mae replied. “Eventually.”
They walked out toward the forking end of Clerkenwell together to say their goodbyes, small bags full of little things clutched in each of their hands, only for Ember to pause, point, and announce, “Oh, look! It’s Teddy. Who’s that with him?”
They all turned, Hannah’s heart immediately leaping up into her throat as she found the silhouette of her love in the misty cold. It held there for a moment, starting to sink, as she realized there was a woman on his arm. A beautiful woman.
“Oh,” said Mae, stepping closer to Hannah, as though to shield her.
“Teddy!” called Ember, looking very cross indeed. “Come here! I need to tell you about the chaise!”
“Oh, Ember, for goodness’ sake!” Millie hissed as he turned toward them and lifted his hand in greeting, coming their way with the woman in tow.
She was tall and finely built, with dark hair and regal bearing.
She walked like a woman accustomed to command, and wore a stiff purple coat with dappled foxgloves pressed into the fabric.
Her dark hair was curled neatly over her shoulder, and as soon as she reached them, she ran her eyes over each woman, one by one, in cool assessment.
Once that happened, Hannah felt herself relax. Relief rose in her like a spritz of springwater from the center of her chest. She’d recognize those eyes anywhere.
“Hello,” she said first, before anyone could speak, stepping forward and extending her hand. “You must be Vix.”
The woman’s lips parted, a little gust of fog emerging. “Victoria,” she corrected. “If you please. And you are?”
“This is Miss Hannah Lazarus,” Thaddeus said quickly, releasing his sister’s arm and stepping between them. “A dear friend of mine. And Miss Ember Donnelly, my business partner. And Miss Mae Casper, a healer in our part of London.”
“I am Millie Murphy,” Millie offered with an incline of her head, “and this is my good sister Rosalind. We are just about for a bit of holiday shopping.”
“I see,” said Victoria Beck, with a quick scan of their little bags. “Pleasure.”
Hannah hesitated, desperate to say more, to say something. She understood that things had not yet been formally announced, but the title of “good friend” rather made her want to scream directly into the void.
“We must all become better acquainted soon,” she said, in the absence of anything better. “Perhaps you will join us for some of the charity work we are undertaking at the Flaming Fox, Miss Beck?”
“Perhaps,” said Miss Beck with an expression that was not quite a sneer. “Teddy, I am growing cold. Do you mind if we begin toward home?”
He gave the assembled ladies an apologetic look. “I must see my sister back to the Vixen,” he said. “But I will be by the Fox this evening for operations.”
Hannah nodded, holding his eye, which thankfully seemed trained on hers in equally hopeful unspoken need. “I shall be there as well,” she said softly.
“Yes, and I,” Ember put in. “I will show you the chaise.”
“Ember!” Millie tutted, shattering the fragile discomfort that had settled over them all in an act of queer, but welcome, mercy.
And so they dispersed to their various corners of London, with perhaps many more questions, aspirations, and underthings than they had expected back when the day began.