A Bluestocking’s Guide to Decadence

Chapter Two

Jo

That infuriating second button was loose again. The smooth horn jiggled ominously between Jo Smith’s fingers as she closed her favorite waistcoat over a chest that had once challenged even corsets.

“Well, fuck me,” she whispered, squinting into the glass and tugging on the checked wool here and there in hopes of taxing the bugger a bit less. To no avail. The button slid to the edge of the buttonhole, holding fast for now, but wriggling on its stitches like a fish on the line, threatening its inevitable escape. It might not be today. Or tomorrow. But a most impolite failure loomed over its future.

She should fix it before she dragged her arse from her home to her shop. She was a bookseller these days, by far her most respectable and public-facing position. If she was going to be so scandalous as to wear men’s clothes in the first place, she had to do it right: tidy cravats and shined shoes, starched shirts and brushed tweed trousers. It had been a change of mindset, to look so tidy all the time. In other lives, she’d mucked stalls and milked cows, mended hems and mixed cosmetics, risked her fingers setting type and risked her arse arranging that type into obscene publications. It was only in the past year that something like a loose waistcoat button would register as a problem that needed prompt tending.

She dug around in her bedside drawer for the sewing things she was pretty sure were in there, sifting through cheaper buttons, beat-up business cards and burlesque handbills, a worse-for-wear rosary, scraggly pen tips, and a few inexplicable pieces of moveable type she must have wandered off with at some point (two a’s and a Q, sans-serif). She found the needle she was seeking when it stabbed her in the thumb, and the thread when she mistook the tangle for a spider and yelped. Loud.

Whoops. She cringed as she snatched up the innocent spool. Her husband—if you wanted to call him that; he was really more of a legally bound friend—didn’t work their bookshop directly, and still kept the later hours of the less-tidy half of their business. Though they’d done well enough to keep separate sleeping quarters for years now, their apartment wasn’t what you’d call spacious. She listened for a moment for a sign that she’d woken him up, preparing herself for a good and deserved teasing when she admitted why.

Fortunately, there was no stirring; she would escape that particular embarrassment for now.

Back to business. Squeaking heavily onto her mattress, she got the tangle off the wooden spool with her teeth and got the needle threaded on the fifth try. She removed her waistcoat and pointed at the troublesome button with the business end of the needle.

And there she stopped.

This bugger was constantly threatening to run off; it was going to need a hardier stitch than the one she’d been using to resecure it. She knew one, didn’t she? A better button stitch? She tipped her head back in thought, staring at the ceiling and feeling how the dark hair she kept knotted at the nape of her neck squished against her starched collar. Her grandmother had taught her a button stitch years and years ago, when Jo was known as nothing more than a particularly bothersome farmer’s daughter back in Ireland. Gran had shown it to her in hopes that better button placement might settle her frustrations with the way her dresses fit. That had not quite been the issue with the dresses, but the memories of Gran’s concern were sweet, and the stitch still came in handy.

Or, rather, the shortcut version Jo had taken to using came in handy. She’d gotten lazy with it over the years, too bored by the need to reinforce her pawned and off-the-rack gentleman’s wear to do it properly. But she’d become friends with a fancy tailor, who’d helped her get her hands on her first properly fitted waistcoat. It fit tighter, and its horn button was heavier than the wood or bone she was used to. Clearly the combination of her bosom and the button’s heft called for more skillful measures.

She tentatively poked at the fabric a few times, mind blank and fingers itching for their shortcut...

That blasted stitch was probably written down in Gran’s book. Jo had nicked the little handwritten compilation of wisdom, remedies, and devotions before running away for good after that one dear relation passed on. It was rightfully hers, she figured, as Gran’s favorite and the bane of everyone else’s existence. The rest of the O’Donnell family back on the farm could still ask each other for reminders on things like this. Jo, on the other hand, knew she would have only paper and ink to guide her adult footsteps, so across the sea into England the book had come along with her.

Quiet as she was willing to be while still plagued by a tiny bit of resentment that her husband, Paul, didn’t have to get up at dawn, she passed by the closed door to his room and through the parlor, headed for the study where they kept their books.

While every other area of the home was lavish and artful, those beloved shelves—those of a lifelong printer and his bookish wife—were packed, every gap filled in at whatever angle necessary to fit the books, so many of them that they were stacked on top of the shelves and the floor in front of them too. Little dime novels were smushed in between important literary tomes; the works of saints and homemakers untouched for years but never discarded; instruction on everything to do with getting words put down on paper, from printing to inkmaking to bloody handwriting analysis. And unfortunately, there was no reason as to the placement, no groupings by subject or author or alphabet. Jo and Paul very much enjoyed their odd way in the world, but that way had never been the most thoughtful or organized way.

Jo started scanning from the left, hands in her pockets and her eyes glued to the myriad spines that had been collected or printed-and-bound by her and Paul over the years of their marriage, searching out that ratty spine that was embedded deeply in her memory. Fuck. It could take an hour to hunt this thing down in such a disheveled, disorganized, neglected wall of treasure. All she managed to spot was some new scandalous stock from the erotic press they ran out of a Holywell print shop, the titles The Ruin of Renatta Cunny and The Sailors’ Tryst sticking out obviously and obnoxiously in substantial stacks on the bottom shelf.

Blimey, they shouldn’t keep that many copies at home. When had he brought these over? It wasn’t good practice to keep these here. She made a mental note to bitch heartily at her dear husband until he took the lot back to the print house cellar where it belonged.

She glanced down the hallway. Did Paul know where Gran’s book was? She considered waking him up, to ask him about it and scold him for bringing too much stock home...but no. Neither situation was urgent, and she needed to get the shop open. As she went back through the parlor, she spotted that a biscuit tin had been left out on the low table before the fireplace. Good biscuits. Ones she hadn’t realized they had.

She smiled with affection in spite of herself. Just like that prat of a husband of hers, up snacking on the good stuff into all hours of the night without her. She popped the lid off and was just scooping a few up to eat on the way when she heard the sound of a creaking bedframe and footsteps from down the hall.

Jo looked up from the tin to see Paul in the doorway, the familiar, slim figure of him draped with a fur-trimmed dressing gown that hung from his shoulders as if from a clothesline. There was a brief look of panic on his features and a quick glance behind him to the bedroom. Then his blond pencil mustache twitched with amusement.

“Caught in the act,” he said, clucking his tongue. “Here I thought you were industriously making your way to work, only to find you’ve become a biscuit thief instead.”

“Don’t mind me, I’ll be out of your way in a second.”

That guilty look came back over his face.

“What’s the matter with you?” She laughed and reached for her hat. “Anyway, you don’t happen to know where my gran’s old—”

“Paul?” came a high-pitched voice from his bedroom.

Oh. So he had Vanessa here. As Jo’s hand finally settled onto her hat, she noticed something else she hadn’t: the mermaid-shaped coatrack by the door held not only Paul’s things, but a woman’s coat and hat. Paul sometimes dressed so ostentatiously that she hadn’t thought much of it, but on second glance, that hat with its faux birds and flowery branches was a bit much, even for him.

She caught his guilty eye. What was he acting so strange for? Vanessa had been coming round for a year, almost. Bit unusual that he hadn’t asked Jo to clear out and snag a room at her sapphic society so the two of them could have a night together like he usually did, but in the end, Jo and Paul kept to their own affairs and liked it that way. Jo couldn’t say she was friends with Paul’s eccentric lover, but they were friendly enough that a chance overlap in their presence was nothing to be so awkward about.

But as she opened her mouth to ask about it, she was cut off by footfalls and a tired voice:

“Paul, I think my stomach will settle best with a few of those—”

Vanessa Garcia—the Spanish actress that Paul had fallen head-over-heels for after a particularly ferocious production of Macbeth at The Strand Theater—froze in the doorway, her eyes wide and cheeks flushed bright red when she spotted Jo by the door, like she expected Jo to fly into a jealous rage at any moment.

It was ridiculous. If Jo was jealous of anything, it was no more or less than Paul’s ability to hang on to a pleasant relationship with a pretty woman, which was something she’d never managed herself.

“Morning, Vanessa.” Jo averted her eyes, in case it was the woman’s disheveled appearance that had her so shaken, rather than an expectation of jealousy. Vanessa had a pale complexion, raven hair, and lips rouged to give a Snow White–ish impression. But this morning, her opulent (though obviously secondhand) dresses had been swapped for some abandoned old silk of Jo’s, the paint on her lips dull and leftover. Her age—likely into her forties, though it was always hard to tell with an actress—was not as well hidden as it normally was, making her look more like the wicked queen than the titular princess. Not in a bad way, though. Nothing wrong with a good old wicked queen.

So why did they both look like they were hiding a body back there in the bedroom?

It was unsettling, like stepping unexpectedly upon a loose cobble. Jo returned her biscuits to the table and backed away toward the door. “I was just on my way out—”

“Oh, Joey dear, don’t go,” said Vanessa, voice clear, brow angled, diction posher than her status in a married man’s bed would indicate. “Please. I’m sorry you have to see me in such a state—”

“No one needs to be in any particular state on my account,” said Jo.

“Join us, will you?” Vanessa went on. She’d been in London a long time. Like Jo, her accent was nearly tamed, so it was strange to hear it breaking free this morning. Jo had spent just enough time with her to recognize the stress as Vanessa scrambled for her usual misty, dramatic way in the world. She reached out and took one of Jo’s hands in both of hers, smiling like she was peering into the great beyond instead of Jo’s very regular set of eyeballs. “I’m sorry to surprise you like this. I came over after my rehearsal very late last night. There was so much to discuss. Is still so much to discuss—”

“Discuss?” Jo alarmedly tried to get her hand back without snatching it, but her subtle attempt at detangling went unnoticed.

“The miraculous connection we’ll soon share, my dear,” said Vanessa. “I simply insist that you—”

All at once, Vanessa stopped her characteristic yet ominous gushing and went dreadfully pale. She dropped Jo’s hand and sprinted to the water closet, slamming the door shut behind her. Jo blinked her bewilderment, then turned to Paul.

“Is she—?”

The unpleasant sound of sickness tripped her up.

“Hold that thought.” Paul put one glittering finger up, then darted off.

Stock-still and ears strained, Jo listened:

“It will pass, darling,” said Paul, chipper as anything.

Then Vanessa’s voice, no longer even trying to remain clear, clean and English, but decidedly rough and weak: “Oh, I’m sorry you’re seeing this. It’s so embarrassing—”

“Don’t worry about me. You know I work on Bookseller’s Row, darling. I step in worse every time I go down there, no question... Better?”

“Much.”

There were sounds of movement, the rattle and swoosh of water flushing down the pipes, some mumbled words, then Vanessa came back. She still looked awkward, but quite a bit better than someone who was sick ought to look. She took up a pitcher painted with bacchanalia and poured from it into a glass that she drank from gratefully.

“Are you ill?” Jo asked, awkwardly glancing back as Paul joined them again, looking a little frazzled. “Damn, I really ought to get out of your way. I—”

Vanessa cut her off with a tired little laugh. She looked across the room at Paul, and that’s when Jo caught the sparkle in both their eyes.

Unfortunately, Jo had spent plenty of time in the company of sickness. Little siblings with stomach bugs. Dying animals on her family’s farm. Friends at her rowdier club, not the sapphic society but the other one, The Curious Fox, where blokes were known to go overboard with the gin.

There was only one sort of sickness, in her experience, that came with even the vaguest possibility of eye sparkles.

Jo could not process the news at all. It might have been easier if Paul and Vanessa were treating the situation like the disaster it was, but once the sickness passed, they both seemed happy.

“Given I’ve made it this long,” Vanessa said with the shameless ease of a woman very outside of polite society, hand on her unwed belly in a manner that would cause the average Englishwoman to swoon, “I simply assumed it wasn’t possible for me. In fact, I thought the missed courses were signaling the official end of such things, and that the dreadful sickness I’ve had was something I ate. But at this point, it’s undeniable. After a conversation with one of my housemates yesterday and nearly fainting at rehearsal, I knew it was time to tell my dear Paul about the situation and express my hope that he would share this joy with me going forward.”

Jo stared between the two of them, dread soaking up through her like muck through the seams of bad boots. “And what does that mean, exactly?”

Vanessa got yet another dreamy expression, like she was about to set a stage with all her wildest dreams for the sake of Jo’s entertainment, but Paul leaned forward on his knees and looked seriously into Jo’s eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said quietly, the dreaded word divorce seeming to pulsate in the very air between them. “You’re thinking the worst. But I swear—”

“It will be an irregular union!” Vanessa proclaimed, as if these words were an incantation for joy immeasurable. “You know we have already been discussing celebrating our love among our own community. Now, we can celebrate the life of our child as well! We shall find a way forward together. And—” She broke off, looking a bit more softly in Jo’s direction. “We shall do it without approval of church or crown, as those mean nothing to us anyway.”

Jo stared at the pair of them, furious with Paul for getting himself into this situation and incredulous with Vanessa, who, while odd, had seemed to have a half-way decent head on her shoulders. Had she gone entirely mental? It was one thing to celebrate love and life and whatever-the-devil when it was just two people involved. It was entirely another when things became a matter of bigamy and bastards. She had to know that, didn’t she?

“Vanessa—”

But she’d gone green once more, and was out of her seat and off to the water closet before Jo could try to prompt a more reasonable reaction out of her.

Paul grimaced as he watched her go. “It’s definitely mine,” he said with a sigh. “I too become sick when the church and the crown come up in a perfectly nice conversation.”

“Perfectly nice?” Jo hissed, keeping her voice under the sound of retching. “You do realize this is a disaster, don’t you?”

Paul Smith. Paul Shanahan when they’d married nearly twenty years ago. A man she did not love in the way of the poets, but cared for and laughed with and built businesses right alongside. Now that Vanessa was out of the room, he should be looking at her in a proper state of panic at the way his carefully curated life on the margins was about to be upended.

Instead, he sighed. “Is it, though?” He took one of the biscuits but did not bite into it, his hands obviously hungrier for distraction than the rest of him. “With raids being what they are right now, and only promising to get worse come the new year and the new laws, I’ve already had to tame things down at the press. Might have to put some of the tawdrier vases up high for a while, but all in all...” He looked at her with guilt that could not hide a glow of happiness in his eye. “Not a disaster. Such a circumstance has, in fact, never seemed like a disaster. To me.”

His last two words were so incredibly loaded that Jo was struck speechless.

While he’d said before that divorce—a shameful legal proceeding that would leave Jo in a very bad situation indeed—was not on his mind, the fact that she’d never given him the children he was technically owed was his ticket to it, should he change his mind. Church and crown be damned, she’d done everything in her power to avoid a similar circumstance, back when their marriage was still a functioning one. And the way it functioned now was no better in the eyes of those nauseating institutions...

“We should talk,” he said before she’d gathered her wits. “Just you and me. As soon as possible. I know that this is—”

But then Vanessa was back, looking gray and frail. Though she seemed to think she was a few months along, Jo noticed that she didn’t really look it. She’d never have described Vanessa as hearty, but in spite of her smile and her over-the-top assurances, she now decidedly lacked the heft and vitality that Jo’s own highly fertile family had insisted was necessary to bear healthy children.

She suddenly regretted not having made a better effort to be friends with Vanessa. Maybe Paul wasn’t thinking divorce yet, but Jo had a hard time trusting that Vanessa was truly alright with the status that an irregular union would afford her and her child. This worrisome physical state didn’t bode well for continued optimism, either. At every disadvantage imaginable, what if she tired of her unmarried status? The insecurity that came with it? Paul loved Vanessa. Would he really deny her for Jo’s sake? Jo, the wife who had given him friendship and monetary success, but nothing that could ever compete with love and a child?

If this situation was left to go forward on its own, Jo would be out on her arse by Christmas.

But what could be done? Oh, there were plenty of nefarious games to play, but that wasn’t her way. So what on earth...?

Jo stared at this woman she hardly knew, yet suddenly seemed the arbiter of Jo’s entire future, thinking fast and latching onto the first thing that might save her from a trip to the divorce court. The bags under Vanessa’s eyes. Her obvious exhaustion. The tentative way she nibbled at her biscuits. Latched onto the idea that there was a problem.

And perhaps, that problem was Jo’s solution.

“You know, dear Vanessa, while I am very happy for you, I’m concerned for your health,” Jo blurted, loving and grasping onto the reason with both hands as she did. Jo would not be nefarious, but she could be concerned. She could be knowledgeable. Could, if she played it right and called on old ideas and skills she’d purposely tried to leave to the Irish housewives, be useful to keep around. “I think you should know that my grandmother was an expert in these matters, and I saw...helped. I helped my own mum go through it nearly half a dozen times with my younger siblings. I’ll tell you, she made a great show of plumping up good and early. Your illness is concerning. Based on my, um, extensive experience.”

Paul rolled his eyes at the notion that Jo’s experience was extensive, but much to her surprise, Vanessa nodded grimly. “I appreciate that,” she said, sending a wave of relief along Jo’s spine. She could be appreciated. “I admit, I know next to nothing of the condition. As I said, I never thought it would happen for me.” She put a hand to her belly in a gesture so soft, so loving, so full of wonder at what seemed to her a miracle that Jo couldn’t bear to look at her until she’d knocked all that off. “What do you think I should do? I hate to think my baby is going hungry in there already!”

Vanessa was looking at Jo just as Jo had hoped she would: like a little secondhand expertise made her a genuine authority on the subject, and a person whom Vanessa should certainly not beg Paul to get rid of.

Paul, on the other hand, looked wary. He put a bracing arm around Vanessa’s shoulders and tucked the edge of the old silk more securely over her collarbones. “My darling, if you’re concerned that the sickness is beyond the usual bounds, we should discuss it with an actual doctor, as opposed to...um.” He blinked a few times, clearly cycling through a few options before settling on, “A... Jo.”

Jo rubbed the back of her neck, faltering a little. Before she could hedge what she’d said about expertise, an unexpected fire lit up in Vanessa’s eyes.

“And what doctor are we supposed to speak to?” she snapped, rounding on Paul. “I’m an unmarried actress, Paul. Toxic to any respectable professional. If all goes well, my friends at home will help me though the labor. If it doesn’t go well, it’s the women’s hospital in Soho Square, and then only if I can talk someone into granting me a bed—they’re limited, you know, and to get one you must inspire pity in a paying member.” She sighed, smoothing the sleeves of Jo’s old silk. “They won’t see an irregular wife when they look at me there, no matter how many parties we have to celebrate the union. They’ll see a fallen woman, carrying a burdensome bastard who will get up to no good. And you mind my words, they will treat us accordingly.” She shined those lit-up eyes back in Jo’s direction. “Jo, if you have any help to offer, I would be so grateful. You obviously know quite a lot more than I do, and goodness knows, I trust you entirely.”

As a person who was consistently dressed wrong, sailor-mouthed, and often a bit creative with the truth, that wasn’t a compliment Jo had ever received before.

“Oh, don’t say that,” she said before she could stop herself. She laughed a little awkwardly. “Why would you say that? We haven’t spent enough time together for all that.”

Vanessa snuggled in tighter to Paul on the sofa, looking much happier there than Jo herself ever was. “Because Paul’s told me all about you. Once he assured me that he’d be seeing this through with as much officiality as can be had, he told me everything, to make certain that I wanted to see it through with him just as eagerly. Everything that came up about you was as glowing a review as if he’d been talking of a dearly loyal brother or sister. And of course, I can see that what he said was true.”

“How? I haven’t done anything.”

“I have my own expertise,” said Vanessa with a certain smugness, that queenliness returning at last to her posture. “In the human condition. I’ve known what sort of person you are from the moment we first met, dear Jo. You won’t steer me wrong.”

“No,” said Paul, a little edge to his voice as he looked at Jo while speaking to Vanessa. “She certainly won’t, will she?”

Jo stood up at last, pacing a bit until she caught Paul’s eye. She had a silent yet detailed conversation with him across the room, because one did not live so many lives over so many years together without learning to speak silently. But then what did it mean, when the person who could say I know what you’re doing; knock it off and talk to me properly later with nothing more than a twitch of his eyebrow suddenly launched himself into a new life without you?

“Well, uh, it’s not me, really, who’s the expert,” Jo said, fumbling a little over the admission. “It was my gran. So. I’ve misplaced her recipe book, but it should be on the shelf over there somewhere. Go ahead and give it a look if you can find it...” She grabbed her own coat from the clutches of the mermaid rack, a chill shooting up her spine even as she set to the task of warming it back up under the swath of tweed. She stared at the door she itched to escape out of. They’d find the book. Look it over. Give it back to her, if she was lucky.

And then what?

And then her usefulness would end. Her place as a legal obstacle would burn bright as ever. In spite of Paul’s na?ve reassurances, keeping her around would become a silly flight of fancy compared to what his child would face in its illegitimacy.

“Until then, though, try a bit of ginger,” Jo blurted, much to all of their surprises. She wasn’t even sure how she remembered that. Some tucked-back part must have sprung a leak. She felt the burn of the candied ginger she used to swipe from her mum’s medicine cabinet, and the sting of the switch when she was caught because it was medicinal and they couldhardly afford enough as it was. “And if ginger don’t do it,” she went on, “see how you do with a very thin potato soup. Coats the stomach. Might help you eat a bit more, but if not, it’s nutritious enough on its own to see you through.”

“I knew it,” said Vanessa with that smug smile. “You’ll be a delightful help to me, won’t you, dear Jo?”

“Yes,” said Paul, pure warning in his eyes now. “Practically a midwife, that one.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” said Jo with a modest shrug that might very well imply she would go that far. “But I can be of help. Certainly. Most certainly, whatever else is going on, I can be of help.”

She was not an inconvenience, something to be got rid of when Vanessa realized how much better off she’d be if she convinced Paul to get that divorce that he was entitled to ten times over. She wouldn’t be that.

She would be help.

“Jo—” said Paul carefully.

“Must run.” Jo popped her hat on in a hurry. “Keep an eye out for the book for me—you know, to jog my memory of some of the details—and I’ll start gathering some of the herbs we’ll want for that second, um, part. The second...oh, what’s it called?”

“Trimester?” said Paul, so dry his throat might have been filled with sand.

Jo tipped her hat and looked just to the left of his eyes. “That’s the one!”

When one’s husband is suddenly expecting a rather ill-advised baby with some perfectly nice actress that he chivalrously did not abandon to the slums of London, and one is not quite convinced this won’t have disastrous consequences for one’s own daily existence, it is reasonable to expect one’s friends to engage in commiseration, complaint, and excessive consumption of whiskey.

But if Jo had wanted that, she probably shouldn’t have chosen Charlie Price as the friend to tell first.

They were in the bookshop after closing. Charlie had stopped by after his day at the bank so his lover—one of Paul’s authors—could get some writing done at home. While Jo’s hands were busy patching up the broken spine of a collectable volume she’d acquired, and the other shop hand, Alma Merriweather, was off sweeping and humming industriously in the store room, Charlie was doing his part by being perfectly decorative on the counter with a parcel of the shop’s secret inventory open on his lap. While the vast majority of their books were good and proper, Charlie had a preference for the fun ones.

“This is dreadful.” Charlie squinted at the page in confusion. “I don’t think he could get to the other bloke’s cock quite like that from the position he’s standing in...” He turned the book at an angle like the action might tip all the characters into a more sensible configuration. “I’m not convinced the third chap could, either...”

“I didn’t promise you fine literature,” Jo snapped. “Now, quit bitching about the mechanics of fictional fornication so I can focus.”

He went silent, but she could feel him watching her until she’d put the cap back on the glue pot and settled the book safely to the side to dry.

“You’re awfully cheery today,” he said when she returned. “Any particular reason?”

Jo put her elbows on the counter and rubbed her hands down her face. “The Beast and his lady friend are having a baby.”

Charlie did not say anything for long enough that Jo glanced up. She’d expected commiseration, but probably shouldn’t have. Seeing as Charlie had once convinced himself that he wanted seven of the little buggers, he wasn’t properly distraught at all. In fact, he looked cautiously excited.

“That sounds delightful, Joey. But perhaps also...complicated?” he added, clearly reading and adjusting to the scowl she gave his enthusiasm. “The Beast is not, um, what I meant to say is, this doesn’t mean he’s going to...”

He broke off. Positive to a fault, giving voice to unfortunate possibilities seemed beyond Charlie’s capability.

“As far as I know, he’s not dragging me to court for a divorce on account of my being a deserter, a cross-dresser, and a seducer of innocent lasses, so I suppose it could be a lot worse.” She put her head back in her hands, thinking about what a fool she’d made of herself during the initial conversation. She hadn’t even congratulated them properly. Paul, her best friend, her companion for life, and she hadn’t congratulated him. “Could be a lot better too, though.”

“How so?”

“Well, aside from being a bit of an arse about the whole thing, it might also have been better if I hadn’t insinuated to his lover that I have midwifery expertise to help her through the sodding pregnancy.”

She couldn’t bear to look at Charlie after admitting it, but she didn’t have to. He hopped off the counter and came around to face her, his own elbows just outside of hers and his dark eyes so wide she could bloody hear them gawking at her even with her own squeezed shut.

“Joey!” he hissed. “You did what, exactly?”

“Well, I didn’t want to be useless, did I?” Her voice came in a squeaky, desperate sort of whisper as she finally looked up to where Charlie had gone very conspiratorial, clearly on the verge of a spectacular burst of laughter. “He don’t want to get rid of me yet, but she will eventually, once she shakes the baby dust out of her eyes and realizes it’s nothing but me standing between her and a lot more stability for that child of hers. What if she convinces him to get the divorce?”

“Aren’t you two Catholic? Can he even do that?”

“This is England. What’s the court care whether the Catholic church approves the split? It’s the courts that matter, and I won’t do well in court, mate. I haven’t managed anything approaching a marital duty in a decade, and while adultery’s not cut-and-dried when it’s two women, a good lawyer could convince the wrong judge that I’ve broken my vows in that capacity, among other things...” Things she’d done to avoid being in Vanessa’s situation, church and crown be damned right along with her. “I’m not exactly a sympathetic creature if I wind up on the stand.”

Charlie mulled that over. “It’s not jailable, is it? Anything you’ve done?”

“Some is, some isn’t,” she admitted, “though what is probably can’t be proven.”

“And you get to keep what’s yours in the event, don’t you? They passed a law to that effect a few years ago, didn’t they?”

“Technically, yes,” said Jo. “Lot of good it would do me, though. I had nothing to my name when I married him save for two dresses and an old recipe book I’ve lost, and we never bothered keeping our money separated. If he turns on me, it will be with exactly as much of our assets as he wants. Or she wants. See why I had to get into her good graces?”

Charlie thumped his hand down on the smut he’d been reading. Paul’s smut. “Let’s say it came to that. You really think he’ll do much better in court than you will? Given this?”

“I’d sooner die than simper and swoon and pretend it’s him that dragged me into his filth to save my own skin,” she snapped, shuddering at the very thought of the things she’d have to say and the fate he’d suffer for it. If such a degrading ploy even worked. “I’m not a bloody rat.”

“Is he a bloody rat?”

She sighed, considering it honestly. “No.”

“Then why are you so worried?”

It seemed a reasonable question, but the anxious gnawing in Jo’s belly thought otherwise. She was worried because she had to be. Because she’d been out on her arse before, and avoiding it happening again was more important than she could articulate.

“All I’m saying is that she and the child are suffering for the lack of a proper marriage already,” she said, settling for a response that sounded as rational as the question. “She’s too scandalous to get a doctor equal to the sickness she’s suffering, and I’m the one standing in the way. I need to make sure I look like a help to her, rather than an obstacle.”

“Here’s a wild idea: why not help by finding a doctor, instead of pretending to be a midwife?”

“Where exactly am I supposed to find a doctor?”

Even as she said it, it came to her, and she knew the answer to that. Charlie did too, smiling at her through the realization.

“Feel like coming along to The Curious Fox with me tonight?” he asked.

Unlike Jo, their friend Noah Clarke only donned a full set of the wrong sex’s clothes when he did drag on the weekends. Still, he was not exactly inconspicuous even on a ho-hum workday such as this, in pearl earrings, hair too long to be even called rakish, and an intricate shawl draped over the shoulders of his jacket. Jo and Charlie found him sitting by himself at his usual table at The Curious Fox, playing solitaire and sipping such an ominous and absinthe-tinged drink that he looked more like an oracle reading the contents of his crystal glass than a slightly chilly tailor relaxing in his lover’s gentleman’s club after a long day.

“Here for a game?” Noah said as they joined him.

“Can’t afford it,” Jo said. “Last time I played you I went hungry.”

Noah smiled wickedly at his cards as he went on placing them in the spread upon the table. He winked when Jo caught him slip a bad card to the bottom of the deck. Apparently, he settled the odds in his favor even when he played himself.

“Jo has a question for you,” said Charlie, determinedly clapping her on the shoulder. Clearly, he wouldn’t let Jo back out of correcting her little midwife misstep. “About your father.”

Noah’s eyes snapped up from his cards, wary. It was rare to discuss families at the club. “What about him?”

Jo glanced around before she went on. While the owner was careful about who he let in, extra caution never hurt before saying something that could trace a bloke back to his life outside a club like this. But while Jo only came here occasionally (and lacked the appetite for what went on in the backrooms and private parlors of the place) she was acquainted with every bloke here tonight, and none of them was paying their table the slightest mind.

Still, she leaned in and spoke quietly. “He’s a doctor, isn’t he? And a radical one at that?”

“Radical might be taking it a bit far, but it’s true enough in the important ways,” Noah said slowly. “Why do you ask?”

Jo started in, but Charlie spoke first:

“Because Jo needs a very open-minded obstetrician and was wondering—”

Noah clutched his shawl to his chest and shattered the mellow clinking and chattering of the parlor with a flat-out scream.

“Joey’s pregnant? Can that even happen?”

One might think that such a dramatic declaration would get a reaction, but the Fox’s regulars were used to outbursts from Noah; they went right on with their own business. The only person who looked interested was the club owner, David Forester, whose gossip-loving head whipped up from the glass he was wiping so fast he seemed in danger of spraining something.

“Not for me, you idiot!” Jo clarified desperately as Charlie chuckled not-so-innocently and Noah scrabbled for the comfort of David’s arm, the latter having materialized at the tableside with his eyes wide and his ears open. “It’s for The Beast’s girlfriend.”

“Your husband’s girlfriend,” Noah said, coming down from the shock.

“Yes.”

“Not you,” said David.

“Fuck no.”

“We’ve got to keep the girlfriend happy, you see,” said Charlie. “So that she doesn’t try to talk him into the divorce that would let them be a perfect little family without a stray sapphist in the attic, making things complicated. And also so she will let me hold her baby when it arrives.”

Jo shouldered him roughly. “What the devil do you know about holding babies?”

“I’m an uncle several times over, and a very good one at that. Do you really think my family would even be speaking to me if it weren’t for the children? They rioted in the streets when I was disinvited from Christmas.” He waved a hand around the club, as if indicating the myriad reasons the disinvitation might have happened. “In fact, forget being a good uncle. I’m willing to bet that by this point, even my maternal instincts are better than yours.”

“Bet?” Noah ran a finger along his stack of cards, making them snap against each other as he eyed Charlie. “How much?”

“It’s just an expression; I’m not betting against you.”

“Hmm.” Noah went on snapping his cards, moping a little in David’s direction.

David planted a kiss on the top of Noah’s head, then turned his attention back on Jo. “So your husband is expecting a baby with this woman. And she needs a doctor, am I understanding the situation correctly?”

“About right, yes.”

“And you’re the one to find a doctor because...?”

“Because she implied she’s useful in matters of midwifery,” said Charlie. “Which, as you can probably guess, was a bit of stretch.”

They all looked at Jo in horror until she huffed, “I’m trying to be useful now, ain’t I? Securing the doctor and all that?”

“While the social dynamics wouldn’t scare him off, I doubt the actual work of it would suit my father’s practice,” said Noah, returning to his solitaire game. “He’s a surgeon, mostly, and nearing retirement. He doesn’t come into town very often these days. However...”

He glanced over his shoulder at David, the two of them having the same sort of silent conversation as Jo could with Paul.

“However what?” Jo snapped, unable to take the suspense.

“His father probably won’t,” said David. “But his sister might.”

“Sister?”

“She’s a doctor as well,” David went on. “A very good one.”

“She’s also a real piece of work,” Noah muttered to the next card he drew, one which was promptly stuck back into the middle of the deck. “But if you’re looking for a physician and not a drinking buddy, she might be a good fit. I could arrange an introduction.”

Jo mulled over that unexpected possibility. A female doctor? She’d never encountered one of those before. “She’ll work with someone in such a scandalous situation? And can she be discreet?”

“I think she can.”

“Is she some kind of social reformer? Given the press we run on Holywell Street, I’ve gotten a pretty wide variety of responses from those sorts.”

“To be honest, I would strongly suggest that you leave Holywell out of it, if at all possible, but as for the rest, it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s what most female doctors do—charitable medicine for other women. That said, I cannot ever promise a particular response from Emily. While I theoretically understand her habits and values, the fact is, she’s got—”

“A mind of her own,” provided David.

“I was going to say a stick up her arse, but that works too.” Noah seemed to catch Jo’s skeptical look, because he patted her reassuringly on the shoulder. “But she is a very good doctor. There’s no denying that.”

“And who knows?” said David, his bearded face going a little dreamy and pleasant. “Maybe you’ll surprise us. I’ve seen stranger sets of people get along swimmingly.”

He winked, and Jo found herself intrigued in spite of herself. “Oh,” she said. “Then is she...?”

“Well, she hasn’t said anything, but you don’t exactly have to be a genius to notice—”

Noah swatted gently but scoldingly at David’s arm. “Keep your matchmaking to the club, amore.”

“Jo’s a member. I can set her up if she wants.”

“Wants?” said Jo. “I never said I wanted—”

Noah went on as if she’d said nothing: “Not with my bloody sister, you can’t.”

David, who had dedicated his life to enabling lovers, looked perplexed. “They’re both lonely, and it’s not even illegal. I don’t see the problem.”

Jo jolted at the words. “I’m not lonely—”

No one seemed too troubled by her resistance, Noah barreling right over her to go on scolding David:

“It’s untoward in the extreme,” he said.

“I don’t mean any harm by it. Emily’s like a sister to me too. I’d like to see her happy.”

“It’s not untoward in regard to Emily,” said Noah, rolling his eyes. “It’s Jo I’m worried about.”

David shrugged, looking Jo over with an appraising eye. “I don’t know, beautiful. Something tells me they’ll get along better than you think.”

“Dio mio, are you drunk?”

“I am not drunk,” said David, clearly offended.

Noah turned back to Jo. “Looks like he needs a drink, then. A strong one. And frankly, Davy, so does Mr. Brady.” He gestured to the bar, where a chap was waiting on David to return to his duties. As David reluctantly gave his lover a kiss and returned to his post, Noah went on. “I’ll write Emily in the morning and get your friend set with an appointment. Meanwhile, ignore Davy, will you? The stress of these laws is getting to him, I think.”

Back in August, Parliament had snuck chilling new restrictions into what should have been a reasonable reform. As raids becoming easier loomed on the press’s horizon, so too did the vague notion of “gross indecency” bring dread to the blokes at this club, with David set to take on more risk to himself than ever before.

“There hasn’t been any legal trouble, has there?” Charlie asked.

Noah shook his head. “Everything’s been alright in that regard, actually. But only because of the work he’s put in. It’s a lot of pressure, you know, and his nerves...” He broke off, transmuting his grimace for a grin. “Let’s just say there’s been a little less sleeping and lot more talk of matchmaking and pretty decorations. Don’t worry yourself about it.”

Jo shrugged and laughed, though there was still a grim turn to Noah’s mouth that proved his levity was false. Stress levels were indeed high at the moment. For all of them.

“Look, mate,” she said bracingly, “if dreaming up matches makes him feel better, let him have it. It’s not like he’s going to get to me. Last thing I need is an affair with a bloody bluestocking.” She couldn’t help but laugh. “God, can you even imagine?”

Noah lifted his greenish glass to that sentiment as he and Charlie laughed.

“Fair enough,” he said. Then squinted for a moment, and with the sort of friendly, thoughtless indecency that characterized this place, he reached out and tapped the loose button on Jo’s waistcoat. “Remind me later, I’ll tighten this up before we leave.”

Jo clamped her jaw shut to keep from groaning with irritation. With all the distraction, not only had she given up on finding Gran’s book, but she’d never gotten around to tightening that damned button up at all.