Chapter 21
The dinner party to celebrate our return to London was supposed to be an intimate affair, but it seemed India and Matt’s closest friends wanted to hear all about our travels, too.
Matt’s elderly aunt, Miss Glass, joined us, as did Willie and her husband, Jasper Brockwell, Cyclops and his wife Catherine, and Lord Farnsworth, who was quite possibly the oddest man I’d ever met.
He could be empty-headed yet sometimes say the most insightful things.
He somehow managed to be both after listening to Oscar and me tell the tale of the Scala family, the murder, scandal, and the resulting adoption of Emiliano by Pietro Scala.
“What a wonderful lesson,” he declared with a salute of his wine glass.
“Family is important. Shared blood is a shared bond, and all that.”
“You loathe your family,” Willie pointed out.
“I didn’t say we had to like our family, just respect where we come from, our lineage, as it were.”
“Why don’t you like your family?” Oscar asked.
“They’re dreadful snobs. They’re always hounding me to marry a lady of good breeding.” He made a face. “If I had to spend the rest of my life married to one person, I’d rather it be Willie. She’s jolly amusing.”
“True,” Willie said. “I am.”
D.I. Brockwell leaned forward to peer past his wife at Farnsworth. “She’s already married.”
“Oh yes. I quite forgot. Sorry, old chap.” He sipped his wine and signaled for the butler to pour more. “Miss Glass, you look a little peaky. Is everything all right?”
She stared down at her plate, knife and fork clutched firmly in her birdlike hands.
“Aunt Letitia?” Matt prompted.
She looked up. “Yes, Matthew?”
“Are you all right?”
“Quite all right. India, I’d like to invite a friend over for afternoon tea tomorrow.”
“Of course, but you don’t need my permission,” India said.
“I want you to invite Beatrice and Charity, too. I’m not sure they’d come if I asked, but for you, they will.”
India blinked. “Is there a particular reason for this afternoon tea?”
“As Lord Farnsworth said, family is important. Although Charity is touched in the head, she is still my niece, and I ought to help her since she’ll never secure a husband. Her madness comes from Beatrice’s side, you know. We Glasses are quite normal.”
Willie wiped gravy from the corner of her mouth with her thumb. “Charity doesn’t just have a screw loose. She’s got a cruel streak.” Her gaze flicked to Cyclops then back to Miss Glass. “You don’t owe her any favors, Letty.”
“Even so, I will ask my friend, Miss Cripps-Brierly, to approve Charity’s application to the Hanover Square Society. She’s on the membership committee. As long as Charity behaves herself at afternoon tea, I’m sure Miss Cripps-Brierly will do me this favor. She’s quite a good friend, you know.”
“I’ve never heard you mention her,” Matt said.
“Really? I can’t think why. I talk about her all the time. Indeed, she was here only yesterday.” She frowned. “Perhaps it was the day before. So, Mr. Barratt, have you written any interesting articles for that newspaper you work for?”
While everyone else exchanged worried glances about Miss Glass’s mistakes and lapses of memory, Oscar told her about our final dinner in Rome.
It didn’t seem to bother her that he’d not answered her question.
She enjoyed his story of the miscommunication with the waiter who was offended when we’d called the restaurant noisy.
Apparently he thought we’d said noioso, which meant boring in Italian.
“We were asked to leave shortly after that,” Oscar finished with a laugh.
The evening ended pleasantly, and I promised to return the following day to meet Matt to discuss potential locations for the library.
Oscar and I left together, and shared a cab.
He was quieter than usual, reflective. I wondered if he was thinking about Miss Wheeler and when he’d see her again, but his next words proved his mind had returned to the dinnertime conversation.
“I was just thinking. Not all families are related by blood.”
“Are you referring to adoptions?” I asked.
“Yes, and friends who become as close as brothers. Take us, for example. I’d much rather spend time with you than Isaac.”
I felt warmed by his kind words. I’d much rather spend time with him than almost anyone, too, but I didn’t say us much. He had a habit of misconstruing my meaning when I was simply being friendly.
“You mustn’t lose touch with him altogether, Oscar.”
“I won’t, for the sake of his children. I want them to grow up knowing me.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“My sister rarely speaks to him anymore, too. It’s a shame.
Little Huon and the baby could benefit from the company of their cousins.
” We passed a tea shop with a light on in the recessed doorway, even though it had closed hours ago.
It was probably on to keep the vagrants away.
“I wish some enterprising Italian migrant would open a coffee house in London like the one we frequented in Milan. I liked that place.”
“So did I, until the anarchist’s bomb went off,” I said.
“That reminds me. Do you really think you saw Rocco there? I know you said you recognized his shoe buckle, but he just doesn’t seem like the sort to be involved in causing anarchy.
He seems more like the fellow he claims to be—a victim of De Angelis’s bullying, forced to spy on his lover or have his nature revealed to the Carabinieri. ”
It was something I’d wondered about since we left Monteoro, and I still couldn’t decide if Rocco was afraid of De Angelis, or was in fact an important cog in the anarchist cell. There was one thing I knew for sure, however. I’d found Rocco compelling. Frighteningly so.
That was another thing I wouldn’t tell Oscar.
I arrived at number sixteen Park Street the following afternoon, just as an elderly woman was leaving.
Instead of waiting for Bristow to close the door of her carriage, she slammed it shut herself.
Bristow managed to contain his surprise to a blink and quickly stepped back onto the curb as the carriage lurched forward.
He invited me inside and directed me to the drawing room where Matt and India both sat along with Miss Glass, the dowager Lady Rycroft, and her daughter, Charity Glass. Charity was the only one who looked happy. Indeed, she sported an air of satisfaction, whereas the rest seemed rather dumbstruck.
Matt rallied when he saw me. “Good afternoon, Professor. Would you mind waiting for me in my study? I need a few moments with my aunts and niece.”
“Yes, of course.” I made my excuses to the ladies then exited the drawing room. Before I could take the stairs up to Matt’s study, Willie stopped me with a low whistle and a crook of her finger. “You just missed all the fun, Prof.”
“You were at the afternoon tea, too?”
She wrinkled her nose. “No. I was out here, eavesdropping. I ain’t spending time with either of those snakes if I don’t have to.
” Her voice was barely above a whisper, but I doubted it would have been heard by anyone in the drawing room even if she spoke at normal volume.
The dowager was scolding her daughter, loudly.
“Go on then, aren’t you going to ask me what happened to send the old crone storming out of here? ”
“It’s none of my business.” I winced as the dowager’s voice rose to a shrill level. It was hard not to miss her telling her daughter how ungrateful she was. I hardly knew Charity, but no daughter deserved a berating like that from her mother.
Matt’s firm, even tone calmed the dowager for a few moments before she started again.
Willie beckoned me down to her level and whispered in my ear. “Miss Cripps-Something-Or-Other from that spinster’s society was just here, and she told them all that Charity’s application wouldn’t be approved, ever.”
I couldn’t help myself. I had to know more. “What did Miss Glass say to that? Miss Letitia Glass, I mean.”
“Nothing. She went into one of her brain fogs and tuned out altogether. But the dowager demanded to know why, so Miss Cripps told her that Charity had drawn pornographic sketches in the margins of her letter to the membership committee.”
“Oh! No wonder she was upset.”
“Not only that. Charity also called the women in the Hanover Square Society dried up, dull old prunes and wrote that she never wanted to be like them. She planned to live a different kind of spinster life.” Willie tapped her chest. “She mentioned me, on account of I had a lot of fun before I was married, if you understand my meaning.”
I was considering how to respond when Willie grabbed my hand and pulled me into a nearby anteroom as the dowager stormed out of the drawing room, dragging her daughter by the wrist.
“I knew I should have vetted that letter before you sent it, you foolish creature! You’re sabotaging your entire future.”
“That’s enough, Aunt Beatrice,” Matt snapped as he followed them..
The dowager made a sound of disgust in her throat, tossed her tightly turbaned head, and strode off.
I ducked back into the anteroom, out of sight, before Matt saw me.
Then I remembered I was supposed to be waiting for him in his office.
Before I could take my leave of Willie, however, she began unbuckling her belt.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
“I want to show you something.”
“I don’t want to see it!”
She gave me a lopsided grin. “Don’t panic. It’s just my tattoo.”
“Oh.” I pushed my glasses up my nose. “The one you got before we left for Italy?”
“I’ve only got the one, Prof.” She hooked her thumb over the waistband of her trousers and lowered them just enough to reveal the tattoo of a small cylinder with a circle attached underneath at one end. “Jasper reckons it looks like a cock and balls in profile.”
I choked but managed to cover it with a cough. “What is it meant to be?”
“My colt.”
“A gun? Oh yes, I see it now. The curve in the cylinder threw me off.”
Willie drew her trousers back up. “The tattooist said his clients are all sailors, so he was more familiar with anchors, mermaids and compasses. S’pose that’s what I get for finding a cheap one.”
I thought any of those three options would have been a better choice than a gun, but I wasn’t going to tell Willie that.
She loved her Colt. It was as much a part of her as her cowboy hat and buckskin trousers.
“Er, thank you for trusting me enough to show it to me, Willie. I won’t tell anyone what it is unless you say so. Not even Oscar.”
She clapped me on the shoulder, quite hard. “Thanks, Prof. I’ve only shown my husband and now you. I knew you wouldn’t be tempted by a flash of my flesh, and it doesn’t matter if Jasper is, of course. Turns out, he likes tattoos.”
I suspected she was teasing me, and taking pleasure in the discomfort such an intimate discussion caused me. Knowing she was teasing didn’t help matters. My discomfort ratcheted up when she winked suggestively.
“I should go,” I said quickly. “Matt will be waiting.”
I hurried out of the room and rushed to the stairs, Willie’s chuckle following me much like Miss Wheeler’s chalk dust.
Matt looked up from his desk when I entered the study. “There you are, Professor. Did Willie waylay you?”
I took the seat he indicated and blew out a measured breath. “She wanted to show me something.”
Matt gave me a crooked smile. Like Oscar, such a smile could turn his face from handsome to extraordinary. He didn’t press me further about Willie, thank goodness. He handed me a sheet of paper with some addresses, each one containing a list of pros and cons for the location of the library.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I took it.
Finally, a topic I felt comfortable discussing.
Just thinking about the library we would one day open suppressed any lingering embarrassment over the exchange with Willie.
I read through the list then smiled at Matt, waiting patiently on the other side of the desk.
“I know Crooked Lane,” I said. “It’s an old and wonderfully atmospheric little street. It would be the perfect place for a library housing books about magic.”
“We agree. India says the library on Crooked Lane has a nice ring to it.”
“Yes. It does. When can we inspect the building?”