Chapter 19
Nineteen
Agnes’s solemn loneliness dragged her back to the dark memories of her childhood. To the day she had run away. To the day she had stood outside the gates of Columba of Sens’ Children’s Home, hands on the slick iron bars, drowning in the heavy rain.
Her mother had declared that she was old enough to bring in her own coin and this was her last chance with a man. Agnes could either give him what he had paid for, or she wouldn’t eat. But Agnes slashed his face with her fingernails and bolted out of the room in Whitechapel.
All she had cared about was speed, not direction.
Yet somehow, she ended up here. Agnes would take the long path home from school—when she had attended school—just to walk by the orphanage’s gates, even praying in the small chapel on occasion.
But as the torment of her life continued, she had lost her faith.
Standing there, she stared at the statue of the saint, silently begging for help.
The woman carved in white stone had always captivated her.
The statue, green from the constant moisture of the tepid fountains and London fog, had summoned her here, she was sure.
The woman with flowing sleeves rested one hand atop a bear’s head, and in her other hand, she held a book with a large feather stuck between the pages.
Chains hung around her stone wrists, but instead of appearing vulnerable in her imprisonment, she appeared resistant.
A ghostly figure limped from the orphanage’s main door, hunched over in a gray coat and a flat cap pulled over his eyes. “Hold your horses, hold your horses. Wasn’t expecting nobody in this type of weather. All the girls are already inside getting dry.”
Did he know she was an unexpected visitor?
No one here knew who she was, but it wasn’t as if she had anywhere else to be.
There was nowhere to go. While Agnes waited for him to creep to the gate, her gaze returned to the statue.
She almost began her silent supplications again, but she stopped herself.
She was young, not stupid. No statue could protect her.
When the man finally opened the gate, she realized he wasn’t ghostly at all. Just silver from age, pale from the absence of sun, and slow-moving due to bad joints. “Come inside, dear.”
The term of endearment petrified her, but upon taking in the man’s kind eyes, her shoulders relaxed. No one had ever called her dear, except for the lecherous men who thought if they used sweet words, it would soften the girl for whose company they had paid. It never did.
Agnes had never wanted to be a fighter. She preferred peace.
She craved serenity. But she also wanted to survive, and she would do what she had to do to make her life different from her mother’s.
Mother’s life would lead to her own demise, whether it shortened her years or broke away pieces of her until nothing was left.
Shivering and dripping onto the floor, Agnes followed the slouched man into the foyer of the orphanage.
She had left her moth-eaten cloak in Whitechapel, unable to grab it while worried that the man her mother had brought over would give chase.
It had been warm while she ran through the streets of London, but now that she slowed down, the dampness chilled her to the bone.
An old woman with curled white hair, smelling of cinnamon and earth, came out from one of the side rooms. “Oh, goodness. She is freezing. She will catch her death. Quick! Get blankets and sit her by the fire. I have some lemon balm and lavender tea too. We will see what we can do for her.”
That day had been the start of Agnes’s new life. Once she had been warmed by the fire and given tea, soup, blankets, new clothes, and anything the girls could find, Edith took her with her to York. Agnes never saw her mother again.
Edith was a whirlwind of chaos, but a pleasant one. An eccentric by every meaning of the word, Edith loved Agnes fiercely, more so than her own mother ever had.
The old woman planned to teach her every part of her craft, knowledge that had been passed down through generations of cunning women, claiming Agnes to be her protégé.
But Agnes never took to the magic. The power that she was expected to harness was too tumultuous for her liking.
She did not like to wrestle for control.
Plants, on the other hand, didn’t fight back.
They yielded to her whims, offering themselves to her without the struggle.
If Edith was disappointed, she never showed it.
“You’re not quite a witch, Agnes, but you’re still the closest thing I have to a daughter.”
Now, Agnes sat in her apothecary with her hands pressed on her eyelids until the darkness swirled with color.
She missed Edith more than ever. Her absence was always felt, but the pain had dulled, except for today when she wept for the person who had protected her most. The person who she could trust beyond a doubt to never hide secrets from her.
Agnes thought about meeting with Nora and Louisa, but her friends would know something was wrong. They would ask questions. Questions Agnes had no answers for. They would likely blame Mr. Evans, and even though he might have lied to her, Agnes still felt loyal to him. It was preposterous.
Ward knocked on the door and cracked it open at her muffled welcome. She had told him that she was not home for visitors today. God forbid Charles visit to repeat his proposal.
“Are you home to Mr. Evans?”
A few days ago, her heart would have leapt and soared.
She would have hoped for another chance to kiss him.
Now, she wished that she had the strength to argue with him.
To demand the answers he had kept from her.
To tell her what she needed to know to make sense of the entire situation and spare her from the nauseating uncertainty her life had become.
But she couldn’t muster anything while consumed by her own doubt. Nothing seemed real anymore, not when she didn’t know who to trust. And to think there had been a time in her life where all she had wanted was to be left alone in her apothecary. But that was before him.
“Tell him I’m not home.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Harry stood on the doorstep of Agnes’s townhouse, not quite sure what to do with himself.
She had denied his visit, not Ward, but Agnes.
After they had shared that kiss, after she had asked him to kiss her back, she wouldn’t see him.
What if she had come to her senses? She must have been disturbed by Skelton’s proposal, willing to kiss anyone less slimy than the baron. Mortification set in.
He couldn’t go home yet. It would gut him to feel the distance between himself and Agnes grow larger as the train roared over the tracks. He wandered the city without direction, merely staring at the tips of his freshly polished shoes, placing one foot in front of the other.
He eventually found himself outside of the Ye Old Starre, and his stomach grumbled. He hadn’t eaten since morning. He had no appetite, but perhaps the inn would have something sweet to counter the bitterness that currently filled him. The sudden descent from elation to dismay had given him vertigo.
He sat down at a table, surveying the room around him. The rules were more relaxed in York than in London. Men and women sat in each other’s company enjoying their ale and food. A blonde woman with crystal-blue eyes sat down across from him.
“I think I recognize you,” she said with a saucy smile. Harry wasn’t in the mood for a flirtation, but he hated confrontation even more.
“I don’t believe so. I live in London.”
“That’s where I know you from.” She leaned over the table, although Harry was having no difficulty hearing her. “I also live in London. What a fortunate coincidence. I like to visit York for the . . . ambience.”
The barmaid put Harry’s gooseberry pie on the table in front of him.
The woman eyed his plate and looked up at him through her black-painted eyelashes. “You have a bit of a sweet tooth? If you enjoy sugar so much, why aren’t you enjoying life’s sweet pleasures? Don’t be so sour-faced.”
Her lips dropped into a pout, and mischief sparkled in her eyes. Just his luck. He was a man in his mid-thirties, and he had never been the target of flirtation, at least not like this. Of course it would happen as soon as his heart had been shattered by the slamming of Agnes’s front door.
If Agnes wouldn’t have him, what was stopping him?
He looked up at the beauty with rosy cheeks and a petite nose.
He said the first thing that came to mind.
“What’s your opinion on sugar?” Well, that was terrible.
He didn’t have much practice, and his heart definitely wasn’t in it. She didn’t seem to notice.
“I like a bit of sweetness, but sometimes sweetness is bland without a touch of spice, is it not?”
Heat rose along the back of his neck. He deserved this. While he wasn’t ready to tup this lady in one of the rooms upstairs, maybe she would permit him to call on her in London. That’s what eligible men and women did. He could bring her flowers.
“You’re Mr. Evans, right?” Her hand crept closer to his on the table. When they met, she hooked her finger over his. She plucked the fork out of his hand, stabbed a piece of the pie, and delicately placed it into her mouth.
Her direct gaze was intense and seductive, and Harry could feel the sweat form under his mustache.
His hands weren’t trembling, yet—he had gained more confidence since meeting Agnes—but they would be soon if she kept staring like this.
But he wasn’t excited, nor lustful. He felt more like a rabbit who had heard the sound of leaves crunching under a hunter’s boot.
“I am. Do we have an acquaintance?” It was a surprise that she actually did know him. He studied her face, trying to remember where they had met. The woman licked the gooseberry from the prongs of the fork. Harry gulped.
“I’ve been to your poetry readings at a bookshop. Your poems—they’re rather romantic, even, dare I say, erotic? I find them . . . stimulating.”
He had always been told how much the Evans boys looked alike.
People had often mistaken him and the twins for triplets during his childhood.
It wasn’t until Bert and Benjamin shot up in height around the age of ten that people began to tell Harry apart from them.
Their height came from Papa, while Harry took after his mother’s shorter stature.
Now that he was seated at the table, the woman had not noticed he was nowhere near Bert’s six feet.
“I’m afraid there has been a mistake—”
“You are a romantic, Mr. Evans. I was being shy before. I haven’t seen you just once, but multiple times.” Shy was not how he would describe her.
“But really, I am sorry to say that I am not the Mr. Evans you know. The man you . . . admire is my brother.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “But you look so much alike.” She broke eye contact and dragged her eyes around his face, assessing his features. Her gaze trailed downward over the rest of his body. While other men’s blood might run hot from her scrutiny, Harry shivered.
A catlike smile returned to her face. “So then, what is your profession? Are you also a creative? You must be a playwright? Novelist? Artist?” Her foot grazed his under the table. He jerked in his seat.
“No. I’m an accountant. I . . . I think I must be going. I have morning meetings in London.”
The smile dropped from her face. “No need. I’m on my way out. Finish your pie.” She picked up her reticule and disappeared into the crowd.
He hadn’t even wanted this blonde vixen. If she had made a proposition, he would have rejected it. She was much too robust for him, but it just reminded him of what he already knew. He was forgettable, only recognizable by the connection to his kin.
For a brief moment in time, he had thought Agnes had seen him for the man he was.
He had felt like a man in his own right, at least in her eyes.
He had started to believe there were things he could offer a wife, even if he had no enterprise of his own.
But soon Agnes would forget him, just like everyone else.