Chapter 9 #2
Mr. Jacobs held the Frenchman’s mild hazel eyes for the space of five heartbeats. But he looked away first.
“Shall I…shall I open a window?” Mrs. Easton’s cheeks were red as apples. “It’s awfully stuffy in here, is it not?”
“This heat is nothing.” Pierre Toussaint’s melodic voice bit through the tension in the room like teeth through a peach. “Where I am from, the summers are so hot that we hang wet sheets over the windows and pray for a breeze.”
“That is nothing,” said Mr. Bajwa, bravely taking up the mantle of conversation with a nearly imperceptible smile in Caroline’s direction. “Where I am from, thousands die of heatstroke each summer.”
Mr. Jacobs launched into a tirade against the British Empire in India that would have had Caroline’s father demanding the butler fetch his hat and coat.
But far from causing a rift in the party, the alarming topic pulled all the guests into the conversation.
They broke off in groups of two or three, turning to the men beside and across from them.
Satisfied she was no longer under scrutiny, Caroline lifted her gaze from the tablecloth.
It was an unlikely dinner party. Of the new guests, there were two silver-haired, clean-shaven types in old-fashioned cravats who reminded Caroline of her father’s gambling mates. They sat on either side of John and shouted into the melee, clearly on the side of the empire.
Mr. Jacobs did not so much as glance again at Caroline. But as she topped off his wine and removed his oyster fork, every eye at the table swiveled toward him. Fingers tightened on butter knives; muscles hardened under supper jackets.
Caroline had shrugged off this flavor of unsavory interest before. Her father’s friends, after a few cups of canary, occasionally said something about her marriage prospects, or made an excuse to touch the bare skin of her shoulder. Lord Foster, as far as she knew, had never even noticed.
But these men, strangers though they remained, were ready to defend her. The knowledge glowed like a coal in Caroline’s belly, and as she strode to the sideboard for another wine jug, she held her head high.
A familiar-looking man with a luxurious mustache (of which he was obviously very proud, as he dried it fastidiously with his napkin after each sip of wine) sat between Rab and Monsieur Rodart.
His was the next cup, and Caroline tried to place him as she refilled his glass.
A military man, judging by the rigid line of his spine.
“Mr. Ripley,” asked the mustached man in the accent of the peerage, “what happened to that pale-faced fellow you were always whispering with? I haven’t seen him in months. Not since the two of you nearly broke the table.”
“Aye,” Mr. O’Riley cut in with a laugh. “That was a row, all right. You and Charlie went after each other like a couple of roosters in a Deadwood cockpit. I didn’t know you Brits had it in ya.”
A drop of red wine fell on the white tablecloth. Caroline unobtrusively sopped it up with a tea towel and cursed her trembling hands.
“That’s right,” said the peer. “Charlie. That was his name. The two of you were inseparable. Until you were strangling each other between pitchers of Mrs. Easton’s excellent beurre blanc. What was the disagreement over? A woman?”
“No,” Rab said quietly, “it wasn’t over a woman.”
“You remember those days, guv’nor,” said Mr. O’Riley.
“Chock-full o’ piss and vinegar. Boys that age are liable to fight over anything.
I remember when I was a pup, nineteen or twenny, I put it to this feller I met at a bar down in Silverton.
He didn’t do nuthin’ to me, mind, just looked at me the wrong way.
” Mr. O’Riley chuckled. “He was a lot less pretty by the time I was done with ’im. ”
“Well?” the mustached man pressed, looking around the table, as though Charlie might suddenly appear. “Where is he? As I recall, you bested him in that brawl. Did you run him off?”
Rab shook his head. His brow was cloudy, the sun in his eyes doused. “We made up after that. But then he disappeared.”
The same story he’d told Mary Jane.
“Well, good riddance, I say,” muttered the peer. “Any man who fights his friend over a civilized supper does not deserve the boon of Mrs. Easton’s hospitality.”
Caroline’s knuckles blanched on the handle of the carafe. But she had no excuse to linger. Besides, Mrs. Easton was gesturing to her from the sideboard.
“Come up in thirty minutes to help me serve the cake,” the landlady whispered when Caroline was beside her. “Then go straight upstairs and lock your door.”
“What about the cleanup?”
“It’ll keep till tomorrow.” Her eyes gleamed with sudden sharpness. “Upstairs. And lock your door, Miss Huxley.”
Caroline did as she was told, washing as many pots as she could in half an hour. Then she carried the cake to the dumbwaiter—it seemed to weigh as much as her steamer trunk—and hoisted it up the shaft.
It had taken Mrs. Easton the better part of two days to make the confection.
First the currants steeped in sugar and brandy, then the cakes themselves, fluffy and yellow with egg yolks and lemon zest. Caroline had watched her assemble it in three tiers, slathering thick layers of raspberry jam and whipped cream between layers, and coating the whole thing with buttercream.
Her arms burned by the time she reached the first black mark in the rope, signifying the tray had reached the dining room.
Caroline tied off carefully, shook out her fingers, and trudged up the stairs.
When she emerged again into the blinding light of the dining room’s chandelier, the conversation around the table had reached a fever pitch.
“They know nothing,” Monsieur Rodart was saying. “If they had any leads, the newsboys would be shouting it from every corner!”
“There is a man in custody,” replied the mustached peer beside him in a tone of authority.
“Ah, yes,” Pierre Toussaint sneered from across the table. “The so-called lunatic. If he is the murderer, why has he not been charged? The police have chosen an easy target so they can consider the case closed. They will look terribly foolish if the Whitechapel murderer strikes again.”
The mustached man bristled. But he had no chance to reply.
“I’m not saying it should be legal,” Senhor Perreira shouted at Mr. Tythe, “but the slave owners must be entitled to some compensation.”
“Nothing short of indentured servitude,” black-bearded Mr. Jacobs bellowed over the melee, “here in Britain, with children separated from their mothers, forced to pick oakum from sunup to sundown with naught but skilly to eat—”
It was hot in the room, and the men’s faces were red and slick with sweat. Mrs. Easton hovered among them with the wine pitcher, smiling indulgently, although it was clear to Caroline they’d had enough. Never had she seen a party so uninhibited. Never had she seen a group of men so drunk.
Mrs. Easton said nothing to Caroline as she took the cake from her hands with a grim expression and began to slice it.
A halfhearted cheer sounded round the table as the more sober men spotted the dessert, but many of them, Caroline noted, seemed beyond caring.
She took the first servings to the table and set them down as unobtrusively as possible, pulling her hands back to her sides as though she had just slipped the food between the bars of a cage.