Chapter 14 #2
The woman’s bleary gaze sharpened on Caroline’s face with something like hope. “The flat on the corner,” she said, inclining her head to the ground-level door opposite where they stood. “You’re lucky. She’s usually out this time o’ day. But no one’s getting custom in this weather.”
Caroline thanked her and crossed the square.
Her heart throbbed harder with every step. Her mouth filled with a metallic tang. All her focus had been on finding Mary Jane; she had given no thought to what she would say, how she would convince the other woman to trust her.
There was a window to the right of the threshold, but a blanket had been thrown over it in lieu of a curtain and gave Caroline no glimpse into the flat.
In the bottommost pane the glass had been shattered, a bundle of rags shoved through the fist-size hole.
Caroline stared at it for a long moment.
Someone could easily push the rags aside, reach in, and unlock the door.
She glanced over her shoulder, imagining the court at night—the darkness would be thick as tar, the steps from Mary Jane’s flat to Dorset Street taken like a blind man: hands thrown out, sightless eyes wide.
And the return, after unthinkable commerce, to this flat on the ground floor, the only thing standing between her body and the night a bundle of rags.
Caroline had been frightened in her garret room, with the dead bolt drawn and the chair before the door. She could not imagine what it would be like to sleep here.
Her hand looked strange against the wood of the door: a soft, pale thing that did not belong. But she raised it anyway and knocked.
Furtive movements in the flat beyond. Footsteps. The blanket over the window twitched. A glimpse of wide blue eyes, like earrings in a gutter. Then the door opened.
“Who’re you?”
Mary Jane was a head taller than Caroline, and as lovely as Charlie’s sketches.
Her cheeks were sloping and feline, her face a perfect heart.
But now the black lines of ink were made flesh, Caroline saw the toll life had taken on her beauty.
The whites of her eyes were shot through with red; fine, premature lines bracketed her mouth.
“I’m…” Caroline swallowed. Her mouth had gone very dry. “My name is Caroline Foster.” At the surname, her true surname, Mary Jane took a half step back. “May I come in?”
—
Caroline sipped the lukewarm liquid and swallowed a grimace.
It was dusty, bitter stuff, the leaves from a battered tin over the stove, the water itself tasting of rust. At first, she had declined the offer of tea, but Mary Jane had insisted.
It was important to her, Caroline realized, this pretense of normalcy.
So she had accepted, taken a seat at the little chipboard table, and watched uncomfortably as the other woman played hostess.
The flat was no more than five paces across, a single room containing a bed, an iron stove, and this table with its two chairs.
It was frightfully neat, though, the brick floor freshly swept, the whitewashed walls hung proudly with cheap engravings framed in wood.
Beneath the broken window, three blankets were neatly rolled, with shabby pillows atop each.
Caroline made a mental note to ask to whom they belonged.
“I’m sorry I’ve no cream,” Mary Jane said for the second time, sitting in the mismatched chair across from her. “Nor sugar. There’s a bit of molasses, I think—”
“I prefer it black,” Caroline lied, taking another sip. She mustered a smile. “I’m so sorry to barge in on you like this, Miss…”
“Kelly. Mary Jane Kelly.”
Caroline was sorry. It was dreadfully intimate, this room, the neatly made bed mere feet from where they sat. Her father’s horses had slept in larger quarters than this.
“Not at all.” Mary Jane took a big swig of tea, and Caroline had the distinct sensation that she wished it were something stronger. “So. I finally get to meet the famous Caroline Foster.”
Caroline blinked. “You know about me?”
Based on the incurious reception she had received at the Full Moon—other than from Rab, of course—Caroline had guessed Charlie had kept her a secret as completely as she had kept him.
Mary Jane blinked wide, guileless eyes. “Of course! Charlie spoke of you all the time. Caroline this, my sister that.” She laughed, a silvery peal.
“I was jealous at first. Told him I wouldn’t play second fiddle to the other lady in his life.
But he wouldn’t stop, told me all the stories of the two of you getting into mischief, and soon enough I was laughing with him.
Charlie is like that, isn’t he? He brings you into his world. ”
Caroline didn’t trust herself to speak. With her, Charlie had shared almost no details of his life. But this woman—this prostitute—knew all about Caroline.
“He must have spoken of me, too?” Mary Jane asked. A childish question, but her features had sharpened with hope.
Caroline felt her cheeks redden. “He told me very little of his life in London,” she said honestly. “But I know that he…cared very deeply for you.”
She saw, now, in Charlie’s portraits, what her jealousy had blinded her to: Mary Jane in profile, Mary Jane looking directly at the viewer, Mary Jane with her face upturned to the sky. Her brother loved this woman.
“Miss Kelly,” Caroline asked, swallowing her envy like a fishhook. “Do you have any idea where my brother is?”
Mary Jane’s blue gaze met hers, and by the sinking sensation in her belly Caroline knew the answer. “I haven’t heard from him in months,” Mary Jane said miserably. “I hoped you might know something. I hoped that was why you came.”
Caroline stared down at the bitter black liquid in her cup. “And the boardinghouse?” she heard herself ask. “The Full Moon Society?”
Mary Jane’s face mirrored Caroline’s own miserable disappointment. “What of it?”
“Have you…Did Charlie tell you anything about it? About what…what goes on there?”
Mary Jane shrugged. “It’s a men’s boardinghouse. A respectable one, I’m sure—”
“Did he say anything about the suppers that occur there, on the night of the full moon?” Caroline interrupted. “Anything at all about strange rites or illegal activities? Anything about the other guests?”
Mary Jane pursed her pink lips, wrapped both hands around her chipped mug. Something gold glinted, and Caroline heard her own gasp.
“His ring,” she breathed. “You’re wearing his ring.”
It was the twin of the one around her neck. Charlie’s signet ring, bearing the Blevins family crest.
Mary Jane fisted her fingers reflexively. “He gave it to me,” she said. “I didn’t take it. I swear.”
But it was more than the ring itself, the metal Caroline had seen countless times on her brother’s littlest finger.
“You’re wearing it like an engagement ring.”
Tears spilled from Mary Jane’s eyes. “Aye,” she managed, “we were to be married.”
Rage burned through Caroline, hot and cleansing.
One day, Charlie had said to her, if neither of us marries, after Father dies, we can live here together.
But he had left her. He had left her alone in Stafford, like a bird in a cage. He had fallen in love. Of all the ladies in London, this miserable creature, this prostitute, in her tiny flat, with her bitter tea and her chipped mugs, was to be her brother’s wife?
But she knew that it was true. Charlie had given this woman his ring, the very object that had convinced Caroline of his true identity when they had first met, when he had asked his sister to trust him. And despite all he had kept from her, she still did.
So Caroline said, “Please, Miss Kelly. Tell me everything.”