“You are now a married woman. Tell me of your husband. He seems quite a common chap. I understand that he is from the streets, a surprise when I first learned of it in consideration of your own family.”
Brodie, a common chap? By whose measure, I thought, irritated by that.
“Not at all common,” I replied. “We share many of the same interests. He is most resourceful, and kind,” I added, a word I would not have thought of before. “He is most excellent at the things he cares about.”
“And you admire that about him.”
“Of course.”
“Of course,” he repeated with a thoughtful expression.
I chose to change the conversation.
“Where are you off to next?” I asked. “Or will you remain in London for a while?” I recalled that conversation I had overheard with Sir Robert about attending Parliament when next they met.
“I will be in London for a while. There are… matters to be seen to.”
His father’s estate I presumed, with his absence for several years.
“And you will be attending Parliament,” I added.
“Yes, Sir Robert was kind enough to secure an invitation for me. The workings of the government are… most interesting.”
The visit had been pleasant but I couldn’t help but sense an undertone of some kind with those questions about Brodie andmyself, his comments about the officers being sent off, as he put it, for the wealth and power of others.
I thanked him and stood to leave. He stood as well and took my hand.
“The world is changing, my dear. We will need those such as yourself and your husband for what is to come. There are those who rule the world, and those who choose to change it.” He smiled then. “I do hope you are not offended by my thoughts.”
“Not at all,” I assured him, with the clear sense that this was not the man I had known from our travels; someone who was self-assured and as adventuresome as I was.
Sir James was not at all the man I remembered.
I returned to the townhouse. Brodie had called earlier and received my message.
It seemed that he was then off to follow information he had after his meeting with Mr. Brimley. And it further seemed that I was on my own for the evening and very possibly the entire night. Not that I didn’t have something to occupy the time.
There was Dr. Bennett’s book, the notes he had been compiling for his second book— his way of standing up against the Society of Medicine that he would sadly never be able to do now. There was the stack of daily newspapers from the last several days, and my own notes from our inquiry, including our meeting with Sir Reginald.
I let Mrs. Ryan know that there would be just one for supper.
I could have said that I had grown accustomed to working on my own, long evenings with Brodie off in one direction, myself off in another. In the past I had thought nothing of it, nor the evenings that often lengthened into the entire night…
Something had very definitely changed in that regard.
I realized that I very much liked his company, even when there was no conversation. The routine of an evening as he added coal to the fire at the office on the Strand, poured a cup of coffee or a dram of whisky for each of us, then listened as I rambled on about one thing or another, usually involving our latest case.
“Add it to yer notes on the board…”he would then say, when hardly more than two years before he would have grumbled that he couldn’t make sense of my “scratchings” as he called them.
How was it that I had become accustomed to those grumblings, even looked forward to them? I smiled to myself.
According to my sister it was rare for a man to want to know what a woman was thinking, much less be concerned about it.
I knew from my own experience— that being the only version of marriage I believe existed and the reason I had previously avoided it— that she was right. It was simply that I had never thought I would encounter such.
I stared at the small medallion that I always wore, that gift from a man who valued my opinions, arguments, stubbornness, and realized that for the first time in my life, I missed someone. I missed Brodie.
Enough, I told myself, tucking the medallion back inside the neck of my gown. I had more than enough to do, and perhaps, just maybe I would find… something that would tell us what was to happen on the eighteenth of December.
