“I like it,” David said unexpectedly. “It’s part of your life now, yours and hers. I’m glad to see you so…comfortabletogether.”
Sipping their port, they lapsed into silence. Then David said abruptly, “I thought I might go back to sea.”
Immediately, as though a switch had been thrown, Solomon felt the stab of loss. But he had almost expected it. David, clearly, had itchy feet. He wasn’t used to staying in one place.
“We’ll miss you,” Solomon said. Then, recognizing that for the evasion it was, he added in a rush, “Iwill miss you. You won’t vanish again, will you?”
A smile flickered. “No. No, I won’t do that.”
“When will you go?” It felt as if David were already on his way out the door.
“Oh, I don’t know. I was just thinking about it.”
“Do you ever think about going back to Jamaica?”
“No,” David said. “Do you?”
“It crosses my mind. Less so recently. I suppose I have roots here now.”
David met his gaze. “They are good roots,” he said earnestly.
The trouble was, they weren’t David’s.
*
In the drawingroom, Juliet stretched her legs out comfortably, and Constance pushed a footstool beneath her feet.
“You’re a good girl, Connie,” her mother said. “And that was a dashed fine meal. Note my moderate language.”
“I do, and it was. In just a little, I want Bibby to come and assist our cook here, to learn more from her. Frees up another place at the establishment.”
Juliet eyed her. “I told himself once you would leave the establishment to be with him. But you won’t, will you?”
“He doesn’t even want me to anymore. He is trying a different tack—trying to make me and the establishment respectable. We get very generous charitable donations now, you know.”
“Clever,” Juliet drawled, “but they’ll throw away the key if they sniff one hint of embezzlement.”
“There is none. I’m very careful to keep the donations very separate.”
“From the immoral earnings? Can’t you give up that part altogether? It’ll never be respectable, Constance, and he deserves that.”
“I know what he deserves,” Constance said, turning away, “and it isn’t me. However, it’s me he wants and has to live with.”
“You’ve given lots of people a chance, Connie, a good chance. It’s time to step away. Be his wife, not a madam or an investigator.”
“I intend to be all three. And really, Juliet, are you in any position to lecture me?”
“No. I suppose I forfeited that a long time ago. But I’m pulling myself back up, Con, and I don’t want you to lose the chances you’ve won.”
Constance hadn’t been going to bring it up, but she did, partly in retaliation, partly because she was curious to know the sides of her mother that Juliet had always kept hidden. “You fell a long way, didn’t you?”
Juliet was silent. Then, “I never wanted that life for you.”
Constance waved her arm, encompassing the whole house. “And I don’t have it, so you were successful. I earned all this—but it’s what you fell from, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be daft.” Juliet’s Cockney accent was more pronounced now.
“You could read and write.”
