She rose and curtseyed to the ladies then listened with lowered eyes to their platitudes of sympathy. She was probably being unkind. Mrs. Willow had lost a husband, so she probably understood.
Oh, Han, why don’t you come? It’s so much more bearable when you are here…
“So kind of you to call on us,” Mama said, as she had so often in the last couple of days.
“How could we not?” said Miss Morton. “Such a terrible thing to happen. We do feel for you so. Of course, my sister suffered the same kind of loss—”
“Not quite, dear,” Mrs. Willow interrupted. “Poor Mr. Willow died of natural causes. I can’t begin to imagine what you are going through, Mrs. St. John, you and your family. So very terrible.”
From the little Bella knew of Mrs. Willow, it was not like to her to allow that anyone, ever, had suffered more than she. Mama looked suitably impressed by the kindness and inclined her head.
“Mr. Willow died at home, of course,” his widow continued. “I had that comfort. And we did not have to deal with the annoyance of the police, or such scandal…”
“There is no scandal,” Mama said with sudden sharpness. “My husband was taken ill suddenly while he was out. I daresay he had no time to seat himself more respectably at afrontdoor!”
“Oh, my dear, the front door would have been worse!” Miss Morton exclaimed.
“I don’t see why,” Bella said, stung. “My father would be no less dead.”
“But everyone would have seen him there,” Mrs. Willow explained, lowering her voice as though it were a secret. “Atthathouse.”
Anthony, looking suddenly alarmed, opened his mouth, but Mama had already spoken.
“What house?”
And that was their moment, Bella realized. This was why they had come.
Mrs. Willow put up a hand to her mouth, as though shielding her words from Bella. “Why, the house of immorality that respectable people should not even have to know about. I cannot begin to imagine how you feel.”
The house of immorality.A whisper among neighbors and servants, a salacious chortle among Anthony’s friends… Bella had very little idea what went on there, but she understood spite when she heard it.
“How is it, Mrs. Willow, that you are so well acquainted with this house?” she demanded, much to Anthony’s clear horror, and her mother’s violent shake of her head. “Wecould not even tell you where it was.”
There was an appalled silence. Miss Morton fidgeted uncomfortably, gazing hard at her gloved hands clasped in her lap. Mrs. Willow’s face grew mottled with ugly red patches.
“Why, because I had cause, only this afternoon, to throw one of the creatures out of my kitchen. Such underhand insolence to get herself invited in by my gullible servants, who were merely being kind, with no idea who she was!”
That might have been true, but it wasn’t the reason Mrs. Willow knew where the house was. She had looked for it.
Perhaps she saw the knowledge in Bella’s face, for her eye twitched at one corner and she delivered her final blow.
“And if you want to know where it is, you need only ask Mr. Cordell. Come, Marguerite. Let us leave this poor family in peace to grieve and reflect.”
Bella barely noticed them depart, though she must have said and done the right things. She came to only with Anthony gripping her shoulder.
“They’re malicious old cats,” he said urgently. “Han would never go to a place like that, and neither would Papa.”
“Anthony is right,” Mama said distantly. “But there was no need to antagonize them, Bella. Now they could tell everyone.”
Bella straightened, staring at her mother’s back as she walked to the door. “Is that really all you care about? That people mightknow?”
“Men have feet of clay, Bella,” Mama said wearily. “It’s as well you know now. Just remember never to notice.”
The door closed behind her.
“I won’t need to, will I?” Bella said. Her voice did not sound real either. “I will never see him again.”
“Oh, don’t be an ass,” Anthony said impatiently. “Don’t condemn a man on the word of those two! Papa may have died on that doorstep for reasons none of us can fathom, but I’m dashed sure he never stepped over the threshold of the house, as they implied. Which means there’s every chance Han did not either. There’s nothing worse in this world than supposedly godly scandal-mongers.”
