Through the door come two women who, even on a crowded London street, could not be easily ignored.
Mrs. Matilda Cunningham, the woman I wrote to on Annabelle’s behalf, is at first glance a singularpersonage. She wears spectacles and has loose brown curls pinned up under a round hat. Her complexion is a few shades darker than Henry’s and her dress is neat but quite worn. She carries a weather-beaten leather reticule. She has an air of abstraction to her, as if she is trying to figure out something in her head that has nothing to do with the situation at hand. And in addition to all of that, she is very pretty—with a high forehead and cheekbones and unusual gray eyes.
And then there is the woman that Annabelle called Evie.
For one, she is bareheaded. She holds her drawn bonnet in her hand, and her hair, almost jet, floats down to her shoulders. I have the distinct impression that she has let it out of its pins just for the pleasure of it—that alone makes her appearance scandalous. Her face is not as pretty as her friend’s, but she is in her own way just as striking. Her pale skin creates a contrast with her very dark brows and long hair. She has an intensity to her, a sense of shrewd quickness in complete opposition to Mrs. Cunningham’s philosophical abstraction. Her eyes alight on me and Henry as if she is calculating our worth from our pin-sticks to our shoes.
And where Mrs. Cunningham has a full, well-proportioned figure, Miss Colley is thin, at complete odds with the current fashionable physique.
“I’ll be hanged! Two gentlemen at once, Annabelle,” exclaims Miss Colley, winking at her friend. “Aren’t you greedy. I knew you could not have married a man who didn’t go in for a bit of fun.”
Her speech is coarse, there is no doubting it, and her accent isn’t much better.
“I hate to disappoint a lady,” retorts Henry before anyone else in the room can respond. “But I am merely a humble well-wisher to the connubial bliss before us.”
“I’m not a lady,” Miss Colley says with a quick, sly smile. Her accent is interesting—her speech has a soft cockney lilt as if a much rougher accent has been filed down from its original state. “And that is what a gentleman in your positionwouldsay caught in such a menage, wouldn’t he?”
“Iwouldn’t know, I am sure,” Henry says cooly, although I can see by the flare of his nostrils that he is vexed.
“Oh, butIdo, Mr. Waistcoat,” Miss Colley says, flashing that dagger of a smile once more.
I stifle a laugh. Henrydoesfancy a flashy waistcoat—the brocade on the one he wears at present is very fine indeed.
“Evie,” chides Mrs. Cunningham. “You mustn’t be impolite. And you know he isn’t the lover of Annabelle and her new husband. For one, he is wearing all of his clothes.”
Apparently, Mrs. Cunningham is also quite plainspoken.
“Well, I wish he weren’t,” Miss Colley says. “But something tells me that he is too high for the likes of me.”
Henry’s eyes are riveted on Evie. And she is staring right back at him.
Then he looks away. It appears to cost him some effort.
“Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. de Lacey,” Henry says, tipping his hat, now back on his head, at Annabelle. I have to give him credit. I thought him discomposed—but his voice is its usual smooth silk. “I will call again. And while I regret, Alfred, that you will no longer be part of our little club, I am glad to see that you are happy.”
He sweeps out, leaving only the ladies.
“You two scared away Mr. Bertram,” Annabelle says with a smile. Despite the détente she struck with Henry, she does not seem upset to see him go.
And neither am I, truth be told. Henry will come back, and I would rather meet Annabelle’s friendsalone.
“Mr. Bertram? The MP? I didn’t realize you consorted with toffs, Annabelle,” Miss Colley says, turning to the hall mirror and running a hand through her hair. She moves around the space soundlessly, as if she is deeply familiar with it—or casing it for a robbery. “Besides being one yourself of course.”
“I don’t unless I can help it. All the same, I won’t have you selling any tattle, Evie, about his presence here,” Annabelle says, her voice stern now.
Mrs. Cunningham gasps. “Evie wouldn’t do that, Annabelle! Not to you.”
Evie gives a wry laugh. “At leastoneof my friends values me as I deserve.”
“I know you would never expose me in that way, Evie. But you needn’t mention my name to do so to Mr. Bertram.”
She gives a huff. “Very well, I will protect his honor as if it were my own.”
“Stop, Evie,” Annabelle says. “I am being serious.”
Evie addresses me for the first time.
“She knows my honor is a threadbare little thing.”
