She pinked with pleasure. “That we have, miss. He’s a good man.”
“He is a good man who wouldn’t mind a visit upstairs,” Stoker said, rising from his seat. Elsie directed him to the nearest water closet with careful instructions on the vagaries of the temperamental plumbing. When he had gone, she settled back, regarding him with a fond leer.
“I do love to watch him go,” she said, keeping a practiced eye upon his backside until he was up the stairs. She looked to Eddy, who was slumped in his chair, his fingers slack around his glass, then turned back to me. “You must know that I never saw Mr. Stoker in a professional sense,” she said, suddenly earnest. “He has never laid a finger on me.”
“I know.”
She nodded and refilled my glass. “So long as we’re clear on that. He’s a good lad, innocent as a lamb, and I’d not have him any other way.”
I coughed, choking a little on my gin and more on her assessment of his character.
“You think him innocent?”
She widened her eyes. “Lord love you, miss. If there’s one thing I know, it’s men. And that one is good as gold. He’d never lift a hand against a woman and he would never think the worst of one. Puts us on a pedestal, he does.”
I considered this and decided she was more correct in her assessment than otherwise.
She went on. “He’s made me an allowance, you know. ’Tis anonymous and I’m not meant to know the identity of my benefactor, but he’s not half so clever as he thinks. He sends it through a temperance worker and she brings it, twenty shillings, every time. He wants to make certain I have money enough for a bed and a hot meal, bless him.”
“He could find you employment,” I pointed out. “Better work than what you have.”
She blinked. “I don’t mind my work, miss. I make silk flowers when I can get the materials. I made these,” she added, touching a fingertip to her little bouquet of silk violets. Each one was elegantly shaped with a tiny golden bead at the heart and a leaf of green velvet. The whole affair was bound in ribbon of green and violet silk and added a touch of elegance to her black hat.
“Very pretty,” I told her truthfully. “Mightn’t you get work with a milliner?”
She flapped a hand. “No, miss. That’s for girls, and I am no spring chicken. I make my flowers the old-fashioned way, my gran taught me. But the fashion nowadays is for great bloody birds, and I’ll not stuff abirdto put on my head. It’s unnatural, that is,” she said vehemently.
I had to agree. The fashion for befeathered millinery including heads was a ghoulish one.
She went on. “No, miss. This suits me well enough. I make flowers for some of the less expensive suppliers when my hands are nimble. When the wind is out of the east, they swell up like Cumberlandsausages, they do, and it’s all I can do to button my boots.” She thrust out her hands and I saw they were swollen across the knuckles, marked with rheumatism, one of the innumerable disadvantages of the life of the poor—sketchy nutrition, damp beds, and chilly nights spent in fogbound streets.
“That’s when I find myself a fellow for the evening and make a little coin that way,” she said, as if it were as natural as anything.
Stoker returned, subsiding heavily into his seat as Elsie signaled for another bottle. We sipped the vile stuff as if it were vintage champagne. It would never do to insult our hostess, and Stoker’s innate courtesy was the stuff of legend.
He glanced down at her hands and touched one knuckle lightly with a fingertip. “Rheumatism. November is coming along, Elsie. You need to sleep inside.”
She bristled. “That don’t always happen, Mr. Stoker,” she told him, her mouth slightly mulish.
“What about the allowance from the temperance worker you told me about?” he asked gently. Elsie and I exchanged quick glances, neither of us willing to reveal to Stoker that his little fiction had been exposed. (It has long been my experience that men are confused and sometimes upset by the truth. It is a kindness to let them go on believing what they like in such circumstances.)
“Sometimes I helps a few of the other girls out,” she told him, raising her chin. “Long Bet needed new boots last week, and Mary Jane lacked a few shillings to renting her own room. She’s got a snug little place of her own, just around the corner,” she added. The dreams in this part of the city were as small and pinched as the faces. Four walls to call one’s own. A hot meal, a pair of shoes with sound soles.
I thought of the little Gothic temple that Lord Rosemorran had given over to me to use as my own, a bolt-hole where I was snug and safe. I had meals cooked in his kitchens, a generous wage. Elsie wouldbe mistaken by many for a drab, and I might be taken often for a lady, but neither of these was entirely the truth. We were, both of us, women who worked, making our own way in the world. I had expertise and knowledge, but my greatest advantage had been the sheer luck of being born into a gentler class. I might fall a little, but Elsie, whatever she did, could never climb.
Stoker went on, careful not to scold. “Where do you sleep when you’ve given your coin away?”
She shrugged one bony shoulder. “The corner of a yard, sometimes. A quiet doorway.”
“Sleeping rough is dangerous,” Stoker told her. “Particularly now.”
He did not say the fiend’s name; there was no need. Everyone in London knew of the murderous devil who stalked Whitechapel, exercising his brutality upon the women who lived there.
Elsie gave him a fond look and patted his hand. “Lord love you, I can take care of myself, Mr. Stoker. Don’t you worry.”
But a line had etched itself between his brows, and I knew he would think of Elsie, stubborn, incorrigible, generous Elsie, sharing her meager bounty with her friends.
She rose suddenly. “Come on, then, ducks. You cannot go haring about the city dressed as you are. I’ve spoken to a few of my friends. We’ve had a whip-round to see the lot of you dressed decently and a bite to eat.”
