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She began to walk again at a quick impatient pace. Something else about the encounter was bothering her. Lark waited. The first drops of rain, cold and heavy, hit the cobbles and released their stony scent.
“Dodsley told me that he wanted to save me from the ill effects of any ignorant blunders I might make, being new to the publishing trade. He said the title didn’t matter because Lady Melforth’s name would sell books.”
Viv charged on, oblivious to the increasing rain. People scurried for the edges of the pavement under awnings and overhangs. Lark wasn’t sure she understood what Dodsley had revealed about her one-sided partnership with Lady Melforth. “What did you say to that?” he asked.
“I said he must deal with me. I must protect her, you know. She’s always been so active, so intrepid, and now because she’s confined to her couch, people want to take advantage.”
Lark doubted that anyone took advantage of Lady Melforth, but Viv’s admiration for her ladyship seemed to blind her to the woman’s self-absorption.
She gave Lark a rueful glance. “At least I didn’t shoot him.”
“Then I’d say you won.”
“I don’t feel as if I’ve won.”
They’d come to Charing Cross. The rain came down cold and thick, and Lark hailed a hackney cab. “Come on. I know a place that will cheer you up.”
“Where?”
“Marie-Louise Christophe’s house.”
“Who?”
A cab pulled round to them, and Lark helped Viv scramble in. He swept his gaze over the area, but umbrellas had sprouted everywhere above the heads of the crowd, and there was no sign of Rook. He gave the driver the address and climbed in beside Viv. “The queen of Haiti, Marie Christophe. She lives abroad now, but she lived in London for a time, and there’s a woman who remembers her every day.”
“How do you know all this?” she asked as the cab jolted into motion.
“Stick with me. I know a great deal about London.”
*
The cab stopped in a neighborhood a little south of Regent’s Park near the entrance that led to the Zoological Gardens, and Mr. Larkin pointed to a square house with no pretentions to architectural grandeur. It stood on the corner of a modest street with a ground floor of white-painted stone, a shiny black door, and three upper stories of ordinary red brick. In front, a single plane tree shook its leafless branches in the April rain. All that distinguished the house from its neighbors was a bundle of dripping purple blooms hanging from the iron railing in front.
Viv turned to him. “This is it?”
“Wait,” he said.
Viv kept watch through the slanting lines of rain. Then the woman appeared, tall and purposeful in her stride, wearing a day dress of printed lilac foulard and a fitted jacket of a deep aubergine shade. A straw bonnet tied with a chocolate ribbon framed her ebony face. She managed a black umbrella and a basket over her arm with a spray of fresh white blossoms. She stopped at the iron railing and reached to remove the wilted flowers.
Viv glanced at Mr. Larkin. “She came in the rain.”
“She comes every day.”
“Have you spoken with her? Do you know her reasons?”
“She honors her queen.”
The woman held the new spray of flowers against the railing, deftly tying a bow to keep them in place. Then she stepped back and bowed her head in an attitude of prayer, speaking, though Viv could not hear the words.
“I didn’t know Haiti had a queen. It was a French island, was it not, with enslaved people?”
“It was. The people freed themselves. They tried having a king and queen, but chose to be a republic.”
“You have spoken with her. Will she speak with me?” Viv’s mind ranged over all the women she’d been writing about, women, who, with their lives, had marked the landscape of London, but they were dead. To write about this bold living woman who moved freely about, to make her part of the story would change everything.
“She may not speak back,” he warned.
“She spoke to you.” Viv scrambled out of the cab. The rain was heavy, and she had no umbrella, but she dashed across the street and approached so that she might be seen and not startle the woman.
