Lord Ashley was coming for tea. Miss de Vries had invited him to dinner, and Lockwood had negotiated with the Ashleys’ agents for hours to make them take the bait. But the diktat came down from the mother: it was tea or nothing; they could take it or leave it.
“Lady Ashley is giving our matter her close attention,” said Mr. Lockwood. He’d come over first thing in the morning to set the plan.
Miss de Vries sniffed. She’d been up all night, on edge. “A doting mother. How charming.”
Lady Ashley. A name that would come to her if this went through. It had something, a certain swing to it. She rather liked it.
Mr. Lockwood itemized the Ashley portfolio. They kept a lofty black-bricked house on the smartest end of Brook Street. Fairhurst, their country seat in Surrey, had been in the family since the seventeenth century—lots of pale stone and gracious lines. Their place in Scotland was built in a violent shade of terra-cotta, decked with flags and ghastly turrets. It was a brutal, hideous house, and it made her heart start ticking with pleasure.
“Tell me their weak spots,” she said to Mr. Lockwood.
He spread his hands. “One sees it so often. Old money, locked up in land. They’re simply gasping for something liquid.”
Miss de Vries nodded. “Tea it is, then,” she said.
Lord Ashley drove himself to Park Lane in a Victoriette two-seater, one-handed, elbow resting on the crimson side panel. Papa would have hated that little motor carriage, Miss de Vries thought. He would have coveted it for himself. She stood by the window above the porch and watched his lordship arrive. The carriage rattled up to the pavement just after four. She went to the top of the stairs, placing herself behind one of the marble pillars to observe him arrowing into the house. Young—or at any rate not much older than she was—twenty-four at most. Not tall. In photographs, his face looked delicate, with pointed eyebrows that could have been drawn on with a brush. In the flesh he appeared denser, harder. He had a lantern jaw with a vicious heft to it.
His voice carried up the stairs. “God, the smell,” he said, flicking a silk scarf from his neck, holding it out for the footman. “It’s putrid.”
That sort of voice came from the back of the throat, lazy and clipped. Miss de Vries envied this. She had trained her own with enormous care, with exceptional discipline, in order to make it work for her. But the more she spoke, the more tired she became. What freedom it must be, to simply talk without caring, with no worry about where your words might land.
“And the drafts,” he said, frowning upward. “This place is ghastly.”
Miss de Vries grew still. She agreed with him entirely. But she resented him for saying it. By any measure her house was immense, beyond splendid, constructed at unimaginable expense.
“My lord?” Mr. Lockwood had gone downstairs to greet him.
“You must have rats in the house. Can’t you tell? It reeks. Something must’ve crawled into the walls and died.”
This remark irked her, too. Naturally they had mice. Even Brook Street had them, surely. They crammed their little bodies into the crevices beneath the floors, and there expired. The smell they left behind was almost familiar now—oozing, stinking, mingled with vinegar and rose water. She hardly noticed anymore. Perhaps she was missing things.
Lord Ashley came up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Miss de Vries had to back quickly into the saloon.
By the time they rolled open the double doors she had gathered herself. “Lord Ashley,” she said, modulating her voice down a notch, to freeze him to the spot, to set the tone. “Good afternoon.”
He marched straight in, already talking. “...and the windows are facing full west—it’s absolutely scorching in here. I don’t know how you can stand it...”
Her voice had no effect on him at all.
Lord Ashley sat with his back to the window. A boy, really, thought Miss de Vries, the longer she looked at him. Ugly or handsome, she couldn’t decide. He had a mean face, and his hair ended in a curl that seemed to be slicked to his forehead. He stretched his legs out wide, heels scudding the carpet.
Mr. Lockwood managed the conversation, and Miss de Vries had to give him credit: he knew what he was doing. The topics seemed disconnected. Lord Ashley’s stables, his judgment of the railways, the expense of motoring, the vulgarity of Americans. But Lockwood knitted them together neatly, making an occasional jotting in his notebook, smiling throughout.
“I agree,” said Miss de Vries at intervals. They’d agreed she would say nothing more. Modesty, moral rectitude, dignity—she radiated these virtues, unrelentingly, unendingly, maintaining perfect posture.
“But you can’t care for town in the summer,” Lord Ashley said to Lockwood, but his eyes were on Miss de Vries. “You can’t possibly intend to keep this house.”
There was a silence, a stretched-out moment. That was an opening gambit.
Miss de Vries put down her cup. “I...”
“And you know we don’t like the look of the books. You’re vastly overextended. Has your man told you my view?”
Miss de Vries saw Mr. Lockwood’s face go taut. It was the impertinence of it. That the house of de Vries was considered so vulgar, so lowborn, that it was perfectly reasonable to debase it. That you might eschew good manners, cross your legs and slurp your tea, and simply haggle without any hint of compunction.
“I don’t have a head for business,” said Miss de Vries, making her voice gentle, “but I know my father left his estate in perfect order.” A little white lie, an entirely fair one.
Lockwood said quickly, “We have a most extremely rigorous handle on the household’s affairs.”
Lord Ashley shook his head. “But you’re still in gold! You should get out of that, for a start. And the loans are a joke. They should be axed at once.”
Miss de Vries sipped her tea.
“By the way,” added Lord Ashley—and something twisted in his tone. “What’s all this talk about your old man’s funny business?”
Mr. Lockwood went still.
“Talk?” said Miss de Vries. She studied her fingers.
Mr. Lockwood cleared his throat. “People say all sorts of things.”
Lord Ashley was watching her. It was the first time he’d looked straight in her direction. “I’m not necessarily objecting,” he said with a testy laugh.
Miss de Vries pushed back her chair.
In this house there were all sorts of boxes. Drawers and vessels and canisters and cases beyond counting. They contained all manner of things. Some were left unlocked. Some were soldered with lead, encased in marble, locked up behind bars, buried in the ground. What Lord Ashley was discussing belonged to the category of untouchable, unknowable things. Miss de Vries knew the rules: she hadn’t made them; they had never been spoken aloud; they were things you intuited, just like breathing. You didn’t hesitate in these circumstances—you didn’t speak a word. You simply turned around and got out.
She rose.
“Lord Ashley,” she said, “I must bid you good evening.”
Later, Mr. Lockwood came up to see her.
“Well?” she asked. She disliked asking Mr. Lockwood his opinion on anything. It made him more self-congratulatory than he already was. But she had no other counselor to whom to turn.
Lockwood scratched his chin. “He’s a curious mixture of parts. A fearful snob, of course, but determined to cut his own path in the world. His grasp of economics is dismal, I mean really dismal. We’d have to be mindful of any undue interference. But he wasn’t rattled by any of the things that have troubled us before.”
Miss de Vries said coolly, “What troubled us before?”
Lockwood examined his notes. “Gracious, where to start? Wrangling over the jointure, election of trustees, talk of thirds and dowers. His sort have been negotiating marriage portions since Magna Carta. But Ashley’s brisk, and not worried by the detail.” Lockwood sniffed. “Perhaps he doesn’t understand it.”
“Mr. Lockwood,” said Miss de Vries, “you forget yourself. You are speaking to the future Lady Ashley.” It paid to keep Lockwood in his place.
Lockwood raised his eyebrows, not daunted. “The current Lady Ashley is worried by the detail. Her people will spin things out as long as they can afford to. Their pride will see to that, I can assure you. We’ll have several rounds of negotiation, assuming we’re minded to even accept an offer.”
Miss de Vries felt her heart skipping with impatience. “Then go and turn the screws on them. You said it yourself: he doesn’t care a jot for detail. If the Ashleys are so desperate for cash, then they can stump up and sign for it. Bring them to the ball. Let him see the rest of the world at my door. Someone else will put in an offer if they don’t.”
Lockwood sighed, his expression signaling his disapproval. “This ball.”
Miss de Vries regulated her voice. “You take care of your business, Mr. Lockwood. I’ll take care of mine.”
Afterward she went upstairs and inspected the invitation cards. She’d discarded several designs. This was the best one. She felt the thickness of the paper between her fingers, the delicate ridges, the gilt edging and black scrolls. Gold for grandeur, black for propriety.
“Fine,” she said, and the servants began stacking them up, shoving them into envelopes. Hundreds and hundreds of invitations.
She closed her eyes, pictured them vanishing into the postal system, wheeling out across the city at dawn. Hurtling up South Audley Street, along Piccadilly, across Cadogan Place. Skittering, leaping, glittering. Caught on silver platters, handled with cream gloves, sliced open with a sharp blade. A hundred eyes taking in the request—then two hundred, five hundred, a thousand eyes more: The House of de Vries requests the honor of your company...
It was time for her to be noticed.
Across town, Mrs. King and Winnie sat stuffing envelopes of their own. Short letters and telegrams, going out to the names supplied by Mrs. Bone. Agents in Paris, Hamburg, Naples, St. Petersburg, Philadelphia, all receiving notice of an imminent movement in the market for luxuries and rarities and impossibly splendid things...
“What name shall we use to sign them?” asked Winnie, taking a breather. The pages were teetering in piles, spilling all over the floor of Mrs. Bone’s house in Spitalfields. They worked in a room with bars on the windows, Mrs. Bone’s men standing guard in the passage.
Mrs. King’s concentration broke, and she accidentally gave herself a paper cut, a fine, long trail across the tip of her forefinger. She sucked it quickly, and left a stain on the letterhead. A pale, pinkish watermark. Signed in blood.
“You’re the cleverest,” she said. “What do you think?”
Winnie’s eyes brightened. “It should be something grand, something with meaning. What about the Fishwives of Paris? Or the Monstrous Regiment? Or the Army of Boudicca?”
“We’re not fishwives, we’re housekeepers.”
“We were housekeepers,” Winnie replied, hotly. “We’re not anymore.”
“You shouldn’t forget where you come from,” said Mrs. King thoughtfully. She took out her pen, signed the first letter with a flourish. “The Housekeepers will do nicely.”
At sunset they carried the sacks to the postbox, frog-marching the postman down the lane with one of Mrs. Bone’s stony-faced guards.
Winnie patted her sack as it was borne away from her hands. “Godspeed,” she murmured.
Mrs. King glanced at her. “You’re enjoying this.”
Winnie considered this seriously. “I am,” she said.
“Come on,” Mrs. King said. “Let’s have a drink.”
She felt it then: that burst and tingle of pleasure, that thrill of surety. She had her funds, her women, her plan. She pictured the messages flying out into the night, lifting off like starlings in flight: looping and undulating and gathering force like a storm cloud. To Europe, to America and beyond. Spreading the word: there was a big job on the horizon, bigger than all imagining, a fortune to be made...
Godspeed, she said to herself—in private, deep inside.
Alice came downstairs while the other servants were managing the dinner service. She’d been at her worktable nearly four hours, mouth parched, eyes blurring, and there was an intractable ache in her neck. Madam’s costume was at the stage where it controlled her, not the other way around. Unpicking one thread meant unpicking a dozen more. The shoulder seams were immensely delicate, spun as finely as silkworm threads, and they needed to carry so much weight: the rich lining, jet ornaments, the far-reaching acreage of the train. The dress seemed to unspool every time she looked at it, growing uglier, wilder, blacker. She hoped never to see crepe de Chine again.
Miss de Vries hadn’t sent for her all day. Alice hounded the other servants with inquiries: had Madam given word as to when she next wanted to be fitted? Had she left any message, any instructions for Alice at all? She needed some assurance that she was still doing well, that she was excelling, that she was safe.
The weaselly-looking errand boy was lugging a bucket of coal in for the range. “Whatchoo asking so many questions for?” he said, staring at Alice without compunction.
Alice rounded on him. “Bugger off, little rat,” she said, showing her teeth.
His eyes widened, startled, and he scuttled off across the yard, his ragged coat flapping in the breeze. Alice had startled herself. She put her hands to her crucifix. By any measure it was too late for Miss de Vries to still be eating her dinner. Evidently, she was preoccupied, absorbed in business.
Alice lingered in the front hall, trying to invent excuses to enter the dining room. William, the head footman, came out and spotted her. “You’d better make yourself scarce before Shepherd sees you,” he said, eyes narrowing. And then, voice gentle: “What’s got you in a twist?”
“Nothing,” she said, anguished.
“Hmm,” he said, turning his gaze away from her. “Do I sense a tragedy?”
She blushed at that and scurried outside, crossing the garden, then the yard. Mr. Doggett and his boys were playing Racing Demon outside the mews house, flicking cigarette ash behind the ornamental urns. They didn’t notice Alice, or else she supposed they didn’t care to acknowledge her presence, taking her to be a plain and stupid girl, with no purpose in this house, nothing at all to recommend her. The dress was calling silently to her, summoning her back. She wanted to avoid it. She needed a break. She marched to the mews door, as if she had an errand to run, as if she were on a mission of great import. As the clocks chimed the quarter hour she stepped out through the mews door into the lane.
She froze.
Two men, wearing rich, silk-lined overcoats, were standing under the streetlamp. The air smelled of gardenias. She recognized the scent, and then their faces, at once.
They came to the gate. The taller of the two lifted his hat, tilted it toward her, perfectly courteous. He had a smile on his face that Alice knew by instinct, that she would have known even if she were a babe in arms. Danger, danger, danger.
The debt collectors had found her, after all.
Perhaps they didn’t think she was going to run. Or if she did, they didn’t care. They continued to smile at her, eyes steady, as if to say, We’ll track you anyway. They had one message, and they handed it over on a piece of paper.
She opened it once she was inside the house, in the kitchen passage, back to the wall. Breathing hard, she made out the words under the flickering lamplight: One week.