Mrs. King had left this chore for as long as she could, but it could wait no longer. There was only a week to go. It was time to see William.
Certain appointments thrilled her. Some of them amused her. Some of them were tedious but necessary. This was quite different. It involved the digging up and dusting off of feelings.
Winnie eyed her from the other side of Mrs. Bone’s inventions room. “Something’s put you out of sorts,” she said.
“Not in the least,” said Mrs. King briskly, fastening her gloves.
“Who did you say you were going to see?”
Best not to obfuscate. “William,” she said.
“You’re not serious.”
Mrs. King buckled her belt, gave it a fierce tug. “It’s about the tiniest little thing. I wouldn’t even have mentioned it if you hadn’t asked.”
Winnie’s hackles were up in seconds. “Tell me,” she said.
Her temper was growing frayed. She’d been quick to anger ever since she’d discovered Mrs. King’s secret. Trust was such a precious thing. It broke so easily. There was no neat mending of it.
“No,” she said firmly. “I won’t.”
If she’d been sleeping properly, she might have kept her own cool. She might have taken Winnie further into her confidence. Winnie of all people would have understood. She was sympathetic to affairs of the heart. But Mrs. King was growing tired and edgy and she was running out of time.
Winnie stood aside to let her pass. What else could she have done? Wrestled Mrs. King to the ground? She’d never win in a struggle, and they both knew it.
“Good morning, then,” she said, voice tight.
“Good morning,” Mrs. King replied, voice tighter.
Mrs. King stood outside the garden door on Park Lane. The heat was rising, scorching the door handle. Around here, in the shadow of the house, the world had grown quiet, as if it had run out of breath. The cypress trees sagged, quite still. The sky seemed bigger than ever, the color of dust.
Mrs. Bone had been watching, and had reported back: he went out for a smoke at two thirty. Every day. Like clockwork.
Her eyes had narrowed. “Visiting a fancy man at night, were you?”
“Don’t listen to gossip, Mrs. Bone,” Mrs. King said.
Her affairs were hers alone. She reminded herself of her resolve: this wasn’t a romantic rendezvous. She was taking care of loose parts. This was all about business.
Right on cue, she heard footsteps on the other side of the wall.
The scrape of a match, the sound of the flare. He was lighting a cigarette. Why? To calm his nerves? Buck himself up?
There followed a long, suspended silence. He was taking a drag.
She stood outside the garden door and took a long, deep breath—and listened.
He was pacing. She could hear his footsteps circling, slowly, around that quiet shady spot behind the shrubbery.
Now was the moment.
“Got something on your mind?” she said through the door.
A pigeon rose from the wall above, a nervy wingbeat, breaking the stillness. She sensed, rather than heard, his tiny intake of breath. “Dinah?”
“Open the door,” she said.
Another pause. She put her hands behind her back, looked up at the house. When she was a maid, less encumbered by her own dignity, she used to open the attic window at first light. She’d creep out onto the balustrade and walk slowly, coolly, along the whole length of it. Training herself to walk faster, then run, without fear. Will had once spotted her from a window ledge in the men’s quarters. He’d raised an eyebrow, tipped a finger, a gesture that said, Nice work. He was new then, and the same age she was: twenty-one, with his whole life ahead of him.
From the other side of the door, she heard him mutter below his breath. “For God’s sake.” And then she heard the scraping of the bolt.
She passed out of the world and into the garden.
“Hullo, you,” she said with a smile, and she kicked the door closed behind her.
The air changed as she crossed the threshold. Thickened. She saw the rush of paving stones, their jagged lines, the ferns.
William stood there, tall and dark, watching her. Flies made low, lazy loops around his head, and he dashed them away with his hand. “What are you doing here?” he said.
“Just visiting.”
He was incredulous. “Visiting?”
“Thought I’d say hello to you.”
She saw the flicker of something in his eyes. Hurt, hurt, hurt, she thought, and not even nearly ready to forgive. She put a hand out, touched him on the arm. He was burning underneath his jacket. She could feel it even through that thick navy cotton. Hot flesh and sinew, tightly wound.
His arm jerked. “You should clear off,” he said. “You don’t want to be seen down here.”
“No harm if I am.”
“I don’t want to be seen with you. I’ve enough work already just trying to get my reputation back.”
He looked weary. He wasn’t much of a sleeper. That’s how things began, between them. He’d said one evening, “Fancy a stroll?” It had been a damp and cloudy night. “Yes,” she’d said, and they’d scaled the wall as if it were a normal thing to do. They’d walked for miles. Deserted roads, church spires white and ghostly in the mist. A city entirely their own. And when they’d come back, Park Lane seemed even smaller than before.
“Look,” said Mrs. King, “I’ve come to make amends.” She perched on the low stone bench, beside the pool. The trellis managed to obscure her from the house, but only just.
“Amends?” He stared at her. “What were you doing, Dinah?”
She kept her face expressionless. “I told you. I just needed to look for something in the men’s quarters. I didn’t know anybody would be keeping watch for me.”
“Look for what?”
She didn’t do what she’d have done with Winnie, or Mrs. Bone, or the others. She didn’t wag her finger, give him a teasing smile. She said, serious, “I can’t tell you. So don’t ask.”
He let out an angry breath. “I don’t believe this.”
“It’s a fine life on the other side, Will. You should think about getting out. Reassess your prospects. It might be time to try something new.”
“Oh, really?” he said, in a withering tone.
“Really. You could learn to drive a motor. Become a chauffeur. It pays well. Easy hours. You could get a room in a hayloft for your trouble.” She grinned. “Just think what you could get up to in a hayloft.”
He was quiet for a moment, as if trying to read her. Then he said, “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
He tilted his head. “What’s your plan? Become a seamstress? Open a greengrocer’s? Set up a knocking shop?”
“In this neighborhood?” Mrs. King leaned back, letting the house loom dizzy and white overhead. “Why not? I’d make a roaring trade.”
William squeezed his cigarette. “Well, I’m fine as I am, thanks.”
She noticed something inside her chest: a little flare of disappointment. She studied William. The neat, clean ridge to his forehead. The wide-set slope to his eyes. She knew his shoulders, his chest, the cords of muscle around his rib cage. She knew what his shins looked like underneath his long socks, hairy and nicked and bruised.
She took a risk, against her better judgment.
“I’ve made plans, you know,” she said, in a low voice. “You can get in on them.”
William laughed, a husky sound. “Plans?” He shook his head. “You don’t have any plans. You’re done for. There’s no luck to be had around you. Not anymore.”
Mrs. King knew better than to react. “Steady on.”
His jaw tightened. “Why not? It’s the truth. They gave you the sack.”
“And now I’m free.”
“They gave you the sack, Dinah. They nearly gave it to me. I only got out of it because Shepherd decided to tell everybody you were bloody sleepwalking.” He took a breath, eyes fierce. “Nobody knew about us. Now they do. And you’ve made it look...” He was testing the word in his mind.
She could guess what it was. Tawdry. Cheap. Meaningless.
“Never mind,” he said, heavy. “You don’t understand.”
It was infuriating sometimes, managing people. Accounting for their feelings. When you were on the same page then life was easy—it was like breathing. But the second she broke things off with William she had felt the change. Break wasn’t even the right word. A break was a clean thing. And this was different. She felt him twisting away from her.
“I just need a little time,” she said. “To put some affairs in order. It’s not that much to ask.”
He shook his head, disbelieving. “You broke things off between us, Dinah.”
“For heaven’s sake.” Mrs. King governed herself. “I said we should wait. That’s all.”
“We aren’t people who wait. You don’t wait.” His voice was low. “I bought you a ring.”
“Oh, enough,” she said, rising to her feet.
Mrs. King felt her anger burst through, breaking its bonds. She’d proposed a pause, a temporary suspension of things between them, just until this business was concluded. She needed to concentrate. And to him this represented a schism, a betrayal, an irrevocable parting. It was so completely foolish of him.
Her rage passed as quickly as it came, and left the usual shame behind. He was right to judge her. She hadn’t been straight with him; she hadn’t shared one iota of the truth. She would have been furious at him if he’d done the same to her. “Look,” she said. “I’ve got plans. Come with me—if you like.”
A long moment passed. William was silent. Then, slowly, he said, “Miss de Vries’s new girl. Alice.”
Mrs. King felt her skin tightening. “Who?” she said.
Those eyes shimmered. “Don’t ‘who’ me. What’s the connection?”
Mrs. King was caught off guard.
“Well?” And then, impatient, “She told me she comes from up your way. Same neighborhood. That doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me.”
Mrs. King shut her eyes.
“Dinah?”
“How do you remember which neighborhood I come from?”
“You told me.”
She frowned. “Ages ago. Years back.”
Some understanding crossed his face. “I remember everything when it comes to you,” he said.
Mrs. King remembered how it used to be, when she was a house-parlormaid, back when William arrived. Of course the girls went mad for him—half of the men, too, come to that. William knew this, and he handled it gently. He didn’t let it turn his head. He kept himself to himself—he was hard to read, same as she was. The first time their hands touched, they were both buttoned up in their gloves. He’d taken a breath, a deep one, as if steadying himself. They kept it secret, whatever it was between them. They didn’t even call it love for years. It was their thing, theirs alone.
On their night walks they skirted Whitechapel, and he pressed her, curious: tell me who you are, tell me where you come from. “Who cares?” she said, laughing. “Let me be a mystery.” She led him down the old street, right past Mr. Parker’s house, in silence. Yellow-gray brick, and a broken lamppost, and a shadowy boy flipping ha’pennies at the end of the lane. She must have gone silent, fretting, remembering Mother. He’d clocked it, yet he didn’t say anything; he didn’t want to cause her pain.
I remember everything when it comes to you.
Those words made her throat dry. “Don’t repeat that to anyone.”
He stared right back. “Which part?”
“Any of it.” She closed up her face, turned her back on him. She could feel it: danger, pulsing through the garden.