“He doesn’t know that I wasn’t here?” I said, feeling a coil of hope.
“I kept your secret,” she said, flashing those shrewd blue eyes at me. “For the time being, at least.”
“Don’t tell him, please. I was only—”
She held her hand up, silencing me. “Whatever you’re going to tell me won’t be the truth, but we’re all entitled to our secrets. I remember what it meant to be a young woman in a city like this. In a life like this, where everyone is watching your every move. The professor told me you were clever, and that broken lock on your bedroom window seemed to support that theory, so I left the kitchen window cracked after he went to bed and hoped you had the good sense to climb in through it. It’s what I would have done.” She leaned forward. “You’d be wise to never sneak out of this house again, or else you had better get far craftier at it, because if I catch you another time I won’t hold my tongue.”
I nodded, unable to look her in the eye. Now I’d disappointed the professor’s niece, too, before I had barely met her. She stood and crossed to the still-open window, which let in slips of cold air that left me shivering, and slid it closed. When she took her seat at the table again, the sternness had eased from her face, and a deep concern knotted her brow in its place.
This is how a mother might look, I thought, and the idea filled me with a sense of loss and longing.
“Now that we’ve gotten that behind us, you aren’t in trouble, are you?” Her eyes had a way of reaching somewhere deep inside me, beyond my past and my indiscretions and focusing instead only on my well-being. Such care from a stranger made my chest tight with emotion I didn’t know how to process.
I shook my head quickly. “No trouble. It was only a silly lark, sneaking out to see a friend.”
She raised an eyebrow, uncertain whether to believe me, but then jerked her chin toward the top of the stairs, dismissing me. I gathered my skirt and hurried up, still shaken, and closed myself in my room.
I didn’t know what I had been expecting from Elizabeth’s arrival. Perhaps just one more person to lie to. I certainly hadn’t expected a woman who thought like I thought, who anticipated my every move.
Who would lie for me.
THE NEXT DAY LUCY and I had an appointment at Weston’s Dressmakers to be fitted for gowns for the masquerade ball. Elizabeth insisted that Ellis take me in the carriage and wait outside the store, because of all the Wolf of Whitechapel panic in the city. As the carriage rolled down the Strand, I heard the call of at least a dozen newspaper boys yelling out headlines, all of them about the Wolf. I pushed back the curtain and watched the swarms around the boys, everyone hungry for news of the city’s latest mass murderer. Signs had been pasted on the sides of buildings and alleyways with his nickname in thick red ink. I even saw two men and a portly older woman wearing metal breastplates not unlike Inspector Newcastle’s, as though the murderer might leap out onto the busiest street in London and try to rip their hearts out right there. I let the curtain fall back, disgusted. This city hungered for violence nearly as much as the Beast did.
As I climbed out of the carriage, the sound of tense words caught my ear. A few paces from the dress shop doorway, Lucy and Inspector Newcastle stood arguing while his police carriage waited in the street with the door still open. On instinct my stomach tightened, but I took a deep breath and tried to remember that he wouldn’t arrest me. In fact, having a police officer close to Lucy while Edward was in the city might be the most fortunate thing that had happened to me in a while. As I approached them, I caught the tail end of the inspector’s words.
“I’m only saying that your father knows best. No one’s heard of this man’s family. How can you be certain he isn’t trying to take advantage of your father’s money?”
“Of course no one knows him; he’s from Finland!”
“Darling, Henry Jakyll is a complete stranger. You might think yourself infatuated with him, but your father has barely even met him, and—”
“Father’s the one who wants to keep me from Henry? Not you?”
As I approached, Inspector Newcastle caught sight of me. He straightened and smoothed his jacket over his breastplate. “Miss Moreau, a pleasure to see you again.”
Lucy’s head turned to me too, but her scowl didn’t leave. “Good, you’re here. John was just leaving.”
“Lucy, darling—” he started, but stopped as the scowl on her face deepened. He leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, but she pulled away and stormed into the dress shop with a wild clatter from the bell.
The inspector stared at the doorway, looking disheveled and lost.
“I’ve upset her, I’m afraid,” he said, and then gave a deep sigh. “And not for the first time.”
He looked crestfallen, and I searched for words but could only keep staring at his breastplate and thinking of the preposterous fervor I’d witnessed downtown. “You’ve started a fashion trend,” I said. “It seems quite a few people have adopted your penchant for protective garments.”
He gave a humble shrug. “They think because I’m leading the investigation, I must be a good example to follow. Well, it doesn’t hurt anyone. Perhaps it might even save someone’s life.” I raised an eyebrow doubtfully, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“You haven’t reconsidered my offer, have you?” he asked. “I truly would like to close the case on your father. A promotion would help Lucy see me in a . . . more favorable light. Especially such a personal case. It might give you some peace of mind, too, Miss Moreau.”
I pulled my hood higher. “I’m sorry. I appreciate your concern, but I really can’t help you.”
He looked as though he might say something more, but then changed his mind and opened the door for me. I slipped past him into the dress shop.
A pair of seamstresses looked up as the bell chimed, as did Lucy, flipping a little angrily through a book of sewing patterns. I sat on a peach-colored chaise, while one of the seamstresses brought me a book of cloth swatches and a tray of biscuits. I halfheartedly felt the various samples of velvets, muslins, silks—they all felt itchy to me.
“John proposed,” Lucy said at last.
“Oh my.”
Her eyes flickered to the seamstresses, and she pulled me through the silk curtains into the privacy of a small dressing room that smelled of French perfume, with a screen and a stuffed ottoman, which she now flopped onto.