The Housekeepers(64)

“What are you doing here?”

“I might need the tiniest little favor from you tonight.”

“You might need… Dinah, what on earth?”

She kept her face on the crowd, her body as motionless as a Roman soldier. “Ask me no questions—I’ll tell you no lies.”

Will was silent, stony faced.

Then he said, voice even lower, “I might be getting out. Madam’s offered me a new job.”

Mrs. King felt the cut. She said coolly, “That doesn’t sound like getting out to me.”

“Getting out of Park Lane, I mean. Going with her to her new household.”

“Her new what?”

“Her married household.”

Mrs. King took a breath. “I see.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice.

“And what do you mean, ‘favor’？” said William with a slight frown.

“What?”

“You said you need a favor.” He half turned to her. She could smell him: tar soap on his neck, the rough scent of wax. “What is it?”

Mrs. King had longed to be free. At liberty to put things straight, to order and corral and bend the world. To make corrections where corrections were required. It made her feel vast and enormous inside, as if her soul were built like a cathedral: a great and mighty project, reaching for the divine. To risk that now would be impossible.

“Never mind,” she said. “You’ve got other things on your mind.”

She turned and left. She didn’t touch him, although she yearned for it. He said something, but she didn’t wait. She didn’t want to hear.

Mrs. King took the grand escalier downstairs, slicing through the crowd in sleek white and gold. The other women were dressed as Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marguerite de Valois, Mary Queen of Scots—beruffed, beribboned, trussed up in lace. There was even an extraordinarily elderly lady who’d come as the great Palmyrene queen, Zenobia herself, stitched from head to toe in green velvet, bearing a gigantic headdress that looked set to snap her neck. She was held up by two men in seal-gray cloaks. Seal gray, thought Mrs. King. It reminded her of men visiting the mews house, men paying calls on girls. It made her clench her fists.

But there was one person there in plain dress. She saw the flash of silvery hair, a gentleman in dark tails, forging his own path through the crowd.

Just as she had predicted.

She was quicker than he was. She met him at the bottom of the stairs, putting a gloved hand out to bar his way. Lawyers never liked to be impeded. They were forever pressing on, counting minutes, charging hours. “Mr. Lockwood,” she said.

She saw him transition out of his private thoughts, arrange his public face. It was so much easier to watch people, to really watch them, when they couldn’t assess your own expression in return.

“To whom do I owe the pleasure?” he said with a perfect and wolfish smile.

She didn’t play with him. “Mrs. King.”

The manners fell away. They simply dissolved. Something hard and brutal entered his face. “Mrs. King,” he said, taking in her gloves, her tunic. His lip curled. Perhaps he remembered her choosing the name. She’d done it on his instructions. “Good heavens.”

She didn’t move. He glanced up the stairs, judging the crush. Down here the noise was growing into a roar, hundreds of people staggering through the porch and entering the front hall. She knew what he was thinking: what can people see, what can people hear, what reason will they construct for this discussion, when will the risks show themselves? She rattled through a similar list herself, every moment.

He smiled, eyes running over her mask. “Miss de Vries mentioned to me that you had made an unwelcome visit. She charged me to keep an eye out for you. I must confess I thought she was overreacting.”

“Foolish of you,” said Mrs. King. “For here I am. You’ve caught me.”

She was Jonah inside the whale. She was stepping right into the heart of the matter.

He snapped his fingers, and two younger men hurried over. They were dressed as dominoes. Clerks, she guessed, his own little entourage. Evidently, Lockwood liked having his own people in the house, too. “Accompany us to the library,” he said to them. “And guard the door.”

They gawked at Mrs. King. Then they saw Mr. Lockwood’s hand touch her elbow, and they squared up.

“I think we should have a private discussion,” Lockwood said.

“I agree,” she replied, lifting her mask.

“May I?” he said. He offered his arm. He wasn’t her equal—he would never countenance that notion—but he could pretend to be civil.

“No,” she said, and they walked upstairs, men at her back—trapped, as intended.

27

Three hours to go

The ball had begun. But the lady of the house was still below stairs, just where they wanted her. Mrs. Bone was being held in the butler’s pantry, and the chauffeur barred the door. Mrs. King had been very clear about this. Let them interrogate you as long as they want. We need them down in the servants’ hall, so the men can pack up the old nurseries. Mrs. Bone pictured rocking horses creaking as they were lifted onto runners, gigantic dolls blinking as they were turned upside down. The nursery was a forlorn sort of place, preserved in aspic: too big, too bleached. The wallpaper was metal colored, a bleak and relentless pattern. The whole place had given Mrs. Bone the shivers. She was glad it was being packed away.