* * *
—
She was not at the Warrender, and he was shooed away by a termagant and then spent an hour in Hyde Park, thinking that somehow he would come across her amongst the weekend crowds, but the only person he saw whom he recognized was Niven Coker, ambling along with his dog as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Frobisher couldn’t imagine what it would be like to feel so unburdened by life.
Miss Kelling, however, was as fugitive as a wood nymph. Not a nymph, Frobisher reminded himself. He must not be fanciful. He must leave the sunshine and return to Lottie to suffer with her.
Necromancy
Gwendolen woke to a bright beam of sunlight slicing through a gap in the curtains. She had absolutely no idea where she was, but there was a handy clock by the bed—nearly ten!
She realized that she had been woken by someone knocking on the door, but before she could croak, “Come in,” the door opened and a maid came in bearing a large tray, with a cheery “Morning, miss. Did you sleep well?”
Hugging the bedsheet to herself for modesty, Gwendolen struggled to sit up. “I don’t think I ordered any breakfast,” she said. The maid bobbed a curtsey, “Compliments of the management, miss,” and scooted out of the door before Gwendolen could ask her anything else.
A silver pot of coffee, a jug of cream, warm rolls with pale butter, a dish of lime marmalade and, beneath an impressive silver dome, a perfect omelette, fluffy and flecked with finnan haddock. A mere week ago she had been breakfasting on toast and jam made from blackberries foraged in York Cemetery, cultivated by the bonemeal of the dead. Her mother, so recently laid in that same ground, must already be feeding the soil. No doubt she would resent contributing.
Gwendolen wondered how long her money would last if she moved into a hotel and lived a sybaritic life. Not long, probably. Wasn’t this how the devil caught you? You travelled in a cream Hispano-Suiza and shrank from the idea of returning to the omnibus. You tasted pheasant （or a perfect Arnold Bennett omelette） and your spirits drooped at the return to boiled mutton. Gwendolen could have added to this list indefinitely from her own experience of the last few years. She had boiled a good deal of mutton since the war.
She would never have thought of coming here if it hadn’t been for Niven. What had Frobisher said? It is very easy to be seduced by these people.
* * *
—
It turned out that the Savoy was indeed the kind of place that would not only send someone to a shop on your behalf but could also persuade a shop to break the Sunday trading laws and open up just for you. Gwendolen gave her measurements to a very pleasant, uniformed housekeeper, much the same age as herself, who went to Swan and Edgar and bought a complete outfit, from hat down to shoes and all the layers in between. The housekeeper asked no questions and Gwendolen gave no explanation. The rich really do have different rules, she supposed. Gwendolen was beginning to realize that people in London didn’t seem to care what you did, especially if you had money. “In London,” Azzopardi had said, “the law exists to be broken.”
“How much did that come to?” she asked the housekeeper when she delivered the new clothes.
“You can pay when you settle your bill, madam,” she said.
It was well after midday before Gwendolen—rather reluctantly—checked out, but when she came to pay, the man on reception said, “The bill’s been seen to, madam, it’s on the gentleman’s account.”
“And my Swan and Edgar bill?”
“That too, madam. All paid.”
Did she want to be beholden to Niven? Or any of the Cokers? On the one hand, it was, ultimately, the Cokers and their club who were responsible for the ruination of her clothes and for her being locked out of the Warrender, so perhaps it was only fair that they should have paid for her to stay here. Still, she had the odd feeling that she was being bought somehow.
“No,” she said pleasantly. “Please void Mr. Coker’s cheque, I shall pay for myself.”
* * *
—
The doorman at the Savoy hailed a cab for Gwendolen to return her to the dull prospect of the Warrender. It may as well have been a pumpkin pulled by six white mice.
Had her absence been noticed by the eagle eye of Mrs. Bodley? Or would the chambermaid have told Mrs. Bodley that Gwendolen’s bed had not been slept in last night? She had encountered the girl in the corridor once or twice, her arms laden with piles of folded sheets and towels, and they had exchanged smiles.
It helped, Gwendolen thought, as the cab disgorged her outside the Warrender, that she had no overnight bag with her and she was wearing her new Swan and Edgar outfit—a neat dress with a sailor collar and a kick-pleat skirt beneath a linen duster coat. A new hat, too, not a green one, she was celebrating spring with straw.