“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.
18
Tilney Street, Mayfair. Mrs. Bone had rented lodgings for them on a side road off Park Lane, in order to maintain the closest possible presence to the de Vries residence.
“Can she afford it?” Mrs. King murmured when they first inspected their new lodgings.
“Why couldn’t she afford it?” said Winnie.
Mrs. King’s expression smoothed out. “No reason.”
Now Winnie sat in the parlor with a mountain of fabric, sewing tunics. She frowned, struggling with the machine, which whirred and rattled and threatened to destroy her faith in herself. She wasn’t making nearly enough progress. They needed to dress at least sixty men. She was barely a third of the way through.
She called through to the bedroom. “How are you getting on in there, Hephzibah?”
Hephzibah’s voice came back, rich and imperious. “Call me Lady Montagu!”
Mrs. Bone had sent one of her own gigantic-looking mirrors to Tilney Street, and they’d propped it up at the end of the bed. Winnie peeked around the door. Hephzibah was examining herself, ruffled and rippling, awash with pink silks. A hat triple-barreled with roses floated merrily on her head. “I’m radiant,” she said.
“You look like a regular Venus,” said Winnie, with care.
Hephzibah eyed her beadily. “Because of the pink?” She sniffed. “Yes, I like that.”
Winnie approached carefully. She touched Hephzibah’s neck, checked the buttons on the back of the dress. Studied the photograph they’d pinned to the glass. The real Duchess of Montagu stared back at her. Strong oval face. Fine, long nose. She looked at Hephzibah. The resemblance was remarkable.
“Have you been learning your lines?” she said, trying to be cheerful.
Hephzibah’s hands seemed jumpy. “There’s more to this job than learning lines.”
Winnie made herself smile. “You’re every inch the duchess.”
Hephzibah let out a breath, flexed her hands. “I’m a terrible ham, aren’t I?”
“You’re magnificent,” whispered Winnie, and squeezed her arm.
Hephzibah picked her way slowly across the room and Winnie reminded herself, she won’t spoil things; she won’t mess it up. She kept smiling, to be encouraging, to hide her doubts.
Mrs. Bone had hired a Daimler for them at further eye-watering expense. It had a bright blue body and button-leather seats, slick and black as tar. Hephzibah held her parasol over her head and tried to stay cool. Winnie passed her a box of visiting cards, marked the top one with a PPC. “Keep the rest. But don’t you dare pay any other calls.”
Hephzibah felt hot and clammy, sweat running down her back. She prayed it wouldn’t stain the satin. The motor ground to a halt and Winnie flashed a nervous smile as she slipped out. “Good luck.”
Hephzibah concealed her expression, and her trepidation, with her parasol. “Talent does not require luck,” she said, in as frosty a tone as she could manage.
They’d hired the chauffeur with the car. He didn’t know Hephzibah from Eve. “Here, m’lady?” he said.
Hephzibah peered out. She hadn’t planned for this moment. The house was still so extraordinarily big, so white—like a wedding cake, many tiers high. The park was a desert, all baked earth and scrub grass. Dust came in great billowing clouds from Rotten Row. It was desolate, a dreadful place.
I’m not equal to this, she thought.
“Yes, here,” she said to the driver, and he got out to deliver her card. Her own self vanished. She sank into her silks and ruffles, and became the Duchess of Montagu.
The head footman ushered Hephzibah through the hall. Servants paused in their duties and huddled behind pillars. The staircase was still tremendously ugly. She’d forgotten its recesses, those blocks of black and blood-red marble. They looked like gravestones, signposts on the way to hell. How many times had she cleaned the banisters, rubbed them with blacking, cracked her nails on their grooves and whorls?
The footman gave Hephzibah a wide and courteous berth. “No more visitors,” he murmured to the under-footmen, and they closed the doors.
He was enormously good-looking. Stony faced, dark haired, terrific eyes. He was something to focus on, to occupy the mind.
“This way,” he said, extending a gloved finger.
“Oh, I can guess the way,” said Hephzibah. She needed to warm up, to test the voice. “People only move in one direction when they build a house like this.” She held out her parasol, and he took it. “Up.”
His eyes flashed, a single golden gleam. Amused. Good, Hephzibah told herself, that was a clever line. Well judged. Nice and rude. She wondered, Would a duchess speak to a footman? Perhaps there were no rules for duchesses.
She tried to quiet her mind. It was too easy to lose a character, just by listening to all the chatter in one’s head. She eyed the footman’s calf muscles, the hard curve of his arse underneath his tails. Lovely, she said to herself, trying to cheer herself up. She could smell beeswax: there was parquet upstairs. It made her dizzy, the memory of all those tiny pieces of wood. It took hours and hours to polish every block.
The saloon doors slid open—slowly, slowly. She spied a small figure on a couch, far away in the center of the room. Great slanting shafts of light came through the windows facing the park. Hephzibah shaded her eyes with her hand.
She had tried to cast her mind back to the old days, to remember the child who’d lived in the nursery. A snowball creature, with yellow-gold hair done up in ringlets. More like a pet than a person, a fluffy thing fed and watered by the senior servants. Hephzibah had hardly thought about her, had hardly imagined her living or breathing or existing at all.