Enthralled.
She caressed the edges of the pages already concealed beneath Charlotte’s winter dresses. The stack was reassuringly thick, crisp and dense against its nest of silk and wool. She didn’t know why she’d thrown herself headlong into duplicating her work by hand; after all, she wasn’t in any great hurry to submit it—and have it come back rejected.
No, she was lying to herself here. She did know why she copied for hours on end, hunched over her desk, the sandwich that should have been her lunch still largely untouched. After a glorious, if also terrifying adventure in France in the company of Charlotte and a number of their friends, Livia was back home, where she least wished to be.
And yesterday morning, just before she departed London, Mr. Stephen Marbleton, the young man she loved, and whom she believed to love her equally in return, had told her that they were too hopeless a case. That he would no longer keep in touch with her.
Livia had been instantly heartbroken, and yet . . . strangely calm. She’d told Mrs. Watson, who accompanied her home disguised as a lady’s companion, that she believed it very wise of Mr. Marbleton to act as he had. Instead of living on false hope and eventually being hurt and disappointed anyway, now their courtship had ended and she need no longer dread its eventual demise.
Mrs. Watson had comforted Livia as best as she could. And then, Livia had arrived home and no one had cared particularly that she was back or that she wanted to cry but couldn’t. She’d gone up to her room, unpacked a few things, taken out her notebooks, and begun to copy her story.
To escape her own life in the only way she could, by immersing herself in the fictional lives of others.
She massaged the muscles of her right forearm. A cup of tea would be nice, but her kettle was empty. In other households, the daughter of the house would simply ring for a fresh pot. But Livia tried not to give more work to the servants, who already had to contend with her inconsiderate parents. And after an entire day in a chair, she could use the exercise of going down for a pitcher of water.
She hadn’t yet reached the stairs when her mother’s question exploded like an artillery shell. “And where do you think you are going?”
Livia stopped in her tracks, mortified. Would she be berated now even for fetching water?
“Ah, Lady Holmes,” said her father, “I was just coming to say goodbye to you.”
Livia blinked, realizing belatedly that her mother had been speaking to her husband, and not her daughter.
“You were not!” huffed Lady Holmes. “You would have left without saying a word.”
“And could you blame me, my lady, given the harshness of your goodbyes?”
Women newly acquainted with Sir Henry sometimes considered him suave and charming. Livia, after nearly twenty-eight years under his roof, only found him both unctuous and mean-spirited.
“How could you leave now? It’s almost Christmas, and Christmas should be spent at home.”
“Since you think so, you should by all means remain home for Christmas, my lady. I wish you a most joyful holiday filled with warmth and festiveness.”
The sound of footsteps headed for the front door.
Livia stole forward until she was at the top of the stairs and had a clear line of sight to the front hall. Her father, in his traveling cloak, stood before the door to the vestibule, a large satchel in his hand. Her mother had just caught up with him, her heavy bosom heaving, her fussy winter cap askew.
“But even if you don’t care about spending Christmas at home,” she shouted, “shouldn’t you spare a thought for your pocketbook? You’ll be spending money we don’t have to please your selfish self!”
“Ah, but that is not true,” answered Sir Henry, his voice dripping with smugness. “I recently came into possession of one hundred pounds.”
“One hundred pounds? How? From where?”
The same questions echoed in Livia’s head until she remembered the deal Charlotte had made with their father to give him one hundred pounds every year.
“You need not concern yourself with that, my lady, save to know that it is indeed so.”
“Then how could you be so cruel as to not take me with you on holiday, if there is money to spend?”
Sir Henry grinned, a superior, callous expression that made Livia wince. “But you yourself insisted just now that you should remain home for Christmas. Who am I to gainsay you, my lady?”
And with that, he sauntered out, leaving his wife to sputter with impotent rage.
Had Charlotte imagined that Sir Henry would spend the entirety of his windfall on himself? Or that Livia would be left alone with a seething Lady Holmes?
She tiptoed backward, but not quickly enough. Her mother turned around and saw her. “You! Peeping from the shadows again! Did you see it all? Did you see what a dastardly scoundrel your father was? And why are you still here, you old maid? Why can’t you find a good man—or any living, breathing man—to marry you and take you off my hands?”
Livia fled, back to her room, back to her desk, back inside a story where the villains weren’t her own parents.
Six
Despite the rain, reporters and curiosity-seekers thronged the pavement in front of Mrs. Treadles’s house, their small forest of black umbrellas spilling into the street. As Charlotte drew near, a large laundry basket under her arm to complete her laundry-maid disguise, a murmur of excitement rippled through the crowd.
She stopped beside a woman, most likely a maid from a nearby house, at the edge of the herd. “Pardon me, miss, but why are there so many people? And everybody a-quakin’?”
The woman placed a hand over her heart. “You don’t know? Goodness, but the inspector what lives in this house got himself arrested for murder. Two murders. And they said another inspector from Scotland Yard just went in to see his missus.”
Charlotte had come as quickly as she could, in the hope of speaking to Mrs. Treadles before Inspector Brighton did. It would seem she was still too late.
“Oh my,” she moaned. “What’s the world coming to? And me with washin’ to deliver to the house.”
This earned her an enthusiastic reply. “Well, then ask them on the inside what’s going on. I’m dying to know!”
Charlotte broke through the crowd. As was typical of such town houses, next to the front door there was a wrought iron fence that enclosed a set of steps going down to the service entrance. Onlookers hung over the fence, watching her descend.
At the service entrance she knocked loudly. “I’ve yer washin’ ’ere!”
The door was opened by a tense-looking woman of about fifty years of age. “We’ve already got—”