“Alice, it’s been no secret for some time that I want you for my wife. I hope that you will do me the honor of accepting my hand.”
Alice looked at the roses, so red. At William, so blond. At her mother, so jolly.
“Take the roses,” her mother prodded, clapping her hands in delight.
Stunned, Alice could think of nothing to do but obey. She took them from William’s hands, and he turned around and gestured at his cart.
“I know how you love music, Ally, so as a token of my affection I have spent the last year making you a wedding gift.” He grinned, then walked over to the carriage and pulled up a corner of the burlap tarp. It was a barrel organ—a pretty one—all brass and gleaming hand-worked wood.
“I managed to track down the one your father owned, the one he taught you on. It was in bad shape, but I salvaged his original ivories. The keys are grooved from his own fingers.”
Alice put her hand over her mouth.
Her father had always said William was a gifted craftsman. And this organ, she could see, was truly a piece of artistry. That he had made her an instrument using the keys of her father’s own organ was such a touching gesture that it genuinely took her breath away.
It would all be so moving, were it not the bait in a trap her entire family had conspired to set for her.
“She’s touched,” her mother declared, mistaking her fury for sentimentality. “Can hardly speak. It will do her good, I think, to play again.”
William smiled at Alice fondly, his blue eyes twinkling. “You always were Mr. Hull’s best shop window, Ally. And now you’ll be mine.”
Shop window.
She heard a noise behind her that echoed how she felt: a strangled gasp. She turned and saw that it had come from Henry, who’s eyes darted and met hers, horrified.
“Well don’t just stand there gaping, Ally,” her mother chuckled. “Answer him.”
She looked at William, standing with his hand on the instrument he’d made her using the skills he’d learned from the man who’d loved her more than anyone ever had.
She felt like she’d been lifted up to the sky, and was observing the scene take place from heaven. And what she saw down there, in her mother’s driveway, was not a picture of herself being presented with her future.
It was a portrait of her about to say farewell to her past.
“No, William. I can’t marry you. I’m sorry.”
“Ally!” her mother yelped. She gripped Alice’s shoulder painfully. “What are you doing?” she hissed.
Alice ripped her arm away.
William was a kind man, one she’d been friendly with since childhood. One who saw past her reputation as a loose-skirted, bad-mannered girl to her talent. She knew the life she’d have with him. Comfortable, secure, familiar.
But she did not want familiar. She did not want to be wanted for her talent.
She wanted a man who wanted her the way Henry Evesham wanted her. Someone who burned for her.
“Don’t be a fool,” her mother was whispering. “This is just as we’ve all planned. Just what your father wanted.”
“No, this isn’t what I planned. In fact, I haven’t been honest with you. With any of you.” She took a long, deep breath. “The place I work in London—it’s a whipping house. A private club where people come to indulge in unusual desires.”
She glanced at her mother to make sure she understood.
Her mother’s eyes went wide. “Alice! Don’t speak of such—”
“No, it’s time we all speak honestly. I look after the establishment, and sometimes help my mistress with the members of her club. I’ve been training to take on more duties. To become a governess, like my mistress.”
William let out a soft breath. “Ally. You don’t have to do that. I have the money to look after you all—”
She shook her head. “William, you are so kind to do what my father asked of you. But you see, I have never felt so much at home as I do in London. I have seen things that would shock you and I covet every sight. If I were to return here to marry you, I’d always pine for something else. And I won’t do that to either of us. I simply can’t.”
William stared at her, shocked and silent.
And then something flat and cold smacked her along the cheek.
Her mother’s open hand.
She wobbled on her feet, for the blow had hit her so hard she nearly lost her balance.
And then she picked up her skirts and ran.
She didn’t know where she was going.
But she knew her future would not—must not—end in Fleetwend.
Chapter 25
No one moved as Alice dashed off toward the hillside.
Henry waited for this man, William, to chase after her—but he just looked in puzzlement at Mrs. Hull, seeming baffled that his proposal had been met with rejection. Henry wanted to shake him. You called her a shop window. A shop window! Do you even know her? What I would give for such a—
“Odd, ungrateful girl,” Mrs. Hull muttered, in a tone rich with self-pity. “Always has been a trouble to me.”
Henry could not remain silent. “Madam, your daughter has travelled for five days in miserable weather in order to reach you, afraid she would not make it back in time. I have listened to her sobbing through the walls at night in grief, thinking you were dying. I have prayed with her for your health and for your soul. Whatever you think of her, she loves you. It was very unkind to make her think you were ailing when you might have simply told the truth.”
“And who are you?” the woman sniffed. “Someone from that wicked place she’s working at?”
“I’m a friend of Alice’s. And I think she deserves better than such trickery.”
“Trickery! An ‘andsome ‘usband and an organ—most girls’d love such trickery as that I reckon.”
“We only meant it as a surprise, not a trick,” the suitor, William, said, aggrieved. “I hoped to do something nice for her. Her pa asked me to look after his girls when he passed on, and it took me longer than I hoped to get myself settled.”
A great boom of thunder struck, and a violent thread of lightning cracked in the sky.
“Will, the organ!” Mrs. Hull cried. “Never mind about Ally. You must move the cart into the barn before it’s ruined.”
Henry looked at her unable to believe that an instrument could be of greater concern than the feelings of her daughter.
“But Alice … ,” William protested weakly. Henry swallowed down a surge of irrational, unattractive jealousy at this man uttering her name.
Mrs. Hull waved her hand. “She’s probably gone up to the graveyard to complain to her father’s ghost or some such nonsense. You know how she indulges in dramatics.”
“I’ll go after her,” Henry said.
He ran toward her up the muddy hillside. By the time he managed to clamber to the top, he was soaked and filthy and panting.
Alice knelt before a headstone. She pressed her forehead to it, as though the slab of granite might embrace her back.
The sight of her broke his heart.
“Alice,” he said quietly.
She did not look up nor cease her sobbing.