Shadows Fall Away (19 page)

Was that so wrong? I hadn’t come right out and accused him of anything, hadn’t said anything incriminating. I’d had just asked a question that should have been asked weeks ago. Why had he spoken of a mysterious “aunt” no one had heard from?

I considered going to the tea shop then rejected the idea. He certainly hadn’t warned me of his intentions or rude behaviors.

Let him know what it’s like to have your world ripped apart. Let him suffer the consequences for a change.

With that satisfying thought burning in my mind, I headed back to the boarding house.

Genie

“You wouldn’t be the first woman to trade herself to a man for that,” Mrs. Yost told me with a glance around the small park where she and the other homeless were trying to sleep. It was a warm day. The flies were out in full force but she barely had the energy to shoo them away. “You’ll not the first and you’ll not be the last who took the plunge.”

The sharp look she gave me drove home her veiled meaning and I let out a sharp gasp. “No. I could
never
!”

“You say that now, girl, but hard times make for hard choices,” Mrs. Yost replied with a touch of anger in her voice. “You wait till yer belly’s gnawing at you like a rat in the night. You wait till you have to make a choice. Then come tell me you’d
never
do it.”

I wanted to scream, “No!” and run as fast as I could but I contained the welling panic and stood, nervously smoothing my skirts. Then more calmly continued. “My father will come around sooner or later.”

Mrs. Yost shrugged, leaned back against the bench, and closed her eyes. “Ya know, it’s not always as bad as you make it sound.” She closed her eyes. “No matter what some think, we women have our needs, my girl.”

Needs like those aroused by one Mark Stewart in a moonlit garden?

I picked up my Gladstone bag and stood. “Well, your wound has healed nicely so I don’t suppose I shall be seeing you as frequently now. Do take care of yourself.”

“You too, dearie,” Mrs. Yost mumbled. “May God watch over you.”

I looked around the park as I walked away. The state of the homeless people suddenly became too much, far more disturbing that it had ever been.

Their shabby clothes and worn shoes, gauntness from hunger, the blank defeat in their eyes, had once been symptoms of a social decay I crusaded against, but now those thing were becoming entirely too personal.

I turned and hurried, trying not to think of myself as being little more than one step above them. I’d fallen so far from my own station so quickly it was not hard to imagine the next few small steps to utter destitution could be just as quick.

Instead, I rallied my courage, looked at the sunshine, and tried to shake off the frightening gloom. Compared to so many I was well situated. Father had paid for the room for the month plus a bit extra which the landlady had finally given to me for food and necessities. Still, it was precious little. I knew I would have to be frugal. I dared not think what might happen if Father decided not to pay my rent or add an allowance next month.

My whole existence hung by a thread and I wanted to scream at the injustice of it all. I wanted to vomit.

My parents had forbidden me to complete nurse’s training because I would never need an occupation to support myself. Yet they’d cast me into a situation in which that income might make all the difference to my survival.

I needed to find employment to make my own way rather than be at the mercy of a moment’s whim.

But isn’t that was just what Mrs. Yost had suggested? After the most outrageous suggestion of all?
You might see if that American chap would marry you.
As if marriage to the one who’d caused my ruin would be a reasonable solution to the problem.
No. I will never again allow myself be dependent on another person for anything.

Almost before I knew it, I found myself near the tea shop, the one place I would most likely run into Mark Stewart. I came to a halt then realized I could use a cup of tea. I’d finished my rounds and, unless I wanted to return to the Nurses’ Hostel where I’d been imprisoned, I had nowhere else I needed to be or even wished to go at this moment.

The bell jingled gaily as I entered the shop and took my customary stool.

“Morning, Miss Trambley,” Mrs. O’Connell greeted. “Tea and a sweet roll today?”

“Just the tea, please.”

Mrs. O’Connell delivered the tea with a quizzical look. “You’re not your usual chipper self this morning. Something troubling you, then?”

Instead of answering, I merely shook my head.

I would not confide in Mrs. O’Connell no matter desperately I wanted to. Mark Stewart would not hear of my dilemma nor gloat over it. Mrs. O’Connell favored me with an all too knowing look but left me alone with my tea and thoughts.

Through the soft swirl of steam rising from the cup I gazed out the window and watched the bustle on Lehman Street. My thoughts weren’t on the benign scene, but on the memory of the times I’d sat here next to Mark. I remembered his arrogance and his scandalous talk and his uncertainty when things weren’t going well. I thought again of the time he’d asked me to teach him to shave. He had truly seemed helpless. Was that really just an act to make me lose my head?

I stirred my tea slowly, wondering what it would be like to be married. Certainly it wouldn’t be to someone like Mark Stewart even if I were so inclined. My parents would never approve—

That hardly mattered any more considering how they’d tossed me to the curb. I was on my own and didn’t need anyone’s approval for anything. Even if circumstances were different Mark Stewart was just…wrong.

Still, I wondered, from a purely theoretical viewpoint, what would marriage be like? Surely it wouldn’t be like my sister’s situation had been. If I ever chose to marry, I was certain
my
husband would never be like Phoebe’s and go off to have a regular weekly affair with a prostitute. Nor would it be like my parents’ marriage with their careful indifference. And it wouldn’t be like the women I knew in Whitechapel whose husbands beat or abandoned them.

I sipped the tea and scowled. None of the marriages I’d ever seen were ones I’d want. What was the point in any of it? Of course there was Jack Palmer, the new doctor Father had taken under his wing. He was affable enough. He hinted that he might like to call upon me formally, but I wasn’t sure if he liked me or the fact that my parents had influence at the hospital.

What I wanted was a friend, someone to talk to? Who would support my ideas and encourage me. Someone like…the very idea made me shudder. Someone like Mark Stewart.

I thought back to the night of the fundraiser and how intoxicated I’d been with his talk. About all the unfamiliar feelings as I’d stood so close to him. We’d almost kissed.

I swallowed hard, aware that those same feelings were again asserting themselves. A strange, discomforting excitement crept through me and I wondered if that type excitement would be part of marriage. Could that be what Mrs. Yost meant about women’s needs?

I tried to quell the feelings but to no avail. I imagined what it would have been like to have kissed him. Would I know what to do and how to respond? Would he? Surely he would know. And I was suddenly unsure whether I was disgusted or comforted by that notion.

I finished my tea and hurried out of the shop, afraid Mark would show up and completely cloud my thinking. The medical bag banged against my thigh as I hurried along. I’d walk towards Spitalfields. I needed to do something, needed to confirm my purpose. Surely, someone would need some sort of nursing.

I paused at the High Street, waiting for a break in the carriage traffic and caught a glimpse of Mark rounding the corner from the newspaper office.

My heart thundered in my chest. I couldn’t bear to see him now.

As if he’d heard my thoughts, Mark turned around abruptly and darted back around the corner and out of sight.

His avoidance made me feel curiously hollow. Then angry. He’d somehow heard what had happened with my parents and he was running away like a guilty scoundrel. He
had
been toying with me and now that I was no longer such a prize with the backing of an influential family, his interest was gone.

For the first time in my life, I felt incredibly dirty.

***

Mark

I hurried along the street, not caring where I went. I needed to stay out of Genie’s way.

Last night I’d heard about her situation from Mrs. O’Connell who had heard it from some other source. Since Genie hadn’t confided in Mrs. O’Connell from the start, I was sure she didn’t want me to know.

Although every instinct I had screamed for me to offer help in whatever way I could, after our argument the night of the Nichols murder, and the way her father had treated her I was sure she’d had just about enough grief from the men of the world. I didn’t want to be any higher on her shit list. As hard as it was to walk the other way, the common sense I rarely listened to told me to let her face life in the real world and figure it all out on her own.

Just the way I’d been doing since I got here.

I walked aimlessly for a while then found myself in the market where I’d nearly had my pocket picked. I wandered among the crowded stands and carts where vendors and shoppers were involved in boisterous haggling. Above the din of the marketplace, I heard a single voice calling to me, a voice I didn’t know but couldn’t ignore.

“Hallo! You! The American!”

I followed the voice to a small, garishly-decorated booth staffed by an equally garish woman with dark hair and dark features beneath a brightly-patterned turban. A gypsy, I guessed, based on her stereotypical movie looks including the surplus of gold jewelry on her wrists and neck.

There were only a few trinkets for sale on the small table in front of her booth. The majority of the booth was occupied by a red-and-white striped enclosure in which I suspected she did her real business. Hopefully fortune-telling, maybe other stuff I was even less interested in doing with her.

She stared at me with piercing black eyes. “Above you there is a clock,” she said the minute I stopped in front of her table. “It is running backwards. There is great danger.”

I blinked and considered her statement. The clock thing could represent time was backwards for me. It was vague enough to be the sort of thing that could apply to almost anyone.

Before I could refuse more of her services, she continued, “Someone is searching from afar, turning the hands of the clock like the pages of a book. For her, too, there is danger.” She stared at me but I had the distinct impression she was looking through me. “It is someone close to you but distant.”

Agatha? Closely related but distant as I’d only seen her a few times before my parents had dumped me on her. She was searching because I disappeared from the park.

But wasn’t that how the scams worked? If I tied this stuff to my life couldn’t a lot of others do the same?

I stuffed my hands in my pockets. I had to admit, she was good. “And how much will your advice cost me?”

She shook her head. “Not cost, saving.…saving…something. But there I cannot see. You seek many answers, answers that are at war with each other. This is why it is so cloudy.” Suddenly her focus shifted directly to me. “But there is a price, a terrible price if you succeed. The price of victory is a knife in your heart.”

A shiver ran down my spine and yet again I felt I was stuck in a Tim Burton movie. I’d never considered I might become one of the Ripper’s victims. The Ripper had never targeted men but, if cornered, he would probably defend himself.

The gypsy seemed to be saying that if I did succeed in changing history and revealing the killer’s identity, it might be at the cost of my own life.

This still bordered on vague enough to fit most anyone territory but this one was touching upon a lot that was going on with me. Even though she probably had heard enough bits and pieces about me to string this together and she wasn’t actually telling me anything specific, there was something creepy about it.

“Look,” I finally said. “You can cut the cryptic Yoda act.”

She looked up suddenly, a strange light in her eye. “For all your questions, the answers are close at hand but you do not know it. They are now no more than a glimmer in the shadows, a thing seen but not known, and a fear that is real but not admitted. But soon, the shadows will fall away.”

I dug into my pocket for a coin but she reached across the table and stopped me.

“No. You must give me something else.”

Of course. This was her real game. She wanted the big bucks.

“A name,” she said as if answering my unspoken question. “I see it over you, some great machine within a clockwork. Wheels within wheels, something like the planets of the heavens. A great engine of silver and gold--a machine made of time itself.”

I froze. I hadn’t told anyone about Hawkesmythe’s supposed time machine. Not even Genie. And even though the old guy rambled I didn’t think he got out much to regale the world with his tangents.

There was no way this woman could have picked that up to throw into her act unless she really was psychic. “The cost for this information you’ve given me is a
name
?”

The gypsy nodded energetically. “The cost is not for me, but for the one who is searching. I am not sure even of the purpose of the name, only that it is important to you.”

I was still skeptical and creeped out but I couldn’t see any real harm in it. “Sir Cedric Hawkesmythe,” I said finally.

She gave a shiver then closed her eyes and bowed her head for a moment. “Yes,” she murmured. “That is sufficient for now.” She looked up. “Return to me in three days. Then maybe I will have something you will find worth paying for.”

“What’s your name? In case you’re not here, who do I ask for?”

She smiled. “Madame Zharova is always here when she is needed.”

Impulsively, I pulled a shilling from my pocket and slid it across the table to her. “There is another question.”

“No, it is part of the same question. You have at war with yourself.” She frowned, then laughed. “And you are a formidable enemy.” She sighed. “There is no joy in any outcome for you. Both victory and defeat bring sorrow of different kinds. I am sorry.” She slid the coin back.