I smiled. ‘It is lucky then that he won’t be forced to do so for a long time to come,’ I said, wondering what people were saying about me. How awkward if talk of an engagement had already leaked out. I saw Lucasta making her way through the crowd towards us and turned to her mother with an apologetic smile. ‘I do hope you will excuse us but I haven’t seen Lucasta for far too long and am dying to catch up with her.’
Lady Brennan gave a false little society smile and stepped aside as her daughter came up and took my arm. ‘Of course. It’s always such a delight to see you two girls together.’ She didn’t look delighted though and not for the first time I found myself wondering if she actually liked me at all.
‘It’s not you,’ Lucasta muttered as she dragged me off to the terrace. ‘She’s like that with everyone at the moment. I think it’s the change coming upon her, like the Lady of Shallot’s curse only in reverse.’
‘The change?’ I was confused, the loss of my mother and sister had left me at something of a disadvantage when it came to such womanly matters although I was sure that Aunt Minerva would be only too happy to oblige should I ever feel in need of any intimate advice. I shuddered at the thought of it.
Lucasta nudged me. ‘You know,’ she said. ‘When a woman’s flowers stop and she can’t have babies any more. They get really upset about it for some reason.’ She shrugged. ‘I have no idea why - it sounds like a blessed relief to me.’ She firmly closed the glass doors behind us and led me over to the parapet overlooking the garden.
‘Don’t you want to have children?’ I asked my friend curiously as she fished her silver and enamel cigarette case out of her reticule and flicked it open with a sophisticated air that I longed to emulate.
Lucasta shrugged. ‘I suppose that I will have to have at least one, one day but I can’t say that I am thrilled by the prospect.’ She lit a cigarette and took a deep, blissful drag. ‘Isabella was the same, I think. Why do you think there’s only me to carry on the family name?’
‘Maybe there were other attempts?’ I said gently. I knew that my own Mama had had several sad little miscarriages in between Beatrice and myself, which explained the long gap between us.
Lucasta shrugged again and blew out a perfect smoke ring. ‘Maybe,’ she said with a complete lack of interest before cocking her blonde ringleted head towards me. ‘So how is Whitechapel?’
I sighed, wondering how much I could tell her. ‘It’s very different to how I expected,’ I said carefully, thinking of Henry Mercier and his slow smile.
Cigarette in hand, Lucasta peered at me through the gloom. ‘Why are you smirking?’ she demanded with a frown. ‘Have you met a man? Oh my God, you have, haven’t you?’
‘Of course not,’ I said with a nervous laugh as I felt my cheeks go hot and red again. ‘How utterly bizarre you are being. Quite ridiculous, in fact.’
Lucasta impatiently waved my protests aside. ‘Who is he?’ she said. ‘Gracious, is he some piece of Cockney rough? Or have you managed to winkle out a gentleman for yourself? Come on, spill the beans.’
I sighed. ‘There isn’t anyone,’ I said firmly. ‘I haven’t met any young men and certainly none that you would care to hear about. It isn’t exactly a hotbed of handsome young millionaires, you know.’
‘Pshaw.’ Lucasta blew out her cheeks in annoyance and took another drag from her cigarette. ‘Have you told Patrick about it?’ she asked, pretending to examine her nails but really watching me closely from beneath her long eyelashes.
‘Of course I haven’t,’ I blustered, appalled by the very idea. ‘And besides, there is nothing to tell.’
‘Oh, give it a rest,’ she said with a grin. ‘As usual, you forget that I’ve known you all your life, Alice Redmayne and can tell straight away when you are lying.’
I stuck my tongue out at her. ‘Now you just sound like Aunt Minerva,’ I said. ‘I’m sure she said exactly the same thing to me not so long ago.’
‘Perhaps you should try telling less lies then,’ she retorted with a cheeky look before dropping her cigarette on to the ground and grinding it to dust beneath her heel. ‘Anyway, I have news of my own.’
‘Oh?’ I raised an eyebrow, relieved to have Lucasta’s attention stray elsewhere even if I wasn’t foolish enough to think that she had finished with my own diverting little situation quite yet. ‘What have you been up to? More kissing unsuitable young men after drinking too much absinthe?’
‘We didn’t just kiss.’ My friend grinned. ‘Anyway, it’s not that - it’s this.’ She lifted up her saffron yellow silk skirts and innumerable lace and ribbon edged petticoats to reveal a pale blue swallow tattooed into the pale skin of her inner thigh. ‘What do you think?’
I stared at the tattoo then, suddenly embarrassed because of where it was, quickly looked away. ‘Gracious, Lucasta, how on earth are you going to explain that away on your wedding night?’
‘Oh pooh.’ She laughed. ‘I have no intention of marrying the sort of feeble milksop who would be shocked by this, no matter what my parents have planned for me.’ She dropped her skirts and brushed them down with a smug look. ‘They are all the rage among the court ladies, you know. It’s whispered that even Lady Randolph Churchill has a tattoo of a snake on her wrist.’ The dark haired and frankly gorgeous Lady Randolph Churchill, formerly the American heiress Jennie Jerome, had been Lucasta’s most adored idol ever since she’d smiled and waved to her across the way at the opera.
I sighed. ‘I suppose you think that I should get one too,’ I said, resigning myself to the inevitable.
Lucasta laughed. ‘Oh gracious no, it’s far too dashing for you, my dear!’ She stuck her tongue at me. ‘Although if you’re going to run off with your East End paramour…’
I glared at her. ‘I’m not running off with anyone,’ I said.
She put her arm around me. ‘Oh come now, you know that if you did then people would excuse it as all being down to your Italian blood.’
I laughed then. ‘I am not actually Italian, as well you know,’ I said. ‘I just happened to be born there.’ It was true. Papa had dragged a pregnant Mama and Beatrice out to Rome with him while he made sketches for what he intended to be a grand series of paintings about the infamous Borgia family with Beatrice posing as Lucrezia Borgia, looking lush and beautiful with her long fair hair studded with rubies and hanging unbound to her knees. He promised Mama several times that they would be returning to London in time for my birth but in the end she had given up, hired a local midwife and settled in for my birth, which occurred in a lavish Renaissance palazzo overlooking the Tiber.
‘Same difference,’ Lucasta said with a smirk. ‘Maybe you should go there on honeymoon. I can picture it now - you, your Cockney dreamboat, the blood red waters of the Tiber at night, the majestic beauty of the Vatican and… ’
‘I’m not getting married, Lucasta,’ I interrupted her patiently. ‘No matter what half of London seems to think.’
We were called in to dinner shortly after that and went in together, arm in arm and ignoring Aunt Minerva’s hissed reminders that we were supposed to be escorted in by two of the eligible young gentlemen present, who now stood awkward and partnerless in their white gloves at the back of the drawing room until my aunt suggested they stroll in together.
I’d arranged the seating plan so that I was in between my father and Sir John Steer, one of his elderly artist friends that I had known all my life and who always amused me with his tales of his travels abroad. However, when I reached my chair he was nowhere to be seen and Patrick was sitting there instead of him, with a look of perfect innocence on his handsome face that told me immediately that he was not the culprit responsible for swapping the place cards.
‘Have a lovely time,’ Lucasta whispered to me with a laugh as she released my arm and skipped away to her own seat on the other side of the table. ‘Oh, don’t look so cross, darling. I only did what you really ought to have done for yourself.’
‘I can’t believe you didn’t plac
e me next to you,’ Patrick said with a comically reproachful look as I awkwardly sat down beside him. ‘Do you really prefer Sir John to me?’
I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Oh absolutely,’ I said in a whisper. ‘He’s quite the Casanova when you get to know him a little.’
‘Really?’ Patrick looked down the table to where the doddery, pink cheeked Sir John was nervously taking his seat next to Aunt Minerva. ‘Well, he certainly looks the sort. Will your aunt be safe from his devilish charms, I wonder?’ We looked at each other and grinned, all awkwardness vanishing between us.
‘So why didn’t you want to sit next to me?’ he asked after a moment’s silence as the footmen hired for the evening served the soup course, a thin vegetable consommé and poured wine into our fine red crystal goblets, an artistic affectation of my father’s which always made me uneasily feel like I was drinking blood.
I felt my cheeks go warm at the directness of Patrick’s question. ‘I didn’t want people to talk,’ I mumbled, not quite meeting his eyes.
‘But don’t they always talk?’ he said in some surprise, putting down his soup spoon with a clatter. ‘Or do you mean in a more specific way?’
I looked at him then and saw that his face was filled with nothing but concern. ‘I think you know what I mean,’ I said in a low voice.
Patrick sighed and nodded. ‘Yes, alas, I do.’ He took hold of my hand beneath the cover of the table. ‘Well, I can think of at least one thing we can do to make them stop talking,’ he said gently.
Now I really was blushing. ‘There’s two things actually or, well, technically three. We could both marry other people.’ I gently but firmly removed my hand from his grasp.
He looked dumbfounded. ‘Marry someone else?’ he repeated as if he hadn’t quite understood what I was suggesting. ‘Alice? Is there someone else?’ He lowered his voice to a barely audible hiss. ‘Someone that you want to marry?’
I pushed my soup bowl away untouched. ‘Of course not, Patrick,’ I said with a nervous laugh. ‘You’re as bad as Lucasta. I can’t so much as look at a man without her hearing wedding bells.’
We both laughed then looked across the table to where our friend was simultaneously charming the socks off a pair of middle aged artist friends of my father, both of whom were very handsome in a rather louche Bohemian way and had quite shockingly rakish reputations, which made me wonder if perhaps Patrick’s place card was not the only one she had tampered with.
The soup bowls were efficiently whisked away to be replaced by a fish course of sole fillets in a rich creamy wine sauce and I picked at this without enthusiasm as I listened with half an ear to the conversation between Lady Brennan and the gentleman next to her that was going on beside me. A conversation which, I realised with a jolt, had strayed on to the topic of the recent spate of murders in Whitechapel.
‘Of course, what can one expect from the savages that live in such an area?’ Lady Brennan said with a sniff of disapproval. ‘They’re little better than animals.’
‘Come now, my dear, surely that is being a little unfair to animals?’ her husband interjected from across the table, which had the effect of making the conversation more general as everyone turned their heads to see what they were talking about. ‘If animals behaved like the creatures in the slums of Whitechapel, we’d be doing them a service in having them put down.’ He looked smugly around the table as if expecting applause.
I’d known Lord Brennan all my life and had never really had much of an opinion about him, other than the occasional wish that he would have a little more care for his daughter Lucasta’s feelings. Now though, I absolutely disliked the man and wished that I had the courage to say so.
‘That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?’ Patrick said smoothly and I looked at him in gratitude. ‘The people of Whitechapel are as deserving of respect as any of us. More so in fact when one considers the difficult conditions that they are forced to exist under.’ His hand again reached for mine beneath the table and this time I didn’t pull away.
‘They don’t have to live that way though,’ Lord Brennan said with a fatuous smile. ‘Why can they not make themselves useful to society and live like all the rest of us instead of choosing to live like beasts?’ He heaved a great dramatic sigh and looked around the table, which had gone completely silent now as everyone listened to him. ‘Oh, I’m sure that most of them bemoan their fate and curse the cruel ill luck that brought them so low but what do they do to try and change matters, that’s what I want to know.’
Patrick gave a low, mirthless laugh. ‘Oh come now, my Lord, surely you aren’t suggesting that a street child from Whitechapel has the same advantages as, say, someone of your own standing?’ He shook his head as if in disbelief. ‘I’m sure that if every child in Whitechapel had several hundred thousand pounds in the bank, a title and an education at Eton and Oxford then we, and they, would have nothing to worry about.’Lord Brennan shrugged. ‘They’d spend the fortune on gin then pawn the title to buy more,’ he said briskly, rubbing the ends of his fingers together as if literally brushing the dirt of Whitechapel from them. ’Such loathsome creatures will never change. We’d be better off sending them all off to the colonies.’ There were some nods of agreement around the table but I was heartened to notice most of our guests were staring fixedly down at their plates with expressions of dismay. I looked down the table to Aunt Minerva and noticed that Sir John had placed his hand gently on her arm as if restraining her from launching into an attack. I found myself wishing that she’d just shake him off and say what was on her mind. She never had much time for the Brennans. ‘At least then we’d never have to see any of them again or hear about their miserable lives or these tawdry murders.’
‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ Patrick muttered. ‘How convenient.’ He sighed and took a sip of his wine before smiling again. ‘Of course, you forget, my Lord, that Miss Redmayne has been working in Whitechapel for the last few weeks and probably knows more about the area than either of us.’ He turned to me and smiled, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze beneath the table. ‘Is that not so, Miss Redmayne?’
Every eye around the table turned to me and I felt my cheeks redden and go hot under the weight of their scrutiny. ‘That - that is true,’ I faltered, first staring down at my plate then, after taking a deep breath to steady myself, looking up and straight into Lord Brennan’s cold dark eyes. ‘You are wrong about the people who live there, my Lord,’ I said softly. ‘They are not perfect, it is true, but who is? I certainly don’t think they are any worse than us - after all, they have the same weaknesses and strengths, the same virtues and vices as anyone around this table. If their vices overwhelm them then it is our fault as much as theirs for it is we, with our gifts of both wealth and ability who seem hell bent on keeping them in their place.’ I thought about bright little Charlie and his poor little barefoot friends; of Emma with her pale hungry face and terrified eyes; of Miss Lawler, so earnest and desperate to assist in any way she could and I felt my heart swell with pride. ‘Lord Brennan, they are not beasts or animals, they are people just like you and I and as such deserve our respect.’ I slid my eyes around to Patrick and saw him give a small, almost imperceptible nod. ‘In fact I would go so far as to say that if our society as a whole is judged by how it treats the poor, sick and needy then I’m afraid that I find us very wanting indeed, no matter how civilised we may think we are.’
An uneasy silence fell across the table, broken only by the gentle clattering of plates as the footmen discreetly removed one service and brought in the next, as I stopped speaking and looked away from Lord Brennan’s astonished gaze. ‘Well done,’ Patrick whispered to me, giving my hand one final squeeze before releasing it.
Lady Brennan gave a high pitched nervous laugh that suggested that she’d already had too much to drink. The huge egg shaped rubies around her throat gleamed wickedly in the mellow candlelight and I remembered Lucasta telling me that they had once belonged to an Indian Maharajah who was murd
ered, torn to pieces in fact, by his harem of wives because of his great cruelty towards them. ‘My dear, you are far too soft hearted,’ she said, leaning forward in an almost conspiratorial manner as if it was just we two at the table.
‘That ought not to be considered a failing,’ I replied with a smile that I knew did not quite reach my eyes. ‘Perhaps we should all be a little more soft hearted when it comes to those less fortunate than ourselves.’
‘I rather doubt that,’ Lord Brennan interposed, clearly unwilling to let the subject go. ‘I must say, and I hope you will allow this liberty from someone who has known you all your life, that I am more than a little alarmed by the effect your work in Whitechapel is having upon you, Miss Redmayne. You are becoming quite the little radical. Next you will be wearing absurd smocks and trousers like the so called ladies of the Rational Dress Society and standing for Parliament.’ There was a polite laugh along the table, which he acknowledged with a smug little smile and bow of his head before turning towards my father who had been sitting in silence at the head of the table the whole while, observing in his usual gentle way but saying nothing. ‘I am surprised at you, Edwin, for allowing such a thing.’
My father heaved a great sigh then and carefully put his glass of wine back on the table. ‘Gracious, Richard,’ he said with a smile and a wink across at me, ‘what on earth gives you the impression that I have any control over anything that happens within my own household?’
Chapter Sixteen
After dinner we went to the drawing room where an up and coming young opera singer with the improbable name of Mademoiselle Anastasia Nightingale was waiting to entertain us with some arias. She sang beautifully and I could feel my residual anger about Lord and Lady Brennan’s snide behaviour flow from me like water as I listened. ‘She really is superb,’ Patrick whispered to me. He’d accompanied me out of the dining room and then elected to sit beside me too, much to my aunt’s obvious and rather mortifying delight.
From Whitechapel Page 17
