‘I wish that I could sing so beautifully,’ I said, unfurling my fan and waving it slowly in front of my face. It was an unseasonably cold evening and the combination of a lit fire, candlelight and press of several bodies crowded together into the drawing room had made it intolerably hot. ‘Would I have to change my name to something more musical though? Perhaps Alice Sparrow would suit me?’ I smiled at him and he grinned back.
‘I think your name is quite musical enough,’ he said gently as the last aria ended and we all politely applauded. ‘Or at least it is to me.’
I smiled but said nothing.
‘You really were quite astonishing earlier on,’ he continued in an undertone as we all got up and some of the guests, including him, prepared to leave. ‘I had no idea that you were quite so passionate about the plight of the people of the East End.’
I gave a tiny shrug. ‘I must confess that I had no idea either,’ I confided as I led him out to the hallway. ‘It’s true though. I am proud of the work that we do there and only wish that I could do more.’
He nodded, suddenly serious. ‘You should be proud,’ he said, feeling in his pocket for a card which he pressed into my hand. ‘If you ever have any need of me, if there is ever anything that I can do to assist then you will let me know, won’t you?’ He put his finger to my chin then and tilted my face upwards so that I was looking into his eyes. ‘Promise me, Alice?’
It was the first time since childhood that he had used my first name, having abandoned the practice as soon as I started putting my hair up and lowered my hemlines, and I gave a little smile to acknowledge this and approve it. ‘I promise,’ I said in a low voice. ‘Must you go now?’ One of the footmen was already advancing towards us with Patrick’s hat, black evening cloak, gloves and walking stick in his hands and I suddenly found myself desperate to keep him there with me just for a little while longer.
‘I’m afraid that I must,’ he said regretfully. ‘Like a total idiot, I arranged a business meeting for first thing tomorrow morning and must have all my wits about me for the task. You have no idea how much my lawyer and estate manager love to confound me.’ He laughed and put his hat on then took the walking stick as the footman arranged the cape carefully about his shoulders. ‘I will be back to see you soon though, no doubt.’
I smiled and slipped the card into the tiny watered silk reticule I wore hanging from my wrist. ‘I do hope so,’ I said just as there was a knock on the door which made us spring apart almost guiltily. ‘Gracious, who could that be? I don’t think there was anyone missing from dinner?’ I looked around for my aunt but she was still in the drawing room, holding court with my father, who was showing off some of his latest sketches.
One of the footmen went to open the door and I was astonished to see Mr Mercier standing on our doorstep, looking very unsure of himself and dressed in a rather shabby oversized black overcoat with his bowler hat tucked under his arm. There was a short, painful pause, during which he looked like he desperately wanted to leave, before I swallowed down my ridiculous feeling of disappointment and went towards him with my hand out stretched. ‘Mr Mercier,’ I said as smoothly as I could, smiling at him. ‘What a pleasure to see you.’
He stared at me silently, ignoring my hand and my smile faltered as I realised how he must see me - the price of my lovely apricot silk dress could feed a family in Whitechapel for six months, my diamond earrings could keep a girl off the streets for two years. I pulled back my hand and looked away as a stab of shame shot through me.
‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ he said at last very formally, clearing his throat before he spoke. ‘I didn’t know that you would be entertaining tonight. I assumed that —‘
I felt my cheeks go warm as I looked at him again and met his eyes, which were just as cold and hard as I’d feared they would be. ‘No, no, there is no need to apologise. You weren’t to know.’ I felt Patrick come up behind me and turned to him in relief and some embarrassment. ‘Lord Woollam, this is Mr Mercier from the Whitechapel Women’s Mission.’
The two men looked each other in silence before Patrick held out his hand with enviable and very practiced aplomb. ‘I am very pleased to meet you, Mr Mercier,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’m most exceedingly interested in the work that our dear Miss Redmayne is doing in the East End.’
Mr Mercier nodded but said nothing and there was another pause as Patrick clearly cast about for something else to say. ‘I’ve been thinking that perhaps I ought to make some sort of donation,’ he said at last as I looked at him in surprise. ‘To see Miss Redmayne so inflamed with enthusiasm about the Mission has made me realise that I don’t do enough to help.’
Mr Mercier gave a nod. ‘That would be very kind of you, my Lord,’ he said but I could tell by his expression that he didn’t believe a word of it, that he thought my friend was just another bored rich aristocrat trying to make himself look good by making promises that he had no intention of keeping.
I watched them both together, taking in the contrast between Patrick’s fair good looks and Mr Mercier’s dark stockiness as they warily looked at each other. I could tell that Mr Mercier was longing to be as rude and dismissive towards Patrick as he used to be to me, but the fear of angering a potential sponsor for the Mission had completely taken the wind out of his sails. As for Patrick, he was his usual urbane, friendly self but his eyes as they rested upon Mr Mercier and flickered every now and again towards me were hard and calculating.
‘Why did you come here?’ I asked eventually when the silence went on for a smidgen too long. Of course the question sounded much more polite, less accusatory when I rolled it over in my mind a second before asking but it was too late to do anything about it now.
Mr Mercier pulled his gaze away from Patrick and looked instead at me. ‘I wanted to bring you something,’ he said with a shrug, matching my rudeness with plenty of his own. ‘I didn’t know if you were coming back to the Mission but thought you might have need of it at some point.’ I raised my eyebrows in some confusion and he felt inside his coat pockets, eventually bringing out a battered envelope which he looked at thoughtfully for a moment before almost reluctantly handing over to me. ‘It’s the address that you wanted. I probably ought to have just sent it,’ he added a little ruefully, feeling the back of his neck with his hand in a gesture that I knew meant that he was feeling awkward and like he really ought not to have come. ‘I just thought that —‘
‘Well, it’s certainly very kind of you to bring it all this way,’ Patrick interrupted smoothly. ‘After all, Whitechapel is no small distance away.’ I looked at him quickly, thinking that perhaps he meant to mock Mr Mercier but there was nothing but sincere appreciation in his expression.
‘Some things are better delivered by hand,’ I interposed a little crossly, wanting to reassure Mr Mercier, who was now eyeing the door as if considering escape, and thinking of the other envelope, the red stained one in my drawer upstairs. ‘At least now you know that it is safe with me.’
He smiled then although the rest of his expression was unreadable. ‘Is it?’ He turned back then to Patrick and gave a slight bow. ‘It was nice to meet you,’ he said.
‘Likewise,’ Patrick agreed affably. ‘I will contact the Mission tomorrow about making a donation.’
‘And who is this then?’ Her timing perfect as always, Lucasta appeared in the doorway and I gave an inward groan of apprehension, dreading whatever was inevitably going to happen next. If my face gave away my trepidation, she gave no sign of noticing but instead grinned and tripped carelessly over to us, her bright blue eyes fixed curiously on Mr Mercier. ‘Is this one of your’s, Alice?’
I could have cheerfully slapped her but instead I just smiled and shook my head. ‘No, absolutely not one of mine. Mr Mercier is his own man and belongs to no one.’
Lucasta laughed and opened her white ostrich feather fan which, like her tattoo, I had been assured was all the rage amongst the Princess of Wales’ ladies in waiting. ‘What a pity,’ she pur
red, looking Mr Mercier over quite shamelessly.
I hazarded a look at him, half expecting him to be all a-blush and flattered by her attentions but instead he was pale with anger, with his full lips drawn together into a forbidding line. ‘I really should go,’ he said to no one in particular before turning and rushing from the house.
‘Oh dear, I think you scared him off,’ Patrick said with a wry smile at my friend, who gave an unconcerned shrug.
‘Clearly he should learn a bit more about our ways then,’ she said tartly, closing her fan and turning to me with an impish look. ‘I thought you said there aren’t any handsome young men in Whitechapel?’
I glared at her then, before I really quite knew what I was doing, lifted my heavy silk skirts above my ankles and ran out of the door and down the stone steps after Mr Mercier. Unable to see him straight away in the gloom and heavy clammy fog that swirled around the streets of north London that night, I guessed that he must have gone towards Canonbury station at the end of the street and turned right before hurtling clumsily down the road, hampered by my high heeled boots and heavy, swagged skirts.
‘Mr Mercier!’ I called into the smoky darkness. ‘Please wait!’ A dark shape that could have been a man loomed out of the fog just ahead of me and my heart leaped with hope as I called again: ‘Please don’t go!’
He turned and looked at me then, his face shadowed. ‘Wait.’ I panted slightly as I came up to him and rested my hand against my side where my tight corsetry was digging into my flesh. Perhaps I should have joined the Rational Dress Society after all. ‘I just wanted say…’
‘Yes?’ He sounded impatient and keen to be on his way.
‘It’s very kind of you to come all this way.’ I waved the envelope at him, still gasping for my breath and shivering in the damp night air.
He frowned and shrugged. ‘It’s really nothing.’
‘It’s not,’ I said, pushing the envelope down the front of my bodice. ‘It’s really not. You didn’t have to come all this way but you did anyway, just to help me.’ I held my hand out towards him. ‘I really appreciate it.’ He didn’t take my hand and I slowly withdrew it, distressed by the barrier that had sprung up between us again just when I had thought that it was gone forever. ‘Thank you.’
He half turned as if to go but then turned back to me and this time there was a light in his dark grey eyes as he looked at me. ‘Are you ever going to come back to the Mission?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘Yes.’ I hadn’t been certain, had indeed been rather dreading my return to Whitechapel in fact but now I knew that I had to go back. I had to see my quest to the very end, no matter where it led me.
‘Good.’ Mr Mercier nodded and looked down at his shoes, which desperately needed cleaning, causing me to feel a brief, entirely unworthy and hastily repressed stab of embarrassment that my friends, particularly the always exquisitely turned out Patrick should have seen him thus with his dirty shoes and scruffy overcoat. ‘You have been very much missed.’
I felt ridiculously pleased. ‘Have I?’ I asked, smiling now, the shoes and shabby coat forgotten. ‘By everyone?’
He smiled and shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’ We heard a train whistle in the distance, an unearthly eerie sound, wailing like a banshee through the thick grey swirling smog. ‘Miss Redmayne…’ He hesitated.
‘Mr Mercier?’ I prompted when he still didn’t speak.
He sighed and shook his head almost regretfully. ‘It’s nothing. I did not mean to speak out of turn and I certainly didn’t mean to ruin your party.’
I laughed. ‘You didn’t ruin anything,’ I said. ‘It was just one of Papa’s get togethers. He likes to entertain.’ I smiled and shrugged. ‘I am not quite so fond of it. I would prefer a quiet life.’
‘I don’t think a quiet life would suit you,’ he said in a low voice and again I realised how I must look to him, all dressed up in my peach silk gown with diamonds at my ears and throat and even dotted about in my hair. I knew what it must have cost him to come to me here in Highbury and I also knew that I had somehow disappointed him dreadfully, that what he had found here had confirmed all of his worst thoughts about me.
‘I know what you must think of me,’ I said, faltering over the words in my desperate haste to make amends, to make him understand that this was not all there was to me and that the barriers that he had clearly erected between us were just figments of his imagination. ‘I know you think me rich and spoiled and ridiculous and perhaps I am all of those things but that is not all that I am, Mr Mercier.’
He gave a brief curt nod. ‘I know that,’ he said before giving a sudden smile. ‘I also know that you can hold your brandy and have worryingly little care for your personal safety.’
I smiled too. ‘I told you that I am ridiculous,’ I said a trifle ruefully. I folded my arms around me as the fog swirled and thickened around us. Just beyond my line of sight I could see dark moving shapes of other pedestrians and every now and again a carriage would pass by, the usual brisk clip clopping of the horse’s hooves muffled and made dull by the smog. ‘I just wish I knew…’
He stepped closer to me. ‘Knew what?’ he said softly, so softly in fact that I had to lean forward to hear him.
I hesitated for a moment. ‘I wish I knew what you want me to be,’ I said at last, rather miserably. ‘It seems like everything about me is wrong.’
He frowned then. ‘I don’t want you to be anything,’ he said slowly and carefully as if to impress every word upon me. ‘You are as you are, Miss Redmayne.’ He nodded in the direction of my house, which was mostly obscured by the swirling fog, bar the soft amber lights that glowed at the windows. ‘Are you engaged to Lord Brennan?’ he asked.
I paused then shook my head. ‘No, although everyone wants us to be,’ I said. ‘We’ve known each other all our lives, you see.’
He nodded but didn’t smile. ‘You make a handsome couple,’ he said flatly.
‘Do we?’ I laughed. ‘I’m not so sure. We fight like cats in a bag and I’m fairly sure that if we did marry then one of us would end up horribly murdered by the other before the end of our honeymoon.’ A horse and carriage clip clopped slowly past in the fog and I suddenly felt the chill in the air with a renewed vigour and heartily wished that I’d had the presence of mind to snatch up a wrap before running out of the house. ‘I should really go back now.’ I gave him a quizzical look and extended my hand again while yet again he ignored it. Good grief. I sighed loudly to let him know how tiresome I thought he was being then turned away with a shrug. ‘Thank you for coming all this way,’ I called over my shoulder as I started to slowly fight my way through the fog back to the house. ‘I really do appreciate it.’
I heard his footsteps behind me and before I could do anything to prevent him, he had put his arms around me and turned me around to face him. ‘I like you just as you are,’ he said quickly and urgently before, oh lord, he pulled me to one side so that we were hidden behind a wall then lowered his head to mine and kissed me as I clung to him in the most unladylike manner.
‘Mr Mercier,’ I whispered against his lips as he pulled away for a moment. I opened my eyes and stared up at him in wonderment as his arms tightened around me and pulled me close again, first trailing his warm mouth down the side of my neck then making for my lips again. ‘Henry.’ I opened my mouth and kissed him back, feeling intoxicated at first but then gradually nothing at all. Perhaps my expectations were simply too high after all those weeks of frantic daydreaming and wishing or perhaps we just didn’t fit together as well as I had so tremulously hoped, but there was something wrong and after a while, although I let him carry on kissing me, I began to wonder just how long I could politely leave it before I moved away.
‘Alice…’ In the end it was he who broke away first and released me. ‘We shouldn’t do this. You’re on the verge of getting engaged to someone else and I, well…’
I stared at him, still feeling the weight of his tongue upon my own, the roughness of his stubble
against my chin. ‘I’m not on the verge of getting engaged to anyone’ I interrupted with annoyance.
He gave a short laugh. ‘Of course you are,’ he said. ‘I saw the way that you and Lord Brennan looked at each other. I don’t know you well enough to know precisely why you’ve convinced yourself that you aren’t right for each other but my guess is that you’re spoilt, Miss Redmayne, and you’re having your little bit of fun with someone who can’t hurt you before it’s time to settle down and play wife.’
I glared at him. ‘That’s not true,’ I said furiously. ‘I’m not spoilt and I’m certainly not having any fun.’
‘Not at my expense anyway,’ he snapped.
‘So why did you kiss me just now?’ I demanded. ‘Or did I entrap you into it like some sort of siren.’ I gestured at the fog that surrounded us. ‘The current weather conditions are certainly very apt for such activities, aren’t they?’
He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I kissed you because I wanted to,’ he said. ‘And because I thought you wanted it too.’
I stared at him then, I think to the amazement of both of us, I started to laugh. ‘I did want it,’ I conceded with a rueful smile as he stared at me in astonishment, ‘and I’m glad that it happened.’ I looked at his face, which was just as comely as ever but not really as handsome as I had remembered it during my time away from Whitechapel. ‘I’ll admit that I was just a little bit infatuated with you, Mr Mercier but to be honest, I don’t think that we are very well suited either.’ I lifted a hand to stop him speaking. ‘No, this isn’t about money or where we live or our respective backgrounds or anything as tiresome as all that, it’s simply that I think we are just too different in our attitudes and aspirations.’ I smiled. ‘If Patrick and I wouldn’t survive beyond the honeymoon, I doubt we would make it past the announcement of our engagement being posted in the newspapers.’
From Whitechapel Page 18
