He took a sip of cold tea and immersed himself in Donne, and I wandered on down the narrow aisles, turning, finding myself near the book-laden steps leading up to the gallery. A title caught my eyes. I stopped, startled, unable to believe what I saw. I reached up and touched the dusty, faded blue binding, my fingers trembling. A General History of The Most Famous Highwaymen, by Captain Charles Johnson. My eyes were moist as I took down the battered volume and examined the thumb-marked pages. Yes, it was the very same copy Father had let me keep that afternoon over eight years ago when I had come home after my first encounter with Hugh Bradford in the gardens at Greystone Hall. Marie had sold it along with all the other books after Father’s death, and it had turned up here, through some miracle, to be reclaimed at last.
I brushed away the tear that trailed down my cheek. No, I wasn’t going to give way to the grief still in my heart, nor was I going to entertain the flood of memories the book brought back. My father was gone, and I had come to terms with that loss in my own way. Hugh Bradford was gone, too, not a single report of him since he had bound and gagged the footman and fled the stables two and a half years ago. The pain was still in my heart, the love as well, unreasonable though it be, and I tried never to think of those wickedly slanted brows, those moody brown eyes, the emotions and sensations he had stirred that evening under the stars.
The noisy rustle of skirts and clatter of heels shattered my reverie, and I was amazed to see a radiant, attractive young woman hurrying down the aisle toward me. Stumbling over a pile of unshelved books, she uttered a very colorful curse, her vivid blue eyes full of exasperation. Her long auburn waves bounced wildly about her shoulders. Her white silk frock had bright cherry red stripes and was cut extremely low. The heels of her cherry red slippers were extremely high. Something told me she was not one of Miller’s regular customers.
“Quick, luv, I’ve got to hide!” she exclaimed. “Show me where!”
Without a moment’s hesitation I took her arm and led her over to the wooden stairs and told her to crouch under them. She obeyed promptly, disappearing among the shadows. I caught a whiff of exquisite perfume and heard a sneeze as I turned back to the shelves, examining the titles with studied nonchalance. A minute or so later I heard heavy footsteps stumbling about the maze of shelves. “Megan!” a husky voice called. “I know you’re in here somewhere!” There was a thud, a crash, the sound of books toppling to the floor, followed by a groan and an expressive “Damnation!” I listened, fascinated, as the footsteps began to tromp again, drawing nearer, and then a tall, ruggedly attractive chap with dark bronze hair and angry brown eyes appeared at the end of the aisle where I stood. He was wearing a superbly cut brown broadcloth frock coat and a yellow silk neckcloth, both garments decidedly the worse for wear and both quite dusty at the moment. The fingers of his right hand were ink-stained, I observed, and there was a smudge of dust on his cheek.
“You’re not Megan,” he said. He looked thoroughly out of sorts.
“Definitely not,” I informed him.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
“Who?”
“Girl who popped in here not more’n five minutes ago. Perky little thing with long auburn curls and saucy blue eyes, wearing a frock with red and white stripes and a pair of preposterous red shoes.”
“Haven’t seen anyone like that,” I lied. “In fact, I don’t think anyone has come into the shop since I’ve been here.”
“You’re sure?”
“Certain,” I said.
“Damn! I could have sworn I saw her come in here. Maybe it was the shop next door—I was halfway down the street when I spotted her.”
“It seems you’ve made a mistake, sir.”
“Yeah, guess I have,” he grumbled. “Damn. Left me flat, she did. Just up and left three months ago because I had to spend so much time working on my articles and couldn’t squire her about town. Disappeared, she did. I’ve been looking for her ever since. London’s a big city,” he added.
“I know,” I replied.
He shook his head, looking very unhappy now, and then he turned back into the maze, stomping about the place until he finally located the front door. I heard it open, heard it close, and then I stepped over to the stairway and informed the girl it was safe to come out. Skirts rustling crisply, she emerged a moment later with dust on her cheeks and cobwebs in her hair. Her blue eyes were full of admiration.
“You were marvelous, luv!” she cried. “I heard everything, and I couldn’t have carried it off better myself. I’ve had training, too. Do yourself a big favor, luv. Never fall in love with a journalist.”
“I’ll try not to,” I promised.
“Larry’s actually rather sweet,” she confided, “but the moment he asked me to marry him I knew I’d better clear out while I still had a chance. Journalists are all a bit mad, you see. Think they’re geniuses, the whole pack of them. Think a girl should sit at their feet in rapt admiration. I left him a note,” she added. “Some men just never give up.”
She pulled a mirror out of her reticule, let out a cry of horror when she saw her face and began to remove the dust from her cheeks with a handkerchief. This done, she brushed the cobwebs out of her hair and told me it had been terribly spooky under there, and then she smiled a lovely smile.
“Megan Sloan, luv,” she introduced herself, “late of the Drury Lane Theater. Very late, actually. I had a tiny, tiny walk-on in one of Mr. Garrick’s productions last season and haven’t worked since. On the stage, that is.”
“I’m Angela Howard,” I said.
“That’s a lovely name. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for helping me out. I owe you a huge debt of gratitude. Seeing Larry again would have been quite tiresome. He can be very persuasive, believe me. I might even have weakened and gone back to him.”
“He was very good-looking,” I observed.
“They all are, luv. That’s the danger of it.”
With her full pink lips, that pert nose and those vivid blue eyes, she was really extremely attractive, I thought, though one would never call her a beauty. Her long auburn hair was thick and wavy, a luxuriant reddish-brown glistening with rich highlights. Not quite as tall as I was, she had a superb figure, admirably displayed in the red and white striped frock with its tight waist and low bodice. Megan Sloan exuded vitality and good humor and a jaunty self-confidence I couldn’t help but admire.
“Fancy all these books,” she said, gazing around at the towering shelves. “What would a person do with them?”
“Read them, of course.”
“Oh,” she said.
Miss Sloan was clearly not of a literary bent, I reflected.
“I don’t know about you, Angela, but I haven’t had lunch and I’m positively starving. Why don’t we buy some things and take them to the park and have a picnic? If you’d like to, that is. You may have other plans.”
“I’d love to, Megan.”
The girl was clearly delighted, and I suspected that, for all her vitality and good nature, she had very few friends. We made our way to the front of the shop and I rang the bell and Miller eventually shuffled up in his felt slippers to take my five pence for Captain Johnson’s book on highwaymen. Megan was happily stroking Hercules, whose tongue hung out in ecstasy. Miller looked at her with considerable bafflement. I doubted many women in striped silk and outlandish red shoes frequented this particular shop.
We left, and Megan kept a nervous eye out for the ardent Larry, not relaxing entirely until we had turned off Fleet. We strolled to the park and bought sausage rolls and oranges and gingerbread and lemonade from various street hawkers, and I bought a loaf of bread as well. A strapping blond sailor followed us into the park. Megan turned around and put him off in language so salty it brought a blush to my cheeks. The sailor blushed, too, scurrying away as though he’d been stung. Megan sighed and said a girl had to know how to deal with men in a wicked city like this, else she’d be whisked away in no time at all. She was clearly an expert.
The park was lovely, multicolored flowers abloom in the beds, the grass a soft green, the trees beginning to bud. Children played noisily, romping about with reckless abandon, and lovers strolled hand in hand. Others, less inhibited, lolled on the grass, pant legs and petticoats all entangled. Vendors shouted, hawking roasted chestnuts, paper kites, a variety of goods, and plump blue-gray pigeons perched on the edges of the fountains. Several men looked us over as Megan and I sauntered along, admiring her lovely form and gleaming red-brown hair, but none of them accosted us, which was just as well after what had happened to the sailor. We finally located a spot near the edge of the pond for our picnic and sat down on the grass, spreading our skirts out and leisurely eating our food in the warm rays of sunlight.
“I love sausage rolls,” Megan declared. “The sausage is always so spicy, the mustard so tangy.”
“I love them, too, though I rarely have an opportunity to eat one.”
“What do you do, Angela?” she inquired. “You’re beautiful enough for the stage, talented enough, too, if your bit with Larry is any example, but I haven’t ever seen you around Covent Garden.”
Beautiful? Megan was very kind, I thought.
“I work at—at a gambling house,” I told her. “Marie’s Place. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”
Megan lifted an eyebrow, clearly surprised. “I thought she only employed blondes.”
“I don’t run one of the tables. I—work behind the scenes. My stepmother owns the place.”
“How nice for you,” she said.
“Not at all,” I replied.
And I found myself talking to this friendly, engaging girl as I had never talked to anyone before, not even Eppie. Before an hour had passed I had told her about my life in the country, about my father and Hugh Bradford, about the trials and tribulations of being Marie’s ward here in London. There was something about her that inspired trust and put one completely at ease. Megan ate a gingerbread man and peeled an orange, and when I finally lapsed into silence she told me her own tale. The daughter of a fishmonger, she had lost her father when she was thirteen and her mother had immediately remarried. When Megan was fifteen her stepfather had raped her and vowed to kill her if she breathed a word about it. She lifted his wallet the next morning and struck out on her own, making Covent Garden her turf, working in the flower markets and eventually going into the theater, without resounding success, she was quick to inform me.
There had been a multitude of men in her life, she couldn’t seem to avoid them, and she was always making mistakes, like Larry, and hoping to find a man who would be the man but he hadn’t turned up yet. They were rogues, the whole lot of them, handsome and delightful and ever so cozy to be with, yes, but always rogues in the end, treating a girl like she was his personal property and expecting her to dance to any tune he chose to whistle. She guessed she would always be a fool for a boyish grin and a pair of merry eyes, never seemed able to resist them, alas, but a girl needed room to breathe and she’d rather be on her own than be some man’s plaything and drudge.
“It’s all roses at first, luv,” she confided, “and then they expect you to darn their stockings.”
“Indeed?”
“And woe unto any girl who has ideas about having a career of her own. I could have been a super in Garrick’s last production if Larry hadn’t been such a menace about it. Not having other men ogle his girl, he wasn’t. Flatly forbade me to take the job. That’s one of the reasons I left him.”
“What’s a super?” I inquired.
“A walk-on. Someone who hasn’t any lines. You stand around in the background and look decorative while the leads emote. I’ve been a super dozens of times. Once I carried a spear in a play about Boadicea, and next season I was an Egyptian slave girl, wore a long black wig.”
“It sounds fascinating,” I said.
“Helps pay the rent, luv, and a girl needs all the help she can get. I’m currently resting—that means between engagements—but there are several new productions opening soon, and my friend Dorothea Gibbons lets me work for her when I’m not otherwise employed—this is my afternoon off. Dottie makes most of the costumes for all the managers. I don’t sew,” she hastened to add. “I help in the stockroom and go fetch laces and velvets and such from the suppliers. It’s not bliss, but at least it’s honest work.”
It all sounded wonderfully colorful and exciting, I thought, particularly when compared with my own bleak life. Lost in reverie for a few moments, I was startled to see Megan whipping off her outlandish red shoes. Then I heard the little boy crying. He had been playing with a toy sailboat at the edge of the pond and the boat had floated out of reach, moving slowly to the center of the pond. Leaping to her feet, holding her skirts up to her thighs, Megan charged into the water, retrieved the boat and gave it to the child, telling him to be very, very careful because little boys had been known to drown in this particular pond.
This small incident spoke volumes about my new friend. Megan Sloan might be fast, even wicked in the eyes of some, but in this age of brutality and indifference she had a kind heart and a caring nature, and these were rare. Probably went far to explain her failures with men, too, I thought, men being what they were. Other women might have become hard, calculating and mercenary given her experiences, but Megan retained an honest, open outlook on life, even a kind of innocence, though she hadn’t a naive bone in her body. Drying off her legs with a handkerchief, she plopped back down on the grass and pulled on her shoes, sighing a deep sigh.
We talked for a while longer and then, gathering up our things, sauntered across the stone bridge and tossed small chunks of bread to the ducks paddling among the water lilies. They squawked with delight, flapping their wings and greedily fighting over the bread, and both of us laughed. Bells chimed, and I was surprised to find it was already five o’clock. I told her I would have to go now, and Megan looked wistful, as reluctant to part as I was.
“It’s been a lovely afternoon,” I said. “I—I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed myself so much. I feel we’ve been friends for years.”
“I feel the same way,” she confessed. “It was destiny, luv, me hurrying into that strange shop, you being there. Now that we’re friends, we’ve got to stay friends.”
I agreed, and we made tentative plans to meet one week from today here by the bridge. There were long shadows on the grass as we strolled slowly out of the park.
“I’ve got a large flat over Brinkley’s Wig Shop in Covent Garden,” Megan informed me, “right across from the arcades. It isn’t grand, but it’s roomy, much too large for one person, actually. If—if you should ever need a place to stay, luv, I’d be delighted to have you room with me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I promised.
“I could probably help you find work, too,” she continued. “I know dozens of people in Covent Garden. My friend Dottie’s always looking for someone who can sew.”
“I sew like a dream,” I said. “I was thinking of trying to find employment with a seamstress when I leave Marie.”
“Then it’s settled!” she exclaimed. “As soon as you leave, you’ll come room with me and work for Dottie. She’ll be thrilled to have someone responsible, and you’ll love her. She’s an old dear—fussy as can be and a bit absentminded, but she’s got a heart of gold.”
We said our good-byes at the entrance to the park, and Megan gave me a hug before she trotted off on her high red heels. Shadows were beginning to gather as I made my way back to Underwood’s for the cards, and a thick purple-blue haze was settling over the city as I started home, colors gradually fading, everything brown and gray. It was after six-thirty when I got back, for I’d had to wait a short while for the cards, and Marie was in a tempest when I carried them to her office.
“You’ve been gone all day!” she cried.
“You told me not to come back without them,” I reminded her, “and they weren’t ready until a little while ago.”
“Where did you get that book?�
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“I bought it with my own money. I browsed for a while at Miller’s while I was waiting for the cards.”
Marie paid no attention to my reply, probably didn’t even hear it. She had had a very bad day, that was plain to see, and something was definitely bothering her now. Her green eyes flashed. Vivid red curls spilled untidily over her brow. Her fingernails made an impatient rap-tap-tap on the edge of her desk, and she seemed to have forgotten my presence. She stood up after a moment and scrutinized me with narrowed eyes, frowning deeply.
“We’ve got problems,” she said. “Big problems. Jen’s sprained her ankle and that slut Sally hasn’t shown up. Two girls short, and this one of my biggest nights! You’re going to have to run one of the tables tonight, Angela, and don’t tell me you can’t. I know the girls have taught you everything about it.”
“But—”
“I don’t like it any more than you do!” she snapped. “You’re not even blonde—but there’s no way around it. Sally’s gown should fit you, and you can put your hair up. Get upstairs. Take a bath, wash your hair. Tess can take Sally’s table and you can take Tess’s—she does nothing but deal cards for Twenty-One. Hurry up, Angela!”
“Marie, I—”
“None of your lip! Customers will be arriving within the hour. You’re going to have to do it, and God help you if you mess up! Go on now, get upstairs and start making ready. Merde!” she exclaimed. “Why do these things always have to happen to me!”
Chapter Eight
I wasn’t nearly as brave as I pretended to be. Oh, I made a lot of noise and acted cool and intrepid and sometimes it worked, sometimes I even tricked myself into believing I wasn’t nervous, but much of the time it was just a pose. Couldn’t trick myself tonight. I was so nervous I felt I might jump out of my skin if someone said “Boo!” It wasn’t that I was intimidated by all the aristocrats I’d be nobbing with—I’d learned a long time ago they were just like other folk, only richer and snootier—it was just that at the moment I couldn’t remember one card from another and knew I was going to mess up dreadfully and probably make a complete fool of myself. Marie would just love that. Sod Marie, I told myself. This wasn’t my idea. If I messed up she would have no one to blame but herself.
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