Jane Steele(43)

“Me little one’s off raising ’ell, I shouldn’t wonder.” Tilly ventured to my window to see if she could glimpse Kitty playing amidst the lost violet blooms and the chestnut shells; it was freezing, but Kitty was a reckless, towheaded thing with thick mittens, and no weather could touch her.

I shifted in my chair, wrapped in a brown dressing gown with lace at the collar, sifting through newspapers as the draught of poisoned smoke trickled into my brain.

“You know I’ll buy next time,” I mentioned, regarding her pipe. “If you’re short of chink—”

“Not I, I’m rich as butter.” She winked, adjusting a tatty purple shawl over the friendly spillage of her bosoms. “Nay, it’s . . . we’re nigh out o’ hard up, and I’ve Judge Frost arrivin’.”

My friend Tilly’s speech was thick with local slang, which made me wish I were more fluent, since I rather adored the dialect of society’s underbelly (though I certainly understood hard up meant tobacco). Meanwhile, most of Tilly’s clientele were no more dangerous than horseflies—pimpled youths with sweaty hands, hawkers who had sold their stock of Barcelona nuts in the market below, sad widowers with silver hair; but Judge Frost was what Tilly liked to call a right scaly customer.

I gasped sharply, and Tilly pivoted. “Lord, Jane, you done give me a turn. What’s up, then?”

Folding my lips together, I reread:


WANTED, at Highgate House,——shire. One young lady to see to a nine-year-old ward. Estate recently taken possession of by Mr. Charles Thornfield, heir of the Barbary family, late of the Sikh Wars, whose household requires the services of a qualified governess. Compensation——— pounds per annum with room and board, apply care of Mr. S. Singh, with references.

“Ye look like someone just slapped ye in the quim with a fish.”

I restored myself to my full senses with a hard shiver. “It’s nothing. But . . . I used to live there, you see those words—Highgate House. They want a governess.”

The previous August, I read with passionate interest the obituary of Mrs. Patience Barbary, who died abroad; Highgate House had passed into the care of that most universally respected profession, the law. My aunt’s death hurt shallowly, like a mishap made peeling potatoes—she had never searched for me, never even advertised, an omission which made me equal parts grateful and furious.

Meanwhile, the thought of Highgate House provoked a queer unease. My mother insisted that it was mine, but died before explaining how or why. I was not unhappy in London; I adored the metropolis, the way I could disappear in it, but approaching a group of gouty men wearing pince-nez had not seemed wise. I was not destitute, but neither was I remotely respectable any longer; I wore jolly frocks with the fronts cut low and slung brightly coloured shawls about my elbows, teased my favourite costermongers with vocabulary that would have quite soured my aunt’s digestion. Neither did I have paperwork, nor any means whatsoever of proving I was the Jane Steele who had disappeared so long ago, and thus the idea of knocking up a powder-wigged gentleman to say How de do, may I have this estate, please? frankly frightened me. In any case, ought I claim to be Jane Steele when Inspector Sam Quillfeather could be waiting with his ear to the ground, a hunter wise enough to allow his prey to trap herself and save him the bother?

Now, however—the thought of a stranger inhabiting the place smouldered in my stomach. Was the cottage occupied? Was my bedroom? Was Agatha yet living, and would she even know me if she was?

“Lived at a place named Highgate House!” Tilly teased. “Well, I never. Ye was a genuine lady, like, with silks and velvets and a stick up yer arse.”

“No velvets. No silks.” I folded the paper.

“But the stick?”

“Of course, they equip us with bum sticks from the cradle.”

“I’ll bet ye had a great bed wi’ acres and acres o’ white sheets,” she surmised dreamily.

“All you ever think about is linens. It’s actually impressive.”

She shrugged. “Never ’ad naught but a straw tick, so, aye, it occupies me mind.”

“Admittedly if I spent as much time in bed as you do . . .” Her face clouded. “Tilly, I’m only joking—you know I’m no better than I should be.”

“How is Jeremiah, come to that?”

She passed the pipe and I took another slow puff. “I’ve thrown him over. He snores, and he wasn’t much cop at . . . well, anything. He may as well have been winding up his watch.”

“Bloody hell, if ye net a guppy, toss ’im back in the river.” Tilly giggled.

At my lowest tide of spirits and highest of gin swilling, I had discovered that I enjoyed the practice of lovemaking as much as the theory. My swells were acquaintances from Rotherhithe, mainly—the curly-haired boy from the saltpetre works, the tap man at the Mayflower Pub. By giving the lads some fun, I could at least make a human being happy for a quicksilver moment; and once I had got the knack of pessaries and slow touches and the faint scrape of teeth over hipbones, I enormously enjoyed myself, just as I had imagined I would when gasping alone in my bed with The Garden of Forbidden Delights.

“I’ll find someone else soon enough,” said I.

“Yer doin’ it wrong, ye realise,” Tilly repeated, shaking her head. “They’re meant to pay for the privilege.”