Page 106 of Guardian
A moment’s hesitation, then she asked, her face cautious. “Are we going to stay, for good?”
“I think we can,” I said, brushing crumbs onto my plate.
Her face brightened, and she slathered one last roll with jam. As she finished it, she looked thoughtful. “It’s silly, I know, but I found myself wondering what they think of me at the Willitses’.”
I’d not given that much thought. “Mrs. Rice suspected you of running off with the two pounds she gave you for the market. I told them you hadn’t.”
Her brow furrowed. “I’d hate them thinking I’d do that.”
“You aren’t thinking of going back in service, are you?”
“Of course not,” she assured me. “I’d much rather run a shop with you and Mary.” She hummed as she began to read the to-let notices.
I hadn’t yet broken it to Sarah that the thought of running a shop didn’t appeal to me in the least. A new idea was brewing in my head, but I didn’t want to say anything yet.
Sarah and Mary found us rooms in Crane Court, not far from James’s and the new shop. Sarah and I shared a room, and Mary took the second.
Sarah took to our new life gratefully, making our cups of tea in the morning, curling up with a novel in the comfortable chair for an hour, then going out with Mary to shop for shelves, tables, chairs, lamps, and such. For my part, I went out for long walks, gleaning a sense for my new surroundings and reflecting on the events of recent weeks, teasing apart the rough tangle of threads so I might wind them more properly around their spools. With Sarah safe and Maggie no longer a threat, my thoughts turned down odd and unexpected paths.
I would be twenty-one in a fortnight, the same age as Maggie when she’d been transported. Maggie’s death had freed me from being frightened of her—and in the absence of fear, I found myself feeling a measure of pity for her. What might Maggie’s life be had she been allowed to continue acting at the theater? Or if Tim Lowry had never come to Southwark? If Simonson hadn’t been a fiend? If Rose hadn’t turned on her? If she’d found a more benevolent man in Swan River? Some of what happened to Maggie was of her choosing, but a good deal of it wasn’t. I felt no small resentment at a system so weighted on the side of wealthy men, who flaunted the rules. And what would have happened to me, if I’d had a jenny who betrayed me? There but for the grace of God went I.
With my pity for Maggie came pity for another person as well: my mother. Some nights when I lay awake with Sarah beside me, I thought of her. Sarah looked more like my father than ever, and I probed at the possibility: If Sarah were, one day, to simply walk out, what would that do to me? It would unmoor my heart. I might hate and distrust the entire bloody world.
As grateful as I was to have Sarah back, I felt the loss of Amelia keenly. As I walked the pavements of my new neighborhood, more than once I could’ve sworn I saw her across the street or at the end of a lane. Of course, it wasn’t her, just the shadows of her in another woman’s figure, in her walk, in the way she turned her head, in the way her cape swung out as she turned a corner. I worried about her and wondered where she had flown. Were she still here, she would have insisted the decision to kill Maggie was hers and hers alone, but I knew I’d had a hand in it. Had I thought farther ahead, I might have wrested a promise from Amelia to let Scotland Yard find the diamond and put Maggie through the process of a trial and into prison. But as Mary reminded me, it was Amelia’s choice, and she might have found some relief from her guilt, however unwarranted it was.
Between the money I obtained from pawning the fifth diamond, funds Mary and I had put by from thieving, and a modest sum contributed by Sarah, they were able to purchase the necessary cooking implements, chairs and tables, and the first supply of sundries without taking on credit. Sarah was in her element, dusting shelves and sorting books. When the shop opened after weeks of preparations, it was almost an immediate success, partly because the tea was always hot and not watered-down and the biscuits and cakes were homemade by Mary.
I was pleased for them. They fell into chairs at the end of the first week, arms flopped over the sides, their legs sprawled toward the stove, exhausted but happy.
James had left the hospital on crutches and returned to the Custom House, where he was allowed temporarily to keep records at a desk, with his leg propped on a stool in front of him. He’d fully recovered, without even a limp to show, the only sign of his injury being a reddish scar a few inches long.
One afternoon when I was alone in our new rooms, the street bell rang downstairs. Our landlady answered it, and a few minutes later, a knock sounded at our door.
I opened it to find Mr. Stiles, and I welcomed him in. Stepping over the threshold, he removed his hat and looked around at the bright room appreciatively.
“How are you, Miss Jimeson?”
“You can call me Kit, you know,” I said. “And I’m fine.”
He set his hat on the table, removed his coat, and gestured toward a blue chintz-covered chair, one of a pair that Sarah had chosen. “May I?”
“You’re too polite,” I said. “Of course.”
He waited to speak until I’d taken a seat in the other chair.
“I came to tell you that Billy and Tommy were tried and found guilty in the Fairleigh murders,” he said. “The verdict was returned this morning.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“I thought it would set your mind at ease, but that isn’t the only reason I came,” he replied. “May I ask, what do you plan to do with yourself?”
I chuckled. “Are you afraid I’ll go back to thieving? Give you more trouble?”
“Well, I don’t want that.” His eyes were frank, and he gave a good-natured laugh. “I came across someone at a theater who is looking for help. Would you consider becoming a costumer?”
“A costumer?” I echoed.
“It’s the person who creates the costumes for the actors.” He paused. “It isn’t just needlework. You design them, too. It’s important to get them right.”
