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Ever since then, his world had ceased to sort properly. Ever since then, he’d felt an itch in the back of his mind—the itch of a book out of place, a letter slid into the wrong file.
Eight years ago, he’d made a decision, and ever since then, it had eaten at him subtly, whispering that he’d put Anthony in the wrong place, and that there was no way to correct his mistake.
He was never getting Judith back; he’d become inured to that fact by now. He’d settle for keeping hold of himself.
Ten.
He let the beads fall away and set the bowl back on his bedside table.
He lay back, adjusting his position on the pillow. Sleep came, eventually, and with it, dreams of clockwork ships sailing in storms.
Chapter Five
The good thing about sleep was that it wiped away the emotions of the prior day. One could wake refreshed, ready to take on the tasks of a new morning.
When Judith awoke in bed next to Theresa the morning after she saw Christian again, sun spilled through the curtains. She thought first of the tight clockwork turn she’d worked on last night—that quick reversal of figures, not so swift as to seem mechanical. If she could get that right, it might mean a little extra. Another thirty pounds, maybe.
She had hope again. There had been setbacks yesterday, but she was so close to her goal. The hard part had been earning the money to be held in trust for her sisters, to send Benedict off to school. From here on out, it was simply a matter of execution and making an appointment to accompany Christian to the family solicitor.
Not that she was worrying over that last task. Not at all. She wasn’t thinking of him as she made a mental list of the things she needed to purchase. She had put him entirely—well, mostly—out of her mind as she got her shopping basket. She’d forgotten him—sort of, maybe—by the time she greeted her friend.
Daisy Whitlaw lived across the way, in one of the myriad flats that had been carved out of a larger house as the neighborhood fell into slow decay. They had made each other’s acquaintance over the course of years of shopping. Daisy’s father had once been a grocer—past tense both in the sense that he had lost his business years before, and that he’d passed away a year ago. Her mother had been a vicar’s daughter. Daisy had never been a lady, not like Judith had, but she knew what it was like to fall slowly from grace. She’d understood Judith the moment they’d run into each other at the market.
Judith looked much the same as she always looked. She was wearing her favorite green dress, comfortable and clean, if faded; her shawl was looped over her shoulder, and her basket hung at her elbow, ready to receive that day’s shopping.
Daisy was waiting in place, under the black painted pole of the street lamp. Her friend’s day gown was faded blue, instead of faded green; her shawl was a dull gray instead of a dull blue. And she carried her basket—slightly misshapen and definitely aging—in her hands instead of hooked over her elbow.
They looked completely different. Daisy was tall and blond, where Judith was short and dark-haired. Still, everyone in this handful of streets knew them as an entity.
“Good morning, Daisy dearest,” Judith called.
“Good morning, my lovely Judith.” Daisy gestured her closer, and Judith crossed the street to her friend.
Daisy worked in a flower shop. She could put on her mother’s accent when she wished, but most of the time, she spoke like the other residents nearby. She’d never asked where Judith had fallen from, a refreshing change of pace. Judith had been glad to have a friend who didn’t ask her endless questions or who saw her as the traitor’s daughter.
She and Daisy could be friends. A friend, one she could laugh and talk with, one who never reminded her of her past, had been as valuable as learning to make proper sandwiches. More, even.
Daisy hooked her arm through Judith’s and they proceeded on their way. The market was four streets away, far enough to make the walk unpleasant on wet, drizzly days. Today, though, was glorious for once. The sky was clear, all the grime and muck washed away by last night’s rains. The streets had been cleared by the same. The sun shone and the clouds—small, wispy, insubstantial things—hardly blocked its light.
“What shall you get at the market today?” Daisy asked after they’d gone about twenty yards.
This was the usual start of their game.
“Would you know,” Judith said, “that we are fresh out of gold leaf in our household?”
She and Daisy had started the game years ago, when one of the local boys had accused them of thinking too highly of themselves.
“No!” Daisy turned to her in mock horror. “Not out of gold leaf! Why, however will you gild your beef?”
“I don’t know,” Judith said. “Why, just last night, with Benedict home for the first time in weeks, we had to have our filets seasoned with nothing but salt and pepper and a little rosemary.”
“Oi.” Daisy shook her head. “You ought to watch your stores with greater care. I find that a bit of gold leaf, laid on top of a fruit tart, aids the digestion. Without it, cream can upset the stomach.”
“So true, Daisy dearest.” Judith smiled and patted the other woman’s hand where it laid on her elbow. “What is it that you are tasked with purchasing today?”
“Well.” Daisy paused. She tilted her head up to the sky, so that sun spilled onto her face, as if thinking of something she needed. “I did need to stop by the glove-maker. Yesterday, when I was scrubbing the pots…” She stopped at this—manual labor didn’t fit the game, after all—and finally shrugged. “Well, you know—I wore through my last pair of kidskin gloves with seed pearls.”
In the game, one never pointed out that one didn’t scrub pots wearing kidskin gloves. That would ruin the fun.
“Tsk, tsk,” Judith said instead. “They simply don’t make kidskin gloves with seed pearls the way they used to. Why, back when we were children, kidskin gloves—the normal sort, even before you added the seed pearls—could go through a year’s worth of work in the grimiest scullery without falling to pieces.”
“It’s true,” Daisy said mournfully. “Standards have fallen. We live in decrepit times.”
“So,” Judith said. “Gloves and gold leaf, then?”
This conversation had brought them from the relative quiet of their street to the market square. The stalls were bustling already. The greengrocer, in particular, would prove a bit of a fight. They’d have to go there first to lay claim to whatever decent vegetables remained.
Without discussing this, both women passed the glove-maker on the corner without a second glance and took their place in line. The summer harvest was delayed after a cold spring. The vegetables were still rather sparse: suspicious-looking turnips and last year’s potatoes with little white sprouts growing out of the eyes made up the bulk of the bins. But there were some heads of lettuce and peas. And—wonder of wonders—a cache of oranges.
Oranges. They were dear, especially at this time of year, and who knew how far these particular ones had traveled. But an orange, peeled and split among three over breakfast… It would be a lovely treat.
/> Not a good choice, Judith warned herself. Not after she’d already splurged for Benedict’s homecoming.
But the day was beautiful and Benedict was home, at least for now. An orange would make everything better. Judith mentally counted the coins in her pocket and those remaining in her dresser drawer.
One orange.
“I’ll have twelve of the turnips,” Daisy said as she came to the front of the line, “and sweet ones, too—none of the tough ones.”
The grocer laid his grime-stained hands on the counter. “It’s July,” he said gruffly. “All the turnips are tough.”
“Twelve of your best,” Daisy said, with her head thrown a little higher. “And a good three pounds of potatoes. Smaller, please.”
The man weighed these items out, and money changed hands.
It was a curious friendship, the one Judith had with Daisy, but that didn’t make it any less dear. Theirs was not the sort of friendship where they told each other the truth. The truth was hard and nearly impossible to bear; talking about it would not make it any easier. When they did talk, it was as they had today—a conversation that centered on gold leaf and kidskin gloves, silk and strawberries, honey-wine and carriages. They talked as if they had no worries in the world.
And so, for the space of four streets, they could lay them down.
Doing your household shopping with another woman was an act of intimacy. Judith tried not to do the math. She tried not to divide those turnips by the two people in Daisy’s household. Once, twelve would have seemed a great many turnips to her. Now, she knew that no matter how you mashed them, no matter how finely you chopped them or how large the quantity of water in the pot where the soup was made, twelve turnips divided by seven days and two mouths was not quite enough to fill the stomach.
These were the things they didn’t talk about.
Judith got her own turnips, twice as many potatoes, a bunch of new peas, some lettuce that looked sweet, and her orange.
