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“Wha-at?”
“You accused me of moral turpitude, Mr. Marsden. I am here to say I am not guilty.”
He stepped backward with a little puff of a gasp.
“I have here a letter I wrote. I will tell you what it says. It says if you cause Brigid MacBride to lose her position I will see that your wife is informed about what really happens in the weaving room after hours.”
“My wife?” he whispered.
“Mrs. Overseer Marsden. I figure she ought to know if there is moral turpitude occurring in her husband’s weaving room.” She jammed the letter in the overseer’s hand and closed his reluctant fist around it. “Good night, Mr. Marsden. I hope you sleep easy—before you die.”
* * *
* * *
She took a stage to Boston. Hardly anyone did these days. The train was so much faster. But she had nowhere to go in such a hurry, and the ride gave her time to compose herself. Boston was a terrible place, older and even dirtier and more crowded than Lowell. The streets were narrow and Lyddie stepped gingerly around the refuse and animal droppings, lifting her skirt with one hand and trying to balance her new trunk under the other arm. She should have found a safe place to leave it, but how did one do that in an unknown city?
At last she found the address. She looked through a glass-windowed door and saw Diana herself, tall and pale, but no longer thin. She was speaking to a customer, her head slightly bent toward the short woman, a polite smile on her face.
Lyddie shifted the heavy trunk under her left arm and pushed open the door. A bell rang and Diana looked up at the sound. At first she nodded politely, her attention still with the chattering customer. Then she recognized Lyddie and her face was transformed.
“Excuse me a moment,” she said to the woman, and came over and took the trunk. “Lyddie.” Her voice was still quiet and beautifully low-pitched. “How wonderful to see you.”
There was no time to talk until the customer’s order was complete and the bell rang, signaling her departure. “How are you, Lyddie?” Diana asked.
“They dismissed me,” she said. “For ‘moral turpitude.’ ”
“For what?” Diana was almost laughing.
“It means—”
“I know what it means,” Diana said gently. “I’m intimately acquainted with the term myself, but you … surely—”
“You are not vile, base, or depraved,” Lyddie said.
“Thank you.” Diana tried not to smile, but the corners of her mouth betrayed her. “And neither are you. What I can’t imagine is how—”
“It was Mr. Marsden.”
“Ah, yes, dear Mr. Marsden.”
When Lyddie told the whole story, nearly crying again in her rage, she realized suddenly that Diana was shaking with laughter.
“It weren’t funny, ey!” she protested.
“No, no, of course not. I’m sorry. But I’m imagining his face when you pounced out at him last night. Just when he thought he’d won—when he’d rid himself so neatly of the evidence.”
Lyddie saw the rosebud mouth shaped into an O of fright. It was satisfying, wasn’t it?
“And his wife is a perfect terror, but you know that—”
“I didn’t think anyone else would believe me against him.”
“Oh, she’s a terror, all right. Everyone says so. She’s a fright, I promise you.” She got up and poured them each a cup of tea. “Let’s celebrate, shall we? Oh Lyddie, it’s so good of you to come. How can I help you?”
But she had come to help Diana. “I thought—I thought to help you if I could.”
“Thank you, but I’m doing all right, as you can see. It was hard at first. No one seemed to want a husbandless woman expecting a child. But the proprietress here was ill and desperate for help. So we needed one another. It’s worked out well. She’s been so kind. And her daughter will look out for the baby when it comes.” She smiled happily. “Like family to me.” She reached over and patted Lyddie’s knee. “But you understand.”
