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George glowered at their backs. “Someday, things will not always be so uneven,” he vowed. “We will not always have to hide in the darkness or suffer the consequences.”
The watchmen stayed long enough to enjoy a tankard at the bar, then to gather up a stack of meat pasties and rolls and stroll back out. On their way, the nightstick cracked against another head and an elbow.
After the men left, the diners’ voices were loud and angry. The wounded were tended to, and glasses raised in their name.
Swann sent out a round of mulled wine and gingerbread to everyone, on the house. He clattered a plate down in front of Letty. “They come in here wanting to make a show,” he spat. “Make me pull their beers, wait on them, and then let us know by their presence that they’ve an eye on us. That they have the power to do what they’ve done to poor Tom over there, and Anthony, and that they could do worse if they felt a hankering.”
George’s face was grim. “Something must be done to protect the community, or to help shelter it.”
Letty thought of Anne’s reluctance to discuss it when she had brought up her affairs with women. Ugliness like this was at the root of that need for secrecy and sowed the seeds of fear in all of their hearts.
The eyes of her neighbors were on Letty. But the eyes of the King himself were on Anne and Hawthorne. Would she be risking more than Anne’s reputation if she flirted with her?
It was best if she didn’t act on her desires for the duchess. Even if it went against every grain of her being.
Chapter Eleven
Letty poked her head in the door of the duchess’s morning room. She was writing letters at her desk, the light streaming in from the window behind her. Letty’s breath caught for a moment. The light turned the duchess’s pale hair almost white, and her face was animated as she wrote, her lips parted slightly.
This was a look of interest, and passion, and Letty wanted quite desperately to have it turned on her instead of the page on the desk.
She tapped on the doorframe and the duchess looked up.
“Did we have a meeting scheduled, Miss Barrow? I apologize, I was lost in my letter to the estate manager at Hawthorne Towers.”
“We had no meeting, but I wonder if you would care to accompany me? I am far from completing the bedchamber, but I do have one room ready for you, Your Grace.” She smiled. “I thought you might be envious that the duke had his dressing room completed, so I finished yours as fast as I could.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice in an exaggerated whisper. “Worry not—I made yours much nicer.”
The corners of the duchess’s lips twitched. “I hadn’t thought you were too far along, but again you surprise me with your efficiency.”
Letty couldn’t help herself for all that she had convinced herself that flirtation between them was a bad idea. “I think the pleasure is all the better for being prolonged,” she said. “This is a taste and will whet your appetite for the main room.”
They made their way to the empty bedchamber, which the duchess had sworn not to enter until Letty deemed it time and was pleased to hear her gasp as they entered.
“It’s smaller!”
“This is the first time in my career that I thought someone might wish for asmallerbedchamber, instead of a larger one. I thought it would be easier to keep warm. Though it’s still large enough for three of my own bedrooms in here,” she added with a laugh.
The new wall was plastered but not yet painted, but Letty could see how it would look in her mind’s eye and was pleased.
“Is this what you wished to show me?”
“Not exactly.”
Letty led the duchess to the unfinished doorway that had been cut into the wall and gestured for her to go inside. “Thisis what I wanted to show you.”
“Oh. Oh, Miss Barrow!”
The look of wonder on her face with her hand clasped to her mouth told Letty volumes, but she was anxious to know if she saw all the effort that had been put into the space. Did the duchess notice the color gradient of the thick Turkish towels, stacked from palest seafoam to cerulean and finally to royal purple? Did she see the golden fish painted onto the tiny tiles on the floor around the bathtub, which had come all the way from Greece?
The duchess tugged off her gloves and trailed her finger over the towels, then along the rim of the copper bathtub and down its hammered sides. “It’s wonderful.”
The mirror was set into an airy wooden frame that Fraser had carved, with hundreds of wooden vines and tiny leaves weaving around it, creating depth and movement. There was a deep-set chair near the bathtub with a blanket draped over its back, with plenty of shelves next to it for her cosmetics and creams.
The dressing room was twice as large as it had been, having taken space from the bedroom. The top row of the mullioned windowpanes had been replaced with stained glass in shades of blue.
“I love it,” the duchess announced, circling back to rest her hands against the bathtub again.
“It suits you,” Letty said softly, looking at her sleek hair and the sharp contours of her face and the little blunt edge to her chin that she yearned to touch. She had designed the room with linear planes and smooth curves, spare but elegant, wanting it to suit her vision of the duchess.
