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She was starting toward the door, steeling herself to watch him walk out of her life forever, when she heard the thud.
Leonie would have finished locking up the shop long before now, and she would have made sure nobody surprised Marcelline with an interruption. No one ought to be downstairs at present. The family ought all to be upstairs, setting out dinner.
“Wait,” she said in an undertone.
She went to the door and pressed her ear to it. Nothing.
“I thought I heard something,” he said softly. “Erroll? Would she—”
“No. Not after we close up shop. She’s not allowed, but she wouldn’t come, in any case. She’s afraid of the dark.” That had started after she recovered from the cholera. That and other anxieties. “Be quiet, will you?”
Another thump. Someone was out there, stumbling about in the darkness.
He reached for the door handle. “I’ll deal with—”
“Don’t be stupid,”she whispered. “You can’t be here.”
Carefully she opened the door. She looked down the passage in the direction the sound had come from. She saw a faint light in the little office where Leonie kept her ledgers. There, lately, they’d been storing Marcelline’s designs, in a locked box. And there, today, they’d set out their bait.
Her heart began to race.
She slipped through the door into the gloomy passage. She heard his soft footstep behind her. She stopped and gestured at him to stay in the workroom.
“Don’t be—”
She put her hand over his mouth. “I have to deal with this,” she hissed. “It’s business. It’s our spy. We’ve been waiting for her.”
He was shattered, still.
That was the only excuse he had for heeding her, and as an excuse, it lasted but a moment.
He ought not to be here, certainly not at this hour, after the shop was closed.
But the shop ... A spy? Had not Clara said something about—
Clara!
With the thought of her, cold shame washed over him. Betrayal. He’d betrayed his friend, his future wife.
My wife, my wife, he told himself. He smoothed his neckcloth as though he could smooth over what he’d done. He tried to imbed her image in his mind, to engrave the picture of his future, the one he’d always supposed was the right, the only possible one. He would wed the sweet, beautiful girl he’d loved since she was a child, the fair, blue-eyed child he’d met when he was still grieving for his sister. She had a sweet innocence like Alice’s and she looked up to him the way Alice had looked up to her big brother. He’d always assumed he’d marry Clara and take care of her and protect her forever.
But at the first excuse, and with the slightest encouragement, he’d run away from her and stayed away; and after three years of indulging himself, he still wasn’t satisfied. No, he must betray her trust within a few days of returning to her.
But the shame wasn’t strong enough to wipe out the recollection of what had happened minutes ago or the sensation of the earth having shifted on its axis.
Never mind, never mind.
He’d had Noirot and he was done with her.
And here he was, standing like an idiot, while she— What the devil was she about?
“No!” someone shrieked.
He moved noiselessly into the passage. A faint glow a few steps down from the workroom showed an open doorway.
“I hope Mrs. Downes has paid you well for betraying my trust,” he heard Noirot say. “Because you’ll never work in this trade again. I’ll see to it.”
“You can’t hurt me,” the higher-pitched voice answered. “You’re finished. Everyone knows you’re the duke’s whore. Everyone knows you lift your skirts for him, practically under his bride’s nose.”
