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Bobby rubbed her very short hair, cropped by a barber in the way she liked. So much more comfortable than having all that hair wrapped around her head in styles so complicated it took two lady’s maids to dress it. Best thing she ever did was to have the whole mess chopped off.
Judith, whose luxurious hair was a dream to stroke, deepened her frown.
“It is still a risk. What if it’s a club where you must have someone vouch for you simply to get inside the door?”
Bobby shrugged. “Then I, like any other disappointed chap, will walk away, hail a cab, and come home. If I don’t drown my sorrows at a pub that will let me in its taproom.”
“That is another point—what if you get drunk and babble things you should not?”
“Now you are inventing things,” Bobby scoffed. “Point the first, I never drink to excess—well, not when I’m trying to be careful. Point the second, what the devil could I babble? I don’t have any deep dark secrets. I mostly read books, enjoy my cheroots, watch you paint, and get on with my life. The most I’d admit in a drunken fit is that I didn’t really like the latest book by Wilkie Collins.” And that I’m potty about you, dear Judith, she added to herself.
“It is still too dangerous.” Judith crossed her legs, her skirt swinging freely.
Look at her, all tightly wrapped around herself, Bobby mused. She longed to untwist those shapely limbs and have them twine around her instead. End this silly argument with something much more pleasurable.
“I’ll be doing nothing more than what I would on a leisurely night out with Cyn,” Bobby said. “If you’re so worried, come with me.”
Bobby only half joked. Judith never had any inclination to dress as a man. She wore frocks designed to her specifications that allowed her less restriction than most ladies’ attire and saw no reason to don anything else.
Judith sent Bobby a look that boded no good. “I just might.”
She turned her back, took up her brush, and returned to the painting, a signal that the conversation was over.
In spite of Judith’s declaration, she was nowhere in sight by the time Bobby was ready to depart that evening.
“She’s gone out, your ladyship,” Hubbard told Bobby when she inquired.
Hubbard insisted on using the honorific with Bobby and had gone stiff with horror when Bobby suggested he not bother. She didn’t press him, however, because Hubbard was a good soul, who put up with Judith’s way of life without a word of admonishment or even of judgment.
“Do you know where she’s gone out?” Bobby asked somewhat impatiently.
“I could not say, your ladyship.”
Which meant he might or might not know. Bobby sighed, wrapped a scarf around her neck, and settled her hat. “Never mind. I’ll try not to be too late.”
Hubbard liked to bolt all the doors at midnight on the evenings Judith didn’t have guests. If Bobby didn’t make it by then, she’d be sleeping in the garden or trudging home to her old flat on Duchess Street.
She ought to give up that flat, but she didn’t want to presume that her newfound understanding with Judith would last forever. Or that they even had an understanding. Bobby was reluctant to broach the subject.
She said her farewells to Hubbard then stepped into Upper Brook Street, turning toward Grosvenor Square in search of a hansom cab. She soon found one and directed the driver to take her to the Strand.
The Adam Club, which Mrs. Holloway had given them the address of, lay not far beyond Charing Cross railway station. The club was situated in an unprepossessing building of dark brown brick with one small sign on the doorpost to tell passersby what lay within. Bobby alighted from the cab, noting that the club’s windows were either shuttered or too grimy to allow her a look inside. The whole place was unnervingly dark.
The hansom rattled away into traffic that was still heavy, even at this hour, the Strand always full of life. Despite the bustle behind her, Bobby suddenly felt very much alone.
She approached the front door as though she had no qualms and rapped upon it.
The portal was opened by the sort of man Bobby expected to see—well-dressed but large and beefy. Portraying respectability but with the obvious strength to throw out any riotous patron.
“Evening,” Bobby greeted him cheerfully. “Anyone welcome here? Or do I need to answer the secret questions?”
In some gaming establishments, if one had to ask such things, then one didn’t belong there. Bobby had learned to act the rather dim-witted upper-class twit trying to slum, a ruse that worked like a charm. She might not always be admitted to a place, but she wouldn’t be bodily tossed to the pavement either.
It also helped that she had a naturally low-timbered voice and didn’t have to take on a false baritone. She bounced on her toes and beamed at the bloke while he scowled down at her.
Bobby knew what he saw—a shortish, plump young man who’d grow stout as he aged, with a square face, brown eyes, and clothes tailor-made for him. Probably had money to burn and not enough sense to hang on to it.
The man abruptly stepped aside and gestured for Bobby to enter. Bobby relinquished her coat and hat to a thinner chap who came forward at the snap of the larger man’s fingers. The footman, or whoever he was, tucked the coat into the cloakroom and set the hat carefully on a shelf. She wasn’t given a ticket—presumably they’d remember whose clobber went with whom.
