The hack rolled to a halt before the little inn, with its sign on chains and its gargoyles. She understood The Grand Palace on the Thames was merely a way station in her life, but when it came into view, she suddenly fervently wished she could live safely here forever, with evenings and dinners and breakfasts precisely as they were, with Mr. Hawkes bound to appear in the room at some point.
At least she now knew how she wanted her life to feel: the love, the kindness, the safety, the truly excellent food.
As she slid across the seat to disembark, her hand skidded across something small, hard, and round. She jerked her hand back just as the hack driver yanked open the door. The soft light from The Grand Palace on the Thames struck a glint from it, and she saw at once it was a miniature in a frame.
Her heart gave a few painful, hard thumps. As if it had been shoved down a small flight of stairs.
The miniature must have fallen out of Mr. Hawkes’s coat pocket.
Of course, it could have been left by a previous passenger.
But Mr. Hawkes noticed everything. He would have found it, surely?
She carefully picked it up and peered down. But she simply couldn’t see the image clearly in the weak available light.
An agony of indecision held her fast.
She could give it back to him without looking at it at all. Call his name softly. She knew he would come if she called him. She would hand it over when he appeared, and she never need know what it was.
But he intended to wait out here in the dark and cold until she was safely inside, and God only knewwho might be watching from the upstairs windows. And he had the right of it. It mattered what people thought, both of him and of her.
“I’ve been paid, madam,” the driver said to her quietly.
Hawkes had paid him, of course, and the driver needed to move on with his evening, too.
“Thank you. Good night,” she said.
She put the miniature in her pocket and went inside.
The journey up the stairs felt interminable with the miniature throbbing in her pocket.
The kiss was one thing. But somehow it was this that had brought her feelings for Mr. Hawkes to an immediate, stiletto-fine point.
She came to a stop when she encountered a smiling Dot on the second-floor landing, heading down the stairs with an empty tray.
“Good evening, Mrs. Gallagher! Would you like me to bring in some tea before you go to sleep?”
“Oh, no thank you, but it is kind of you to ask. But Dot...” She paused. “Would you be so kind as to ask Helga to send up a willow bark tisane for Mr. Hawkes? I do not know yet if he is in, but he will need it, don’t you think?”
Dot tipped her head and studied her briefly, eyes lit up. She opened her mouth to say something, but apparently decided against it.
“Oh yes. I’ll do that straightaway.”
“Thank you,” she said. As if he were hers. She knew how it sounded and yet she couldn’t not do it and at the moment she couldn’t quite care.
With every step she climbed her heartbeat accelerated, until it was a thudding hammer in her chest. Her key bumped and scratched away at the hole in her trembling hand; finally, she jammed it in and turned and was inside her room.
Before she closed the door behind her, her heart jolted again as the sound of Mr. Hawkes’s cheerful bass voice greeting Dot drifted up to her.
She knew relief that he was safely inside.
He said he hadn’t a wife. She believed him. Surely she could not be so very wrong again about a man?
Perhaps it was a portrait of his sister, or a sweetheart, long gone, someone he’d cherished?
And what could she possibly learn from looking down into the portrait of a stranger, anyhow?
Why did itmatterso very much?