He didn’t scream at her for doubting him.
He exhaled slowly. “You’re right. From your point of view, it makes not one lick of sense. What can I say or do to convince you?”
She lifted her head. “There’s no need.” Her eyes bored into him. “I told you, I have spent the entire day in contemplation. I will receive no references from the rector. I have almost nothing. Honest labor in places where I will not be disturbed will be nigh impossible to come by. Rationally, intelligently, I have come to the conclusion that my best hope for continued prosperity is to become a prostitute.”
His eyes widened. “That’s—that’s—”
“That’s logic,” she told him. “That’s the cold hard truth I have had to face while you have been off doing whatever you have been doing. I have no idea how to be a proper prostitute, mind. I don’t mean the trading money for favors part—that, I assume, is simple enough. But I have enough experience to know that prostitution is a business like any other business. There are ways to do it well and ways to do it badly. I haven’t even the option to take an apprenticeship. But I’m not stupid. I imagine I could figure it out. Eventually.”
She had rendered him dumbfounded.
“There.” She stood up and offered him her hand. “There is nothing you need say to convince me of your story. I believe you, even though it’s idiocy to do so. I believe you because you were kind. I believe you because you did come back. I believe you because holding onto my hopes, however irrational they are, is better than the alternative, which is horrid. You don’t need to convince me. Just—please. Don’t disappoint me.”
He looked into her eyes, and very slowly, he smiled. “You’re a bit of a tiger, aren’t you?”
It was her turn to blink at him in confusion. “A what?”
“A tiger,” he said. “Large-ish cat? Orange and black stripes? Occasionally eats people?”
Nobody had ever called Camilla a tiger before. Likely nobody had ever thought it. She stared at him a moment before shaking her head.
“I’m really not,” she said slowly. “I only knew what to say just now because I had an entire day to plan it out.”
“There, you see?” He dusted his hands together. “That settles it. Tigers are planners.”
“What do you know about tigers anyway?”
“Well, I know you now,” he said unhelpfully.
Well. Then. She wasn’t going to hurt her head trying to figure that out. “Enough about me. Tell me about your uncle and the…telegram malfunction that delayed you, or whatever it was.”
Mr. Hunter rolled his eyes. She didn’t think he was rolling them at her this time.
“You did say he’d be able to help us with an annulment, didn’t you? Were you wrong?”
He licked his lips and looked off into the distance. “You…are not the only one here who tries to see the best in people, it turns out.”
“Ah. He disappointed you, then.”
His eyes shivered shut. “A little. It’s…not the first time he’s done it. I really shouldn’t be surprised. Grayson—my older brother—he says I’m too trusting. But…”
“But?”
“But my uncle does need my help,” Mr. Hunter said. “And—I’ve thought it over—if we are to annul our marriage, we’ll have to offer some reason why Lassiter and Miles, two men of the church, acted as they did. My uncle is not wrong to insist that I find proof of Lassiter’s wrongdoing. I just don’t know how to get it.”
“Oh.” Camilla found herself smiling. “How sad. If only you knew someone who had spent eighteen months in Miles’s household. If only you had talked to her this morning.”
He looked at her. “Do you know something?”
She bit her lip. “I know someone who might know something. There’s only one small problem.”
“What’s that?”
“We’ll need to stay somewhere in the vicinity while we ask questions,” Camilla said. “It’s late. And I would vastly prefer not to stay one more night in a place where I am expected to start the exciting profession of walking the streets at any minute.”
He just looked at her for a moment before nodding. “I can find somewhere in town for me—there’s a rooming house there. For you…this may sound odd, but I know just the place for you.”
* * *
“Here, here, sit down,” said Mrs. Beasley. Camilla had met the woman a few times before, when she’d been sent to the telegraph office in town, but they’d never said much to one another—certainly not enough for the woman to be bustling about and fetching her tea. “Poor dear. You’ve been through quite the ordeal, haven’t you? I’m sorry I haven’t much better to offer than a space in the back.”
Camilla and Adrian had been ushered in and seated at a table near the mantel, in a room that appeared to be composed almost entirely of doilies. Doilies on the wall. Doilies under the plates. Doilies hanging off the table. Little decorative doilies had been bound together into pink covers that adorned the poker, shovel, and tongs that stood by the fireplace. The room was a veritable museum to the doily.
Camilla inched a doily to the side and set her spoon down.
Her head was spinning, and not just from a superabundance of doilies. Poor dear? She felt her ears heating with embarrassment at the moniker. It was bad enough that she had to accept this kind of charity; having pity thrown atop it was too much. She didn’t know how she’d ever repay the kindness.
But she was too hungry to object to bread and stew being offered to her, especially when it smelled the way it did. This stew, unlike last night’s soup, was actually good—thick and warming with real chunks of beef.
“My husband is out at the pub,” Mrs. Beasley said as she settled near Camilla in a rocking chair. “And the children are grown, so it leaves me with little to do of an evening but knit and plot the demise of my neighbors.”
Mr. Hunter, sitting on the other side of the table, looked up at that in something like consternation.
“A little joke!” She laughed. “I don’t knit! Obviously, I crochet. Also, I don’t wish to destroy all my neighbors. Only Ruford Shamwell and his uncontainable goats.”
“Of course,” Mr. Hunter said. “I see.”
“Hm.” Mrs. Beasley rocked in her chair. “Now that I’m making a list, I must add Bertrand Gapwood. He keeps throwing his chamber pot in the alley. I tell him over and over, no, we mustn’t do that, haven’t you read the newspaper, that’s how we all get cholera and die. But he never listens.”
“Two neighbors seems quite reasonable,” Camilla said around a spoonful of beef.
“Mm. Then there’s Stephen Wade. He yells at his wife. I’ve told him a thousand times that if they can’t get along, he should go spend his evenings in the pub like my Bobby, but he never listens. And he always yells about the same things. I enjoy hearing a bit of good gossip, but for heaven’s sake, have some imagination. Variety is the spice of life.” The woman frowned. “Well, that’s it—that’s all my neighbors, and they’re all on the list.”
Camilla took another bite of stew.
“Yes,” Mrs. Beasley said, in response to a twitch of an eyebrow from Mr. Hunter. “I must admit I’m a terrible intermeddler. But I’m not a gossip—at least, I only accept gossip. I don’t give it out. So don’t mind me. I’m sure the two of you have much to talk about, so go ahead, go ahead. Mr. Hunter won’t be staying here past eight, so you mustn’t waste any time. Pay me no mind.”
Mr. Hunter took a bite of his own stew and glanced over at Mrs. Beasley. She was, in fact, crocheting. She concentrated on her yarn with an intensity that fooled neither of them.
“Do you need anything?” Mr. Hunter finally asked Camilla in a low voice. “I’ve had occasion to carry your valise twice now, and while it’s very heavy, it doesn’t feel like a lot to contain all your worldly possessions.”
Camilla shrugged. “I’m used to moving about. I don’t even bother acquiring things any longer. It’s much more convenient to not have to move them.” She l
et out a little laugh, because it felt like the thing one ought to do at a time like this.
If she laughed, maybe he would be fooled into not feeling sorry for her.
Mrs. Beasley, across the room, poked herself with her crochet hook and made a muffled sound.
“About…that thing we talked about earlier.” Camilla dropped her voice. “I have an excellent memory, and if I were to guess, I would say that we should visit Mrs. Martin over in Highham. She’s angry at the rector about something involving money and a charitable donation. It would be a good place to start, don’t you think?”
“Better than anything I could guess at.” He spoke even lower than her. “And we can converse further on the way there and back. Away from prying eyes.”
“It’s my ears you should worry about,” Mrs. Beasley said, as if she were a part of the conversation. “Not my eyes. But never you mind, I’m just here crocheting. Paying no mind to anything you say.”
“Highham is eleven miles away.” Camilla thought of her shoe-leather, already painfully thin, and the mud, and her stockings, and then put those thoughts away as pointless and smiled instead. “That’ll be a nice walk, don’t you think? Especially since I won’t be carrying a valise for it.”
He looked at her. “I can well afford to rent a carriage from someone.”
She did not know what to say to that. Instead, she just licked her lips.
“I know you’re only believing me out of necessity,” he said. “I know my story sounds ridiculous, and I can’t blame you for having doubts. But it really is true. I won’t even blink at the cost.”
She took another sip of her tea. “Of course I believe you. If you say it’s so, it must be true.”