‘I do as I please.’ Angelica has no intention of telling Mrs Frost anything of Georgie’s financial oversights; her reaction would be beyond tolerating.
Even so it pains her when her companion demands, ‘And your protector? Does he have no claim on your heart?’ Mrs Frost circles her, minutely adjusting the gathers in the muslin; her disapproval does not extend to leaving them less than perfect, as very well she might.
‘He has sole claim to it! He has no rivals for it! I only have the gentleman up because I am bored, criminally bored.’
‘You think nothing of propriety,’ says Mrs Frost. ‘You must always be entertained. Sit down; there is more to be done to your hair.’
‘You are forgetting I have no propriety.’ Angelica throws herself into her chair and leans her elbows on the dressing table, knocking trinkets and boxes without care. ‘I lost it long ago, and thus I am at liberty to be alone in rooms with strange gentlemen.’ She sighs. ‘You are no model of virtue yourself, Eliza, you know where your bread is buttered, that is all. I never saw you take Georgie’s side until now, when you believe your living depends on it.’
‘How dare you! I have been nothing but virtuous. Rectitude is ever my watchword; it wounds me to see you break your promises with such little provocation.’
‘Shut up, Eliza.’ For this lecture is hardly to be tolerated either.
‘No! Truly! I should like to see in your behaviour some inkling of female decency, but I begin to think your appetites are baser than they ought to be. I had thought you more restrained …’
Angelica casts her eyes to the heavens. ‘I am only taking your advice,’ she says, ‘remembering myself to the town; I do not closet myself away from those who might one day be of use to me.’
‘Now is the time for closeting,’ says Mrs Frost. ‘You jeopardise our position when you—’
‘Are you finished here?’ Angelica rises abruptly from the table. In doing so her hair delivers a soft clout to Mrs Frost’s chin, but she affects not to notice as she whisks the powdering cape from her shoulders. ‘Yes, I think I look very well. You have dressed me very fine. That is what you are good for. I go now to await my visitor.’ She stops before the mirror, smooths her dress. ‘Oh, by the by, I would have you pawn a gown or two. My sole protector keeps us so very comfortable.’
‘You are vexed today,’ he says.
‘Aye, and what if I am?’ She slumps on her sopha, picking at the varnish on its scrolled woodwork, and the light from the window touches one cheek but not the other. Now and then she turns her face towards the glass, a despondent little gaze that lingers on, and ends finally with a sigh, and which puts him in mind of Sukie when her friends do not call by for her. ‘There is a great deal in my life that is vexatious.’
He shrugs. ‘You may be as you are. I am not so cheerfully disposed myself.’ And this is so. He slept badly. Since the Unicorn completed its creep along the west coast and struck out past Ireland, he has had no word from Captain Tysoe Jones. It being such an unusual voyage, he cannot guess when next he might have news, but the coldness of the winter has sown dreams in his head of crooked and cured mer-children: they squawk to him from dark cradles; when he looses their swaddling, he finds their little bodies crushed to a handful of dead leaves.
‘What can be wrong in your world?’ she asks.
‘Well, what is wrong in yours?’
She scowls. ‘No mermaid, for one thing.’
‘Patience,’ he says shortly.
‘A virtue I have very little of, today.’ She looks again towards the window. ‘Forgive me, sir, I have a great deal on my mind. I am waiting for something – it may never transpire – but my fortune depends upon events that take place far away, which I can neither know anything of nor do a single thing to alter.’
‘I have lived all my life that way,’ he says.
She looks at him askance, purses her lips. ‘Well, I am not used to it. If it don’t happen under my nose, or by my own hand, why ought it to affect me?’
‘Providence,’ he shrugs. ‘We live in a great world but may only see one tiny corner of it.’
‘I cannot be at ease with it.’ She begins to bite her thumbnail, then takes it from her mouth guiltily, and slaps a cushion instead. ‘Why nothing in the meantime?’ she demands. ‘Can you not acquire me some little amusement now? No mermaid – why not the skin of a selkie? They can be got in Scotland very easy; there is nothing to prevent you.’
‘Oh no,’ he says, ‘I could not give you that in good faith, for then the poor lady would never return to her kin.’
‘I don’t care,’ she retorts. ‘It’s a luxury few enough of us have in this life.’ A movement from the back rooms catches her eye and she breaks off; here is Mrs Frost scuttling through, clutching several gowns to herself, their skirts hung over one arm, their jackets the other. He sees the bright chenille border of the flower-garden Angelica wore when they met first. ‘You see?’ says Angelica. ‘There go my sealskins.’
‘What is she doing with them?’
Mrs Neal looks away. What expression is on her face he cannot see, but some of the animation leaves her body. ‘Oh,’ she says, and any light that was once in her voice is fading, ‘they are to be laid up in lavender.’ She smiles then, as if she has solved a problem, and returns to her seat. Her arms are spread on the cushions, wrist-upward: her skin is white and her veins are lilac. ‘I have so many gowns this season,’ she continues, ‘I cannot fit them all in here. There is simply not enough room for all the luxuries I possess. Besides –’ she tips her head back so her pale throat shows – ‘I tire of them.’
Mrs Frost snorts, which he does not much like, but she is already out of the door. ‘I am taking them to her uncle’s,’ she calls mockingly over her shoulder.
‘Pay her no heed,’ snaps Angelica. ‘She is sent to vex me; or perhaps it is vice versa, she does not like me much of late.’
‘I did not know you had an uncle in this city. You said you had none.’
She grimaces. ‘It is a turn of phrase.’
He stops and thinks. ‘Oh, I see.’ He steeples his fingers. ‘Are you comfortable in your household economy, Mrs Neal? Are you amply provided for?’ He knows he should not have asked; so perfectly does her face close up that he would not have been surprised if it had been accompanied by the sound of a slammed door. Her body closes up too; she buries her hands under the fold of her shawl, but he can see the nervous movement of her twisting fingers. ‘Forgive me,’ he says. ‘It was indelicate.’
‘You would not have asked that of any other lady,’ she says.
‘No, I believe I would not have.’ But is this not Mrs Neal’s very problem? Since their last meeting he has been nagged by the thought of her as an ordinary woman, and once a girl as deserving of protection as his own Sukie, or Bridget, or any daughter of straitened means. She is a woman out of place, this Angelica Neal, a piece fallen loose from a great machine. Her concerns are not those of other women. ‘I should not have opened my mouth,’ he concedes.
‘Aye, assuredly you should not.’ She rises, dropping her shawl onto the sopha. ‘I find I have forgotten an engagement, Mr Hancock, and am very much delayed in my preparations for it. I must ask you to take your leave of me.’
But he does not move. He dares instead to keep watching her. ‘No,’ he says. ‘You are distressed. What is your trouble?’
She shakes her head, but her lip is quivering and her eyes one wink away from overflowing.
‘Now, come,’ and he drops to an ungainly knee beside her couch. But Angelica has pulled down her chin, and her shoulders are quaking.