Mrs. Watson smiled. “I cooked up my little scheme before I truly knew anything about you. The moment I stepped out of the tea shop, I realized that it wasn’t going to work. I’d left no identifying information in the reticule. But you knew so much about me from a look—it would be only a matter of time before you discovered my address.”
“I didn’t mean to call upon you—my intention was only to ring the doorbell and give the reticule to a member of the staff. But as I approached the house, I saw Miss Hartford emerge from a carriage far too grand for her supposed station in life. She turned around and said to someone in the carriage, ‘’Ow do I sound?’ and a man’s voice replied, in a similarly exaggerated accent, ‘Like a proper Cockney, luv.’
“It made me uneasy. She was still some distance ahead of me. When I turned the corner and saw that she’d been admitted into your house, I went back to the carriage, knocked, and asked for directions to the Strand, claiming to be lost.”
“I imagine the young man in the carriage must have bent over backward to help you.”
Charlotte smiled slightly. “He was very chivalrous and even brought out a map of London to help me orient myself. After I spoke with him, however, I became even more suspicious about his purpose here. So when I did knock on your door, instead of merely handing over the reticule, I asked to be brought to you. And a moment outside the drawing room was enough to let me know what Miss Hartford wanted.”
“I did think her accent was put on,” said Mrs. Watson. “She’s a talented mimic, but she’d entered into it with too much enthusiasm and sounded as if a Punch caricature had come to life.”
“Perhaps it would be a good idea to retract the advert. I imagine you wouldn’t wish for any more young women to show up at your door trying to claim you as a mother, whether they are sincere or intent on swindle.”
“You are right,” said Mrs. Watson. “The experiment has run its course.”
Something in her tone struck Charlotte. Mrs. Watson of this evening was different from the exuberant woman she had been earlier in the day: quieter, more solemn, and more . . . apprehensive.
She rose from her seat and walked to the mantel. There she stood with her back to the room, studying a row of framed photographs. Many featured a dark-haired young man with a steady, but mischievous, gaze.
He was in uniform in their wedding photograph—the army then. Dead six years, according to what Mrs. Watson had told Charlotte—and six years ago there had been a war with Afghanistan.
Distant colonial wars that one read about in the newspapers were like theatrical plays: vivid and dramatic. One could get caught up in the excitement of the battle, the unexpected turns of events, the high passions in the halls of Parliament. But in the end, they didn’t seem quite real.
At least they had never felt real to Charlotte before this moment. Before she stared at Mrs. Watson’s elegant back and saw thousands of dead men strewn across a harsh, brown landscape.
Mrs. Watson turned around. Charlotte half expected to see the very embodiment of grief and fragility. Instead she was reminded of the reason she had intuited that Mrs. Watson had been successful on the stage—she exuded a sturdy confidence, that of a woman who trusted herself because of a lifetime of good choices.
“Shortly before you arrived, I came to a decision,” said Mrs. Watson, her voice soft, her tone firm. “I knew it wouldn’t be long before you called, bearing my reticule. And that would be an excellent opportunity to offer you the position of a lady’s companion.”
This development Charlotte had entirely failed to foresee. Her lips flapped a few times before she managed a reply. “Me? To you?”
“We do have a lack of respectability in common, don’t you think?”
“It isn’t your disregard of my scandalous recent past that astonishes me, ma’am. Most people tend to want nothing to do with me after I enumerate what I see about them.”
In fact, it had been a singularly effective means to persuade a gentleman to withdraw a proposal of marriage.
Mrs. Watson smiled wryly. “I can see why. It was extraordinarily uncomfortable to be laid so bare. But in my case . . . in my case it was also a tremendous relief.
“I stopped wearing mourning after the regulation period. I had a young girl under my care and I wanted her to see that life went on. That the loss of a man, even if he had been the love of her life, was not the end of a woman’s existence. That such a loss was something she could recover from, with both courage and grace. But now that my niece is away in Paris, now that I have no audience for whom to perform this role of the merry widow, I—”
She pulled out a handkerchief that had been tucked into her sleeve, straightened it, and then tucked it back in. “In any case, I thought, let me try it. Let me try having as a companion someone before whom it is useless to pretend that everything is all right. Let me try living without hiding my grief, because to her that grief would already be plain as day.”
For a minute, neither of them said anything.
Mrs. Watson retook her seat and looked at Charlotte. “Will you take the position, Miss Holmes?”