Mrs. Coulter’s shoulders dropped so completely that the straps of her apron might have slipped off them.
“You can’t come in,” she said. “My—” Again she lowered her voice. “My husband is resting and my children will be back from school soon. But there’s a tea-counter at the back of the bakers.”
“Let me buy you a cup,” said Miss Grant. “And you tell me all about it.”
It was excellent tea: blistering hot, the color of teak when the milk went in, and fragrant too. Proper leaves, Miss Grant concluded, not those sweepings in little sacks that were enjoying such a vogue. Mrs. Coulter got a bit of color in her thin cheeks as she sipped. By the time she was halfway down the first cup she was ready to begin.
“My husband,” she said, “was married once before. Briefly. I didn’t tell my parents. It was hard enough . . .” Miss Grant nodded. It certainly would have been, trying to sell an architect of all things to Sir Stephen and Lady Larbert. Better than a doctor, at least, since he would not hand Lady Larbert into a carriage with hands that had just left off examining a rash, but an architect was not a gentleman and their daughter was a lady.
“He was young,” Mrs. Coulter went on. “And he had his head turned. It was in New York. She was very glamorous by all accounts.” Mrs. Coulter’s voice dropped a little. “She was a soubrette.”
Miss Grant leaned forward to hear better. “A socialite?”
“Good Lord! Hardly,” said Mrs. Coulter. She laughed again as she had before—but this time, perhaps there was a little amusement in it. “She was quite outside society. Quite outside. What I mean is, she was theatrical.” Miss Grant would hardly tremble at that and, emboldened by such a calm reception, Mrs. Coulter went on. “Burlesque, actually.” Miss Grant did have to work just a little to keep her eyebrows straight then, but she managed, and so Mrs. Coulter, after swallowing a strengthening mouthful of tea, finished with: “A hoochie-coochie girl by the name of Za-Za-Zita.”
“Heavens.”
“He was a stage-door Johnnie and no bones about it. He saved her.”
“Good for him,” said Miss Grant. “From what?”
“Oh, she was in with a very rough crowd. Down in a part of New York called the Bowery or the Battery or some such outlandish place. She was mixed up with a jewel thief and if Edward—my husband—if my husband had not swept her away she might have ended up in some rather hot water. I sometimes think, uncharitably perhaps, that she used him.”
“I wouldn’t wonder.”
“His family cut him off.”
“I wouldn’t wonder about that either,” said Miss Grant, trying to imagine a hoochie-coochie-dancing daughter-in-law being introduced to whatever blameless merchant or banker had been Mr. Coulter’s father. “And am I right in thinking that the marriage was not a success? She left him?”
“The marriage wasn’t even a marriage!” said Mrs. Coulter. “Yes, she left him. As soon as he’d got her out of New York, out of America, she abandoned him.”
“And divorced him?” said Miss Grant. For surely not even Sir Stephen and Lady Larbert would care about an indiscretion that left a man a widower.
“She had no grounds!” cried Mrs. Coulter. “My husband is as loyal as the day is long.”
“Too loyal to divorce her?” asked Miss Grant.
“He could have,” Mrs. Coulter said. “He had photographs of her in her costumes; he had the costumes themselves. Any judge in the land could see a woman like that would never be faithful.”
“They can be sticklers for hard evidence,” said Miss Grant, thinking of Brighton boarding houses and what good livings there are for indiscreet chambermaids.
“And besides, he didn’t need to,” Mrs. Coulter said.
“She died?”
The woman had the strangest look on her face, Miss Grant thought to herself. She dabbed her lips and folded her little napkin before she spoke again.
“She may have died for all we know. But what I meant was that he had no need to divorce her. He applied for annulment.” Miss Grant waited a moment or two but Mrs. Coulter said nothing, so she prompted her.
“On the grounds that . . .”
“Yes.” Mrs. Coulter did not blush and did not hang her head. On the contrary, she put her chin in the air and stared down her nose at Miss Grant, daring her to speak.
Miss Grant was always one for a dare. “And the same judge who’d never believe she was faithful refused to believe she was chaste?” she said. “Dear me.”
“We had both been so sure it was a mere technicality!” Mrs. Coulter said. “We had already told my parents we were engaged. We couldn’t find the words to describe our difficulty. So we went ahead with the wedding.”
“Dear me,” said Miss Grant again. Then, as all the ramifications arrived in her brain together, she said in quick succession: “But that—So you’re—The children—” before she managed to press her lips closed again.