“Why two?” Scotty asked carefully. “Why not one?”
“Because both wanted to move me to my own lodgings and take care of me,” she admitted quietly.
“And ye didn’t want that?” he asked.
“I . . . What if they changed their minds and threw me out?” Beth asked instead of answering directly. “Or what if, once they had me all to themselves, they became cruel and abusive?”
“Ye didn’t trust them,” Scotty said solemnly, and then added, “And why should ye, when yer own father sold ye into such a business.”
Beth nodded solemnly.
“So ye kept two, so that . . .”
“Neither could think they owned me,” she said quietly. “But those two were enough. For fifteen years I was basically a mistress to two men, but then one died and the other had a change in fortune, so I started making penny pies and going out to sell them as I had with my mother. I’d learned to make proper pastry by then,” she added with a smile. “Mouthy Mary showed me.”
“Penny pies in the market,” he murmured.
Beth nodded. “That’s where I found out that my father was dead. Our neighbor Mrs. Hardy still sold warm peas by the market, and she told me. He died just days after he sold me. He’d taken the money from the brothel owner and drunk himself to death.” Her mouth hardened. “I didn’t mourn him.”
Scotty nodded in understanding, but simply waited. He knew how this story ended, just not all of the particulars.
“Life went on like that for another decade. A couple of the girls saved every penny they made, pooled it together and managed to buy a small pub to run together. Two more married and moved out of the house, and one died of pneumonia, but eventually all of us began to slow down. The girls took in less business, and I went to market less, especially in the winter. And then Dree convinced us to retire. She bought a house on the other side of London in an area where no one knew us and we could introduce ourselves as respectable widows, or simply old spinsters . . . whatever we chose. We could make friends and play gin and do needlepoint and be little old ladies.
“Dree put the house in our name. She said she’d recoup the money for the new house from selling the brothel, but she didn’t sell it for years, and I suspect she probably only got half her money back when she finally did. Though, I didn’t know it at the time. None of us had any idea how expensive that new house must have been. But we were so pleased with it,” she said with a smile. “Charming it was, and beautiful. Dree had it decorated magnificently. She had come to love each and every one of us over the years and spared no expense.
“Once we were settling nicely into our new respectable lives, we suspected she might start to feel at loose ends, so we suggested she take a vacation. Have a nice long visit with her family in Spain, and maybe take a tour of the Continent or the like. It was something she hadn’t been able to do while we needed her protection. She had hired a man named Cyrus to help protect us so that she could take short trips here and there over the years, but she’d never been gone for more than a couple days or a week or two before that. We felt she deserved a long vacation. So Dree decided she would go. She’d visit her family in Spain first and then perhaps take a short tour . . . but she wouldn’t be gone long, she assured us. She’d come back to check on us soon.”
Beth chuckled softly. “Now that I am immortal, I understand that time passes differently. Those decades she spent with us, while the better part of our lives and long in our minds, were not so long to her. But we didn’t know that then, and Dree’s short tour seemed interminable to us, though it only lasted a little less than two years. She wrote often, about once every week or two, and we wrote back if she said she would be somewhere for more than a couple of weeks. Anything shorter and she would be gone before our letters arrived,” Beth explained.
Scotty nodded, but asked with curiosity, “In all the time ye’d known her, had none o’ ye ever thought ye’d like to be immortal yerselves?”
“Oh nay,” Beth said at once, and then frowned and considered it for a moment more before admitting, “Well, mayhap. On those mornings when I woke up sore and achy with age, or when I noticed I just wasn’t as strong as I used to be and it wasn’t as easy to lift that bucket of water, or cart those logs to the fireplace. And sure, once or twice when I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror on passing and blinked in surprise at the gray hair sprouting and the wrinkles multiplying and then turned to look at Dree who was still as young, strong, and beautiful as the day we met her . . .” She smiled wryly. “Mayhap I considered it for a moment or two then, but the whole drinking blood thing quickly made me shake my head.”
“And the others?” he asked.
“Ah.” Beth nodded solemnly. “There were several of them who wept at the loss of their youth and looks and would have happily accepted immortality. But there were just as many who didn’t want it at all, or only briefly considered it but feared it like me.”
“Feared it?” he asked with a frown.
“This was the eighteen hundreds, Scotty,” she said dryly. “Dracula may not have been out in print yet, but Dorian Gray was, and we were a superstitious lot. Nothing so fine as remaining young and healthy forever could be a good thing and without a steep cost.”
Scotty smiled faintly at the words and nodded in understanding. He had lived through that era as well.
“Anyway, as I say, nearly two years passed. I know Dree didn’t mean to stay away so long. Time flies when you’re having fun, as they say, and there was no reason for her to think she had to come back. And although we missed her, we were also feeling guilty for how we’d monopolized her all those years. So in our letters we told her we were having a grand time and she should too. And we were,” Beth assured him with a grin. “We enjoyed our new respectable rank. We made friends with the neighbors, had them in to tea and were invited into their homes as well. We did needlepoint, read books, played cards, and made up the most fanciful and tragic tales for each of us as to how we’d ended up widowed and in that house together.
“It was lovely,” Beth said with a wistful smile, and then the smile faded, and she added, “Right up until the day Jimmy came.”
“Jamieson Sterne,” Scotty said solemnly.