“You needn’t.”
He must have read something in my tone, because he said, “Very well, Jo. I’m sorry I approached you like that. It was rather stupid after yesterday’s subterfuge. But that doesn’t mean I can’t accompany you home.”
“I’m taking a bus,” I said.
Now his voice was just a little amused. “I think perhaps I can manage that. I’ve done it before.”
I reached the stop—there were a handful of other people waiting, men and women on their way home from work—and whirled to face him. In my panic it crossed my mind that he was looking for a repeat of the night before, as if I would be foolish enough to risk everything, to lay myself bare before him, every night of the week at his pleasure. But when I met his gaze, I could not sustain the idea. From beneath the brim of his hat, those unmistakable eyes were looking at me with concern—true, sincere concern. There was no trace of lust in his gaze. Or none that I could see, perhaps. It struck me as possible that I wasn’t as good a judge of men as I’d thought.
“Go home, Alex,” I tried again.
“No,” he replied.
So we took the bus, he and I, crowded in with the other London workers, as rain began to pelt the glass. He said nothing, merely sat next to me, his shoulder brushing mine, as if we did this every day. I thought for certain he’d be noticed, not only as of a higher class but also—to my mind—the best-looking man who had ever existed, but in his ordinary coat and hat no one gave him a second glance, not even the women. It seemed that when he wanted to, Alex could fade into the city background, invisible to everyone but me.
I looked out the window, wondered if I could walk to work instead and save the bus fare, and for the first time felt like weeping.
Still my shadow, he followed me off at my stop and from there to my boardinghouse. I roomed in a house that was cheap, horrid, and female-only, the landlady a termagant about her rules. “You cannot come in,” I told Alex. “Men are not allowed.”
“I’ll explain,” he said.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, my thin gloves cold against my skin. Now I would lose my home as well as my employment. Perhaps I could find somewhere cheaper. I’d be turned out if I was pregnant, anyway. In defeat, I turned my back on him and came through the front door, taking the stairs to my flat.
The landlady, who lived in the ground-floor room and watched everything from her front window, came immediately into the front hall, protesting, when Alex followed me. I kept walking and let her words wash over me, followed by Alex’s soothing tone. He told her something; I knew not what. I did not listen. I took the second set of stairs and put my key in the door to my rooms.
I left the door open behind me—that Alex would succeed with the landlady was never really in question—and walked immediately to the bedroom, dropping my coat, my hat, and my gloves as I went. “There,” I said when I heard him come in. “You’ve accompanied me home. Well done, Sir Galahad.”
I heard him close the door and settle on the single chair in my sitting room, and I imagined him looking around my flat. Taking in its mere two rooms—the kitchen was downstairs and the bathroom was down the hall—and their dim corners, the smell of cabbage cooking from downstairs. I began to unbutton my lavender wool dress, not caring that the door to the bedroom stood half open.
“What is this?” Alex asked. I glanced through the doorway to see him holding a framed photo, one of the few mementos I kept in the flat.
“That is me,” I replied, ducking back into the bedroom and continuing to undress. “Mother had work for a time as an artist’s model, and she convinced the studio to hire me as well. I didn’t last.” I had been unable to sit still, or still enough. I had wanted to sketch instead.
He was silent for a moment. The photo showed me in nothing but a simple Greek toga, cut to midthigh, sitting chin in hand on a stool with leaves woven into my hair, the fabric of the toga falling artfully off my shoulder almost to the level of my small breast. “How old were you?” he asked.
“Thirteen.” I folded the lavender dress carefully and put it away.
I heard a click as he put down the sketch in its small frame. “Dear God, Jo.”
“We had to make a living,” I snapped, pulling the pins from my hair.
“I know what you’re worried about,” Alex said. “I’m not a fool, you know. I’m worried about the same thing.”
“It’s none of your concern.”
“I disagree.”