apron tied over her bombazet dress. She had obviously been working, and it occurred to Sebastian that she might very well be packing up her own things. After all, a widower would have no need for a lady’s maid.
She paused in the doorway to eye Sebastian with undisguised suspicion. “I don’t see no baton,” she said, referring to the emblem of office traditionally carried by Runners.
A real Runner would probably have snapped, “We’ll have none of your impertinence, girl,” and ordered her to sit down. But in Sebastian’s experience, most people cooperated best when their dignity was respected. So he simply said, “Please, have a seat,” and steered her toward the ladder-backed chair he had placed beside the window overlooking the rain-drenched rear gardens.
She hesitated a moment, then sat, her hands folded in her lap, her spine as straight and uncompromising as a nun’s.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions about Lady Anglessey,” said Sebastian, leaning his shoulders against the wall. “We understand her ladyship left the house in a hackney on Wednesday afternoon, and we’re hoping you might know where she went.”
“No,” said the abigail baldly. “I don’t.”
Sebastian gave her a coaxing smile. “No idea whatsoever?”
There was no answering smile to lighten the woman’s pinched, unremarkable features. “No, sir. She didn’t say, and it’s not my place to pry into the activities of my employers, now, is it?”
Sebastian crossed his arms at his chest and rocked back on his heels. “Very commendable, I’m sure. But a lady’s maid often knows things about her employers without needing to be told—and without prying. Are you quite certain, for instance, that Lady Anglessey didn’t let drop some sort of a hint? Perhaps when she asked you to get out her gown for the afternoon?”
“She selected the gown herself—a simple walking dress with a matching pelisse, as would be suitable for a lady of fashion going out for the afternoon.”
Deciding to take another tack, Sebastian went to sit in the chair opposite her. “Tell me, Miss Bishop, how would you say his lordship and Lady Anglessey got along?”
Tess Bishop gave him a wooden stare. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do.” He rested his forearms on his thighs and leaned forward, as if inviting confidences. “Did they quarrel, for instance?”
“No.”
“Never?” Sebastian raised one eyebrow in a show of disbelief. “Man and wife for some four years, and no quarrels? No minor disagreements, even?”
“If they quarreled, sir, it wasn’t in my hearing.”
“Do you know if she ever met a man named Alain, the Chevalier de Varden?”
Something flared in her eyes, something she hid by staring down at hands now clasped so tightly they showed white. “I never heard the name, no.”
Sebastian studied the abigail’s stiff, hostile face. He supposed it said something about Guinevere Anglessey, if even after death she could inspire this kind of loyalty in a servant. “How long have you been with her ladyship?” Sebastian asked suddenly.
“Four years,” said Tess Bishop, relaxing slightly. “I came to her just before she married his lordship.”
Sebastian leaned back in his chair. “I suppose it’s natural for a young lady about to make such a brilliant alliance to want to provide herself with a more experienced abigail than the one she’d brought with her from the country.”
“That’s not the way it was at all. This was my first position.”
“Your first?”
“That’s right. I used to be a seamstress, while my David was a carpenter. But he was pressed into the navy, right before the bombardment of Copenhagen.” She paused. “He was killed.”
“I’m sorry,” said Sebastian, although it seemed a pathetically lame sop to offer her.
“After that, I supported us as best I could, but…” Her voice trailed off as if she regretted having said so much.
“Us?” Sebastian prompted.
“We had a baby. A girl.” Tess Bishop turned her face slightly toward the window so that she was no longer looking at him. “I took sick. When I couldn’t make my quota, they let me go. And then my baby took sick, too.”
Sebastian watched her slim throat work as she swallowed. It was a familiar enough story, a tragedy enacted a thousand times or more a year in London, Paris—in every city across Europe. Women barely eking out a subsistence wage, caught by illness or a downturn in the fashion industry and thrown onto the streets. Most turned to prostitution or theft, or both. They had no choice, but that didn’t stop the moralists from condemning them as sinful women and railing against them as the source of all corruption and decadence. As if any woman in her right mind would willingly embark upon a path certain to lead to disease and death and an unmarked grave in some noisome churchyard’s poor hole.
“I was desperate,” Tess Bishop said in little more than a whisper, a flush of remembered shame coloring her cheeks. “I finally took to begging in the streets. Lady Anglessey…she took pity on me. Brought us in and gave us something to eat. Even had in a doctor for my little one.”
Sebastian looked at the woman’s thin shoulders, at the starched white cap that covered her bowed head. “But it was too late,” she said after a moment. “My Sarah died that very night.”
Out in the garden, the rain had eased up, although the clouds still hung gray and heavy over the city. From here Sebastian could see the outlines of a large glass-and-frame conservatory, its panes steamy with moisture.
This was a side of Guinevere that no one had showed him before, and one he suspected wasn’t exactly typical.
