The Hawkins residence on the Rue Malory was a solid, respectable-looking house of three stories, but its internal disruption was apparent even to the casual observer. The day was warm, but all the shutters were still sealed tight against any intrusion of prying eyes. The steps had not been scrubbed this morning, and the marks of dirty feet smeared the white stone. No sign of cook or housemaid out front to bargain for fresh meat and gossip with the barrowmen. It was a house battened down against the coming of disaster.

Feeling not a little like a harbinger of doom myself, despite my relatively cheerful yellow gown, I sent Fergus up the steps to knock for me. There was some give-and-take between Fergus and whoever opened the door, but one of Fergus’s better character traits was an inability to take “no” for an answer, and shortly I found myself face-to-face with a woman who appeared to be the lady of the house, and therefore Mrs. Hawkins, Mary’s aunt.

I was forced to draw my own conclusions, as the woman seemed much too distraught to assist me by offering any sort of tangible information, such as her name.

“But we can’t see anybody!” she kept exclaiming, glancing furtively over her shoulder, as though expecting the bulky form of Mr. Hawkins suddenly to materialize accusingly behind her. “We’re… we have… that is…”

“I don’t want to see you,” I said firmly. “I want to see your niece, Mary.”

The name seemed to throw her into fresh paroxysms of alarm.

“She… but… Mary? No! She’s… she’s not well!”

“I don’t suppose she is,” I said patiently. I lifted my basket into view. “I’ve brought some medicines for her.”

“Oh! But… but… she… you… aren’t you…?”

“Havers, woman,” said Fergus in his best Scots accent. He viewed this spectacle of derangement disapprovingly. “The maid says the young mistress is upstairs in her room.”

“Just so,” I said. “Lead on, Fergus.” Waiting for no further encouragement, he ducked under the outstretched forearm that barred our way, and made off into the gloomy depths of the house. Mrs. Hawkins turned after him with an incoherent cry, allowing me to slip past her.

There was a maid on duty outside Mary’s door, a stout party in a striped apron, but she offered no resistance to my statement that I intended to go in. She shook her head mournfully. “I can do nothing with her, Madame. Perhaps you will have better luck.”

This didn’t sound at all promising, but there was little choice. At least I wasn’t likely to do further harm. I straightened my gown and pushed open the door.

It was like walking into a cave. The windows were covered with heavy brown velvet draperies, drawn tight against the daylight, and what chinks of light seeped through were immediately quenched in the hovering layer of smoke from the hearth.

I took a deep breath and let it out again at once, coughing. There was no stir from the figure on the bed; a pathetically small, hunched shape under a goose-feather duvet. Surely the drug had worn off by now, and she couldn’t be asleep, after all the racket there had been in the hallway. Probably playing possum, in case it was her aunt come back for further blithering harangues. I would have done the same, in her place.

I turned and shut the door firmly in Mrs. Hawkins’s wretched face, then walked over to the bed.

“It’s me,” I said. “Why don’t you come out, before you suffocate in there?”

There was a sudden upheaval of bedclothes, and Mary shot out of the quilts like a dolphin rising from the sea waves, and clutched me round the neck.

“Claire! Oh, Claire! Thank God! I thought I’d n-never see you again! Uncle said you were in prison! He s-said you-”

“Let go!” I managed to detach her grip, and force her back enough to get a look at her. She was red-faced, sweaty, and disheveled from hiding beneath the covers, but otherwise looked fine. Her brown eyes were wide and bright, with no sign of opium intoxication, and while she looked excited and alarmed, apparently a night’s rest, coupled with the resilience of youth, had taken care of most of her physical injuries. The others were what worried me.

“No, I’m not in prison,” I said, trying to stem her eager questions. “Obviously not, though it isn’t for any lack of trying on your uncle’s part.”

“B-but I told him-” she began, then stammered and let her eyes fall. “ – at least I t-t-tried to tell him, but he – but I…”

“Don’t worry about it,” I assured her. “He’s so upset he wouldn’t listen to anything you said, no matter how you said it. It doesn’t matter, anyway. The important thing is you. How do you feel?” I pushed the heavy dark hair back from her forehead and looked her over searchingly.

“All right,” she answered, and gulped. “I… bled a little bit, but it stopped.” The blood rose still higher in her fair cheeks, but she didn’t drop her eyes. “I… it’s… sore. D-does that go away?”

“Yes, it does,” I said gently. “I brought some herbs for you. They’re to be brewed in hot water, and as the infusion cools, you can apply it with a cloth, or sit in it in a tub, if one’s handy. It will help.” I got the bundles of herbs from my reticule and laid them on her side table.

She nodded, biting her lip. Plainly there was something more she wanted to say, her native shyness battling her need for confidence.

“What is it?” I asked, as matter-of-factly as I could.

“Am I going to have a baby?” she blurted out, looking up fearfully. “You said…”

“No,” I said, as firmly as I could. “You aren’t. He wasn’t able to… finish.” In the folds of my skirt, I crossed both pairs of fingers, hoping fervently that I was right. The chances were very small indeed, but such freaks had been known to happen. Still, there was no point in alarming her further over the faint possibility. The thought made me faintly ill. Could such an accident be the possible answer to the riddle of Frank’s existence? I put the notion aside; a month’s wait would prove or dispel it.

“It’s hot as a bloody oven in here,” I said, loosening the ties at my throat in order to breathe. “And smoky as hell’s vestibule, as my old uncle used to say.” Unsure what on earth to say to her next, I rose and went round the room throwing back drapes and opening windows.

“Aunt Helen said I mustn’t let anyone see me,” Mary said, kneeling up in bed as she watched me. “She says I’m d-disgraced, and people will point at me in the street if I go out.”

“They might, the ghouls.” I finished my airing and came back to her. “That doesn’t mean you need bury yourself alive and suffocate in the process.” I sat down beside her, and leaned back in my chair, feeling the cool fresh air blow through my hair as it swept the smoke from the room.

She was silent for a long time, toying with the bundles of herbs on the table. Finally she looked up at me, smiling bravely, though her lower lip trembled slightly.

“At least I won’t have to m-marry the Vicomte. Uncle says he’ll n-never have me now.”

“No, I don’t suppose so.”

She nodded, looking down at the gauze wrapped square on her knee. Her fingers fiddled restlessly with the string, so that one end came loose and a few crumbs of goldenrod fell out onto the coverlet.

“I… used to th-think about it; what you told me, about how a m-man…” She stopped and swallowed, and I saw a single tear fall onto the gauze. “I didn’t think I could stand to let the Vicomte do that to me. N-now it’s been done… and n-nobody can undo it and I’ll never have to d-do it again… and… and… oh, Claire, Alex will never speak to me again! I’ll never see him again, never!”

She collapsed into my arms, weeping hysterically and scattering herbs. I clutched her against my shoulder and patted her, making small shushing noises, though I shed a few tears myself that fell unnoticed into the dark shininess of her hair.

“You’ll see him again,” I whispered. “Of course you will. It won’t make a difference to him. He’s a good man.”