Page 8 of Disturbing the Dead
A faint smile. “A turn of mind that we share, and I agree. Having never seen an unwrapping, I am curious. If a colleague had invited me to this, I would politely demur. But Isla…”
“Isla wants to go, and I don’t want to shame her for that.”
He meets my gaze. “Precisely. Hugh will also want to go. If you would rather not, I will understand.”
“The unwrapping is happening whether I attend or not. I don’t see the point in standing on principle, not when Isla might question why I’d refuse something that should interest me.”
“So we are going to a mummy unwrapping?”
“It seems so.”
THREE
Three days later, we are on our way to the mummy-unwrapping party, with me wearing a gorgeous gown that makes me happier than I ever thought a dress could make me. Chamber-pot scrubbing isn’t the only bone of contention between myself and my employers. Wages are another issue. A housemaid makes relatively little on top of room and board. Gray and Isla pay more, of course, but that doesn’t mean I can buy dresses for which I have no practical use, especially when they’d cost the equivalent of a designer gown in my own time.
I can’t just pop into a discount shop and buy something off the rack either. Even if I chose to splurge, I then need to match it with proper footwear and gloves and jewelry and winter cape and a crinoline cage. I have a decent secondhand brushed-wool “going out” dress that takes me almost everywhere. It will not take me to an exclusive party at the home of Sir Alastair Christie.
Here, Annis plays fairy godmother. Or she does when Isla insists on it. Isla may not have her sister’s gift for manipulation, but she did grow up bearing witness to it.
“Annis wants you at that party,” Isla said the day we were first invited.
“She wants the shock value of bringing a housemaid to that party,” I said.
“Perhaps, but she likes you. You are interesting, and she loves interesting people.”
“I’m a puzzle to be solved.”
“Also fine company. The point is that she wants you at the party, and so she must ensure you have everything you need. I will insist she play your fairy godmother for this particular ball.” Isla’s lips twitched. “Please be sure you take full advantage of it. Remember that if Duncan seems well-off, he is a pauper compared to Annis.”
I did take advantage. That’s not my usual style, but there’s a vast difference between accepting the ridiculous wage Gray tried to offer me as his assistant and letting his wealthy sister outfit me in a dress suitable for a party she wants me to attend as scandal-bait.
What I get isn’t new. It’s too late for that and too extravagant. Instead, Annis had one of her dresses quickly tailored to fit with fresh trimmings. The gown is silk, which I could never afford in this era—and probably not in my own. It’s turquoise with rust-brown embroidery and beadwork, trimmed in brown lace. The neckline is high, and the bodice is tight enough that I need help with the strings on my new corset. The crinoline cage is also a hand-me-down from Annis, as is the crinoline petticoat that goes over it. The petticoats underneath are my own. My gloves are white silk, and my slippers are also silk, with thin leather soles.
The accessory I’m most pleased with, though, is my poison ring. It’s the first chance I’ve had to wear it since Gray gave it to me for Catriona’s twentieth birthday last month. It’s a gorgeous black enamel and gold piece, antique even in this time. The best part, though, is the tiny compartment for, yes, poison. Okay, they’re not actually used for poison. Women store pills in there, maybe a bit of scent. But anyone seeing it knows it could contain poison.
The ring is in honor of our last case, which had involved a poisoning ring. I’d been terribly disappointed to realize that only meant a suspected ring of poisoners. Gray gave me this to make up for it.
Annis fetches us in her coach. Can I say that’s a bit inconvenient? It means McCreadie needs to come to the town house, rather than have us pick him up on the way. Then we have to wait for Annis, and she’s late—as usual. Also, coaches really aren’t made to fit five people, especially when three of them are women in Victorian evening gowns.
Gray helps me in, and then slides in beside me, which has Annis waggling her brows. I swear the woman is as bad as that annoying friend in fifth grade, always whisper-singing “Jason and Maria, sitting in a tree…” Okay, in fifth grade that annoying friend had been me, but at least I’ve outgrown it.
Gray takes the spot next to me to allow Isla to sit beside McCreadie, because they are the ones who deserve the juvenile singing, and while Gray and I won’t subject them to that, we are not above doing everything we can to nudge them together.
After we’re all seated, though, Isla sighs and says, “This will not do.” She looks at Annis. “Were you not going to mention it?”
Annis only smiles her cat smile.
Isla shakes her head. “We cannot arrive at the party in this configuration. Duncan? Hugh?”
They switch spots without comment, as if they knew better but just weren’t going to bring it up. McCreadie sits beside me and Gray between his sisters, for propriety’s sake, I presume.
Isla is a widow almost out of her mourning period, and her dress now is a gorgeous rich lilac. Following the death of Prince Albert, there are very strict social rules for a widow of Isla’s class, with a two-year public show of mourning for the loss of an asshole that Gray had paid to stay away from Isla. There are, of course, no such expectations placed on widowers. How could one expect them to find a new bride if their dress publicly reminds everyone they lost their last one?
Isla and McCreadie have known each other since childhood. In a proper romantic tale, they’d have grown up together, realized they loved each other, and married. It didn’t work like that. Maybe they didn’t realize how they felt until it was too late, with Isla married and McCreadie engaged. I don’t pry. Oh, I totally would, if that were an option, but when two people refuse to admit they’re crazy about each other, you can’t exactly ask how long they’ve been that way and why they’ve never acted on it. You have to wait for them to figure it out, which is extremely frustrating.
McCreadie is a police detective. A “criminal officer,” as it were, a relatively recent position in a relatively recent institution, formal policing only dating to the early part of this century. It isn’t a case of Gray befriending a poor boy from the lower classes. McCreadie’s family comes from the Grays’ social stratum, and the boys met at private school.
McCreadie is now estranged from his family, and again, it’s not the sort of thing I can ask about. I only know what I see, which is a very good-looking guy—despite luxurious period-appropriate whiskers—who is clever and good-natured and decent in every possible way, making him the perfect match for brilliant, strong-willed, and kindhearted Isla. But enough about that. For now.
