A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King [49]
We went back up the stairs to the ground floor, and Veronica was about to lead me into the side entrance of the hall when we were intercepted by one of the refuge workers.
“Oh, Miss Beaconsfield, I’m glad I found you. There’s a Queenie something wants to see you, says her husband’s gone off his nut. She’s cryin’ and carrying’ on like anything.”
“You go on, Ronnie,” I said. “It’s almost time for me to see Margery, anyway.”
“If you’re sure? I’ll tell Marie you’re here.”
She scurried down the hallway and up the stairs, then returned within a minute, gave me a brief wave, and turned into the corridor that led to the shelter. I nodded at the women behind their desks, noting that their curiosity about me had increased when I had mentioned Margery, an indication that the Temple was now big enough to make its leader aloof from lesser mortals. I sat down and picked up a stack of pamphlets to keep me occupied, managing to work my way through Diseases of Childhood, Treating Tuberculosis, and Women in the Classroom before Marie appeared in the doorway, pronounced my name, and turned without another word. I followed at a leisurely pace and chattered away at the taciturn grey back in perversely cheery French as she led me up the stairs to, I was unsurprised to see, the corridor where Veronica and I had ended up on Monday night. Marie paused in front of the door opposite the Circle’s meeting room, knocked once, waited for the response, and opened it for me.
Margery Childe was sitting in front of a fire, wearing an orange-and-grey shot silk dressing gown, a book in her lap. She uncurled from her chair and came to greet me, one hand out to seize mine.
“Mary, how lovely—may I call you Mary? Everyone calls me Margery. I hope you will. Do you mind an informal meal, here in front of the fire? I never eat very much before a service, and I have to go and dress and meditate in an hour. I hope you don’t mind that, either. What a lovely colour of green that is; it does magical things to your eyes.”
My responses consisted of Yes, of course, very well, of course not, I understand, and thank you, and I found myself giving Marie my coat and hat and being seated at a small table with two delicate chairs that I tentatively identified as Louis XIV. The place settings were luminous and paper-thin, the silver old and heavy, the glasses blown into an ornate and modern twist. I hid my twice-let-down hem beneath the table.
“Veronica has been showing you about, I take it?”
“Yes, it was most impressive.”
“You sound surprised.” From her expression, it was a common reaction.
“Mostly by the fact that I’d not heard of the Temple before Monday.”
“We are working to remedy that. Wine?”
“Thank you.” She poured from a cut-glass decanter into two glasses that matched those on the table, these with a twist of pale orange in the stem. “But it must be new,” I noted, accepting the glass, “most of it. One of the presses in the print shop looked almost unused.”
“True. Five years ago, we hired a pair of second-storey rooms once a week. We now own four buildings outright.”
I wanted very badly to know more of just how the transformation had come about, but I held my tongue. It would have sounded, if not accusatory, at the least suspicious, and even if she did answer, I did not want that note to sound just yet.
“Very impressive,” I repeated. “I shall make a donation to the library fund.”
“A good choice,” she said blandly, without so much as a glance at my tired clothing. “Veronica has great hopes for her free lending library.” The bluestocking will be good for a couple of pounds, she was thinking, and with a rush