Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [81]
When the last person was fed they tidied away the empty churns and began slowly to push the cart back to the house where it was kept and the food was cooked. It all came from donations, sometimes from wealthy people, sometimes people with little more themselves.
At quarter past nine, in the dark, they walked side by side to the church. Then Jago insisted on accompanying them until they should find a hansom.
“Why did you really come to Whitechapel?” he asked Tallulah. They were passing under a gas lamp, and in the pool of light his expression was innocent. There was no guile in him, or expectation of a particular answer. Emily was interested that he had no thought that she might have come to see him. She liked him even better for his modesty.
“I wanted to help Finlay,” Tallulah answered after only a moment.
Emily longed to tell her to be quiet. Jago Jones would not approve of their going to see Rose Burke about her testimony. She pretended to trip, and caught hold of Tallulah’s sleeve, jerking her hard.
“Are you all right?” Jago said quickly, putting out his hand to steady her.
“Yes, thank you.” She stood upright again, smiling, although they were past the lamp now. “It wasn’t a very clever idea really. There isn’t anything we can do. But we thought if we saw the place, we might think of something.”
Jago shook his head but forbore from comment. He could be tactful when he chose.
Tallulah glanced at Emily as they moved under the next light. She seemed to have understood the hint.
Jago found them a hansom on Commercial Road, and after helping them in, bade them good-bye and thanked them with a wry smile, then turned and walked away without looking back.
Tallulah swiveled to face Emily, although they could barely see each other in the darkness inside the cab.
“I know even less than I did before,” she said, her voice tight with confusion and weariness. “I know I love Jago, but I don’t think I could live here. It smells so awful! Everything is so … dirty! Who could I even talk to? How can he bear it?”
Emily did not answer, because there really was nothing to say, nothing to argue about or rationalize. There was only the decision to be made, and no one could help with that.
Emily collected the new Hellfire Club badge and met Tallulah, by arrangement, at a dog show held by the members of the Ladies’ Kennel Club. It was somewhere they could both go quite comfortably without comment, and meet and compare notes, as if on the scores of dogs of every breed and color and size. Tallulah was in a gorgeous gown of daisy-patterned muslin with white satin ribbon trim. No one would have recognized her as the woman who had helped ladle soup in Coke Street the previous evening. She looked carefree, full of laughter and grace, until she saw Emily. Then she excused herself from her friends and came over, her hand held out, her face tense and shadows of unhappiness in her eyes.
Without comment Emily put her hand into Tallulah’s and passed over the badge, then as quickly withdrew. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Has something new happened?”
“No. I …” Tallulah shook her head. “I just love this dog show. Look at them all. Aren’t they beautiful and intelligent?”
“The people or the dogs?”
“The dogs, of course!” She brushed her fingers against the soft fabric of her skirt. “And I love this dress.”
“You look wonderful in it,” Emily said honestly.
“Can you see me wearing it in Whitechapel? It probably cost more than Jago makes in a year. Maybe two years.”
“Nobody can decide for you,” Emily replied under her breath, smiling and nodding to the wife of another member of Parliament who walked by leading a Great Dane and trying to look as if it were not leading her. “The one thing you must never do is blame someone else because you have chosen the wrong way. Be honest with yourself. If you want your life as it is, with money, fashion, a husband you may not love, then take it.” She smiled and lifted her hand in a gesture of acknowledgment to the wife of a cabinet minister she loathed. “But if you want Jago, with all