He had never expected to find himself looking at Cora herself.
A slightly older, careworn version of Cora, but Cora none the less.
Her voice had changed. Her accent was now almost indistinguishable from that of the other girls who lived and worked in this area. But there was still an unmistakably soft Scottish burr underlying the sharper vowel sounds, and a cadence to her speech that proclaimed her origins. The rest of her had hardly altered at all. Same fair skin that would break out in freckles at the most fleeting exposure to sunlight, same delicate features that made her face look all eyes, same mannerisms. The way she held her cup, the way she tilted her head as she looked up at him, though those green eyes, that had once blazed at him with what he had believed was the sort of love poets wrote sonnets about, were cold now. Blank.
Empty.
The enormity of her betrayal, her sheer deceitfulness, struck him all over again. There was no consolation in knowing she was not dead after all! He slumped down on to the bench beside her, in the gap that had opened up when her co-worker had climbed into the hackney-cab driver’s lap and sucked in a sharp pain. Why had he not seen how deceitful she was back then? Look at her now, calmly sipping her gin after colluding in a clandestine meeting between her co-worker and her fancy man. Abusing the comparative freedom of her trusted position without so much as a qualm! His upper lip curled into a sneer. This woman was not trustworthy! She had waltzed off with his heart and his ring…
His ring! How could he have forgotten that? That ring had been in his family for generations. It was the only item of jewellery his mother had managed to prevent his father from selling. It was extremely valuable. Far too valuable to waste on a deceitful, brazen…He grabbed her hand, determined to take it back.
Her ring finger was bare.
‘You sold my ring!’
How had she managed that? He had put up a reward, which he had been ill able to afford at first, in the hope that if it turned up, it would lead back to her. The antique ring, a blood-red ruby surrounded by tiny pearls, was such an unusual piece that he had been sure he would have heard if it had come on to the market.
She had somehow outwitted him, even in that. She must have sold it and used the proceeds to fund her flight to London. He scoffed at his own naïvety in thinking the paltry reward he had put up would have tempted a fence to turn in his supplier!
‘Why, Cora?’ he asked her again. That was what he simply could not comprehend. ‘At least, tell me why you ran away.’
If she had changed her mind about wanting to marry him, why had she not just told him, broken off the engagement and gone home? There was no need to have gone to such lengths to disappear so completely.
Mary’s heart went out to the poor gentleman who looked so bleakly baffled. For she knew exactly how he felt. At one point, her world had frequently seemed to make no sense at all. And that in turn left her feeling scared and lonely and confused.
And when she had felt like that, a few kind words, or a smile, had helped her get back on an even keel. Summoning up a smile that she hoped conveyed her sympathy for his state of mind, she gently explained, ‘I really am not who you think I am, sir. My name is Mary.’
‘How can you sit there and lie to me?’he snarled. ‘To my face! You got on your horse and rode off without a backward glance…’
‘A horse?’ Mary’s eyebrows rose in surprise. If this man thought she was capable of climbing right up on top of a horse, when she was far too timid to even bring herself to pat one—no matter how earnestly Joe promised it was quite safe—then that just proved how badly mistaken he was about her identity! The very prospect of touching one brought on waves of uncontrollable panic. Panic so strong she could smell it. The smell came flooding to her nostrils right now. She swallowed down hastily, but her heart was already pounding in her chest. And she could smell damp leaves, mixed in with the scent of horse and leather, and taste that horrid, metallic tang of blood…
‘…leaving me to pick up the pieces! Now you will not even do me the courtesy of explaining your outrageous behaviour! You said you loved me…’
His face dark with rage, he suddenly seized Mary’s shoulders, and kissed her hard on the mouth.
Mary was so surprised, she had no time to react. He had not looked in the least like a man who was about to kiss a woman.
But before she could do more than gasp, all hell broke loose.
With an inarticulate bellow of rage, Fred rose up, reached over her, seized the poor, deranged gentleman by the lapels of his very expensive coat, and hauled him to his feet.
His sudden action caused the bench on which they were all sitting to topple over, sending Mary flying backwards in a tangle of skirts. Joe, whose reactions were lightning fast, had managed to leap to his feet as the bench slid out from beneath him, but Molly had tumbled to the floor alongside Mary.
‘Quick, this way!’ Molly shrieked, grabbing her by the arm even as she herself started to scramble on all fours out of the reach of the flailing boots of the three men now struggling together where, just a moment before, they had been sitting quietly drinking their porter.
By the time they reached the door, everyone in the place seemed to have been sucked into the brawl. Glancing over her shoulder as Molly hustled her out, she saw one of the serving girls bringing her tray down on the head of a coal-heaver who had a bespectacled clerk in a bear hug, while one of Joe’s pals accidentally elbowed Fred in the face as he drew back his fist to punch a man in naval uniform. But she could not make out the dark gentleman anywhere amidst the sea of struggling combatants.
‘What a night!’ Molly gasped as they made it to the safety of the street, her face alight with excitement.
‘Are you not worried about Joe?’
From inside the gin shop Mary could hear the sounds of furniture breaking, and men cursing and yelling.
‘Sounds like—’she broke off briefly at a tremendous crash of breaking glass ‘—he’s having a smashing time.’Molly giggled as she straightened Mary’s skewed bonnet. ‘Did you see how fast he was?’ she added, dancing on the spot, and throwing a few punches at imaginary opponents for good measure.
‘I scarcely knew what was happening,’ Mary admitted. ‘It all happened so fast. One minute that man was kissing me, and then…Oh dear—’ she paused, casting an anxious glance over her shoulder ‘—I hope they are not hurting him.’
‘Well, strike me!’ Molly looked at Mary as though she had never seen her before. ‘Here was I thinking you’d be all of a quake, and all you can think of is whether Joe and the lads are hurting your beau!’
‘He’s not my beau! I just feel…sorry for him, that’s all. He seemed to think I was someone he had known once, someone who said she loved him, but then left him. That must have been why he followed me the other day, I must look very like her.’ Even sitting face to face with her, in the glaring light of the tavern’s lanterns, he seemed convinced she was his lost love. It was so sad.
Molly tucked Mary’s hand in the crook of her arm, and stepped out briskly, muttering, ‘I done the right thing, then. I weren’t sure,’ she said a little louder, darting Mary a sidelong glance, ‘but the thing is, Mary, girls like us don’t have a lot of choice.’
‘What do you mean? What have you done?’
‘It’s for your own good,’ she replied, puzzling Mary still further. ‘And it’s not as if you’re scared of him now, are you? Not like you was the other day?’
‘No,’ Mary confessed, shamefaced. ‘I was just being silly that day. He startled me, that was all, leaping out of the shadows like that…’
‘There, you see. It will be fine!’
‘What will be fine? Molly,’ Mary panted, ‘do we have to walk this fast? Nobody is chasing us now.’
‘Sorry,’