Page 18 of A Treacherous Trade
I’d have been a bit less shocked had he not taken a step or two back, retreating a little beneath her tiny onslaught.
Amelia had the look of a dark Valkyrie as she advanced on her stymied brother. “No one asked your permission, and now I’m regretting giving you the information, so unless you’re going to help find this killer, you can fuck off, because your kind are not welcome here.”
“My kind?” He suddenly stood fast against her onslaught, advertising that it was his natural way to allow Amelia the illusion of her physical dominance.
But in reality, her strength against his was nothing more than a whisper in a windstorm.
“Men!” she said acidly. “Forbidding men who think they know better. None of us would even be in this jam without the likes of you lot. So get out!”
Croft held up his hands, his features rearranging from forbidding to cajoling. “I already told you, Amelia, I’ll look into things at the Yard. I’ll call in some favors and do what I can to…”
“That’s not enough. Now stop being useless and go fetch my trunk from the attic. The one with the blue lid.” Amelia snatched a towel from the handle of the oven and swatted him with it hard enough to make a sharp sound.
“Why?” His surprise melted into an oddly boyish confusion. “What’s in the trunk?”
“Never you mind. Just fetch it for me, you overgrown dolt, and put it over by that screen there.”
I promised myself that one of these days I would cease being astounded when Croft obeyed his sister’s edicts. But that day was not today.
Having rid us of him momentarily, Amelia muttered a few curses as she bustled and banged about, putting the kettle on, retrieving a stockpot and several sharp knives then lighting two burners on the cookstove. “Cook isn’t back from visiting her family for the holidays, so you’ll have to suffer my culinary inadequacies, I’m afraid. I have a few decent recipes I picked up here and there—”
“You needn’t make anything on my account,” I said, backing up until I ran into the round table. “I shouldn’t stay long enough to dine.”
“Of course you won’t after that display,” she muttered, pulling the long match from the burner and holding it to a fully packed pipe she retrieved from a shelf next to the door. “Stubborn cur seems determined to die alone.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
Ignoring me, she took a pork loin from the larder along with some lard and bottled jars of potatoes. In irate, jerking motions, she plucked some herbs from this bundle and that, tossing them into a mortar. She’d taken up the pestle and ground these herbs into a fragrant powder by the time Croft descended from the attic, his footfalls impossibly heavier than before.
No one said a word to each other as he banged into the kitchen, set the trunk down by the window, and grappled it open with a screech of metal on metal.
Clomping over to his sister, he glowered down at her. “The hinges on your bloody trunk are rusted. I’ll oil them before work tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” she replied sharply, still grinding at the powder as if it might be his bones.
“Don’t bloody mention it.” With that, he marched out again, slamming the door behind him.
Brothers.
I couldn’t allow myself to think of mine, not without withering into a powder finer than in her spice bowl and blowing away in the winter wind.
One could only contemplate so much grief at a time.
Abandoning her work, Amelia took a cream linen screen from behind the cupboard and unfolded it to create privacy between the table and the far wall. “Change into this,” she ordered me, retrieving a pile of silks and petticoats from the trunk and shoving it into my arms. “This will be perfect for what I have in mind, but I might need to make a few alterations. You’re a bit shorter than I am.”
Only this morning, the thought of undoing my dress at Grayson Croft’s home would have sent me into fits of hysterical laughter. But here I was, ducking behind a screen and a window, cursing the tiny buttons on my high-necked black frock.
“You made this?” I asked, desperate for a distraction from my racing thoughts.
“I’d have been a seamstress if I could have afforded it,” she said, over the busy clanging and clashing of her kitchen.
Amelia was incredibly talented with a needle. Even before I tried on the gown, I could tell how sumptuous and well-made it was. The fabric was costly and fine, not the cheap imitation so many costumes so obviously suffered. Once I’d stepped out of my frock and bustle, I peeked around the screen to look at her own bodice, which was bland enough to be considered serviceable. Not dowdy or old, just a plain peach taffeta with sedate pearl buttons, beneath a dark vest and well-loved apron.
“Tell me about Beatrice,” I said when she caught me studying her, before I disappeared back behind the screen. “Did she work her way up in the business before she became the proprietress of The Orchard?”
“Quite the contrary, actually,” Amelia replied with a warm sort of amusement. “Bea was a society wife, married to a wealthy solicitor who belonged to a family of some consequence. Apparently, she inherited a great deal of money when he passed away, along with a letter he’d left detailing how many ‘houses of ill repute’ he held accounts at. Instead of going back to church, she bought one of them, and has been in the business some twenty years or so.”
At that I stalled, undoing the first couple of my stays in order to get the garment on. “Then how did she…”
