Page 27 of A Treacherous Trade
He slid me a wounded look. “Surely we are friends first and neighbors second, are we not, Fiona?
“Of course we are.”
“There. Then your loveliness is uncontestable. I can’t abide ugly friends.”
That drew a dry wisp of a chuckle, much unused, from my throat. “You are kind. I’ve been told I look terrible today.”
“Well…” He drew out the word. “No object issobeautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not seem unattractive. You, however, have a beauty of spirit that shines through despite the pallor of your skin, the lankness of your hair, and the shadows beneath your eyes. What you need is some sunshine, fresh air, a good laugh, and a better drink.”
“Then I am doomed.” I motioned to slate-grey skies, sooty air, and frigid wind.
“Well… I can help with the laughter and drinks in any case.” He nodded toward my door. “Invite me in.”
“So we can drink frommystock?” I slapped his shoulder with no real strength.
We went through to the kitchens, and I poured him a cup of my best brandy. We sat at the café table in the breakfast nook, sipping and looking out the large window framing my abomination of a garden. He chatted in his lively manner, making the kinds of gestures that might knock things off their shelves were he not such a graceful man.
I laughed for the first time since Aidan.
Oscar knew who Aidan was—who he’d been to me. But he never understood the depth of my pain in that regard. Or my sense of betrayal.
I planned to take that information to my grave.
“Oscar,” I said during a lull in our conversation. “I’m sorry I haven’t been available for you. For this. I feel like the world’s most terrible friend.”
“I understand, darling. Grief makes one’s world very small.”
“I’m sorry I let it do so these past few months. And I shan’t in the future.”
“Oh, but you already have. You have for ages, and will for an indeterminate time yet.”
I tensed as he gave me a speaking look over the rim of his crystal glass. “I-I’m sorry?”
“Your world, fascinating as it is, is already small, Fiona. It ishim. The Ripper. You've lived your life in grief for a girl years dead, who might not have deserved such a gift as your obsession.”
Hurt thrummed through my blood, protected by a quick spurt of temper. “What do you mean about deserving?”
“Well, the bloody obvious, of course. Mary was a friend to you, but you’d lived apart for some years, knowing each other only through correspondence. Writing is hardly a truthful medium, dear, believe me. She could have only presented to show you the most wholesome parts of her life, whilst subsisting on a completely different reality. I mean, we both know what she did for a living—not only that, but how far she’d fallen before—”
I set my glass down heavily and laid both my palms flat on the table. “Are you intimating that Mary’s profession—that her weakness for drink—made her life less meaningful?”
“I was not,” he replied, eyeing me with wariness. “But I’ll dare to intimate it now, because it’s the sad truth of things. In the eyes of polite society, whores are barely humans. Just a set of orifices to penetrate. When they die, no one cares.”
He’d not been the only person to say this, but hearing from him, from a man who should know better…
“Icare,” I spat at him. “People certainlycaredwhen Jack was slaughtering prostitutes in the streets! They rose up on behalf of those women, created militias to patrol their neighborhoods. They looked for him for ages. Longer than any murderer in memory.”
“Yes, but don’t you think that was due to the salaciousness of the deaths? The sheer audacity of them. Leaving women slaughtered and carved in the middle of the streets. The subsequent frenzy of journalists,et cetera. Just think, if it’d been five or six ofyoudead… don't you think the Ripper would be swinging by the neck already?” He held a hand up to stave off my tempestuous reply to finish, “There is no justice for women who work the night—that’s all I’m saying. So why do you persist in looking for what doesn't exist, when you could be moving on with your life?”
“Because that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard anyone say, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde!” Hands still splayed on the table, I pushed myself to stand, and then marched to the opposite window to glare out east toward the city.
“Look at what we've done as a species.” I motioned to the lights in the distance. The smokestacks, and bridges, and churches. “Behold what we've built. Once, there were no engines or steel. No gas lamps nor electricity. No wires. No telephone lines. No heated water and sewage pumps. None of these existed until someone imagined them into actuality. Once they were nothing better than an idea. Then they were a toil. Very probably a failure. Many failures. And then… and then a reality. So maybe I'm looking for a justice that doesn’t yet exist… but the idea of it does. Theneedfor it does. And maybe I’ll just have to make it my own bloody self!” With that, I turned my back on him. “If you’ll excuse me, Oscar, I have work to do.”
Behind me, his chair scraped against the wood floor moments before his large hand enfolded mine. “Please don’t be cross with me, Fiona,” he begged, before pressing a fervent kiss to my chilly knuckles. “I’m so clever that sometimes evenIdon’t understand a single word of what I’m saying.”
The desperation in his tone didn’t only cause me to pause, but also poured a salve on the heat of my surly mood.
“YouknowI think that people who sell sex and companionship sell amuch-neededcommodity. I truly don’t look down upon them so much as others do. I was only lambasting society itself. Surely you can attest to that, being the practical woman that you are. It’s a travesty, certainly, but a reality nonetheless.” He’d trapped me with my own words, and I put a hand over his, though he persisted. “It pains me to see that you’ve taken the mantle of justice on your shoulders, when it shouldn’t belong to you. It’s too much for one lady to bear.”
