“Shall we walk?” Liam asked. I envied his rosy, just-shaven gleam. I had washed my face and hands, but still smelled like the inside of the chaise. “We can look at things better.”
I agreed this was a good idea, looked the wrong way, and stepped into the street. Liam grabbed my arm and jerked me back from a black blur and a rush of horse-scented air, as a high-set carriage and a standing man in gleaming pale pants and boots as black and shining as his horse flashed past.
An actual Regency buck! Then it hit me I could have died. I imagined compound fracture, amputation, blood and sawdust, the reek of gangrene in a dim room. I would be buried here in 1815—under a cross, my just deserts for posing as a Gentile—and later Liam would go visit my heartbroken mother and describe my last hours. She was used to my risk-taking life, though she had never accepted it.
You could die anywhere, anytime; why did this seem so much worse? I looked at Liam; the color had drained from his face.
He had let go of me, but now extended an elbow. I hesitated, staring down at his dark sleeve, then stepped in closer and tucked one gloved hand under his arm, feeling silly but safer.
Thanks to disaster zones and emergency medicine, I know chaos, yet I had never seen anything like this. The intersection of Charing Cross and the Strand was terrifying, and we stood there agape, as I began to understand why people took sedan chairs.
In the raking light of morning, the dust was visible: particles of coal smoke and dried horse manure, shards of brick and iron and paint and porcelain and leather. It softened the shadows of the stony buildings, swirled in the air, and rose from the torrent of passing vehicles: hay cart, mail coach, curricle. Ragged men courted death dodging between them, while hawkers sidled, crying out their wares in a singsong patter: flowers, beer, snails, milk, sheet music of the latest ballads. The air smelled of baking bread and rotting food and coal fires and unwashed bodies. It echoed with the clatter of iron wheels on cobblestones and the shouts of the hawkers, the overlapping vibrations of lives compressed in one place. The boom of a nearby church bell drowned out all other sounds for the count of nine.
A sailor with a parrot on his shoulder, hurrying with his head down, bumped into us and broke stride to apologize, revealing a mouthful of mossy teeth, while the parrot, jostled, spread iridescent green wings with an outraged flutter. Pushed together by the sailor, we stood close and then, at a break in traffic, seized the moment to dash through the gap, hands clasped. Across the street I leaned against the cold wall of the nearest building. I kept my head low, black spots before my eyes, the roar of the city fading in and out with my pulse.
“Are you all right?” Liam shouted in my ear. I nodded.
A lady in a sedan chair passed, trailed by a tiny African servant, child or Pygmy, followed by a man, naked, dirty, and wrapped in a blanket, screaming about the Last Judgment. So many beggars I lost count, including one-legged Army veterans in uniform and a man without arms, who wore a basket for alms around his neck and held out his stumps mournfully as Liam and I exchanged a look of horror and I dropped a coin in the basket. At corners, old-looking little boys with scraps of brooms walked backward in front of us, sweeping horse manure out of our way and pausing, thrusting out a hand.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone was in costume, as if we had assembled for a grimly realistic Regency-themed Halloween party. There was a dairymaid yoked with milk pails; a manservant from a wealthy house in blue livery, white stockings to the knee, and a powdered wig; a flour-dusted baker with a basket of loaves.
THE FABRIC EMPORIUM OF GRAFTON HOUSE WAS AN OASIS OF CALM. Curved windows to the street and a skylight above illuminated the interior, stuffed with rolls of cloth artfully unfurling over the wooden counters. We got in line, watching as shoppers fingered cloth and traded gossip; as shop attendants barked orders to each other and inclined their heads to the customers. The two just ahead of us were having trouble reaching consensus, and I edged closer to listen, hoping for clues to proper shopping conduct and fascinated by this glimpse into the lives of others.
“I do not know if Clarissa will like this,” the older woman was saying. “She is so changed since her marriage, I hardly dare guess what she likes anymore.”
“She can hardly dislike a good-quality muslin, Mamma.”
“Do you not fear the stripes will strike her too frivolous?”
“They are tasteful stripes. Very discreet. One can barely see them,” the younger woman said, then, adjusting her tone for the man waiting on them: “Seven yards of this one.” She continued: “And if she does not like it, she will say, and I shall use it myself.”
“She will not say. She does not confide in me as she did before her marriage.” Her daughter gave a faint sigh, and turned the discussion to ribbon.
An assistant had materialized and was asking Liam something.
“No, we shall need that, as well as a great deal else,” he said, in a tone nearly as pompous as the one he had used at the Swan, and the man began unrolling varieties of linen. It was a commodity, bought in bulk for the shirts and sheets that were sewn at home, chiefly by the ladies of the house, even in wealthy families. Liam deliberated before he chose the most expensive one, and was congratulated by the clerk on his discernment, as I watched in silence, amused by his new persona of textile-savvy dandy, taken aback at being left out. After a lengthy discussion about the best materials for waistcoats, jackets, and pants, a formidable heap of cloth had accumulated on the counter and we could turn to my fabric needs. I quickly chose a dress’s worth each of eight kinds of muslin, happy to be doing, not watching.
We arranged to have most of our purchases delivered to our inn, keeping some with us so we could get started on having people sew. The clerk, who had been totaling everything on a long sheet of paper, looked up. “And how would you pay for that, sir? Are you running an account with us already, or would you start one?”
I had been so caught up in the task that I had forgotten to be afraid, but suddenly I was. Liam hesitated and pulled a few banknotes from an inner pocket of his coat, peeled off one, and passed it across the counter. It was ten pounds, drawable on the Bank of Scotland. My heart was pounding as the clerk held it up to the light, moistened his thumb and tried to smear the ink in a corner of the note, fingered the paper, then nodded at Liam—“One moment—” and disappeared through a door into a back room.