What opium did for some and gin did for others, shopping at Redfern’s did for Loretta. The shop assistant at the millinery counter tied the bow to the Marie Stuart–style bonnet fashionably below her left ear, and angled the standing mirror.
“Madam looks lovely,” said the Frenchwoman, who could not have been more than eighteen, making Loretta feel old at twenty-five.
Sharon Fry sidled up to her. “That won’t do. Too matronly.”
“My thought exactly,” Loretta said, offering her left cheek for the assistant to untie the bow.
Maud Caswell wandered over from the glove counter, a slender package tucked under her elbow. “Still at it? I wish I had a penny for every one you’ve tried on.”
Loretta made a face at her. Maud had no use for hats, choosing simply to ornament her wealth of golden brown hair with combs, ribbons, or even jewelry—depending upon her whims.
The two were her dearest friends, schoolmates from Black-heath Academy for the Daughters of Gentlemen, and though not even remotely kin, could have passed for sisters with their hazel eyes, brown hair, and angular faces.
Maud set aside her hat disinterest to help her select an ecru-colored hat of satin straw, trimmed with brown velvet and pale blue ostrich feathers, and a gray straw capote trimmed with emerald green velvet.
“Where to lunch?” Maud asked back on New Bond Street as her driver, Henry, took their packages and assisted them into the coach.
“I couldn’t make another decision,” Loretta said.
“May I have your vote?” Sharon asked.
“It’s yours.”
Loretta was instantly sorry for the light in Sharon’s hazel eyes.
“Now you’ve done it,” Maud groaned.
“We won’t know if we like it until we try it,” Sharon argued. “Besides, I have the votes.”
“Our husbands will be livid if they find out,” Maud said as the coach rolled eastward toward Limehouse. She winced. “Oh, Loretta. Forgive me.”
“No offense taken,” Loretta said, smiling to show she meant it. She was exactly where she wanted to be.
For she had replied to Philip’s letter—as cordially as possible— that it would be best if he took Doctor Rhodes’ offer. She had even wished him well.
That would give him the power to obtain a judicial separation after two years, possibly leading to divorce, but the stigma of being a divorcée could not be worse than this misery she carried around inside.
Surely her friends would never desert her. And unlike Sharon and Maud, she had no children who would be affected.
The irony of it, she thought, was that Philip would think it a great adventure, heading over to the Chinese section of Limehouse to sample Cantonese food for the first time.
Three hours later, she turned at her door and waved at her friends.
“Did you have a lovely afternoon?” Ines asked.
“It was an interesting one.”
She was bursting to relate the whole experience to someone. We were the only white faces in the crowded little place! she might have said. Maud had Henry join us for safety’s sake. A group of men with pigtails bowed and gave us their table, and finished their meals standing. After the proprietor came to understand we could not read the menu, he brought out dishes of some sort of chicken sauce upon rice. And then . . . chopsticks! We made motions that we would like forks, and he either did not understand us or had none.
One thing her mother had taught her at an early age was that servants were to be treated fairly and spoken to with courtesy, but that the social gap must not be crossed if the household was to run efficiently.
Someone knocked; Loretta assumed it was Henry. Had she forgotten something in Maud’s coach? She waited at the foot of the stairs while Ines set the hatboxes on the hall bench and opened the door.
Her father stood frowning at her.
“Good afternoon, Doctor Trask,” Ines said.
“Good afternoon.” He stepped over the threshold, looked up at Loretta, and motioned toward the parlor.
Once they were alone, Loretta knew not to mention the Limehouse adventure. Not that she would have had the opportunity. He closed the door and turned to her.
“A letter from Philip was just delivered to my office, expressing his intention to resign and take over a practice in Gresham. He made no mention of this when he asked for time off.”
He was staring at her, arms folded. Loretta waited for the question, then realized he had just stated it.
She sighed. “He didn’t deceive you, Father. He was concerned about his stepfather. No doubt his family is pressuring him to stay. They’re quite clingy.”
He shook his head. “I did not perceive that when we met. Close, yes. Loving. But not clingy.”
Perhaps she had exaggerated to a small degree, but she would not take it back. “I suppose returning to Gresham woke up his old dream of practicing medicine there.”
“Then why become a surgeon? A gifted surgeon.”
“A dispensary surgeon,” Loretta reminded him. Trained for both surgery and general medicine.
“So what tipped the scales?”
A flush crept up Loretta’s cheek.
“Loretta?”
She told him of Philip’s letter, and her reply. “It’s better this way, Papa. We’ve both been so unhappy.”
He dropped to the sofa and put his head in his hands. “This can’t be.”
She was surprised when tears stung her eyes. She decided she may as well use them. They had served her well since she was a little girl, sitting on her father’s knee complaining that her cousin Marie owned four dolls, when she owned only three. Those tears had netted her a trip to Lowther Arcade, two dolls, and a music box.
She sat beside her father, hands folded and head lowered, and squeezed out a few more. “I’m . . . sorry, Father. I know I’ve disappointed you . . . not being able to maintain his affection.”
She could feel his eyes upon her, and waited for the touch upon her shoulder. Instead she heard a snort.
“Rubbish, Loretta. That man is head over heels for you. Bring me his letter.”
She gave him as indignant a look as she dared. “Father . . .”
“You can’t fire a cannon like that, sitting here in a house I paid for, and demand privacy. I insist on seeing it.”
It was too late to claim to have burned it. He would be able to tell by looking at her. She fetched it from their bedchamber and handed it over.
He read it once and then again. “I see nothing about divorce in this letter. All marriages hit a rough road now and again. You’ll go to Gresham. Patch things up.”
“Impossible.”
“You’ll not simply throw up your hands and bring scandal upon our family. Pack your things tonight. Tomorrow, you’ll disengage yourself from whatever commitments you have. I shall escort you to the station on Sunday morning.”
It was time for the real waterworks. All she had to do to summon them was to think of herself in Gresham as a country doctor’s wife. She put her hands to her face. Tears filled her eyes, flooded her cheeks.
“Now, now,” her father said with an arm around her, gently pressing her head to his shoulder.
She sobbed and sobbed, and when she thought it was enough, found that she could not stop. When his shoulder as well as his handkerchief were sodden, and her throat felt almost as sore as it had the winter she had contracted scarlet fever, he patted her arm and began speaking, softly.
“I don’t like to make you sad. Please hear me. You and Irene were enigmas. I had only brothers growing up, did not know quite how to treat you. I loved you dearly, could not bear to see you unhappy. But I left the everyday rearing to your mother and nursemaids. I was not the sort of father to bounce you on my knee. As a result, I think you picture me as only beginning to live once I became imprinted in your consciousness.”
He was right. She had never thought much about his youth. Mother was the one who liked to tell stories of her adventures as daughter of the ambassador to Moscow.
“But my heart was broken terribly, before I met your mother.”
She raised her head. Even if he were not her father, she could not picture him as the romantic type, with his smallish frame and white hair.
“She was a Scottish girl, a tobacconist’s daughter in Edinburgh. I took up the pipe just to have reason to frequent his shop. As did many of my fellow students. When she became betrothed to the lord mayor’s son, I thought I would die.” He smiled. “As did many of my fellow students. But I had my studies to occupy my mind. The regimen of medical school kept me from floundering around, wondering what to do next.”
“But you loved Mother when you met her. Right?”
“Absolutely. But you see? I met her four years later, when the shopkeeper’s daughter was but a vague memory. I could appreciate your mother as the wonderful woman she was . . . not as a balm for a broken heart.”
She would have been grateful for this opportunity to get to know her father better had she not realized this was a preamble to what he was about to say. She braced herself.
“I erred by allowing Conrad to court Irene so soon after your heart was broken. I was relieved when you seemed interested in Philip, and so I did all I could to encourage a romance. Inviting him for dinner, encouraging walks in the park. Your hurt had mended, or so I thought. My guilt was assuaged.”
“Father . . .”
“Please allow me to finish.” He cleared his throat. “Your mother and I tried to help make your marriage happy. Giving you this house. Hiring a coachman. But I see now that it only delayed the inevitable. Once you realized Philip couldn’t take away your thoughts for Conrad, you began to resent him. You’ve never really put Conrad out of your mind long enough to appreciate your husband for who he is.”
She had thought she was wrung dry. But even these fresh tears did not soften his resolution. She was going to Gresham.