Page 1 of Undone

Undone

Prologue

Bath

1805

The room above the milliner's shop was let by the week and always paid for in coin. One of her footmen had taken it in his own name, though that name meant nothing and would not be used again. By the time anyone thought to ask who had occupied the room, no one would remember.

She sat in one of the two chairs that occupied the sparsely furnished room, her gaze returning again and again to the door before dropping to the little watch in her hand.

She had half expected the girl not to come. It had been chance, or near enough to it, that had brought the story to her at all — a footman's idle gossip, overheard in a Bath drawing room she had visited only briefly and had no particular cause to revisit. She had returned to London the following week and thought of it again only once her man had spent some months quietly confirming that the story was true, and longer still watching the young woman at its center before he judged her worth an approach.

The correspondence between them had been arranged so that her correspondent could not have traced her, had she wished it. Three one-sided letters had passed between them, none of them written in her own hand. The first two were little more than vague overtures from an unnamed stranger. The third invited a meeting, should the proposal interest her. Most young women of sense would have consigned the letters to the fire and thought nomore of them. Yet, as the clock below struck the hour, measured footsteps sounded upon the narrow stair, unhurried and precise, and before the door had even opened, the widow found herself obliged to revise her opinion of her unseen correspondent.

The young woman who entered was about seven-and-twenty, composed in a manner that owed nothing to her circumstances. She stopped just inside the door, and for the first time since climbing the stair, something like uncertainty crossed her face. She had come, perhaps, expecting to receive another letter. Not meet a person.

The young woman regarded her in thoughtful silence. "You are not what I expected."

"Few people are, once met." The widow did not rise. "Sit."

The young woman sat, though slowly, her eyes moving once about the bare little room before returning to her hostess.

"You will forgive me if I ask your name."

"I shall not offer my name, nor need you offer yours. I already know it." The widow folded her hands upon her lap. "Should you ever speak of this meeting, I shall deny it utterly, and no one will question my word. Yours, I fear, would fare rather differently. I trust you will bear that in mind before deciding what manner of woman I am."

"That sounds very like a threat." Something in the young woman's expression sharpened, wary now rather than merely uncertain.

"It is an assurance. There is a difference, though I grant you it is not always an easy one to feel." The widow tilted her head slightly. "I know a great deal about you already. Where you were before this spring. Why you are not there now. I do not intend to trouble you by naming it aloud, since I imagine you have gone to some trouble to put it behind you. But I would have you understand that I know it, so that we need not waste the afternoon pretending otherwise."

Colour rose briefly in the younger lady's cheeks. "I do not know what you imagine you know."

The widow regarded her steadily.

"As I said, I know a great deal about you," she said at last. "What you hoped buried, careful inquiries have uncovered. You were once employed in a respectable household. You left it under circumstances no one cared to discuss openly."

The younger woman's fingers tightened ever so slightly upon the handle of her reticule.

"The gentleman concerned appears to have suffered very little for whatever passed between you. Such injustices are hardly uncommon."

A silence settled between them.

"What interested me was what followed," the widow continued. "Some months later, a most advantageous engagement belonging to that same gentleman came quietly to nothing. There was no scandal. No public quarrel. The families simply concluded the match ought not to proceed."

The younger lady held her gaze but offered no reply.

"The two events were connected, that much I know," the widow said. "You chose your moment carefully, struck only once, and then disappeared. That is not the work of an impulsive woman."

"You presume a great deal," the younger lady said.

"Perhaps." The widow smiled faintly. "Or perhaps I merely recognize patience when I encounter it."

The young woman had gone very still, a faint crease settling between her brows. "You will not find anyone to confirm any part of that," she said at last.

"No," the widow agreed calmly. "Not directly. Truth is rarely handed to one so conveniently. It is assembled, piece by piece, by those willing to spend the time and the money required."

The younger woman did not answer.