friends. Although, in that case, to say they were only friends would be to miss the point entirely. Perhaps, for them, being friends was everything. Friends who loved one another. Friends who were in love.
Or perhaps they were more, and Kit had never seen it.
He doubted he’d ever know for sure.
As Kit strolled towards Covent Garden, where Mabel now lived, he wondered if she might talk about his mother today. Lately, she’d been mentioning Minnie more often. But it was always just little things—impressions of what she’d been like. No real clue as to what they had been to one another.
“She sang like a nightingale.”
“She was the prettiest girl any of us ever saw.”
“Well, of course, all the gentleman wanted her.”
The door to Mabel’s small but comfortable house was answered by her companion, Gracie, a quiet, faded woman of indeterminate years who had materialised out of nowhere one day and was sometimes vaguely referred to as a “distant cousin”.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Redford,” she said, smiling politely. “Mrs. Butcher will be pleased to see you.”
“I brought cakes,” Kit said, handing over one of the boxes Jean-Jacques had brought the day before.
“Lovely,” Gracie said, taking it from him. “I’ll fetch some tea. You go on into the parlour.”
“Is that you, Kit?” Mabel called out before he even reached the parlour door.
“It is,” he said as he walked inside. “How are you today?”
“Tolerable well,” she said, beckoning him over to her chair and offering him a cheek to kiss—she was becoming downright affectionate in her dotage.
“You look lovely,” he said, brushing her dry cheek with his lips. She was always nicely dressed, was Mabel. Today she wore a blue-grey gown with a high-necked, ruffled collar, and an intricate paisley shawl of deep rose pink, ivory, and blue. A dark-blue velvet turban covered her hair, which had begun to thin quite badly over the last few years.
“Well, thank you, kind sir,” she said, winking at him. “I does me best to please.”
Kit glanced over at the domed cage in the corner of the room and was pleased to see that Nell Gwyn, Mabel’s parrot, appeared to be asleep.
“Is Gracie making tea?” Mabel asked.
“Yes, I brought some of those of little cakes you liked last time. Financiers, they’re called.”
Mabel frowned, thinking. Then her brow cleared. “Oh, them little sponge cakes?” she said. “They was quite nice, I must admit.”
Kit grinned—getting a compliment out of Mabel was like getting blood out of a stone. This was high praise from her.
“Jean-Jacques brought me them,” he said. “Everything Evie makes is delicious.”
“Hmmm,” Mabel replied. She’d never quite forgiven Evie for luring Jean-Jacques away from her.
“Is that a new gown?” Kit asked, as he settled himself down on Mabel’s too-hard horsehair sofa as best he could. “I don’t think I’ve seen it before. It’s not your usual style.”
Mabel sighed. “My dressmaker persuaded me into it,” she said. “I wanted to stick with the same pattern I usually have her make up for me, but she kept saying no one gets their gowns made up like that anymore.” She made a face. “I’m not awful keen on these new fashions. Bloody great sleeves like legs of mutton.”
Her own sleeves only featured a very small puff at the shoulders, but Kit didn’t comment.
“In my day,” Mabel went on, “there was such a wonderful looseness of dress. So freeing, it was!” She gave a happy a sigh, then met Kit’s gaze. “I say in my day, but in fairness, when I was young, it was as bad as now, if not worse—all stays and petticoats and being laced up and having your hair piled up as high as a bloody tower with paste and gawd knows what in it.” She made a face. “But then, when I got to be a bit older—when I was making good money, shacked up with my old marquess—oh, the clothes I had then, Kit! Us working girls would just put our stockings on, pull a muslin gown over the top, and call ourselves dressed!” She laughed immoderately. “Why, you could have your la-las right on show and no one blinked an eye!”
“Woo!”
The piercing shriek from the cage in the corner made Kit jump.
Nell Gwyn was awake.
“Woot-hoo!” The parrot whistled, then, sing-song-like, “Show me yer la-las!”
Kit shuddered discreetly. The parrot’s voice was uncannily like Mabel’s, whilst being oddly flat and strange. Coming out of that of unmoving beak, it was like some kind of horrible magic. Between the talking and the endless, demented whistling, Nell Gwyn made