The Fall by Annelie Wendeberg

Author:Annelie Wendeberg [Wendeberg, Annelie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anna Kronberg, victorian, London, Thriller, Sherlock Holmes
Publisher: Annelie Wendeberg
Published: 2014-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

The Opium Poppy (9)

— day 64 —

I didn’t know where to put my hands. Behind my back, on the windowsill, or clenched at my sides. Then came the dreaded knock. Cecile and Hingston entered my room. The older woman carried a dress, the younger a wooden box embellished with carvings and mother-of-pearl inlays.

I started undressing, the small buttons suddenly reluctant to slip through their holes. I willed myself to breathe slowly. There was no way out. And, after all, I was being silly.

Moriarty had asked for my company at the opera tonight. He couldn’t know that music was like the sirens’ call for me. It made me soft. With him at my side, softness was equal to weakness. Swallowing the clump of foreboding, I stepped out of my dress.

‘Fetch the water and the tongs now, will ya,’ ordered Hingston. Cecile set the box on the chest of drawers and left while the older woman showed me the dress. It was made of elaborately embroidered burgundy silk — something I could never afford, nor even put on without the help of a maid.

Upon Cecile’s return, the two women moistened my hair and flattened the curls with hot iron tongs, then rubbed my face with lemon juice and washed it off again. They plucked my eyebrows and applied creams and perfumes from Madame Rachel’s. A piece of long and shiny black hair was clipped to mine and elaborately braided and pinned. I wondered to whom it had belonged, whether she had children to feed, and whether her hair had grown long again to be sold once more.

Even though I had no fat to be pressed from the ugly places to the pretty ones, Hingston strung the corset very tight. Then, both women pulled the dress over my head, buttoned it at the back, and laced my boots. With a nod and a timid smile, Cecile handed me gloves, hat, and cloak.

Lungs restricted from too-tight clothing and heart tittering, I went downstairs. When I saw Moriarty waiting in the hall, I had to force my feet forward. The sound of my heels on the stairwell made him turn.

‘Astonishing’ he muttered as I reached him. I noticed the slight reddening of his throat just above the cravat, slowly spreading upwards to his cheeks.

He offered me his arm and this time I took it, smiled and said softly, ‘You do not seem to value your neck or your arm very much.’

His eyes flashed and he suppressed a laugh, obviously enjoying the game of cat and mouse. We walked down the marble stairs, where he opened the door of the waiting brougham and helped me in.

I sat next to the window, gazing at the London I once knew. The lamplighters climbed their ladders to light the lanterns, the warm shine caressing flecks of melting snow. We passed busy streets bustling with life huddled up against the cold. We shot through dark and narrow alleys, disregarding people in rags, the old, the sick, the poor, all jumping out of the shiny brougham’s path, all looking at us, trying to catch a glimpse of wealth.

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