After we had settled into our box at the opera, my friend Rachel told me that she saw the truth quite differently. She was the only person in London besides my mother who knew the whole truth of my marriage, and I thought that she would vilify Mr. Barlow, but she had a much more mercenary take on the incidents, at least at first.

“Why do you not meet with the man?” she asked, settling a shawl carefully about her. Rachel’s hair, though grey, was her one vanity. It was arranged carefully on her head in a series of braids and curls so intricate that it very nearly made me dizzy. The rest of her attire was simple. Her gown, though silk, was a deep blue, and her shawl was green. My dress had more lace and details, and yet Rachel had such a presence that I felt I must look rather frivolous beside her.

Perhaps I sounded frivolous, too. “I cannot speak with him. Have you forgotten how ill I was when I first got to London? He left me and Viviana destitute. I will not stoop to speaking with the man.”

She gave a harrumph at that, and I was reminded that Rachel considered herself wiser than I, not simply older. “Well, talk to him, don’t talk to him. You could have me speak to the man if it’s the talking that is the trouble.”

This made me frown. “But I mustn’t have any contact, no matter how willing the emissary!”

“And why not, I ask you?”

Just like Viviana, I looked away from my conversation partner, but she took my hand so that I was forced to look at her once again.

“Really, Alice,” she said, touching one of her hair pins. “It is true, you and the boy parted when you were both children, and you never heard from him again. I am not willing to believe that he was quite as black-hearted as you claim, and feel that a few years of living nearer to each other would have sorted out much of the heartbreak.”

Before I could object, she began talking over me. “But even if he was determined that you and your child should starve, really, is that any cause for avoiding him now? You have not starved, and you have brought up a daughter. He has nothing to reproach you with, and really, you would win in any contest of valor.”

I sighed. “Yes, but I cannot bear for him to see me. I cannot really bear to see him, either. It is all too delicate.”

“Delicate? How? I do not understand why two grown people ought to avoid each other just because things seem ‘delicate,’ and that does not seem very consistent with your own behavior, you know.”

At that very moment, I could see a man with whom I had once had a fumbled encounter in a cloakroom enter the box next to ours, and I did have the grace to blush.

Rachel, from whom I had no secrets, raised her eyes at me. “See?”

Before I could let her win, however, I remembered one point on which her feelings were almost certainly just as tender as mine.

“Well, you talk of having broken Mrs. Johnson’s easel,” I told her, looking directly at her so she would stop glancing over at the man I had held in the cloakroom, an amused smile on her face.

And, sure enough, the mention of the broken easel was enough to drain the smile from her face. She raised her eyes heavenward. “Ah, the young Mrs. Johnson.”

“Precisely. And yet you have never made clear to me what exactly was behind the story.”

Rachel folded her hands carefully. I noticed that she winced a bit as she shifted in her seat, something that was new. Rachel was no stranger to the infirmities of old age, but she was generally so careful that not a single look of pain or discomfort passed her face in public.

“Very well, then, Alice. You may first want to learn that Mrs. Johnson was one a set of women, the so-called Roses’ Club.”

I drew in my breath. That little phrase evoked many of the very worst women I had known over the years. Only women who were beautiful, rich, and vapid were permitted to pay the hefty annual fee required for membership. And once the women had joined, the degradation of their characters only continued.

Rachel gave a bitter smile. “Well, I never joined their club, and that was probably one reason that Mrs. Johnson disliked me. Another, surely, was that once I had the misfortune of accidentally breaking one of her easels.”

I laughed. “An easel is easily replaced, surely?”

Rachel either did not notice the witticism or did not comment on it. “In spite of all that I learned, I would go back and keep myself from touching that easel if I could. Mrs. Johnson went mad. She had certainly had too much punch, and there seemed to be some other source of rage. She threw teacups at me, screaming at me, chasing me out of her house as she called me the most horrid names. She said that I reeked of sewage, and that it was fortunate I had never married, as no man would ever regard me as more than a stinking rat.”

In spite of myself, I nearly gagged. “But that is slanderous!”

Rachel offered only a sigh. “Yes, but I did not want to touch her, Alice. I did not wish to be in the same city as that woman.”

“And now,” I asked, trying not to betray all my hopes. “Has it healed?”

She shook her head slowly. “No. But I have seen Mrs. Smith wither away. She has taken her husband about the country, seeking new society and new amusements, but nothing ever seems amusing to her. And I know quite well that she has not been a great success in London society. Even the Roses’ Club could not make any guarantee of that.”

“Do you hate her still?”

“Mostly I have forgotten, but when I remember the teacup flying at my head, yes, I suppose that I do. The arrangement of my hair was uncommonly flattering that day, you see.”

It was just the sort of joke that I would have happily made myself, and yet I could not laugh at it. To think that London society was even more rotten than imagined.

Pondering the great cruelty of many human interactions, I chanced a glance down at the gallery. It was one reason that I enjoyed going to the opera. Normally, I told Rachel that she did not have to entertain me with fine things, that I was more than satisfied with my lot in life. But the opera was one of the exceptions, as I loved to look at the crowd. Not only could I scan their attire for business opportunities, I could determine which amongst the well-dressed upper set were attempting to live beyond their means. After all, a truly wealthy group should have been able to afford a box, and yet I saw many who purchased the finest hats sitting quite close to each other lower down.

The boxes opposite us held all of the usual crowd, so I did not look to them until just after the lights had been lowered. Too late, I noticed that one of them contained Luke Barlow, the very man I had been desperately attempting to avoid.

He met my eyes, then, and all of my thoughts of escape fled. With hardly a word to my host, I left the box, thankful that I had only needed a light coat and that I had somehow had the foresight to keep it with me. As soon as I got onto the street, I was on my way home, walking several blocks before I hired a carriage. The expense was considerable, as normally Rachel’s coach would have taken me home, but I was thankful to be within four walls and did not balk at the money that I would spend. The secrecy, I knew, would be well worth the cost.