High Society novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Free to Say No

I walked home.

I walked out of the Denholm House door in my blue ball gown, with Tilly beside me carrying my shoes, and nobody stopped us.

The footmen held the doors, and the crowd on the steps fell silent as we went down into the square.

It was past midnight.

We crossed Piccadilly and went down to the river, and Tilly sang the whole way over Westminster Bridge to keep herself from crying.

My feet hurt, and I did not care.

I have walked to Southwark all my life, and it is the one road in London where I know every stone.

At Mill Court the lamp over the pump was still lit.

My mother sat on the step of the wash shed in her shawl with a lantern between her feet.

"Well?" she said.

"You needn't say," said my mother, before I had opened my mouth.

"It is all over your face."

"I haven't said anything."

"That is how I know."

My mother looked at me for a long minute and then began to laugh until she had to wipe her eyes.

"Oh, my girl," she said.

"You're my girl all right."

An hour later we heard a horse on the cobbles.

It came to the gate at a canter and stopped, and a man dropped off it without waiting for a groom.

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