“Miss Mitchell has many opinions,” Gray says. “On many topics.”
“So I see.” Dickens inclines his head my way. “Thank you. That is very insightful and very satisfying to hear.”
“Your stories will provide insight and entertainment for generations to come,” I say. “Long after some of your contemporaries are relegated to the dust bin—or to required reading for higher learning—people will continue to read and enjoy your work. I am certain of it.”
He smiles. “From your lips to God’s ear.”
When I fall silent, not wanting to speechify, Gray murmurs, “Miss Mitchell has a book she would like you to sign, if we could impose.”
“Certainly.” Dickens reaches out, and I hand it to him. When he sees which one it is, his brows rise. “You enjoyed this?”
I manage to find my smile. “It is my favorite. I know, I just spoke of the lives of the poor, and this is not that sort of book, but it has my favorite female character of yours.”
“Bella Wilfer?”
“Yes. Also, the story is a mystery, and I am overly fond of mysteries.”
His smile grows. “One can never be too fond of mysteries. That is what my next novel will be. An unabashed mystery.”
He takes the book to a side table with a pen and ink. “Inscribed to Miss Mitchell?”
“Mallory Mitchell, please.” I shift closer. “About your next book. My friend—Dr. Gray’s sister—was dearly hoping you’d discuss it during the performance. She will be devastated to have missed meeting you. Is there any chance I might take her a hint or two about the next book, in recompense?”
“Certainly.” He finishes signing and leaves the book open to dry. “Beware, though, that I may tell more than you wish to know. No project is as exciting to an author as the one they are currently working on. It is bright and shiny, and no critic has read it to tell them where it is dull and tarnished.”
I laugh softly. “I will take whatever you care to provide, Mr. Dickens.”
“Then may I offer you both a drink?”
He lifts a bottle of what looks like imported Italian wine. We both accept, and Dickens begins to pour.
“My next book is, as I said, a mystery,” he begins. “It tells the tale of a man who disappears, an orphan named...”
I know the answer before he gives it, and with that name, my heart thuds into my boots.
“Edwin Drood.”
I spend the next hour talking to a dead man.
I know it is wrong to say that, to even think it, but I can’t help myself. When Dickens tells me what he’s writing, I know what it means.
That within a year, he will be dead.
I said I was no good with dates, and here’s the proof. My focus was always on Dickens’s work rather than the man himself. If asked, I’d have guessed he died when he was elderly. Certainly not in his fifties. Certainly not after I just saw him tearing up the stage in that performance.
I recall that he dies of a stroke. That is all. And dying of a stroke means it’s not as if I could say, “Beware the Ides of March... and back-clapping friends.” He will die, and there’s nothing I can do about that.
I spend an hour listening to Dickens discussThe Mystery of Edwin Drood. A book he will never finish. A story the world has been trying to finish for him ever since.
I don’t sit there in stunned silence. That would be unforgivably rude. I have a chance to listen to Charles Dickens talk about his work, not from a stage, but in person. Once I am past the shock and those premature stabs of grief, I am the best audience he could want. That is what I can give him... and so I do.
The next day, Gray and I set off to lunch at Lady Inglis’s house. I’m wearing my day dress—much simpler than my gown the night before but still a “going out” dress. To accommodate the winter weather, I have fur-lined boots, a fur-lined muff, a fur-lined hat, and fur-lined gloves. I don’t even want to calculate the number of tiny creatures that died to keep me warm. In my world, I’d never have worn any of this, but synthetics aren’t a thing, so my options are fur or “wrap my feet in newspaper before putting them in my boots.” To be honest, I did try that, and it’s as uncomfortable as it sounds, but I might have continued doing it if Gray and Isla hadn’t been horrified and tried to buy me velvet to wrap my feet instead. And so this was another point where I had to concede my twenty-first-century ethics really only worked for the twenty-first century. My concession is that all my outerwear is second-hand. The critters were already dead, and I’m extending their afterlife.
For my jacket... Well, I don’t have one. I have a cloak. While I have seen a few women in winter coats, cloaks work better over dresses, especially now that the bustle is coming into style. And, yes, the cloak has fur, damn it.
Despite all my dress layers and fur-lined outerwear, we aren’t walking to lunch. Lady Inglis lives outside town in a country estate, one of those places that will someday be a fancy historic house considered part of Edinburgh... if it isn’t sold and torn down for a new housing development.
I can be outraged at the thought of losing such historic homes, but I often wonder whether that’s the New World citizen in me. I grew up in a city where the oldest surviving building only dates back to the decade I currently inhabit. I want to preserveeverything. But these old houses don’t have any true historic value. They’re just homes, and there are cities full of them. Also, they weren’t built for twenty-first-century living, and retrofitting them isn’t always an option.
