The Paid Companion | Herophine

Chapter Five

Josephine

Perhaps it was the steady drizzle that made the mansion in Rain Street appear to loom on some other dark, metaphysical plane. Whatever the reason, there was an air not only of gloom but of neglect about the place, Josephine thought. It reminded her of the house where Lucy kept watch over her dying employer, but on a far grander scale. It was as if something had expired inside the Fiennes Tiffin mansion a long time ago and the big house had begun to decay.

Josephine checked the card Hero had given her to make certain that the hackney had brought her to the right address. Number Twelve Rain Street. There was no mistake.

The door of the hack opened. The driver handed her down and then unloaded the trunk that contained her personal possessions.

On the point of leaving her there in the street, he eyed the front door of the mansion with a dubious expression.

"Yer certain ye've come to the right place, ma'am?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you." She smiled, grateful for his obvious concern. "Someone will be out to collect my trunk in a moment. There is no need for you to hang about."

He shrugged. "If ye say so."

He clambered back up onto the box and let out the reins. Josephine squelched her own serious misgivings as she watched the vehicle disappear down the street.

When the hackney was gone, she was conscious of being very alone in the mist-shrouded street.

Just as well, she told herself as she went briskly up the steps. Better that no one had witnessed Hero's new fiancée arriving in a hack. This way her sudden appearance in Society would be all the more intriguing and curious in the eyes of the Polite World. At the end of this business she would simply disappear in the same mysterious fashion.

A small thrill swept through her. She was about to become a woman of mystery, an actress. She had the oddest feeling that she had spent her whole life waiting in the wings, preparing to take the stage, and now the moment had arrived.

She had donned her favorite gown for this occasion, a deep, claret-red walking dress that Mrs. Egan had ordered for her from her own personal dressmaker. Pinned to the bodice was the elegant little watch that her former employer had given her as a parting gift.

"You'll do just fine, my dear," Mrs. Egan had declared with maternal satisfaction when she had given Josephine the watch. "You've got spirit and nerve and a kind heart. Nothing can keep you down for long."

She reached the top step and banged the heavy brass knocker. The sound seemed to echo endlessly deep inside the big house.

For a moment she heard nothing. Then, just as she was starting to wonder if she had, indeed, made a mistake in the address, she caught the faint patter of footsteps on a tile floor.

The front door opened. A young, very harried-looking maid looked out at her.

"Yes, ma'am?"

Josephine considered how to proceed. Hero had told her that he intended to maintain their charade in front of his servants. But she was well aware that the staff of any household generally paid considerably more attention to the doings of their employers than said employers realized. She had a hunch that even if the maid and the other servants had not already realized that there was no genuine fiancée, they had, at the very least, deduced that there was something distinctly amiss about the situation.

Nevertheless, there was no use going about this in a halfhearted manner, she decided. She was being paid to act, and she must do so as convincingly as possible. The maid, like those in the Polite World to whom she would soon be introduced, was part of her audience.