Free The Body at the Tower by Y. S. Lee Page A

stubbornly to the possibility. Her father had been a brave, intelligent, principled man and his death had destroyed all their lives. That was what she knew. Automatically, her hand moved towards her throat to touch the jade pendant he had left her. In the next fraction of a moment, she remembered that it was far away: safe in her desk at the Academy, along with her identity as a young woman. For now, she was simply a boy named Mark and if she didn’t want to foul up matters entirely, she’d better remember it.
    She entered Miss Phlox’s lodging house by the side door. One step, and she was enveloped by the hot, dense fug of washing day: boiling water, lye soap, blueing and hot starch. Winnie, the maid of all work, was ironing bed-sheets in the kitchen and glanced up as Mary entered. “Supper’s in the larder.” Her voice was breathless, making her sound even younger than her twelve or thirteen years.
    “Thank you.” Mary was suddenly ravenous and it took only a moment to cram down the two thin slices of bread-and-butter that constituted “supper”.
    Winnie put the irons back in the fire to reheat and drew Mary a mug of small beer. Her eyes were fixed on Mary’s face. When Mary met her gaze she looked away, but the next moment resumed her staring. She’d been fascinated by Mark Quinn from the moment they’d met.
    Mary swallowed her beer and tried to look oblivious. There were plenty of good reasons for Winnie to gawk at her. She was a new lodger, and therefore a novelty; she might have dirty smears on her face; she might be… Mary gave up. She knew very well the reason why the maid of all work looked at her with such analytical curiosity: Winnie was Chinese, like Mary’s father, and thus curious about Mary’s appearance. The dark hair. The geometry of her features. The “exotic” aspect that people so often remarked upon. For Winnie, these things probably added up to something very specific.
    Mary cleared out of the kitchen as quickly as possible. She had no idea how to manage Winnie’s curiosity and wanted to avoid all conversation with the girl until she’d decided on a strategy. Should she deny everything? It was true that she didn’t look properly mixed race. Her skin was pale and her eyes round, so that much of the time she passed quite easily as black Irish. Even persistent questioners generally wanted to know whether she was Italian or Spanish. And that was just fine with Mary. The last thing she wanted was to acknowledge her Chinese heritage and deal with the questions and hostility it would inevitably invoke. Certainly not yet. She pushed away those thoughts as she climbed the second flight of stairs to her room, steeling herself for the next challenge: a new roommate who’d moved in today.
    A man sat on the bed, pulling off his boots and enriching the small room with the pong of sweaty feet. As the door opened, he looked up. His gaze was both wary and weary.
    “H’lo,” she gulped. She sounded authentically nervous, in any case.
    “’Lo.”
    What was the etiquette in situations like this? Later tonight, she’d be sharing a bed with this stranger – an uncomfortable fact of life when lodgings were cheap and beds dear. But how much did men talk among themselves? How would they organize who slept at which end? And how on earth would she guard her secret from him? “I’m Quinn,” she offered tentatively.
    He nodded. “Rogers.”
    When it became apparent he had nothing else to say, she hung her cap and jacket on a peg behind the door. At the small washstand, the water jug was partly filled and the scratchy towel carefully used on one half only. She washed briskly, scrubbing her face and neck and wetting her hair to rid it of grime. This was the best she’d be able to do for some time. At Miss Phlox’s, baths cost extra and were available only on Wednesdays and Saturdays. But even if she were to have the money, there was no way to manage a bath with privacy.
    It was intolerable in here,