Funny Meeting You Here
Chapter 10
Ivy paced back and forth in a rush. The living room carpet, already threadbare after 20 years, grew even more bare the more Ivy frantically paced. Ivy heard a door shut. Finally!
"Oh, Lizzie! You're home! I have been worried sick. Everything all right?"
Ivy could tell something was amiss just by the way Eliza dragged into the door. She knew something bad had happened. Eliza spotted her substitute mother and without delay let the dam on her tears burst forth as she fell with great force in Ivy's arms and wept.
"Eliza, my sweet girl, what has happened?"
Meanwhile, William paced himself back and forth on the rug in Arabella's living room. Every so often he would throw a whiskey down. The amber liquid quit burning his stomach a while ago. Now it just remained like a lump in the pit rechurning with his thoughts. The more William stewed about Eliza the more outraged he became.
Why could she not have been more forthcoming with her case? If she had told me when I asked her, I would have been prepared for her appearance and what she was doing William thought. I would have been expecting it. If I had known more about it, I could have dissuaded the men from taking me there. William thoughts trailed off from that point, and he sat down heavily in one of Arabella's elegantly upholstered overstuffed chairs.
As he sat there, he looked around Arabella's richly appointed living room. As he looked around, William knew he wanted a comfortable home like this with Eliza and, probably, in a couple of years some little ones running around. Last night she had mentioned hoping to have children with his curly hair and he joked that he could not bear to see a daughter of his look like him, though ruggedly handsome he is. That was the type of talk they bantered about all night last night until he retired to the guest room leaving a sleeping Eliza in his bed.
Eliza and Ivy sat on the couch. Eliza was completely falling apart. Ivy had not seen her cry like this since she was a little girl and the other girls from school harassed her and made fun of her ambitions to do men's work instead of focusing on becoming a marriageable young woman.
"Oh, Lizzie! It's just he's in shock!
"He's with Arabella, I know it!" Eliza cried.
Ivy did not understand why William would go to Arabella's, but Lizzie did know William well. William and Lizzie were attuned to one another so well.
"Why would he go to Arabella's?" Ivy asked thoroughly confused.
"Because she's everything I'm not! We haven't discussed anything necessary before we marry. Now I don't think he'll want to marry me! "
"Of course, he will, Lizzie! He loves you very much! I'm sure when he'll work everything out and you'll get married. When he comes you can both talk it out. You'll see my sweet girl," Ivy said as she held and rocked Eliza as if she were a little girl again.
Several minutes later, Ivy felt Eliza calm and sob her last sob. Ivy rose and made some tea. It was then that she mentioned she tried to get a message to Eliza warning of the Inspector's visit.
"I'm just wondering why you didn't get it?"
"Who did you give it to?" Eliza asked wondering why she never received it.
"I gave it to Barnabas' young man who clerks for him. He told me that he knew where the place was and that you would be sure to give the message to you"
"Do you mean Hubert? He's a nice young man, but he's not exactly very sharp." Eliza complained.
"Oh Lizzie. I am so sorry. This is my fault then?" Ivy asked clearly upset.
"No, no, Ivy. Never your fault, Ivy. It's mine. I should have told William when he asked me this morning. I thought he finally trusted me."
"He's always trusted you, Lizzie. That's why you didn't need to tell him about your case."
"Maybe I should go to his house and see him?" Eliza asked.
"Lizzie! You know he would never want you out this late unaccompanied no matter where you were going."
Eliza almost choked on her tea. "Ivy, I know he would not, but he knows that I would do it anyway."
It was the first smile that Eliza had smiled since she had returned home.
"William! William!"
"Oh!" William woke with a start.
"Arabella! I must have fallen asleep," William said as he looked up and saw Arabella still dressed in her finery from the restaurant. He looked around as if he had awakened in a strange place one that he had never seen before. Then everything he had been through that night returned to his brain.
"Eliza!"
"Now, don't get yourself all worked up again, William," Arabella instructed.
"What time is it?"
"It's midnight. Do you want to stay here? I can have a guest room made up for you," Arabella asked trying to be friendly and accommodating.
"No, I'm good. Thank you for letting me brood and recline on your couch."
William rose to his full height and took Arabella's hand in his.
"Thank you, Arabella. You are a good friend."
"You're a good man, William. Eliza is a good woman. Why don't you go home and get yourself in bed. Then in the morning see how she is and work out all this misunderstanding. I am sure she doesn't like that she hurt you either."
"You're right, I'm sure," William agreed slowly. "I will call on her in the morning."
William left Arabella's house and it was pitch dark. Above, clouds covered the stars and the moon making the late December night feel colder than it may actually have been.
His mind was foggy not only from the liquor he imbibed but his residual anger at Eliza's method of investigation. He knew in his heart that he did hold her to a higher standard than most women because he loved her forgetting that she had an obligation to fulfill to her client and that she had always to go the extra mile when working because she was a woman and trying to succeed in a man's world.
William took another look at the sky and threw a prayer to whomever may have been listening to his thoughts and then stepping off into the night he began the journey home.
Unknown to William he had left Arabella's at that late hour not unobserved.