Page 25 of Lady, Behave
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“MademoiselleAdelaide, Ido not like this.” Fifi scowled at the ramshackle condition of the shops in this particular lane. “Gitans! Dangereuse, ma cherie.”
This far south end of the Lanes was reserved for wanderers. Addy did not flinch from any association with them. She’d known a family who’d camped on the coast in Waterford, and from them, she learned how to make a mint tea that cured Grandpapa of his winter sore throats. “They are people with special talents, Fifi. I have need of an acquaintance with them.”While I am in Brighton, I might well prepare myself to have a skill that will enrich my life more than money. Or a man.
“No good, I say. No good.” Fifi’s large grey eyes showed white at the edges. She pulled the collar of her pelisse up around her shoulders.
“Wait here, Fifi.” Addy pointed to the rough wooden bench in front of the fortune teller’s shop. “Nothing will happen to me. I just have a few questions of the woman in here. I’ll be out shortly.”
“Oui, allez!”
Addy pushed open the blood-red door, and the creak of the hinges hurt her ears. She marched inside. “Hello?! Hello?” She called to the person whose name appeared on the shop door. “Madam Alain?”
She repeated the call twice before she heard a groan from the far back of the shop and footsteps, hard and heavy, advance toward the front. With a swish of hundreds of hanging chains of colorful beads, a woman appeared. With wildly wavy black hair and puffy coal-rimmed eyes, she wrapped a vibrant red and purple knit shawl around her copious bosom and scrutinized Addy. “I do not rid town ladies of unwanted babies.”
“Oh, I—”
“And I don’t prepare poisons for husbands who cheat.”
“No, I—”
“I don’t make doses to make your man, as you say, priapic.”
A prick.Addy knew the meaning ofthat. “I have no idea whatpriapricmeans, but I’ll ask you that later.”
Cursing in her own bright language, the woman narrowed her gaze on Addy and, with a decided squint of her luminous eyes, tried to give her a bit of a start. But Addy held her ground. She’d met a pirate on the coast of Waterford when she was twelve, and no one had scared her since.
He’d had one eye, a dirty black patch, and wielded one long scary dagger. After he saw she held a jagged rotten tree limb as her defense, he buckled in laughter and settled in to tell her his tales of sailing the Caribbean and running men out of Africa. For weeks, she visited him on the shore, and he told her ribald jokes whose meaning, by implication, had taught her much of men and intercourse. They’d become friends until one day, weeks later, without a word, he disappeared, and she mourned his loss.
By contrast, this lady was not as frightening as she wished to appear. Still, she must have harbored hope of it and advanced on Addy. “You are who, and why are you here?”
This grumpy fortune-teller has not had her morning tea.“I’ve heard from Mister Alworth that you know your medicinals.”
“My what?”
So we must speak in real terms.“Herbs. Plants. Insects. Animals. Healing foods.”
“You do not wish to kill someone?”
“No.”
The lady put one hand on her hip and gestured toward Addy’s stomach. “You have no babe in your belly?”
“Someday, I hope so. But I have no man either. Not yet.”Maybe never if I cannot conjure the same euphoria when I’m with someone other than Gyles. And if Gyles does not want me now…
“A virgin?” Madam Alain leaned toward her with menace framing her jaw.
She had to be the most suspicious person Addy had ever met. “I am.”
“You flow regular?”
“I do.”
“She will have four fine sons,” came a guttural voice somewhere in the depths of the shop behind Madam Alain.
“I will?”This was definitely the best idea to come here.“Are you sure?”
“Big. Healthy,” came the response from the same unseen older woman who had a voice made of the leather of a bass drum. “No girls.”
