“What do you think, Auntie?”

Bess surveyed the contents of the glass case underneath the counter. The jewelry she had given her niece was exhibited in a creative and colorful fashion, showing each piece to perfection. Stephanie had a definite flair for arranging displays to catch the eye, and she seemed to enjoy helping her aunt when her governess had a day off.

She looked over at the girl, who was nervously chewing on a long honey-blond curl. “It’s lovely as always, Stephanie,” Bess replied.

Stephanie dropped the lock of hair and grinned. She always seemed a bit unsure of herself, which Bess supposed was normal as she was still adjusting to living with them. Her life had been turned upside down several times since the deaths of her parents and she was probably afraid that if she displeased her aunt and uncle, they would turn her out on the street like her other relatives had done.

“Do you want me to do the windows too?”

Bess nodded. “I have a basket ready for you.” Returning to the workshop, she retrieved a basket full of glittering necklaces, bracelets, and rings. “Here you go.”

After she unlocked the glass door that protected the merchandise from sticky fingers, Stephanie knelt down and began removing the jewelry in the window, singing softly to herself. Bess went back over to the counter to admire her niece’s handiwork. She was about to go back into the workshop when she heard the bell on the door tinkle. Turning around, she smiled at the woman who had just walked in.

“May I help you?” she asked.

Thanks to her newly acquired bike, Ruth Meijer had had the time to familiarise herself much better with Whitby’s shops and places of interest. Among those, there was a jewellery shop whose window she had surveyed one, two, three, four times before actually stopping.

No harm in watching, she had told herself.

Then she had repeated the operation a few times. The window was there to be watched. There were, though, a few things she couldn’t see properly.

Truth was, Ruth barely had any money on her and she hadn’t successfully secured employment so far, so she felt a little self conscious entering a shop where she didn’t plan to purchase anything. On the other hand, she couldn’t possibly be the first person to visit without buying anything, right?

So she decided to step inside. Very tall for the time, towering even thanks to her long, strong sportswoman mucles and her big bulk of red hair, she was hard to miss. Ruth wasn’t cross dressing today, but she was wearing a pair of bikers bloomers with a fairly severe jacket, which would have not looked improper on a gentleman. She just softened the effect by wearing a sensible yet definitely feminine hat on top of her gibson girl hairdo and a pair of leather gloves. Her outfit was dominated by brick red and mahogany tones. “Good day,” she had a light accent and slightly deep voice, with a hint of an husk in it “I was wondering if I could take a look at those cufflinks.” she gestured towards an article that could be seen from the window but wasn’t in it.

Bess studied the woman who had just walked through the door.  She thought she would have remembered her if she had seen her before because of her interesting way of dressing and the fact the she was about the same height.  Most women were several inches shorter than she was.  Perhaps she is new to town, she mused.

“Of course you can,” she replied.  The cufflinks were sitting on top of a display case close to the window, along with a few other pieces of jewelry.  If this woman didn’t buy them, they would be going in the case later today. 

Picking them up, she walked over to the customer and handed them to her.  “They’re one of a kind,” she said.  Stephanie was still humming as she arranged the jewelry n the window.  Bess glanced over at her and then back to Ruth.  “If my niece’s singing is bothering you, I will tell her to stop.”

Another very tall woman. Ruth was impressed. Maybe women here tended to be taller than in the continent. Maybe she had just been lucky. The woman was also very beautiful, but this, she had noticed in Whitby in general. Perhaps it was the fact that the ladies just looked different on the island.

Ruth nodded, getting closer to the jewels and trying to sneakily get her wrist close to them, in a way that wasn’t too overt. She wondered if they would look good on her current shirt. Ruth shook her head.

“Not at all, she has a beautiful voice, though she is pushing herself too hard on the notes, trying a different register might help her with achieving a better result,” she said casually, eyeing Bess as if that was the owed sort of polite conversation.

The woman held her wrist close to the cufflinks. “You can try one on if you’d like,” Bess offered.

She was quite surprised at what her latest customer said about Stephanie’s voice. The young girl was still at her task, unaware that the two women were talking about her. “You know a lot about music,” Bess commented. An idea began to form in her mind. “Are you a singer yourself?”

“Would you mind?” it was an odd request, she knew. And Whitby could be rather conservative. But Bess did not seem annoyed.

Ruth nodded “And a composer,” something that had required quite a lot of studying back in the day. She was very proud of it, so she was going to share it at any given occasion. She briefly considered. Would she want to do this? It might be a bad choice. But at some point, Zechariah would start to notice how uncharateristically codependent her finances were, to put it mildly. “And a music teacher.”

“Of course not,” Bess replied. She could not tell if the woman was wealthy enough to afford the cufflinks or not. When she had first started helping customers, she had made a mistake by asking a shabbily-dressed man to leave. As it turned out, he was an eccentric millionaire who dressed in rags to see what kind of reaction he received. Unfortunately, she had failed his test and he had gone elsewhere to buy extravagant jewelry for his wife and daughters. She had promised herself never to make that mistake again.

So she was a composer as well as a singer. And she taught music too. Bess looked over at Stephanie and then back to the woman. “I’ve been thinking of finding a singing teacher for my niece. She’s had a rough time lately and she’s very fond of music. If you are not too busy, would you be willing to take her on as a student, assuming that she’s interested?”