Captain Flannery’s visit . . . Sarah’s chiding . . . and the coup de grâce—her sacking by Harris. It all buzzed round in her head like gadflies.
Overwhelmed only by the last and strangest experience of the evening—a voice.
She’d heard it in her head. Loud. Insistent.
Too shocked to do anything but obey, she’d scampered the last few feet to the safety of the hackney stand and thrown herself into the closest carriage. Glancing back, she’d spotted a large man in greasy coat and battered hat. And then the hackney rounded the corner, and she could breathe again.
That’s when she questioned herself—and her sanity. Was she hearing voices now? Not even in her worst days after Lawrence’s death, when she’d been jumping at every shadow, had she heard any voice but her own, reassuring her she would be all right. He couldn’t hurt her again.
Tonight’s voice had not been hers.
Surrendering to the inevitable, she threw back the covers with a groan and, wrapping herself in a dressing gown, crossed to the window to look down on the rainy street below. A few lamps still flickered, but dawn lurked as a faint smudge in the east. Already the coal man was out with his sack, and there came the hollow rattle of a barrow as a dustman passed. Beyond that, the view was gray and misty. The houses across the way bleak and cheerless, their windows empty of life.
A movement caught her eye. A figure bundled in an oversized coat and wide-brimmed hat stepped out of the alleyway opposite and hurried, head down, toward Oxford Street.
Had he been watching her house? Spying on her?
Behind him, a second shape emerged, long and black and silent. Enormous as no alley cat she’d ever seen. Its intense gaze sought her out in her darkened window, eyes reflecting palest yellow-green in the light from a street lamp.
She yanked the drapes closed to a drumming heartbeat. Rubbed her eyes.
First hearing voices. Now seeing imaginary creatures. Perhaps Harris’s suggestion had merit. Perhaps some time off was exactly what she needed. She’d been working too hard and sleeping too little. A few hours’ reading should calm her nerves and weight her eyelids.
Her bag lay on the cabinet where she’d tossed it upon coming home. The great leather multi-pocketed satchel, which had belonged to her father, was one of the few things she possessed of his. A treasure despite its age and the sour, old-dog smell that clung to it. Shecould picture him even now, walking stick in hand as he tramped the high meadows behind their house, the bag slung over his shoulder. Calling out when he found a specimen that struck his interest. Fumbling with his field journal and a pencil, eyes bright as a starling’s.
Smiling around the ache while rummaging in the depths for her brand-new copy of Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion, she pulled out two small bouquets left for her with the watchman, now sadly wilted; a book of poems inscribed “To the goddess Artemis from her Actaeon” (yuck!); a beaded purse; a length of apple-green ribbon; a pair of leather gloves; and—wait a moment . . . now, that was odd . . . an old, weather-beaten leather-bound book with a guinea-sized divet in the center of the cover.
The things some people sent as symbols of their devotion made absolutely no sense to her.
In search of a note or an inscription, she cracked the book open, a shower of white petals falling into her lap from a dried stalk of ox-eye daisy, the leaves crackling to dust. Scott forgotten, she took a seat by her open window. Inhaling a shuddery, frightened breath of smoky, moist wind, she opened the book once again.
She turned to a random page near the front, a small curled fern pressed in the gutter. The handwriting was atrocious, tiny and close, the letters spilling one into another, words cramped tight into the pages. And very familiar.
Adam!
But how? When?
It must have been that last night at the theater. He’dstayed for just a few agitated moments,
Overwhelmed only by the last and strangest experience of the evening—a voice.
She’d heard it in her head. Loud. Insistent.
Too shocked to do anything but obey, she’d scampered the last few feet to the safety of the hackney stand and thrown herself into the closest carriage. Glancing back, she’d spotted a large man in greasy coat and battered hat. And then the hackney rounded the corner, and she could breathe again.
That’s when she questioned herself—and her sanity. Was she hearing voices now? Not even in her worst days after Lawrence’s death, when she’d been jumping at every shadow, had she heard any voice but her own, reassuring her she would be all right. He couldn’t hurt her again.
Tonight’s voice had not been hers.
Surrendering to the inevitable, she threw back the covers with a groan and, wrapping herself in a dressing gown, crossed to the window to look down on the rainy street below. A few lamps still flickered, but dawn lurked as a faint smudge in the east. Already the coal man was out with his sack, and there came the hollow rattle of a barrow as a dustman passed. Beyond that, the view was gray and misty. The houses across the way bleak and cheerless, their windows empty of life.
A movement caught her eye. A figure bundled in an oversized coat and wide-brimmed hat stepped out of the alleyway opposite and hurried, head down, toward Oxford Street.
Had he been watching her house? Spying on her?
Behind him, a second shape emerged, long and black and silent. Enormous as no alley cat she’d ever seen. Its intense gaze sought her out in her darkened window, eyes reflecting palest yellow-green in the light from a street lamp.
She yanked the drapes closed to a drumming heartbeat. Rubbed her eyes.
First hearing voices. Now seeing imaginary creatures. Perhaps Harris’s suggestion had merit. Perhaps some time off was exactly what she needed. She’d been working too hard and sleeping too little. A few hours’ reading should calm her nerves and weight her eyelids.
Her bag lay on the cabinet where she’d tossed it upon coming home. The great leather multi-pocketed satchel, which had belonged to her father, was one of the few things she possessed of his. A treasure despite its age and the sour, old-dog smell that clung to it. Shecould picture him even now, walking stick in hand as he tramped the high meadows behind their house, the bag slung over his shoulder. Calling out when he found a specimen that struck his interest. Fumbling with his field journal and a pencil, eyes bright as a starling’s.
Smiling around the ache while rummaging in the depths for her brand-new copy of Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion, she pulled out two small bouquets left for her with the watchman, now sadly wilted; a book of poems inscribed “To the goddess Artemis from her Actaeon” (yuck!); a beaded purse; a length of apple-green ribbon; a pair of leather gloves; and—wait a moment . . . now, that was odd . . . an old, weather-beaten leather-bound book with a guinea-sized divet in the center of the cover.
The things some people sent as symbols of their devotion made absolutely no sense to her.
In search of a note or an inscription, she cracked the book open, a shower of white petals falling into her lap from a dried stalk of ox-eye daisy, the leaves crackling to dust. Scott forgotten, she took a seat by her open window. Inhaling a shuddery, frightened breath of smoky, moist wind, she opened the book once again.
She turned to a random page near the front, a small curled fern pressed in the gutter. The handwriting was atrocious, tiny and close, the letters spilling one into another, words cramped tight into the pages. And very familiar.
Adam!
But how? When?
It must have been that last night at the theater. He’dstayed for just a few agitated moments,
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