Miss Rivers’s words circled within her.Was this city really as much hers as it was her brother’s, snugly ensconced as he was in his office in Downing Street?She could not make out the Colonial Office from here, and that felt frustratingly significant.
A breath of wind stirred her curls.She shivered and picked up her umbrella.On most days, there was something inside Penny that felt like bottled lightning trying to get out.
What if this was the way she could finally set it loose?What if Clement’s Inn led to Fleet Street, and Fleet Street to Downing Street?What if she could post herself there, not by the Royal Mail, but theDaily Mail?
Chapter seven
Ormdale
Deepinthenight,Una woke, as she sometimes did, with a profound sense of disquiet.
Placing one hand on her heart, she felt the racing of it in a detached sort of way.Her other hand found the comforting bump in the bed that was Oolong.
And she began to tell herself, as she usually did, that everything wasnotin fact teetering on the brink.It was always hard to believe at this hour, when the world felt fragile as an eggshell, one small crack away from destruction.
The conversation with Pip had troubled her.She must try harder to make him see how much he meant to the family.The visit of the strange American had been unsettling, but not enough to fill her with this conviction of disaster.
Una stopped breathing.
“The Cornish way,“ he had said, with a little sneer when she handed him his scone.
She sat up straight.Oolong raised his head and gazed at her out of one eye.
“Why, he wasn’t even an American!”she exclaimed indignantly to the little dragon.
Surely there was no American in existence who would care a fig for the historical disagreement between Devon and Cornwall about which should be applied first, the jam or the cream!
An enemy had come—a pantomime villain, in fact—and what had she done?She had unlocked the family legacy and placed it in his hands.
What if he had stolen it?Had she left him alone in the tower long enough?What if she had forgotten to lock it and he had come back and taken it already?
Una swept back the coverlet and seized the lamp by her bedside.She unfastened the ring of keys from her dragon-keeper’s belt.
Moments later, Una emerged onto the roof and into the pale light of a waxing gibbous moon, Oolong all skittering claws behind her.I ought to trim his nails, she thought.
Una tried the muniments room door.It was locked, to her relief.
Oolong slid to a stop behind her with an ominous huff.
Una looked down at him.His tail twitched from side to side—a sign of nervousness in dragons.
Una knew that a sensible person would go back to bed instead of running about on the roof in her nightgown like that lady who went mad in the Italian opera about Scotland.
“Don’t be anxious, Oolong, it’s just Una worrying,” she said, making her voice reassuring.“Look, Ididlock it.”
She paused.She ought to go back to bed now.But she knew, in her heart, that she would not sleep peacefully until she reassured herself the relic was still in the tower.
She unlocked the door and stepped into the cold stillness of the room, the moonlight making a silver path for her to tread, the dried herbs rustling in the night air.Oolong followed her and began nosing about in a corner, probably after a mouse.
Every small sound seemed loud in the stillness of the night.Which is why she so clearly heard—not a footstep, but the brush of someone’s clothes moving against their body, behind her, at the door.
And the moonlight was snuffed out.
Una froze.She used to go still just like this when her father was in a shouting mood.Perhaps if she was very still, very quiet, he would forget about her, like her father had.
But of course this man wouldn’t forget her.He had been waiting for her.
And she had come to him, and let him in.
