Edith gave a sniffle and looked at Violet searchingly.
“Do you mean like Peter Pan, gazing in at the nursery window?”Edith said slowly.“They put bars on the window, didn’t they?And he couldn’t get in.”
Violet darted an involuntary glance at Una.“Yes.”
“Horrible story!”Edith declared.“I’ll tell Mr Barrie next time I see him, I really will!There are no bars to keep you out, and there never will be.Don’t let my tears trouble you.I’m always like this when I’m expecting.”She patted her swelling waistline.“This will be our fourth, you know.Margaret was born just after you left.”
“The twins told me all about her, and this one,” Violet said with a grin.
“How wonderfully indiscreet of them!”
They both laughed.Una stared.
The way the two of them were carrying on, it was as if Violet had never run away two years ago— never caused them all endless worry and hurt.
To her horror, Una felt tears in her eyes.She got up quickly.
“We open in two hours,” Una said, “I must go check everything’s ready.”
Chapter sixteen
London
Inthedingiest,darkestpart of the East End, in lodgings that were little more than four mildewed walls, the man who had attacked Una stirred under his army blanket.
Harold Eames was reeling with failure, misery, and dread.His mentor had promised that, upon delivery of the relic, he would be admitted into the deeper secrets of the Brotherhood, that he would join the ranks of warriors gathering in England’s hour of need.
Now he was too ashamed to face them.
This part of London was intolerably overcrowded, packed to the gills with the underbred and underfed, stinking of borscht and opium—the refuse of brutal foreign empires.
The Aliens Act of five years ago that tried to stem the flood had come far too late, and of course the wretches found ways to evade it.
It was madness to welcome such people into a country that was already overwhelmed with poverty; where Englishmen who had served their country in battle struggled to find employment; where the roar of machines and the hum of dynamos drowned out the voices of the elderly; where women left fire-side and cradle-side to beat on the walls of parliament.
Eames burrowed into his army blanket on the pitiful cot in his dark bolthole, overwhelmed by the darkness everywhere.The darkness in this place—at the heart of an empire that cast light over half the globe—only confirmed the importance of his mission.And he had scotched it.He would not be trusted to play a part in his beloved country’s purification now.
He closed his eyes.He knew this feeling of being dragged downwards, the slow closing off of the light.Desperately, he searched inside for a memory of something—anything—luminous to hang on to.
And he found it in the glitter of chainmail in the moonlight.But that was not the only thing here that was bright.Here was the white-gowned girl, whom he had laid down as gently as he could on the stone floor.
Bleeding though he was from her vicious attack and the terrifying assault by her dragon—which he had felled with a blow of his own—he still checked her pulse and her breathing, out of sheer kindness.
Then, as he slid the lockbox key from the ring of keys she had dropped, an impulse had seized him to steal a kiss from her—a single, innocent kiss.After all, she had done worse to him, hitting him with that pestle like that.She’d made him bleed with that blow, and he’d had to staunch it with a handful of rags he’d snatched up.
The girl had been foolish, struggling against him when she ought to have surrendered at once.That was the problem with all this talk of the liberation of the female sex.What did it do but expose them to more danger?A less honourable man would have taken advantage!
Looking down at her, so helpless, he had felt a pleasurable thrill.The notorious female dragon-keepers of Ormdale were no different than any other women.They were weak by nature, and relied on men like him—good men—to keep them safe.
Eames would prove it.He would take a kiss as repayment for his efforts.The girl would never know, and she would be none the worse for it.
He had bent towards her, but a ghastly rush of air from behind him warned him that the little demon had revived.He was genuinely frightened of it, because it had been borne home to him how very venomous most of the creatures were, and the girl had no antidote with her this time.
He backed off quickly, looking for a weapon, but to his astonishment, the creature knocked the key out of his hand, scooped it off the floor with its jaw, and disappeared out the open door.
“See here!”he exclaimed, and chased it to the edge of the parapet, almost losing his balance and tumbling off.
And Eames could do nothing but watch, open-mouthed and stupid, as the creature winged its way into the night like an overgrown moth, taking all his hopes with it.
