Now, in his sordid London bolthole, he relieved the crashing despair, because he deserved it.
“Harold?”came a whisper from outside his door.
Eames stiffened.
And someone began to tap the Brotherhood tattoo on his door.
Chapter seventeen
Ormdale, 1 day earlier
Violethadspenttheprevious day on the opposite side of the river, near Drake Hall.
Before that, she had hidden in the back of a cart at Embsay, the closest railway station, and been rattled nearly to death on the long drive to Ormby.
Then she had slipped out when the cart halted for the clutch of tourists crossing the road to buy their postcards at the village shop.
It was still a great joke to her that Ormby could sustain a shop at all.She glanced up at the renovated parish church tower as she slipped through the churchyard.
The little sheep path to Drake Hall was still there.
She walked for more than an hour.Slowly, the sounds of carts and voices and trains and whistles faded from her ears, and the great silence of the dale reclaimed her.
Only it wasn’t really a silence.
It was wind-whistle and lark-song and sheep-bleet, and the untiring gurgle of delight that was the river.
The trees were not yet in leaf, just beginning to bud with green, so she had to crouch down to keep her cover as she drew closer to the river and Drake Hall.
When the neat Elizabethan manor house came into view with its chimney and gables, she sat behind some bushes and considered it.It was lunchtime now, and the staff and family would be busy indoors.
No reason to wait any longer.
She skirted round the stables to the paddock behind, her heart beating wildly.
Within the rock wall enclosing the meadow, on generously long picket lines, were two dragons the size of drayhorses, lying side by side, their ribbed wings furled at their sides.
The beauty of them—one the bright gold of a daffodil, the other the colour of the woods in autumn—stabbed at her like a pain.
The dragons raised their heads and looked at her.
Violet walked to the fence line, hands outstretched, tears springing to her eyes.
“Elfed,” she whispered.
Slowly, they rose and approached her.
The russet dragon, Elfed, had grown even bigger than his mother, Cariad.Elfed was still a little lanky in the legs and haunches, but when he filled out, he would be the most powerful riding-dragon she had ever laid eyes on.Her heart swelled with pride.
They paused in their approach, cautious, the mother snuffling and nudging her youngling as if to discourage him from continuing.
Violet pulled a linty sugar cube from her pocket and held it out.Elfed scuttled closer, his shadow encompassing her, the sharp point of the horn on his muzzle angling close to her face as he investigated what was in her hand.
Violet had seen him break open a ripe melon with that horn once.
Violet’s hand trembled in his shadow.It was only because she hadn’t eaten very well lately, she told herself.
As the dragon sideswiped the sugar cube, Violet reached out to stroke him, but he pushed her hand away with a huff and backed away, his double-lidded eye glaring at her as if she were a stranger.
