But she had taken her eyes off Eames for a moment, and now she couldn’t see him.
“‘Ere, love!”the flower girl cried, tucking a posy of wallflowers into Penny’s lapel.“That way!”
The street vendor pointed down a side street and held out a palm.Penny had no time to find a coin—so she plucked out her hatpin and tossed her new hat to the girl.It was in the latest style and would fetch a good price, far more than the girl’s wares would for a whole day.
The girl crowed a “cor!”and “good luck” after her as Penny sped on, hatless.She pushed her hatpin into the knot of hair at her neck before she could stab herself.
Penny was running towards sound and movement and the smell of the docks, towards the growl of engines and clank of machinery, towards another iteration of the city that was hers.
At the next intersection of streets she found herself in a bustling lumberyard.A stack of rough boards swung inches from her ear, and a voice shouted at her to watch out.
But Penny had already ducked gracefully out of the way, her reflexes sharp from regular practise of the martial arts.She darted halfway across the yard undeterred, scanning it for Eames.
But the yard was too full of brown-armed lascars and navvies, coughing lorries, and clanking cranes.Penny hopped her way up to the very pinnacle of a pile of timber to get a better view.
A brawny arm caught her round the waist and swung her lightly back to earth.
She considered stomping on this bold young man’s feet, but his boots were substantial and his smile pleasing.
And it was his pile of boards, after all, that she’d just been clambering all over.
“I’ve come from Limehouse Causeway—after a man,” Penny panted.
“Any man?”he asked hopefully, as if he might volunteer.
“Englishman with a beard—running, just now.”
He whistled and called out in a presumably-subcontinental language to a little cluster of his fellow Indian dockworkers who had stopped to watch them in amusement.
One of them nodded and shouted back, pointing across the lumberyard.
Penny lurched in that direction, but the laskar stopped her with his developed forearm.
“Wait, Goat Girl,” he said, and whistled again.
One of his compatriots produced a motorised bicycle, kicked up the stand, and started the motor with a thrilling crack, and offered it to her with a little bow.
Penny goggled at it.She looked up at the bold one in amazement.
“What if I ride it into the Thames?”she protested over the roar of the motor.
“Then you’ll owe me two kisses instead of the one you’ll give me now,” he said cheerfully.
Keeping her eyes fixed on his face, Penny pulled the posy from her lapel, gaveita kiss, and popped it behind his ear.
His friends hooted with delight and clapped.
Penny quickly hitched her leg over the seat, smoothed her skirts down, put her umbrella over her lap, and grabbed the handlebars.
“How do I return it?”she asked.
“Leave it at any of the public houses around here for Joki—they all know me, Goat Girl,” he called out, holding up the posy to give it a flamboyant kiss of his own.
“Oh, I’ll bet they do,” she returned.
They let go and she was off to the sound of whoops and applause.
Penny propped her feet on the pedals and let the motor take her, the wind whipping her curls about.
