“That wasn’t me,” protested Crispin.“I was just a schoolboy, Penny.”
“All right.You get a pass for being a child—back then.But what about now, Crispin?”
“What do you mean?”
“You work in a government office.Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me that if you found out something wrong was happening, you’d do everything you could to stop it?Even if it cost your career?You’d use your voice and your vote for something other than your own prosperity and advancement?”
There was a silence, during which the cab pulled up at Brunswick Square.Penny wiped a scattering of tears off her cheek.Crispin was confused by his sister’s emotion for something that felt so distant to him.
“Well, at least you’re honest about it,” she said bitterly.“So now you know why I don’t trust any of you to keep us safe anymore.Women are starting to wake up and keep eachothersafe now, and we’ll do a better job of it—you see if we don’t!”
Crispin reached to open the door of the cab for her, but Penny batted his hand away and opened it herself.
“We don’t want it anymore—your posturing, your pretty speeches,” she cried out.“Do you understand?I suggest you all prepare to be completely extraneous for everything except—procreation!”
With this devastating prophecy, Penny tossed his umbrella back inside the cab and ran up the steps to their front door.
“Cor,” the cabman breathed.“Gave it to you straight, didn’t she?Reminds me of me ol’ woman when I’ve had a few too many.”
“I don’t think my sister gives it any other way,” Crispin said ruefully.“Ashley Mansions on Vauxhall Bridge Road, please, if you don’t mind.”
Chapter forty-seven
Ormdale
Violetwasbeginningtothink that Elfed was harbouring a grudge against her.After shimmying hand over hand up the rope and hauling herself onto Elfed’s back, she had tried once more to clip on the riding harness Edith had lent her, only to find they were suddenly nose-diving and she had nothing to grip except the harness—which was not connected to Elfed.
For a moment, her windmilling arms found nothing but air.
Then she saw orange.
It was like getting smacked in the face by a sunset.
And now she was lying, face down, on one outstretched wing.But she was too weighty for it, so Elfed overcorrected, sliding her towards the other wing.
Violet scrambled with arms and legs for a hold but ended up grabbing onto his wing tip on the other side, hoping it didn’t hurt him, looking down a remarkably long way to the deepest part of the Orme River, dark as an enchantress’s mirror.
Possibly this impeded Elfed’s ability to fly, for they were now spiralling downwards fast, and Violet forgot about hurting him and justclung.
Her own reflection rushed at her, face contorted, hair streaming.
Then the water slapped her in the face—a freezing, vicious blow.
Still, it didn’t hurt quite as much as she’d expected, and she realised that Elfed’s wing tip had broken the surface tension first.
Violet opened her eyes underwater and saw Elfed’s great eye through a churning mass of bubbles.He blinked once at her, as if to sayYes, I really meant it, then clawed his way back to the surface, leaving her.
It occurred to Violet that making her closest friends angry was something she was remarkably good at.
The next thing that occurred to her was that she wasn’t floating back up to the surface.She was wearing too much.She shuffled off the great coat, but her lungs were burning with the effort not to breathe, and her clothes felt as heavy as so many layers of lead.She was finally going upward, but it was too slow.
If it wouldn’t have cost her the last of her air, she would have laughed.After all of the risks she’d taken, she had not thought to drown at the back door of her family home.
A great rip of pain seared through her midsection.
She stretched one arm above her to the surface, as if she could pull herself up with a fingertip.
Dear God, I’m sorry I didn’t have much to say to you before.It’s probably a bit late to start now, isn’t it?I expect you are as angry at me as the rest of them are.
