Lenore refused to apologize. “I’m so very glad I did,” she said softly. She rose and smoothed her skirts.
Her mother’s eyebrows rose, and she frowned. “Where are you going?”
“To visit Papa.”
“That’s the second time this week.”
And if Lenore had anything to say about it, it wouldn’t be the last. “I go for us both. You’re welcome to join me.” She knew Jane’s answer before she made the offer.
The older woman stiffened and turned away, her voice a little more hollow this time. “Not yet,” she said. “Not yet.”
Lenore clasped her shoulder briefly before rising to leave. “I will return by tea.”
“Take Constance with you,” Jane called just as Lenore curled her hand around the door knob.
Lenore raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Mama, Constance is taking deliveries today and waiting for the washer woman. She’s far too busy to play nursemaid to me. I promised her I’d stop by the markets and pick up supplies for her as well.”
A muttered “Stubborn girl” followed her into the hallway, and Lenore closed the door behind her with a relieved “whew.”
Despite the hints of sunlight breaking through the clouds, the day was brutally cold, the only blessing the lack of a wind to cut through clothing. Lenore wrapped warmly in layers of wool coat, mittens and scarves. She’d rolled on her thickest stockings and donned her heaviest petticoats in a futile bid to stay warm. Only the crowded omnibus that transported her and others from Camberwell, across London Bridge to Camden and Swain’s Lane offered some relief and a little warmth. She pitied those who rode on the open upper deck.
Most would think her mad if she admitted to the nervous anticipation that sent her stomach in a tumble once she stood outside of Highgate’s grand entrance. A visit to a cemetery usually elicited tears or in many instances, much appreciated moments of peace and reflection on a Sunday afternoon. Lenore had not lied when she told Jane she planned to visit Arthur. She simply didn’t mention the hope she dare not acknowledge out loud that she might see and speak with the Guardian.
She passed the Lebanon Circle vaults, following a narrow path to where Arthur’s grave lay undisturbed. No longer a target for body snatchers, his remains rested beneath bricks turning green with lichen. Sometime between now and her last visit, someone had placed a bench close enough to the grave so she might sit and chat with her father’s spirit in comfort. The butterflies swirled in her belly. Had the Guardian been responsible for the thoughtful gesture? Those otherworldly eyes revealed nothing of his thoughts, but he had always been courteous to her, and kind.
Lenore set the basket she carried on the bench alongside her ever-present umbrella. Constance had slid it onto her arm before she left. “A bit of lunch for you should you have need of it.” Lenore would also use the basket to bring home those items the grocer didn’t deliver to the house.
Sunlight filtered through the bare trees and thick ivy, golden and alluring with its false promise of warmth. The flowers she laid on the grave three days earlier were already a black slimy mess. She retrieved a new bouquet from the basket, scraped the dead one aside with her shoe and placed the fresh flowers in its place. Like her, they shivered in the cold.
Lenore returned to the bench and perched on the edge. Huddled deep in her coat, she listened for the footfalls of any nearby visitors. Only the silence answered. Her breath clouded before her when she spoke.
“Good morning, Papa. I have news. Nettie has not yet agreed to me joining her crew permanently, but she has allowed me to join them on a test flight. Not thePolluxmind, but a new one—theTerebellum. Do you remember her? A cargo lifter. We saw her plans four years ago. The Vickers Armament modified Sir Smithson’s design so the engines will generate more horsepower with the possibility of speed at 61 knots. They’ve installed them on theTerebellum. Nettie has been offered the chance to test-fly her before she’s formally assigned captain and crew. A short run to Gibraltar and back. No more than a week out. I’m to play cabin boy.”
Lenore didn’t mention her argument with Jane or the fact that creditors had seized everything of value from his workshop and were now eyeing the furnishings in the house. Such things were the burdens of the living, not the dead. She spoke instead of the latest scandals posted in the scandal sheets and conjectured over what the secretive Guild mages might do to strengthen the barriers at the coast.
A faint whine interrupted her one-sided conversation. Lenore went silent, listening. Another whine followed the first, and she peered into a cluster of ivy to her left. A dog, thin and quaking, emerged from the foliage, wary but no doubt drawn to the scents wafting from her basket. Its fur, dark with caked mud, did little to hide its bony hips and ribcage.
Careful not to cause a scare, or worse, have her fingers bitten for the kindness, Lenore broke off a small bit of cheese from the wedge Constance packed and tossed it to her visitor. The mongrel sniffed before wolfing down the tidbit. It didn’t come any closer, but there was no mistaking the pleading look on its canine features. Just one more bite, please.
Lenore reached further into her basket and pulled out the rest of the cheese, slices of cold, boiled ham, a bun, still warm in its wrapping and a square of moist parkin. “Poor dog,” she crooned to the pathetic creature. “When was the last time you ate?” By the look of it, a long time ago. She tossed more of the cheese along with pieces pinched from the bun. The ham and the cake soon followed until there was nothing left of Constance’s carefully packed meal.
“I’m sorry, friend,” she said in response to the expectant look it gave her, along with a timid tail wag. “You’ve eaten everything. Hopefully, that will last until your next meal.”
She blew on her fingers, frozen even in the mittens she wore. “I’ve sat too long,” she said aloud. “My blood is turning to ice chips.”
She looped her umbrella over her forearm, grabbed the empty basket and rose from the bench. The dog lingered nearby, too shy to approach but unwilling to leave this newly discovered source of food. Lenore shooed it gently away with her umbrella. “I’m sure you’d make a fine companion, but I cannot take you home with me. My mother would get one look at you, and we’d both be on the streets hoping for handouts from strangers.”
The umbrella worked as a deterrent for two seconds at most. The dog simply skittered out of the way, only to return as Lenore’s tail-wagging shadow.
She sighed. For years, she had begged her parents for a pet, specifically a dog. Jane couldn’t abide them, and in this matter, Arthur bent to her wishes. Now, when Lenore was older and far more in control of her life, the timing didn’t suit. She had no doubt that were she to leave a rescued street mongrel with her mother while she went sailing off to Spain, she’d return to find the animal had mysteriously vanished.
Woman and mutt gazed at each other for a moment before Lenore gave in. “Care for a walk among the dead?” she asked. The dog cocked its head to the side as if considering her proposal before trotting a little closer, tail snapping back and forth even faster than before.
The unlikely pair traveled an ordered path through the cemetery, pausing periodically for Lenore to read the various headstones or admire the lavish memorials sculpted in marble and granite commemorating various people wealthy or famous or both. At each pause, she glanced over her shoulder or sought the shadows that played behind penitent angels in the hopes of seeing the white-haired, black-garbed Guardian. She refused to admit her disappointment to herself when he made no appearance.
She gave a start at the sudden rise of voices and clink of metal. The dog, her silent companion, laid back its ears and retreated farther behind her. Alerted by the animal’s wary behavior, Lenore crept softly toward the sounds and peeked around a marble cross.
Two men, dressed in ragged coats and tool belts bent to their work over a small grave. Mangled wreathes of fresh flowers lay strewn in haphazard chaos, pelted by the dirt the men shoveled off the new mound.
