“Precisely.You’d better go.Your brother is not known for his patience.”
Sybil nodded then, using a deep breath to steady her, left the shop.A thick fog shrouded Finsbury Square, and Temple stopped pacing to wrap Sybil in a crushing hug.
“I wish I could come with you,” he said into her hair.
“You cannot.You have much to keep you in London.Diana, the babe, the queen.”She chuckled and wiggled out of his embrace.“I’ll be fine.”
“But you’re irritated with me.”
“Of course I am.”
He scowled.She scowled back.They hugged again.
“Write,” she said, “when you have a path forward with Stone.”
He nodded and helped her into the coach.“Your chaperone and companion is Miss Clarissa Barker.Highly recommended by the queen.”He peered inside.“I think she’s sleeping.”
A lump of brown skirts occupied one corner of the coach.A wide-brimmed bonnet obscured most of her face, and a lumpy satchel rested between her skirts and the far side of the coach.She snored.
Lovely.
He squeezed her hand.“I love you.I’ll write.”
“I love you, too.Despite all this.”She squeezed his hand back, then sat as he closed the door.Her eyes felt hot and tingly, and she pressed them closed as the coach rolled forward.She would not cry in front of a woman favored by Queen Victoria!She.Would.Not.
Distraction.She needed it.She wiped the back of her hand against her welling eyes then reached into her nearby traveling satchel.What she wanted was pressed against one side, and she slipped it out, opened it up.
Stone’s notebook was no clearer to her after additional readings.She’d not had much time to spend on it, though.It had only been two days since her abduction.
Two days.It seemed like an age.But now she’d have an unlimited number of quiet hours to figure out the device sketched on every page.Hopefully Miss Clarissa Barker was not chatty.But even if she was, it would be no longer than a week until they arrived at Foggy Hill House.After that, they’d have space to spread out.She could avoid the woman if she wished to.Or, perhaps Sybil would be lucky, and the woman would be clever and kind and interesting, and they’d get along wonderfully well, and Miss Barker would prove a friend and confidante during Sybil’s incarceration.
She sighed.A lovely dream, that.Sybil already missed her sisters, her entire messy family.
With her heart hurting a little, she studied the first sketch.There seemed to be two main devices explored here.A circular one and a long one.Both were comprised of empty tubes and bulbous chambers at intervals along the tubes, but?—
A snore broke her concentration.It was loud and startling.Hopefully the poor dear was still breathing?
Another snore.
Sybil snapped the notebook shut.Miss Barker was not endearing herself.
Another snore and Sybil bounced on her seat.
“Miss Barker,” she said, “could you please wake up?”It was time they introduced themselves, after all.
But the woman still huddled, sleeping.
Sybil said louder, “Miss Barker!”
But the other woman didn’t even flinch.
Sybil took a calming breath.Everything seemed to crash down on her at once.“Here I am trapped in a coach with a stranger, rolling away from my family and friends and my… my…” Her dreams and ambitions, but she couldn’t say that.Another frustration.“Myhobbies!And the Master of the Alchemist Guild himself wants to trap me like a fox in a cage for his own use, and I almost burned down my friend’s shop, and who knows how long I’ll be relegated to some crumbling, forgotten countryside estate.And all I want is to focus on this damned device, but my traveling companion—who I wasnotgiven the luxury of choosing—snores like a… like a wild boar!”
The snoring sounded more like a snort that time.
“Oh.”Sybil’s hand flew up to her mouth.“I do apologize, Miss Barker.I do not mean to offend.Only, I think I’m crumbling, and I would like to meet you, but you do keep sleeping, and?—”
Another snort.
