arah had seldom moved so fast in her life. The state of heightened alertness she had experienced in these same premises several hours previously restored itself in an instant and drove her to action. In a quarter of a second, she recognised Mr Flockhart at the door and understood all possible implications as they applied to her circumstances. She also understood that the doom she envisaged earlier, when she heard a voice call ‘Stop!’, might merely have been postponed, not avoided.
She turned off the lamp as Raven lifted the ledger from the table, and led him swiftly to the storeroom. If Mr Flockhart was visiting at such an hour, it was either to retrieve something or because some idea had come upon him, and both were likely to bring him to the laboratory. The storeroom was off the passageway between it and the shop. There was no reason Flockhart would not need to visit it also, but it was the best chance they had to avoid detection.
Sarah ushered Raven inside and pulled the door to, but not fully closed. She could hear approaching footsteps and knew the sound of it meeting the frame would be too loud. It was not so much a room as a cupboard, a tiny space within intended for one person to reach the shelves on three sides.
They were pressed tight against each other, lest they nudge the door open. Sarah could feel the warmth of Raven against her chest, his scent in her nostrils, her nose almost touching his chin.
She tried not to breathe as she heard footsteps nearing. Through the crack in the door, she saw a dance of shadows, the aura of a lamp as Mr Flockhart made his way through the building.
She heard a cough, a clank of glass upon wood, a bottle or flask being placed on a table. Laughter, a tipsy giggle. Mr Flockhart was a noted socialite. He had stopped off after a night of revelry, but for what?
A few moments later, footsteps approached again. Did he need something from the store?
Once more the shadows flickered, the dancing aura visible through the crack. Sarah felt her heart thump against Raven as the footsteps grew closer.
Then they grew fainter. She heard the front door open. Flockhart was leaving.
Sarah breathed again, then the feeling of relief gave way to something more powerful, as though the lifting of fear had broken a dam within her. Even as the sound of the bolt reverberated from the front door, she pulled Raven closer, though that felt barely possible. She lifted her head in the darkness and found his lips. It felt as though this cramped little space was the whole world, and that world was filled with light.