The Britannia School

 

 

EVELINE TOUCHED THE machines, running her finger over a lever, or the groove where a ball bearing should run. So hard to remember those voices her mother had drawn from them like fine gold wires. So hard to remember how it had been near the end, when she had started making them all sing together. She could remember it was like being in a wonderful cave all made of music, but she couldn’t remember what it sounded like, or how to make it happen again.

Her mother’s hands had moved on them so surely. Her own hands were neat and quick at their work, but their work was thieving, not this. Tears kept coming, trickling down her face and soaking her collar. With pounding head and aching throat, she tried to think. Hastings came back.

“Hastings, how’d you know these were Etheric machines?”

“I saw some in a book. I told you, I like machines.”

“Do you know how they work?”

Hastings gave her a sideways look. She seemed ill-at-ease. “They make noises, and they’re supposed to have some sort of effect on people. That’s all I know. Your mama never taught you?”

“I was eight.”

“I’ve been interested in machines at least as long as that,” Hastings said. “It’s why I’m here.”

“Well I wasn’t interested, not then, all right?” Eveline snapped. “How was I to know she was going to die?”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, what do you mean it’s why you’re here?”

Hastings fidgeted with a coil of wire that lay on the bench. “I was forever messing with things, taking them apart to see how they worked. Mama tried to beat it out of me. She thought I might make a decent marriage – she was daft. I’m a bastard, no-one respectable was going to marry me. Anyway, she wrote to my father and he got me put in here. She told me it was that or Bedlam. This is better.”

“She said you’d go to Bedlam?”

“If I didn’t do as I was told.”

Eveline grimaced. She’d heard about Bedlam, where all the mad people got kept – but she’d never thought you could be put in there just for liking machines. “She wrote to your father?”

“Yes. She didn’t normally – he’d only pay for my upkeep if she kept out of his way and didn’t embarrass him.”

“So they’re not married.”

“I’m a bastard, like I said.”

“Well, I’m an orphan.”

“Orphan’s respectable.”

“Not if you’re a thief.”

Hastings shrugged. “Well, he didn’t want me, and in the end nor did she, so it hardly matters, does it? Do you remember how any of these work?”

“Sort of. Maybe. Some of them. But... I know how to get some of them started, but I don’t know what the noises are supposed to do. Or how.”

“You don’t remember that?”

“No. Were there any notebooks, when it was all brought in? Mama had dozens of them.”

“I didn’t see any, I’m sorry. Why do they want you to study this, anyway?” Hastings said.

“I wish I knew. It’s why I’m here.” Eveline frowned at the instruments, looking so strange in this big clanging dusty space, bits of her childhood yanked from the past and dropped in front of her. What did Holmforth want, with the instruments, and with her?

And if she couldn’t make them work, what would happen then?

“Hastings, you ever done any of this?”

“What, Etherics? No. Most people...” She hesitated, glanced over where Mr Jackson was still waist-deep in his machine. “No.”

“Most people what? Come on, you’ve been chewing on something since you said what they were.”

Hastings sighed. “Most people think it’s nonsense. I’m sorry, Evvie. They either think it’s nonsense or that it’s something only some people have an ability for – that it’s like having red hair, something you’re born with. And it’s mostly women. So, even people who believe in it don’t think it’s important.”

“Well, if it were something you were born with, I’d know, wouldn’t I? Anyway I don’t believe it. She worked hard, my mama. Harder’n anyone. Day and night, sometimes. She didn’t just know what to do from the day she was born.”

Hastings looked at the mechanisms, rubbing her nose. “It’s never made sense to me,” she said. “If people get a chance to learn things they can do things, mostly. Some people are better at some things, yes; but I don’t think it’s in you when you’re born. It’s like thinking only men can do engines. I can make an engine work, I learned.”

“‘Men’re good for doing plenty, but women can do that plus twenty,’ that’s what... someone I know says. She liked mechanisms, too, she just wasn’t much good at ’em. I don’t think it was anything to do with being female, though. It’s not like you gotta hold a spanner in your dick, is it?”

Hastings frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“You do know what a dick is?” Eveline said. Hastings shook her head. “You know. A chappie’s chappie, his....” Seeing Hastings’ utter bemusement, she said, “What he pisses outa.”

Hastings clapped a hand over her mouth and choked behind it, her cheeks bright red.

“’Sall right,” Eveline said. “Jackson ain’t listening.”

“Yes, well, I was!” Hastings said, her eyes screwed up with laughter. “Oh, don’t let Mr Jackson hear!”

“He’s got his ears fulla steam.”

Eventually Hastings got control of herself.

“So you got no idea how they work?” Eveline said.

“I don’t even know if they do.”

“Oh, they do. My mama could make them work. She was getting somewhere, before she got sick. Mr Jackson know anything?”

“He doesn’t believe in it either, so probably not.”

“Well that’s a fat lot of good, then.” Eveline sighed and kicked at the straw. “Now what’m I to do? If I don’t work out how they work, I’m like as not out on my ear. Or worse,” she said. “That Holmforth, I don’t trust him a farthing’s worth.”

“Who’s Holmforth?”

“He’s the cove what brought me here. He’s the one thinks I know how to make these work, because... wait a minute, he thinks Uncle James could do Etherics. He mentioned him. He never mentioned Mama at all.”

“I don’t understand,” Hastings said.

“Never mind. I do. Bloody Uncle James pretended it was his work. Holmforth must have been one of the people he took it to. Don’t know why Holmforth is interested now the miserable old bastard’s dead.” There was a sudden clang and a bout of muffled swearing from the other side of the room.

“What is that thing he’s fadgetting with?” Eveline said.

“Jackson’s Velocitator.”

“Velocitator?”

“That’s what he calls it. It’s an advanced version of a steam car, much more powerful... or it would be, if... Never mind,” she said.

“If what?”

“If he’d let me work on it. I’ve got lots of ideas. But he’s one who thinks you should have to hold a spanner in... you know.”

But Eveline was barely listening. She could see that cosy little room, the fatly upholstered armchair, the little embroidered footstool in front of the fire. Her feet, in warm stockings, resting on the footstool. The tines of a fork dimpling the grease-shining skin of a sausage. The footstool was embroidered with blue and yellow lilies, like the dusty stolen curtains in Ma Pether’s room.

The little room shrank and greyed, fading out of her reach.

If she displeased him... well, she might just end up dumped in the country miles from anywhere, with no money. If she was lucky. And if she made it back to London... if Holmforth thought Ma wouldn’t know she’d been taken up by someone who smelled like law, within minutes of it happening, he was a fool. Not that he needed to care – he wasn’t the one that would have to try and persuade her to take Evvie in again, convince her that Evvie hadn’t spilled every bean on her plate to Holmforth and whoever he worked for.

Ma Pether’d never trust her again. Never. Which meant half the Newgate birds in London would have no use for this particular sparrow, neither.

She had to make the machines work.

 

 

KNOWLEDGE, THAT WAS the key. Without it, she was helpless. She needed to know more about Holmforth and what he wanted, about the instruments and what they did. And until she could speak to Holmforth again, the only person she knew who might know something was Miss Cairngrim.

Of course, there were other ways to get knowledge – cajoling, persuading, getting people to talk about themselves; she knew, and had used, all of them – but sometimes a hairpin in the middle of the night was by far the best way.

The door swung open. Not a scrap of moonlight was allowed into Miss Cairngrim’s office; it was as tightly shuttered as the woman herself. Eveline didn’t want to risk opening the shutters, in case of noise. She had brought a candle, which would have to do.

She made her way methodically through the drawers of the desk, carefully returning every bit of paper and scrap of pencil where she found it. Miss Cairngrim’s tidiness made it all the easier – this would have been a lot harder in Ma Pether’s rooms, with everything all of a higgle-piggle. With some people you could trust they wouldn’t notice, but not with Ma Pether.

She found a battered book with a blue cloth cover, full of figures. Accounts. Income. The main amount from someone or something called HMG; which, seeing a letterhead with the same initials, she realised was Her Majesty’s Government.

The monthly stipend looked substantial, but it got eaten up fast. Clothes, food, teachers’ wages, soap... tiny obsessive figures in ever-smaller columns as Miss Cairngrim tried to stretch the money over the bills like thin pastry over too big a pie. Owed to butcher, 6s 5d. Owed to baker, 2s 9d. Eveline grinned to herself, wondering if the candlestick maker was in there, too. Then her head shot up as she heard a noise; something scraping the glass of the window, outside the shutters. Scree, scree.

A branch shifted by the wind, nothing more; it was only the silence of the house made it seem so loud.

Still, it was a warning she should heed. Well, Miss Cairngrim was short of money, that was interesting; a lever, if Eveline chose to use it and could find the means. But it told her nothing about Holmforth.

Another drawer – more accounts. Another – a diary. Appointments and reminders listed in that same cramped, tiny hand. Speak to Mr M about books. Carstairs girl’s accusations – ridiculous. Carstairs girl? What Carstairs girl?

Scree, scree, the branch went, scraping on the glass. Hurry up, Eveline.

She sighed. Well, at least she knew a few things she hadn’t before, but whether any of it was the least use...

Then her eye caught a fine line in the veneer of the desk, no more than a thread of light; if the candle hadn’t wavered, in the draft, she’d never have seen it. She’d seen such a thing before, in some of the furniture that had passed through Ma’s hands. If she was right, it was a secret drawer. A secret drawer for secret things.

She felt about with careful, clever fingers, gently pulling and pushing, until a little ledge went click.

The crack widened, showing darkness.

Carefully, carefully, Eveline slid it open.

Papers. Cuttings from The Times and the Illustrated London News. Men in top hats. Solemn civic occasions, posh social events. Lord Tracey meeting the trade delegation... Lord Silverman, Lord Fallwell and friends at the races...

Who were all these people? Was Miss Cairngrim like one of those old ladies who kept every scrap and clipping about the royal family?

But there seemed to be no connection, except that all the people shown were important persons of one sort or another. And here and there a face was ringed with blue ink.

She held the lantern closer.

There was something familiar about one of those faces. Lord Silverman...

Lord Silverman looked an awful lot like Treadwell.

Fascinated, Eveline studied the rest.

She couldn’t see it in all of them, but in some, yes; the features of the daughters stamped upon the fathers, clear as day. And there was a Lord Donmar at a hunt ball, with his (presumably legitimate) daughter on his arm, her head adorned with feathers, jewels at her neck; her face a dead ringer for Hastings’.

Well, well, well. So that was where the Britannia school got its pupils, was it? Maybe not all of them, but enough.

It didn’t seem that Miss Cairngrim had stooped to blackmail, though. If she had, she wasn’t putting the takings into the school. Maybe she just liked to know. Eveline grinned to herself. Well, now she knew, too. She slid the drawer back.

It stuck, one corner jutting accusingly.

Eveline swore, jiggled the drawer this way and that, but it wouldn’t budge. She dipped her fingers in the hot candle-wax and rubbed it on the visible edges of the drawer, eased and pulled and prayed. Come on, you wretched, filthy thing!

Finally, with treacherous suddenness, the drawer slid back into place, taking Evvie by surprise, making the table rock so the candle tilted dangerously. Eveline grabbed it before it could fall, hot wax spilling over her hand.

Footsteps. Footsteps right outside the door.

Eveline’s heart jumped into her throat. She pushed the drawer smoothly shut, pinched the candle out with her fingers so it wouldn’t betray her with the smell of smoke.

The room was instantly, utterly dark. Eveline crept towards where she remembered the faded sofa standing, knowing she could wriggle behind it and hide, and ran straight into something that drove a brutal corner into her shinbone. She bit down hard on the swearword that sprang up, reached down and rubbed her leg briskly. She couldn’t feel any blood, at least.

A light under the door; pale and wavering. A candle. But it didn’t stop, and nor did the footsteps. They went on.

Who – or who else – was wandering about at this time of night? The water closets were upstairs, it couldn’t be that.

Eveline backed away from the vicious table and relit her candle. Quickly, she made sure the drawers she had opened were all tightly locked, that everything looked the same as when she had entered. Then she unlocked the door, snuffed her candle again, and crept out into the corridor.

The other light was wavering, away towards the kitchens. She pulled the door shut, the click of the latch sounding very loud. She had to lock it again, or Miss Cairngrim would guess someone had been in. She took a deep breath, clenched her jaw, and then relaxed it. Impatience never sped a lock yet, that was what Ma Pether had taught her.

Carefully, she relocked it, the snick of the tongue like a breaking glass in the stillness.

The light was out of sight, but a glimmer could still be seen on the walls. Never one to turn down a chance at knowing something someone didn’t want her knowing, Eveline followed it.

She got close enough to see that the lamp-carrier was Treadwell, the bright halo of her curls yellow as butter in the lamplight. Well, well, so she wasn’t all piety and tale-telling after all. What was she about, at this time of night?

Eveline had learned her way about by now. Treadwell was heading towards the forbidden area where the staff slept. She wasn’t hurrying, though; in fact, the closer she got, the slower her footsteps went.

She reached a door, the one all by itself at the end of the corridor, and stopped. For a long moment she only stood there, then slowly, like someone in a bad dream who can’t stop whatever is happening to them, she turned the handle, and went in.

The room was Monsieur Duvalier’s.

A moment later came the sound of the key being turned in the lock.

Eveline did not need to listen any longer to guess what came next. She made her way carefully and silently back to the dormitory and back to her bed without waking anyone, and lay there with one ear open, slipping in and out of dreams of flapping curtains in broken windows and dead leaves rustling across dusty floors. Eventually, with dragging steps, Treadwell came back. Eveline heard her get into bed.

Then she heard her crying.

Bon-bons, indeed, she thought. Don’t think I want any of your bon-bons, Monsewer Duvalier.

She was tired, but now she couldn’t sleep; her head was full of confused, angry thoughts, like a storm trapped in its clouds. Treadwell stopped crying and fell asleep. Eveline huffed and sighed to herself, angrily shoving the thin pillow about as though battering it might relieve her feelings. Well, now she knew something she hadn’t, but she wished she didn’t know it. She didn’t like Treadwell. She didn’t want to feel sorry for her.

But she didn’t feel sorry for Monsewer Duvalier. Oh, no. Monsewer Duvalier had something coming to him, and if she could, Eveline would take great pleasure in being the one who brought it.

 

 

WEEKS PASSED. EVELINE discovered the horrors of French verb construction, the use of the parasol both to shade the complexion and wind an opponent, and the many ways in which a young woman could be made to look like an old one, or a man, or a foreigner. She made good progress in Retention, very slight progress in Cantonese (her fingers were constantly bruised from Wen Hsu’s stick), even less in Navigation, and none whatsoever with her mother’s mechanisms. Sometimes she managed to raise a wheeze or a dreadful catlike yowling from one of them, sometimes a growl. The only noticeable effect it had was to send Mr Jackson complaining to Miss Cairngrim that he could not work with such a dreadful noise going on. Considering the constant hammering and clanging that he engaged in on his Velocitator, and the way he shouted during his occasional, half-hearted attempts at teaching, Eveline considered this more than a little unfair. She even asked his advice about the Etheric mechanisms, but his only response was to call them superstitious rubbish intended to fool the credulous, and tell her she would be better off paying attention to her stitching.

She lived in dread of Holmforth’s next visit.

She attempted to distract herself with gathering all the knowledge she could about the school and its inhabitants, though after dark she kept her explorations to the main building. The dogs that ran loose in the grounds at night were a thoroughly nasty pair of animals controllable only by Thomas, their monosyllabic and odorous keeper. During the day they were chained up in the laundry yard, and hanging the washing was a task all the girls hated, living in dread that one day the chains would break as the vile animals barked and lunged and drooled within feet of them.

It was a rambling place, built for a large family and at least a dozen servants. Twenty girls and half as many staff did little to fill it. Half the rooms on the east side were shut off, and a smell of damp came from them which was only slightly more pervasive than that which filled the rest of the building.

When a carriage pulled up at the house for the third time in as many days and Eveline’s heart climbed into her throat for fear it might be Holmforth, she realised there was only one thing for it. She had to get her mother’s notes.

If they still existed. If James or whoever came after him hadn’t found them.

The house would have gone to strangers now. She just prayed it hadn’t been knocked down.

It would be hard to do it alone. Not the robbery, about that she’d no qualms. It wasn’t even robbery, strictly speaking; she’d only be taking back what was hers.

Getting out of the school and back in, though, that was a whole other business.

Eveline began to think very hard.

 

 

“MR WEN HSU IS UNWELL. We have a replacement.” Miss Cairngrim frowned. “He is very young. I had hoped for another respectable gentleman of mature years, but I suppose we will have to make do. He does come on personal recommendation. Necessary, of course, in a place such as this. You will be exposed to a great deal of temptation, Duchen, especially when mingling with foreigners. Regard this as an opportunity to practise keeping a proper distance at all times.”

“Yes, Miss Cairngrim.” Eveline wondered, again, whether she should tell her about Treadwell and Monsewer... but she was pretty certain that if she did so, she wouldn’t be believed. She had a feeling she knew what the Carstairs girl’s ‘ridiculous accusations’ had been.

She made her way to the small, chilly room where her Cantonese lessons took place, hoping she wouldn’t have to deal with any silliness. Miss Cairngrim couldn’t be any more eager for there to be none of that nonsense than she herself was.

She knocked on the door, and pushed it open.

“Zǎoshàng hǎo, Lady Sparrow.”

Seated on the table, grinning and wearing a robe of dark blue embroidered silk and a small round cap, was Liu.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Eveline said.

“Now, Miss Duchen, that shows no respect at all for your venerable teacher,” he said. “I hope you are well?”

“I will be soon’s I’m over the shock. Liu, what are you up to?”

“I am here to teach you Cantonese, of course.”

“But you work for the Brighart Steam Transport Company!”

“And where is it written that a man must have one job all his life?” Liu dropped neatly to the ground. “What are you doing here, Lady Sparrow?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m learning things. ’Sa school. That’s what you do in school, is learn things.”

“I will be a far better teacher of Cantonese than my predecessor, who no doubt bruised your fingers and gave you very boring lessons.”

“Sure of yourself, aren’t you? How’d you get taken on?”

“Now, Lady Sparrow, do you really expect me to reveal all my tricks? We know each other better than that, yes?”

“I don’t know you at all. Are you a spy?”

He paused in the act of taking a scroll out of his sleeve, and looked at her with his head tilted a little to the side. “Not really,” he said. “Are you loyal to your Empress, Lady Sparrow?”

“Well, she’s paying my clothes, board and education, so I s’pose I’d better be.”

“Then we are in a very similar situation. However, my Empress and yours are not at odds, so I see no reason why it should concern us in the slightest. Shall we learn some words? I know much more interesting ones than the old man. I can tell you the secret names of all of the river dragons.”

“I’m not listening to a thing until you tell me what you’re doing here.”

He propped himself back on the table, swinging his legs. “I was bored,” he said. “I wanted to see you. I thought we were friends. Don’t you want to be friends, Lady Sparrow?”

“Are you going to get me into trouble?”

“I don’t plan to,” he said. “In fact, if there is trouble, I may help you avoid it. I’m good at that.”

Eveline laughed. “Coming here don’t look like avoiding trouble to me. Well if you can get me as good at Cantonese as you are at English, I’ll be grateful – but you’d better not tell anyone you know me, or we’ll both be for it. I still don’t know how the hell you found me.”

“I told you before,” he said. “I am exceptionally clever.”

“Or why.”

“Because you interest me. I think you are clever, too – maybe even as clever as I am.”

He was certainly a better teacher than the old man – in among the joking and teasing, she made more progress in one hour than she had in weeks. Maybe it was just because he explained instead of cracking her on the hand, or maybe it was because he didn’t seem to despise her the way her former teacher did. “The one who was here before, he always acted like he thought I smelled bad,” she said.

“You do not smell bad.”

“I didn’t think I did. He smelled a bit himself. But he looked at me like I was stuck to his shoe. ’Sfunny: I got used to that, before, but now it proper narks me.” She laughed. “I must be turning respectable.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t let it trouble you. If someone thinks one is nothing, there is more satisfaction in proving them wrong, is there not?”

“If you say so,” she said. He was right, of course. There was far more satisfaction in ripping off someone who treated you like dirt. But although he knew her for a thief, she didn’t feel inclined to remind him of it.

“In China, women are not much valued, and their education very limited. To have to teach a woman, and a gweilo at that...”

“A what?”

“Gweilo. It is an insulting word for someone who is not Chinese. He must have needed the work very badly. Or perhaps the people who run things here knew something about him that he could not afford to get out.”

“Maybe he was a spy,” Eveline said.

“Possibly. But what does it matter? He is gone. As to the smell – yes. He was taking opium. It affects the bowels. That teacher of yours, the one who looks as though she were left in the sun too long? She too is taking opium.”

“Oh, Miss Prayne! She’s a miserable thing, I’d not be surprised if she drinks laudanum like it was tea.”

“Does she drink it because she is miserable, or is she miserable because she drinks it? I do not like opium. People go into dreams, and some of them never come out.”

“Don’t see that it’s worse than gin.”

“And you have seen what gin can do.”

“Oh, I seen that all right.”

His mobile, lively face saddened. “I have seen many, many people sicken and lose everything and die from opium. You know your Empire sells a great deal of opium to my country.”

“I seen plenty of people lose everything and sicken and die without needing opium, just out of being poor.” She shrugged. “And that or gin, it takes ’em out of themselves. If all you got is a clenching belly and grinding hard work when you can get it, you need something to get you through the day.”

Her mother had never drunk. Her mother had worked. But even that had been taken from her.

“What is it?” Liu said, searching her face.

“Nothing. You’d better be careful what you say about the Empire, round here, though. This place is all for the Empire, and Her Maj, and all.”

“Her Maj?”

“The Queen. The Empress.”

“Her Maj does not sound very respectful,” he said.

“And are you always respectful about your Empress?”

“When there is any chance she might hear of it, yes.”

“I see. So are you going to tell on me?”

“How could I possibly do that, when my English is certainly not good enough to know when you are being disrespectful?”

They grinned at each other.

 

 

EVELINE CAME OUT of the lesson and paused in the corridor, watching the darkening green sweep of the lawn as the trees laid long shadows over it.

The smile on her face felt strange. She hadn’t had so much fun since she’d left Ma Pether’s. There was something about Liu that put her dangerously at ease, but she couldn’t afford to trust him. She didn’t believe he’d come all this way and gone to the bother of getting himself hired just because he felt like it, or because he wanted to see her – it wasn’t as though they’d been sweethearts, or anything like that. She liked him well enough. She liked his sharp white grin and his sharper tongue, his long dark eyes, his glossy black hair and quick, neat movements... You’re getting soft, Evvie Duchen. Can’t afford to get soft.

No, she didn’t believe it. Since Mama, there’d been no-one in her life who didn’t want something from her. He was working for someone: Ma Pether, perhaps, or Holmforth. Spying on her. He had to be. She remembered some of the things she’d said, and shivered suddenly. She was a fool. She’d have to be more careful. If it came back on her she’d say she was suspicious, and testing him out by saying disloyal things.

She didn’t like the thought of ratting on him. She kicked at the skirting, scowling. Well, if he ratted on her, she’d do likewise. What’d he have to come here for, anyway? She had troubles enough. She wondered, briefly, if he knew anything about Etheric science, if he was so all-fired clever... but she’d made herself vulnerable enough. She certainly wasn’t going to admit to him that she didn’t have the first idea how to make Mama’s precious mechanisms work.

But she had an idea about that.

 

 

“YOU’VE BEEN WORKING on something, haven’t you?” Eveline said, pushing aside one of the mechanisms with a sigh.

“What do you mean?” Hastings said.

“You should be more careful, you keep sneaking off and then coming in stinking of oil. It don’t notice when we’ve been out here, but it does in lessons. You smell like Lazy Lou.”

“Who’s Lazy Lou?”

“A mechanical woman someone I knew had.”

“An automaton! Oh, I’d give anything to get hold of a good one...”

“Never mind that. You hear what I said?”

“Of course I did!” Hastings looked her up and down, wonderingly, and shook her head. “You’re clever,” she said. “Why are you so awful with Navigation?”

“Because it’s boring and stupid and Miss Prayne makes me want to scream and throw eggs.”

Hastings giggled. “It’s a shame. If she wasn’t so mopey even you might get interested.”

“Can I borrow your notes?”

“Much good they’ll do you.”

“I know.” Eveline sighed. “All them lines and circles don’t make the least bit of sense to me. I’m good at people, not stupid lines.”

“The lines are only a way of talking about real things,” Hastings said. “You’ll need them if you ever have to travel by yourself. What if you’re in a boat and something happens to the person you’re with and you have to find your way home?”

“Don’t.” Eveline hugged her arms around herself.

“Don’t you want to travel?” Hastings said.

“Not me. I want a nice warm house and enough to eat, right here in England, thank you.”

“You’ll have to if they make you.”

“I s’pose. But fat lot of use I’ll be to the Empire if I get lost.”

“I can’t wait,” Hastings said. “I’ve never even been on an airship. Oh, can you imagine? Up there, away from everything... you could go anywhere in the world, in an airship.” She thought for a moment. “Well, you could with enough fuel, anyway.”

“That great noisy thing’s bad enough,” Eveline said, glowering across the barn.

“That thing is a variant of the steam car. Mr Jackson wants to patent the engine. It’s revolutionary.” Hastings pushed her hair back with a wet hand and said, “At least it would be, if he wasn’t... he just won’t listen.”

“Well, of course he won’t. Never knew a man yet who’d listen when he’s got his teeth in something – like terriers, they are. You gotta distract them with something else. How far could you get on that?”

“That? About half a mile before the engine overheats,” Hastings said. “Honestly, he keeps trying to push more power through it and he won’t compensate properly. I haven’t been doing anything to it but what I’m told. What would be the point? If I change anything, he’ll only change it back.”

“So where is it?”

“Where’s what?” Hastings said, her eyes going wide and round like a nervy horse’s.

“Come on, I know you been working on something. You been making your own, ain’tcher?”

“You mustn’t tell!”

Eveline shook her head. “See? You just give yourself away, saying that. You gotta be more careful. I’d not have known for certain if you hadn’t said.”

Hastings shot a glance at the Velocitator, where Mr Jackson was yet again banging something and muttering, then grabbed Eveline’s hand. “Oh, but now you know, and I can show you, I’ve been wanting so much to show someone, come tonight, please. You’re so clever, maybe you can show me how to get some of the things I need....”

“Whoa up, girl!” Eveline tugged her hand away, grinning. “All right. You need stuff, I’ll try and help – I need something too, so maybe you can help me.”

“Yes, yes, of course, it’s just I need more steel, and some India-rubber, and copper wire, and...”

“How close is yours to being ready?”

“Ready to do what?” Hastings said. “It’ll run, and it’ll stop. I haven’t had a chance to test the engine at full stretch – it’s a lot quieter than the Velocitator, but if I take it through the grounds the tracks will be so obvious... besides, I haven’t been able to get enough copper wire to finish the connections and there’s no cover over the differential mass accelerator... why? Are you finally getting interested?”

“Oh, I’m interested, all right.”

“Why?”

“If I can get you the materials you need, how d’you fancy taking it for a spin?”

“You mean through more of the grounds? But what about the dogs?”

“Surely it can outrun a couple of dogs.”

“Easily, but what’s to stop them barking?”

“Oh, you leave that to me,” Eveline said, grinning. She had tricks aplenty to stop a dog from barking – geese were a lot worse.

“And the tracks it’ll leave?”

“I’ll think of something. Once we’re on the road, it won’t matter.”

“The road? Duchen, what are you thinking?”

“Fancy a trip to Watford?”

“Where?” Hastings shook her head so violently her hair tumbled out of its pins. “No. No, no. Take her outside the school? You’re mad. I’d be expelled. I’d go to Bedlam. She’d be stolen, or broken up. No.”

“She?”

“She’s called the Sacagawea,”Hastingssaid.

“What’s that when it’s at home?”

“A woman who guided Lewis and Clarke on their expedition in America. An explorer.”

“I thought explorers went somewhere. That’s the point of exploring, ain’t it?”

“I can’t,” Hastings said. “Duchen...”

“Oh, call me Eveline, for the love of... ain’t no-one else around to hear you bark out my name like I was a soldier.”

“All right, Eveline.”

“And you’re Beth?”

“Yes. But don’t let Miss Grim hear you use it. We’re supposed to maintain a proper distance. Oh!” She covered her mouth with an oily hand. “Listen to me, you’ve got me calling her that now,” she wailed. “I’ll forget and do it to her face and then what? And if I try and take Sacagawea out... I won’t do it. She has to be finished. She isn’t finished.”

“How long have you been working on it, then?”

“Since just after I got here. About two years, I suppose.”

“Can I see it, at least?”

 

 

EVELINE LOOKED AT the machine and sighed. “I think maybe I’d just better try and borrow a horse.”

“I thought you couldn’t ride.”

“Well, I stuck on, once. For a bit. I’ll have to manage. ’Cos that ain’t going anywhere, is it?”

It was not a beautiful machine. Its origins in scraps and scavenging were pitifully obvious. Its wheels didn’t match, its inner workings were a mass of dull coils and ancient gears, and its seat appeared to have begun life as a church pew, before an unfortunate and extended encounter with a savage woodworm. If she hadn’t known better, she might think it was just a pile of old bits and pieces that had somehow fallen together into a vaguely cart-like shape.

“She’s not finished,” Beth Hastings said. “I can’t get the materials. But she goes.”

“Yeah? How far, before it falls apart or blows up?”

“She won’t do either!”

“No. Sorry. I like my skin whole, and I’d rather not be sitting in a pile of scrap covered in burns waiting to see if Miss Grim or the ruddy dogs find me first. Never mind, eh?”

“But she works!”

“But you said yourself, it isn’t finished. Anyway, you don’t want to risk it, I understand that. What do you plan to do with her when she’s finished?”

“I...” Beth’s mouth drooped. “I don’t know.”

“I gotta get to class. I’ll see you later. Don’t forget and stay back here half the afternoon – they’ll come looking for you.”

She left Beth standing in the fading light, one hand resting on her machine, both of them looking rather dusty and forlorn.

Am I bad? Eveline stopped, halfway back to the school, and frowned at the trees. Was she? It wasn’t a thought she troubled herself with that often.

But she’d said things to Beth that were as calculated as she’d ever laid on a mark. And Beth wasn’t a mark. Beth was the only friend she’d made in this place.

She shrugged irritably in the deepening afternoon gloom and headed for Retention, where she performed less well than usual.

Beth avoided speaking to her for days.

Eveline spent every spare minute in the barn. Beth always managed to be busy elsewhere when Jackson left them alone, but Eveline knew better than to push. Instead she poked about at her mother’s mechanisms, turning levers, studying dials, placing ball-bearings in the grooves carved for them, without having the slightest idea what she was about. Sometimes she succeeded in getting a noise out of something – a string of faint pings, or a soft wail, or, once, a teeth-jarring shriek that brought Mr Jackson shooting out of the cab of the Velocitator like a jack-in-the-box. He banged his head on the way out and went bright scarlet. Eveline apologised, but felt his glare on her neck for the rest of the afternoon.

Lessons with Liu were a bright spot. Eveline started to feel the language with her teeth and tongue and brain, its singing intonations and sliding scales. The speed she learned at, now, was exhilarating. She was getting better at French, too, but slowly.

Miss Cairngrim tended to fling open the door on her Cantonese lessons. Somehow, so far, they had been lucky – whenever it happened, Eveline was sitting at her desk, following Liu’s pronunciation as he read out words he had written on the blackboard. The rest of the time he would be asking her about her life – of which she told him carefully selected portions – or telling her fantastical stories about river-dragons and ghosts and tragic lovers. As the days went on, Eveline realised he was talking more and more in Cantonese, and she was understanding more and more. It happened so smoothly, it was almost like magic.

“You’re ever so good at this,” she said to Liu one day as she was leaving to go on kitchen duty – which she’d got, again. On purpose, this time, although spilling ink on Treadwell had been a bonus. Eveline was sorry for the girl, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t still a right royal pain in the backside. “You could teach at a proper school, if you wanted.”

“I would not be so successful if I did not have such an amenable pupil.”

“You don’t half talk fancy.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I think you’re a flatterer, mister, is what I think.”

“No,” he said. “You do not need flattery. The Folk, now, their rulers need it. Live upon it. Shall I tell you about the Five Gracious Gifts?”

“Is this another of your stories?”

“Of course. You have done very well and have earned a story.”

It was a strange story, of gifts that were not real things, but the shadow of things, the intention of things. It left her feeling strange, disconcerted, and as though her head were no longer quite connected to the rest of her. She sat frowning afterwards.

“You didn’t like it?” Liu said.

“It’s just... odd. I remember people back home leaving out milk for them.”

“Oh, yes. It isn’t the milk – they have everything they could ever want to drink – it is the intention. The fear and worship. And if the milk is hard to spare, all the better. Lacking nothing, they crave the knowledge of lack.”

Something in Liu’s voice made her glance up then, but he was looking away, out of the window, and she could not read his expression.

“How come you know so much about them?”

He turned back, and gave her a smile that was rather thin and sad. “I am very clever, and I study a great deal.”

“Liu, where are you from?”

“Is it not obvious?”

“Well, you’re Chinese, yes, I can see that – but you speak such good English and you spend half your time here – the Brighart Company’s English, too...”

“Spending time in China became... a little difficult for me. I offended someone powerful.”

“Ah. Got a bit too clever, did you?”

“Rather say that I was not quite clever enough. I did something that might be seen as giving advantage to a rival of theirs, so, I joined the rival. Who happened to be from... this part of the world.”

“So do you ever go back?”

“Now and then. Discreetly.” He cocked his head. “The Grim Woman is coming. We should finish the lesson.”

“How’d you know? You always know!”

“I have most sharp ears.”

 

 

“THESE ARE THE things I need,” Beth said, shoving a piece of paper into Eveline’s apron pocket and picking up a dish of greyish mashed potato. Eveline pulled it out, eyes widening at the list of incomprehensible items.

“Wait. You mean you’ll do it?”

“Yes, I’ll do it. I’ve even worked something out to cover any tracks.”

“But I don’t even know what half these things are!”

“You get the money and I’ll get the materials. How are you going to get the money?”

“I don’t know. Yet. I’ll think of something.”

“You’re not going to rob anyone?”

“What, here? No-one’s got anything worth robbing, in this place. You could break up the whole building and it’d be worth about thirty bob down the market. If that. Beth...” But she’d gone, balancing dishes.

There wasn’t another chance for them to talk until supper was over and they were wearily scraping congealed gravy from the plates. The gas mantle hissed overhead, shedding soft greenish light. The cook had taken her sore feet home. Now the oven had gone out, the kitchen was rapidly getting colder.

“Why’d you say yes?” Eveline said.

“Because I called her Sacagawea,” Beth said.

“You don’t have to, you know,” Eveline said, regretting the words the moment they were out of her mouth.

“Well I’m not letting you take her.”

“Too bloody right – me, drive that thing? I’d blow meself up.”

“No, you’d just stall her and make a mess of the engine.”

“I meant, I can find another way to get there.”

“Fast enough and without taking a horse? Besides... I want to.” Beth’s eyes gleamed. “I want to find out how fast she’ll really go.”

“Right,” Eveline said. “Er... how fast do you think she might go?

“Let’s see, shall we?”

“Mm, let’s,” Eveline said. Eveline Duchen, I suspect you’re going to regret this.

 

 

IT WAS AN overheard conversation between two of the staff that gave Eveline her next move. First, she did a little more late night exploring; she made certain enquiries, and took careful note of the social columns of the newspapers that the staff left lying about. Then, she managed to arrange an extra French lesson alone with Mon Sewer. Once she was certain they weren’t going to be interrupted, she cut across his explanation of the Future Perfect (she didn’t care about Future Perfect, she was more interested in Future Possible).

“I hear you’re leaving us to get married, monsewer,” she said.

“Monsieur. Monsieur. Really, Duchen, I thought your pronunciation had improved.”

“Oh, I dunno, monsewer, I think sewer’s just about right for you. Or would you prefer...” she switched to a perfect imitation of his own accent, “Monsieur Merde?”

“What?” He spun around on his shiny, black shoes so fast he skidded and almost fell. “How dare you!”

“I dare ’cos I know all about you, monsewer. And I been wondering if maybe there’s a few other people should know all about you, too.” She slid onto his desk, and sat there, swinging her feet. “About you and Treadwell, maybe.”

His face froze. Eveline could see the pulse beating in his temple.

“Because that’s the sort of thing a lady who’s getting married might want to know about her beloved husband-to-be, don’t you think? Especially a nice, rich lady.”

“What nonsense has the girl been telling you?”

“Treadwell? Oh, she en’t told me nothing, monsewer. She don’t think anyone knows. But I know. And I know she isn’t the only one.” That was a risk, she didn’t know for certain, but she was pretty sure. She knew the type, and given the chance they were like foxes in a hencoop; they couldn’t stop at one. At least a fox didn’t pretend it was doing the chickens a favour. “And since you’re going to be marrying such a lovely, generous lady, I reckon there’ll be some money to spare, don’t you? Five hundred, maybe?” Beth hadn’t asked for nearly that much, but there was no point being skimpy.

Colour flared along his cheekbones. “You... you... petit salope!” He made for her, and Evvie slid off the desk and danced out of the way behind it.

“Oh, and don’t think about something happening to Treadwell, or me. There’s letters, all over, I left ’em with a bunch of people. I left one with the man who got me in here. Either of us gets sick or has maybe an accident or something like that, them letters is going to get sent. Sent to your pretty fiancée and her parents. Sent to the Times. Sent to the House of Commons. Sent to the Reverend at that nice little church you got set for the wedding. St James’s, eh? Right posh, that is.”

He gripped the edge of the desk. “Who will believe the word of a little street thief?”

“Who says I signed ’em?” she said. “Oh, they may not believe ’em, and even if they did ask, I bet Treadwell won’t say a word. But that’s how rumours get started, isn’t it? Rumours that might make a lady look very carefully at who she’s getting married to, and what she might do about keeping her money in trusts, so Dear Husband don’t have a lot in his pocket for going on the town and getting up to pursuits unsuitable to a married gentleman.”

He lunged around the desk, and the knife she’d concealed up her sleeve shot into her hand, gleaming in the weak afternoon sunlight.

He blinked at it. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Little street thief, you said. Yes, I am. I had to use this more’n once not to get used like you done Treadwell, so don’t think I won’t. Protecting my honour, I am. They’ll believe me about that. I found them books and pictures, too. And some of them are still where you hid ’em – but some ain’t.”

He hadn’t even been that careful about hiding the pictures. Maybe the thought of one of the girls finding them and being too shocked and embarrassed to say anything had added to his excitement.

“One more thing, monsewer,” she said. He looked at her with a dislike so intense it should have burned her skin like etching-acid. She grinned, but it was a fox-grin, sly and full of teeth. “This place, it’s turned out to be a proper education and no mistake. I’m getting good at doing what we’re taught here. See, I’m like a sparrow, me. I get everywhere. Can’t tell me from a thousand others, once I’m in amongst ’em. And those letters, they’re staying where they are, even once you’re gone from here. But me, I’ll be keeping an eye on you. I think you’d best leave Treadwell alone, don’t you? And any of the other girls. And any maids, and any daughters you have.” He actually managed to look shocked at that, which she ignored. “From now on you’d better be keeping that cock of yours for your wife and her only, and treat her decent, because it seems to me you’re getting far better than you deserve.”

He writhed like a worm on a fishhook, but in the end, he complied. Two days later she had the money in her hand. She’d made an enemy, she knew; but so long as he believed in the letters, she reckoned she was safe.

So she’d probably better write them. At least her penmanship and grammar had improved enough while she was here that they probably wouldn’t read as though they came from a little street thief.

 

 

“HOW DID YOU... no, don’t tell me,” Beth said, at the same time as Eveline said, “You don’t need to know. So, how long before we get the stuff?”

“Some of it not long; the rest, weeks, probably. I have to get a message to the blacksmith’s son in the village, and he’ll get it for me, and deliver it to the rear gate that no-one uses.”

“Weeks? We can’t wait that long.”

“Well, she’ll run as she is, just not as well. And if it rains, we’ll get wet.”

“I slept out in the rain often enough.”

“Oh, you won’t be sleeping,” Beth said, with a grin. “I’m almost sure of that.”

 

 

COLLAPSING AGAINST THE corridor wall between classes, Eveline felt a presence and opened her eyes. Treadwell was standing in the corridor, looking at her.

“I gotta go.” Eveline pushed herself away from the wall.

“You had a French class.” Treadwell had turned away and was looking out of the window.

Eveline looked at her back. She could see the blonde curls trembling slightly. “Yes.” Did Treadwell somehow know, what she’d done to Monsewer? How?

“He’s... he’s... you have to be careful.” Even from behind, the rigidity of Treadwell’s posture was obvious. “He’s a bad man.”

“Oh, listen, ’sall right.”

“No, it isn’t. You don’t know.”

“Treadwell, I know, all right? I dealt with it.”

“How?” Treadwell’s hands gripped the windowsill.

“I put him off. And I don’t think he’s going to mess with no-one else while he’s here, neither.”

“What? What did you do?”

Eveline wasn’t going to confess to blackmail. “You know what? If it was up to me, wouldn’t just be in here they taught Bartitsu. Most girls I know could do with knowing it. Next time anyone tries it on, maybe a person oughta use some of the moves on them. See if she can give him something to remember her by. ’Specially if maybe she happens to be good at Bartitsu, like you are. I got to go to class.”

“Wait.”

“I’m late.”

 

 

THE SACAGAWEA PUTTERED gently out of its tumbledown shed, shuddering beneath them. Its makeshift engine hummed as quietly as a purring cat, an odd blue-green light flithering over it like marsh-gas. Eveline wondered what the two of them must look like, muffled in cloaks and goggles, her keeping her eyes open for trouble, Beth muttering over her instruments.

She had created an ingenious device of branches sweeping behind them and a box of fallen leaves to cover their tracks, and Eveline had dealt with the dogs by means of some stolen meat and a raid on the box of patent medicines that Miss Prayne kept in her room. Eveline clung to whatever came to hand and tried not to squeak whenever they ran over a bump. Two carriage lamps hung from hooks at the front, but they wouldn’t risk lighting them until they were out of the grounds.

The girls had their nightgowns on under the clothes they wore in the Old Barn. Eveline had insisted.

“Why?” Beth asked.

“If something happens and we’re caught in the grounds, you were sleepwalking, I saw you go out and followed you to bring you back.”

Beth looked at her with admiration bordering on fear.

They had decided to go out by the rear gate. It had a much simpler lock than the main one. The padlock was horribly stiff, and Eveline broke two hairpins wrestling with it, expecting any minute to hear shouts and see lanterns bobbing among the trees. Then Beth pushed her impatiently aside and dripped something from a nozzle into the lock, after which, with a little more persuasion, it snicked open.

Then there was the path through a thin belt of woodland, and more rattling until Eveline was fairly sure every bone she had was out of its socket. At least it was a good clear night, with a hard frost and a bright moon. Rain would have made everything harder, and slower.

It was slow enough as it was. She knew from the maps that Watford wasn’t far, and Beth seemed sure they’d make it there and back with time to spare, but she herself wasn’t convinced. They’d had to wait until everyone was well abed, and it was already past eleven before they got away. Now they were going at little more than walking pace.

Finally the road appeared through the trees – a flat grey ribbon like a frozen river. They bumped and rattled their way to the fringe of the wood, and there it was, in the moonlight, clear and silent.

“Well,” Eveline said. Suddenly, she had no idea which way to turn. When she had arrived, had they turned left or right into the gate? But that had been a different gate. She swallowed hard and turned to Beth. “Beth...”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know which way.”

The moonlight gleamed on the lenses of Beth’s goggles, turning them white, as she tilted her head up and looked at the stars, bright and sharp as needlepoints pricking through black silk. “It’s all right,” she said. “I do.” She hauled on the wheel – a giant cogwheel from who-knew-what, wrapped in cloth to stop the teeth jabbing into her hands – and sent the Sacagawea in a ponderous turn to the right. This surface was definitely smoother, Eveline thought. Maybe they would be able to go a little faster.

Beth lit one of the lanterns, then paused. “There’s got to be a more efficient way to do this,” she muttered. “I should be able to feed power from the... hmm. Yes.”

“Beth?”

Beth gripped the wheel, her shoulders hunched, staring ahead. Something about her posture worried Eveline. She looked as though she might leap out of the makeshift cab and scuttle back to the school.

“Beth?”

“You might want to sit down now,” Beth said. “And hold on.”

“All right.” Eveline sat gingerly on the bench, hoping it wouldn’t collapse into sawdust beneath her, and gripped the side of the cab.

The engine’s purr deepened. The bluegreen light that fluttered and gleamed among the coils flickered faster.

The Sacagawea began to roll, the road unfolding smoothly before her. The trees swept up, and strolled past.

Then they weren’t strolling any more. Wind whipped Eveline’s hood from her hair and sent her coat billowing out like a sail.

She gripped the side of the cab, feeling rust beneath her fingers. “Beth, what are you doing?”

“Testing the engine!” Beth laughed aloud. “Oh, I knew I was right, I knew it! Come on, my beautiful, come on!”

“Beth! We’ll hit something! Even trains don’t go this fast!” Trees were whisking past her like twigs blown on the wind. The moon raced them above the treetops, smiling serenely down, and Eveline stared at it and wondered how it went so fast. A moth batted her face, some creature’s eyes glowed like twin moons in the undergrowth. They shot through a village, rattlebang along the street, the houses in the swinging lantern light like faces shocked from sleep.

Rattle, jangle, twang, clank, ping, swish, vrrrrrrr... The Sacagawea sang her mad chorus along the moonlit road and Eveline held on with both hands, tried to swallow her stomach back down where it belonged and hoped that Beth knew how to stop this crazed machine.

After an hour of this, Eveline began to believe that the machine wasn’t going to blow up or fall apart. She unclenched her teeth a little. The outskirts of the town were on them suddenly, buildings poking up out of the night. Eveline tugged on Beth’s shoulder. “Slow down!” she shouted.

“Why?”

“Because this ain’t the country any more! Even this time a’ night there’ll be folk around, so haul back before we come round a corner and find we’re nose-to with the London mail coach.”

With obvious reluctance, Beth pulled on a lever and the Sacagawea slowed, the feathery bluegreen light around the coils dropping back from its feverish coruscation to a soft shimmer.

The chorus of creaks, groans, pings and twangs also died back, though some of the rattling had got more persistent. Eveline’s backside felt like dough kneaded by a bad cook.

She took a breath that was laden with hot metal and sewage and coal. A faint, persistent thumping, a labouring heartbeat, undercut the silence.

“Phew,” Beth said. “What’s that smell? And the noise?”

“I know, stinks, dunnit? I’d forgotten. London’s worse, though. The noise is factories.”

“Where now?”

“Thought you were the navigator.”

“I got us to the town, Eveline. I don’t know where the house is.”

“It’s off the main street. Just go along, slow. I’ll recognise it.” But the town seemed much bigger than it had been, and the street they had entered by was not the one she remembered. Ghosts of herself and Charlotte trudging along a snowy street haunted her memory – but it hadn’t been this street. They passed a blacksmith – there had been no blacksmith, in her time, or if there had she didn’t remember it. There should be a draper, Hadforth and Sons, was that the name? But no Hadforth and Sons appeared.

With increasing desperation she looked for a landmark; any landmark. Over to their left she could see the sullen furnace glow of the underlit clouds: the factories. Uncle James’s house had been closer to them. She remembered the river of millworkers passing under her window. “Over that way,” she said.

They worked their way slowly towards the glow, thud and boom becoming deeper, more solid, until it pounded up through the wheels like a fist. The Sacagawea seemed to shake more in protest, and an occasional ping added itself to the chorus of noises.

Eveline tried to watch out for anyone taking an untoward interest in the two young women and their odd machine, at the same time as she stared about for something she recognised. A familiar tall-hatted silhouette made her gasp and duck.

“What is it?” Beth said.

“Peeler. Quick, turn down there, maybe he hasn’t seen us!”

“I can’t turn down there, it’s too narrow! Besides, we’re not breaking the law!”

“Aren’t we?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well go slow and smile sweet,” Eveline hissed, “like the actress said, and keep yer fingers crossed he’s thinking about his nice warm bed and don’t want to stop us just on the off-chance.”

The policeman raised a curious brow at them, but in the end only touched the brim of his helmet with his fingers as they puttered past, rattlebang, purr, ping, ping, ping. Eveline kept her head down. Unlikely a peeler in Watford would know her face, but you never knew.

“What actress?” Beth said.

“What?”

Ping, ping, ping, ping, clank.

“Oh, bother. What actress were you talking about?”

“No-one real, ’sa joke. What’s wrong?”

“It’s one of the eccentric rods – it’s shifted and it’s hitting the regulator.”

“Is that bad?”

“I’ll have to adjust it.”

“We can’t stop!”

“We’ll have to.”

“Wait... look! It’s there,” Eveline said. “It’s right there. You can stop.”

“We’re stopping anyway.” They rolled to a halt, a final ping sounding forlornly, a single tiny noise against the huge thunder of the factories.

There were the lions with their blank shields, sneering at the empty street; the big ugly house, up to its ankles in the dank gloom of the laurels, its windows frowning down. Eveline felt cold dark swamp her, as though the night itself had clamped around her like a wet, filthy cloth.

They had made it. And she felt nothing but a powerful desire to turn tail and head back, anywhere, anywhere away from this house.