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“I don’t,” Oliver said
She looked about and noticed her brother’s back retreating froaze caly now
“Your brother doesn’t want you along,” he said “He doesn’t want to worry about your being sick or falling out of the boat and drowning”
“I won’t,” she said “I’m never sick”
“You will be if Long?”
She said, “That rhymes”
“So it does,” he said “Shall I show you the Heptaplasiesoptron? I’ll wager anything you can’t say it You’re only a girl, and girls aren’t very clever”
Her blue eyes flashed “I can too say it!”
“Go ahead, then”
She screwed up her eyes andHer expression was so coh
Longmore and Clevedon had come to Eton the year after Oliver arrived Very much to his surprise, they made a friend of him This was more or less in the way they made a pet of Lady Clara They’d dubbed him Professor Raven, which they soon whittled down to Professor
He’d comore’s father had sent an invitation to join a family excursion, and Oliver’s father said he must accept Oliver had expected to be very bored and irritated, but Vauxhall turned out to be fascinating It offered acrobats and rope dancers and trainedoptical illusions and devices, as well asthe other boys in the boat
He hadn’t planned on playing nurseirl, certainly But Lady Clara had turned out to be so out of the ordinary, rather like other Vauxhall wonders She wasn’t nearly as stupid as one would expect, considering she was, firstly, a girl and, secondly, related to Longmore No one had ever accused his lordship of intellectual prowess
She’d pronounced Heptaplasiesoptron correctly by the tiot to it Equally iht about reflections and optical tricks
After exhausting the marvels of the Pillared Saloon, they walked on to the Submarine Cave After her ladyship had her fill of that, they were reeably familiar voice called out, “That the best you can do, little cuz? She hasn’t even got bubbies yet”
He was distantly aware of his te the world through a red veil He heard hireat distance to Lady Clara “Stay,” he said
He ut
The fat must have been ave a baffled “Huh,” before punching back
Unprepared for the quick reaction, Oliver was an instant too slow to dodge, and the blow reat carcass at Oliver and knocking him down
The next he knew, Bernard was sitting on him
Oliver are of Lady Clara shouting so and trouble catching his breath
Bernard laughed
Oliver was trying to dislodge him when he heard a wild cry Lady Clara launched herself at Bernard in a flurry of punching and kicking This was so funny that for a ot he couldn’t breathe
Then he saw her lunge at Bernard, and he saw Bernard throw his arm up to shield his face Oliver wasn’t sure what happened next, but he deduced she’d run into his cousin’s knuckles or elbow, because she fell back, her hand over her mouth
Bernard leapt up and yelled, “I didn’t do anything!” And ran away
Oliver saw blood on her hand He looked about, but Bernard had vanished He’d picked his moment, as usual, when no adult witnesses were about
“The bastard,” he said “The cowardly bastard At least he could have asked if you were all right Are you all right?”
She took her hand away, then tested a tooth with her thumb “Is it broken?” she said She displayed her teeth No blood there It must be Bernard’s blood on her hand
Her teeth were impossibly white and even Except for the left front incisor
“Did the one in front always have a chip in it?” he said
She shook her head
“It does now,” he said
She shrugged “I hope the chip’s stuck in his elbow and stays there forever,” she said Then, in a whisper she added, “The bastard” And giggled
Perhaps Oliver fell in love with her then
Perhaps not
Whether he did or he didn’t, after that night he never saw Lady Clara Fairfax again
Until
Chapter One
At the head of Whitehall-street is the noted point of Charing cross; and iar square, where is to be erected a splendid naval allery of the fine arts, now in building, is on the north side of the square
—Calvin Colton, Four Years in Great Britain, 1831–35
Environs of Covent Garden, London
Wednesday 19 August 1835
Stop it!” the girl cried “Get off! I won’t go!”
Lady Clara Fairfax, about to alight from her cabriolet, couldn’t hear what the boy said, but she heard hi her away fro she was about to enter It housed the Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females
The horse safe
in her tiger’s keeping, her ladyship snatched up her whip, picked up her skirts, and ran toward the pair She struck the boy’s arh-pitched oath
He was aboy, red-haired, with a square, spotty face He wore the cheap, showy coat she’d learned to associate with the strutting ne’er-do-wells who infested the neighborhood
“Get away froet more of the same,” Clara said “Leave this place You’ve no business here Be gone before I send for a constable”
The boy eyed her in an insolentto stretch his head back and cast his beady-eyed gaze upward a distance, for Clara was not petite and he was not tall His gaze dropped to the whip in her hand, then to the dashing cabriolet behind her—from which she didn’t doubt herher umbrella
With a sneer, he said what sounded like, “You better hit harder’n that, you want me to feel it” He didn’t wait for her to hit harder, but set his hat at a very sharp angle and sauntered off
“Are you all right?” she asked Bridget
“Yes, your ladyship, and thank you ever so,” the girl said “I don’t knoas in his hter know his sort ain’t welcome here”
The Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Feious odds, to be respectable
In the ordinary way of things, girls ai to learn a trade became apprentices But London’s dressmakers could pick and choose their apprentices, and the Milliners’ Society girls were outcasts or rejects for one reason or another: The majority were too old to be apprenticed and/or they were “fallen” or carried soma