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The shop was tidy,A secretive sone, she could finally sneak through the hidden door in her closet She had business to attend to on the roof, after all
Hours later, as she prepared to drag herself inside and into bed, her eye was caught by aFrannie’s row house had the tallest façade on the block, but there were decorative s in the brick to encourage proper air flow She could easily see what occurred on all the other roofs, which was lanced over, hopeful that perhaps the last of her clever crows had found its way ho else would be about on the roof, in the er until a yawn nearly cracked her jaw, then finally went inside and gave in to sleep
When Tho the shop for the third unnecessary time His knock was soft, and the first rays of the sun barely painted him pink when she unlocked the door and shyly let hi a different skirt this time--a kilt, she reminded herself Her curiosity had been piqued by their last conversation, and she had looked up Edinburgh in her atlas to brush up on what little she had been taught about Scotland For a country that was bloody close, things up north were terribly strange, and men with bare knees were the least of it Compared with the native creatures of his ho his skin must have seemed but a minor inconvenience He certainly didn’t see state of undress
Clad all in grays and browns, he al of London His eyes were the lone bit of nature, warrinned at her, and when he spoke, his voice was soft enough to keep fro up the still-sleepy creatures
"Ready to do some work, lass?"
"I aed amiably and scratched his chin He looked re fires all night, but she handed him her flask anyway
"Bit early for whiskey, aye?" he said, but then he sly "Coffee" He sipped it "With goat ly
"I havehis incredulity For a quiet London lass in a doeed suit, she held quite a few secrets As long as Thom never found his way to the roof, she didn’t have lass andit into the shop before we head upstairs to assess the daers They’d steal the hoses off the truck, if eren’t careful"
He eased a cart through the door, careful of the old boards and wrapped bit of glass Frannie locked the door behind hi It was even stranger when he followed her past the curtain and up the narrow steps to the upstairs hall and into her roo kerfuffle had ended worse than badly
Tho as he ran a leather-gloved finger over the jagged, fire-darkened ree last night, but the Brigade didn’t do this Did you break it trying to escape?"
Frannie calass It wasn’t the newer, thinner glass that one could easily see through, but had been original to the house, too heavy to let in anything but a token bit of light
"I didn’t touch the glass There was smoke everywhere, and the curtains were on fire I didn’t even look, really But it would have taken a lot of force to do this e, correct? It’s as thick as my thumb!"
Thom looked out the ,the street below Much to Frannie’s surprise, he dropped to his hands and knees and began to crawl around on the fire-blackened wood boards She hadn’t installed her new curtains yet, and the light through the broken glass laid the room’s every fault bare She was lected dustbunnies were one step away fro a crude device of charred metal and fabric, Frannie was more confused and embarrassed than concerned After all, she hadn’t le ti around under there, either Having grown up with aabout under a pitch-dark bed wasn’t so that interested her
"Tell e" She had many secrets, but no one knew about the her home and shop on fire would have rendered the the object over in his dusty leather gloves Although he held it easily in one large hand, when he gave it to her, she needed both hands to ht of it
"An incendiary device" She cocked her head at him and raised an eyebrow, a trick she had picked up fro hers, to point at a blackened, pointy part "Bit like a fire lighter See, here, where the bit of slate strikes the flint? My best guess is that soh your hile it was on fire That would explain why the flames were concentrated on the curtains, aye?"
Frannie handed it back to hih, his vocabulary was rather crisp She stood before the , the skin crawling on her neck as she thought about the only person who’d ever tried to hurt her But this--this wasn’t his style She was fairly certain it couldn’t be the neighbors, either The building across the street ned by a baker, and she knew the fainated there In any case, the baker’s roof was sloped, not high and flat like her own
"It must have come fro burned"
He shrugged, his shoulders stretching the gray coat "Plenty of arson in this city, most of it never explained to ht?"