A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(24)
She couldn’t help but think of how she’d have fared if she was still on the street. Winter was the killing season for the poor, the season when even such a small thing as a hot potato and a blanket sometimes meant the difference between life and death. She often felt guilty that she was doing so little for the enormous problem out there in the shambles, but . . . she and Sarah only had so much money and so much time, and the problem was so . . . vast. We do what we can, she reminded herself. And we remind people like Alderscroft, who have fortunes, that they can do more.
“Cor, look!” Suki exclaimed, pointing. She and Sarah craned their necks to see there was a winter bridal procession coming out of a church, the bride wrapped in a white velvet cloak, with a white velvet dress, carrying a bouquet of holly, the rest of the wedding party in their very best gear. “Oi ain’t niver seen a widdin’ afore!” She pressed her nose even harder against the window, trying to take it all in before they got out of sight.
Neville and Grey poked their heads out of their sable muffs at her exclamation, but on discovering there was nothing that interested either of them, they pulled their heads back in again, leaving nothing but their black beaks showing. The muffs were in their carriers for extra safety in case of jounces or accident, but in this weather it was unlikely either of them would stir from the warmth of those shelters. Grey could not take the cold, and even though Neville could, he made it very clear he didn’t want to.
Suki was afire with excitement and anticipation. She was about to see her schoolmates again after a vacation of a week, and to a little girl her age, a week was nearly a century. There were going to be presents involved, and a feast of all the foreign foods she had come to enjoy—biryani, and chole bhature, rajma and pani puri, tandoori chicken and rogan josh, naan and gajar halwa. The children at the Harton School, created for the children of expatriate parents, had mostly been born in India, and had been raised on native foods. Isabella Harton understood very well how “food” meant “comfort and home,” and her Indian cooks served the kinds of spiced things most English boarding schools would look upon with horror. No bread-and-butter and milky tea for these children; they got the things they were used to. Suki, having come from the streets, would eat anything that didn’t run away fast enough to escape, and had taken to the spicy fare with relish. When she stayed on the holidays with Nan and Sarah, she ate what they ate, and what they ate were the solid—sometimes stolid—plain English dishes Mrs. Horace cooked. She never complained, but Nan knew for a fact she got tired of such plain food after having had her palate educated in the spices of India.
If they’d been making the trip without the convenience of the carriage, they’d have gotten up in the dark, gotten a hansom to the station, and taken the train, to be picked up with some of the other former schoolchildren in the school cart. It would have been very cold, and they wouldn’t have wanted to expose the birds to all the jostling, the curious, and of course, the cold itself. But with Lord A supplying his lovely carriage, they could travel in great comfort and the birds could come along too.
Sarah had brought a book to read aloud in case Suki got bored. She should have known better, Nan thought with amusement. Suki never got bored. If they were in any kind of conveyance, Suki found endless entertainment in the streets at this time of year. If there had been nothing going on, she would make up stories about the people or things they were passing by.
So Sarah silently read the book to herself, and Nan listened to Suki’s excited running commentary, and in a much shorter time than if they had been going by train, the carriage was pulling in through the gates of what once had been Lord Alderscroft’s manor, and now was the home of the Harton School.
The children had been waiting for them, because, of course, they already knew there were presents coming; they swarmed the carriage, and the coachman, laughing until he cried, got the presents down off the top and into their hands to be carried away. Suki got carried off with the horde, one of the (few) school servants got their overnight bags to take to their rooms, and Memsa’b appropriated Nan and Sarah and the birds. In no time at all they were enjoying hot tea and cakes in Memsa’b’s cozy little sitting room.
“Well, you certainly uncovered a pretty piece of work in that poor child you rescued from the asylum,” were the first words she said as soon as they were all settled and the birds had bits of cake of their own, in saucers on the floor.
“Is Amelia a problem?” Sarah asked, looking anxious.
“No—yes—well, not a problem because of who she is, but rather what she is.” Memsa’b shook her head. “She’s a very powerful . . . whatever. I am not yet certain if she is a clairvoyant or a precognitive. Or both! And absolutely no control, poor thing.” She frowned. “A year in the care of that meddling quack and she would have been mad.”
Memsa’b Harton was not a pretty woman, and never had been—but she was striking, with very defined and sculpted features, a long and graceful neck and a pair of wonderful gray eyes. Her dark hair, put up in a heavy chignon, was liberally streaked with silver now, but she seemed to Nan not to have lost a bit of her energy and vigor. Just now she wore an expression of concern.
“Has she had any more visions since she came to you?” Nan asked.
“One. And I have asked Alderscroft to have one of his London agents pursue details on the other visions. You see, that doctor she was with was not as careful about exact details as he could have been. He only made certain that there was no way in which she could have learned of the murders by some ordinary means; he did not trouble himself to find out if she had seen the murders during their commission, or before. This is why I am not certain if she is clairvoyant or precognitive. Actually I am just as glad he was so careless; he might have worked harder to force her to see things that he could have profited by.” Memsa’b sighed. “I haven’t told her that her initial visions might be precognitive, and I probably won’t. The poor child would blame herself for not preventing them. But I digress. She had another of those visions of a London in ruins, inhabited by monsters.”