The Sea Peoples(65)
If I were no better liar than that I’d still be in a straitjacket! Hildred thought; then he chuckled.
“But that’s enough of old, unhappy things,” he said. “Where are you going?”
Louis looked after his brother officers who had now almost reached Broadway.
“We had intended to sample a Brunswick cocktail, but to tell you the truth I was anxious for an excuse to go and see Hawberk instead. Come along, I’ll make you my excuse.”
Hildred turned to follow his cousin’s eager step, striding out with his spurs jingling and his riding crop tapping at the top of his high polished black boots. A flash of tawny hair caught John’s attention, and frustration nearly drove him into mindless fury as nothing happened when he tried to jerk head and eyes around.
Pip! he thought. Was that Pip? How could Pip and the others be in this place?
The thought of her made his mind work a little better, less blurred and dull.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BETWEEN WAKING WORLD AND SHADOW
“Here he comes,” Pip murmured.
They spread out a little and trailed Hildred Castaigne and the man in uniform who could have been his brother and was almost certainly his cousin Louis. They walked directly to Hawberk’s shop, and the armorer was outside on the sidewalk, neatly attired in a fresh suit of pale linen sniffing the air.
“I had just decided to take Constance for a little stroll before dinner,” he replied to the impetuous volley of questions from Louis. “We thought of walking on the park terrace along the North River.”
He nodded to Hildred. “Did you meet the young lady from Australia?”
Hildred looked puzzled. “No . . . from Australia, you say?”
“Yes, she and her party; they said . . .”
He broke off as his daughter emerged, opening her pale mauve parasol against the bright afternoon sun.
“Oh, hello, my dear! Here are Louis and Hildred, by a happy chance.”
Pip was watching them in the reflections they made in a shop-window, but even with dust and distortion it was plain how Constance grew pale and then flushed by turns as Louis bent over her small gloved fingers. That was the full I-kiss-your-hand treatment, evidently something special because Constance’s blush turned to absolute crimson for an instant.
Good for you, my girl, Pip thought, briefly amused.
Then she caught a glimpse of Hildred’s eyes, and felt herself recoil.
And I don’t shock easily, she thought.
“Do come with us!” Constance said. “It’s a lovely spring evening, just right for a stroll, and I’ve been shut up in the shop all day.”
“I’m desolated, Miss Hawberk, but I was going to dine soon with some friends at my club . . .”
“Nonsense, old man!” his cousin said. “You’re coming with us! I know those friends of yours—nothing but blather about revolting French novels. Fresh air will do you good, Hildred.”
“Yes, do come, Mr. Castaigne,” Constance said.
He hesitated; Pip saw his eyes dart towards his cousin and then back at Constance, and he smiled with a practiced expression, and they all set off.
He wants to keep an eye on them, Pip guessed. He’s not interested in the girl himself, you can tell that by the way he looks at them and holds himself. But seeing them together makes him very, very bloody angry.
That puzzled her, until she thought of some times she’d had with her disgustingly numerous and even more disgustingly ambitious cousins. Pip was an only child as her mother had been before her, but her paternal aunts and uncles had bred like rabbits . . . and once they weren’t children anymore, the offspring had quivered with anxiety and anger whenever it seemed that there was any possibility of her marrying.
Because then Daddy would have an heir for his heir, and they’d be out of the line of succession. Particularly if he does modernize the terminology and make himself King of Townsville. Which makes sense if Mr. Hildred Castaigne intends to make himself a King here, though that seems rather mad. But then again, he is rather mad, what?
Hildred looked jaunty with a flower in his buttonhole, whistling now and then and swinging his walking-stick. Pip envied it a little; it was more like what she usually carried than . . .
This damned brolly, she thought, stopping to look in a shop-window for a moment. It’s useable, but it makes me nervous. You should be able to handle things by instinct in a dustup.
The others followed her lead; none of them had been specifically trained in how to track someone in a city, but they were all natural hunters and very experienced and none of them was stupid. The rather shabby neighborhood where Hawberk’s shop was located—and that of the mysterious Repairer of Reputations—gave way to more prosperous-looking streets, though still insanely crowded by her standards.
Still, that makes it easier to do the tail.
Instants after that, the four they were following got on a large boxy vehicle that slid along the street on rails set into the pavement. For a moment Pip simply stared; then she remembered the similar system they had in Darwin—albeit pulled by horses, not pushed by the legendary force of electricity, which must be what those sparking poles on top running up to the wires slung overhead were for.
Bless a classical education! she thought. I shall never mock Miss Blandish’s Pre-Blackout Sciences class again!
The driver clucked at them and pointed at a box for fares. Thora reached into her handbag and pulled out a handful of the local currency and offered it; that had apparently been supplied, as their imaginary swords had been changed for equally imaginary—but also legendary—guns.