Page 87 of Infamous

When dinner was finished, they sat by the fire in the drawing room for a while (Nash really did know how to build one, although whether it was necessary to snap the leg off an antique chair to add to the kindling was yet to be seen), dozing and talking in fits and starts. Eddie excused herself first, and then discovered that of course, the fire in her room was long dead. She thought about going downstairs in search of the tinderbox and some fuel, and then instead just crawled in under the bedclothes, curling in a tight ball like an iced woodlouse to try to warm her extremities. She had only been lying there for a minute or two when she suddenly got up, crossed to the door and pulled a chair in front of it, wedging it under the handle so that nobody on the other side could enter, a trick that had come in very handy against inquisitive siblings at home. She felt silly doing it, but also immediately relieved.

Despite her fortifications, she kept one eye on the door until she fell asleep.

Chapter Twenty-nine

For the next few days the remaining inhabitants of the house spent their waking hours together, huddled in the drawing room or eating increasingly odd meals in the dining room. There had been older bread in the larder, but so little of it that they had to eke it out in very small increments; there had also been preserves, but due to the lack of bread, they had taken to eating them as if they were soup or pudding. Eggs, as it turned out, were easy to prepare in a number of ways once they had managed to get the kitchen fire going, and they had quite a few of them as they had evidently been stored for baking. Juno seemed rather fond of them, which was lucky, as they had little else to give her. Nash had offered with much bravado to prepare the brace of birds they discovered, but on further inspection they had clearly been hanging for far too long, and his bluster almost turned to vomiting when they revealed themselves to be populous with maggots.

There were rather a lot of potatoes, so they fried them over the open fire. Eddie didn’t mind that part of their makeshift victuals. She felt she could have lived forever on a diet of fried potatoes and slightly runny eggs. It was, however, beginning to wear thin that she could never get comfortably warm. She wasn’t sleeping well either, dogged by a strange, sharp sort of anxiety that serrated all her thoughts and made her feel brittle and irritable.

She felt as if she had been harpooned at the end of a long length of rope, and that it led all the way to London, where Rose would be starting to make preparations for the wedding: meeting with Albert’s family; having the banns read; choosing her dress. She almost imagined that she could feel little tugs in her chest as Rose went about her business, and wondered if she was feeling that same pull, or – far more likely – if Eddie was perhaps inventing it due to being short of a few marbles from spending every waking hour hunched over her manuscript and shivering the night through.

Nash seemed too preoccupied to help much with her writing; he often disappeared from their group huddle and didn’t return for hours, although when he did he usually had some new bottle of alcohol to warm them, or some oddity he’d discovered in the depths of the house to show them.

On the third unstaffed day, very abruptly and without ceremony, Eddie finished her manuscript.

She stared down at the last line she had written, sure that there must be more – something she had forgotten or neglected – but nothing came. She got up, so that she could gaze at it from a distance, too tired to even smile. She wandered into the kitchen in a daze in search of something to eat and found all three of the others gathered solemnly around a recently deceased duck, Juno panting at their feet. She thought of announcing that she had finished writing, but something made her hesitate. She wanted to keep it her own private accomplishment for just a little longer; she would tell Nash tomorrow, when she had managed to get some sleep, and they could celebrate together.

The person she really wanted to tell was too far away to hear it.

‘Kitty shot it,’ Valentine said, of the duck. ‘Now we just have to pluck it and .?.?. you know. Remove the innards. Decide how the stove works.’

‘Remember to save the bones for later,’ Nash said, somewhat ominously.

‘What’s later?’ asked Eddie. ‘And .?.?. I know I will regret asking this, but .?.?. why does it require bones?’

‘Not all this again,’ said Kitty, rolling her eyes and pulling the duck towards her so that she could start methodically plucking it.

‘I told you we were going to let our hair down now that we are unobserved, Edie,’ said Nash. ‘And tonight is the night. The moon is full. The omens are good.’

‘You mean you’re bored,’ said Valentine. ‘And you found the secret stash of pharmaceuticals that you thought you had misplaced.’

‘That too,’ said Nash. ‘Don your finest garb, for we ride at midnight.’

‘Ride where?’ Eddie asked, still none the wiser.

‘ToHell,’ said Nash, spreading his arms wide like a priest gone wrong. He wandered away, humming, and Eddie looked at Valentine, who shrugged.

‘We are going to take lots of drugs and likely burn things while Nash screams at the moon and thinks he’s communing with Bacchus.’

‘Wear good boots,’ said Kitty. ‘It’s terribly muddy out.’

*

‘OhGod, no,’ Nash said when he saw Eddie coming down the stairs later that evening. ‘What the hell is this?’

She was wearing soft buckskin breeches and a dark tailcoat over a shirt and waistcoat; the outfit strained very slightly across her chest, but otherwise was surprisingly comfortable. Valentine had offered a top hat, but Eddie had decided this was one step too far; she had, however, accepted a pair of shiny black riding boots, which were only just too big for her. Valentine had tied her stock for her, and she had grinned like an idiot the entire time.

‘I like it,’ Eddie said, fingering the sleeve of her shirt, her confidence dented. The idea of wearing a dress in this cold had felt repugnant, and when an alternative had occurred to her, she had gone to see Valentine about making it a reality.

‘You look ridiculous.’

‘Nobody said anything about there being adress codefor summoning the Devil.’

‘Well,’ said Nash. ‘I should have. You ought to be .?.?. I don’t know. Dancing about in white muslin, barefoot, with your hair down. It’s about the spirit of the thing.’

‘It is November,’ said Eddie. ‘Youdance about in white muslin, barefoot, if it suits you.’

‘Perhaps I will,’ said Nash.