Page 94 of Infamous

‘Well, I should arrange to go sooner than that,’ said Liza. ‘I will be returning tomorrow. I can escort you.’

Half of Eddie’s mind immediately fled home to London, and the other half hovered, clinging to Nash and the promise of the letter from his editor. Perhaps all was not lost, if she departed. Perhaps she could have both.

‘I have finished my novel,’ she said, addressing Nash. ‘If I go now .?.?. I shall see you in London, when you return? And .?.?. and when I have pieced my manuscript back together, we will send it to your publisher for review?’

She knew she sounded desperate, completely at odds with the tone of the conversation they were having, but if he agreed to all in front of Liza then perhaps that meant it would truly happen. She would not go home empty-handed.

Liza raised her eyebrows at this, but Nash nodded effusively.

‘Of course! Of course. And if this is not quite the right thing, then I’m sure the next thing .?.?.’

Eddie nodded, placated. They did not have to be the best of friends. She did not have to condone everything he might have done in the past, or the person he continued to be. She felt older, now. Wiser. Perhaps it washerturn to set the rules of engagement – to make clear the boundaries, so that there were no more misunderstandings about the nature of their connection.

She would go home to retrieve her manuscript, and have things out with Rose, and eat three meals a day cooked by somebody competent under the roof of a house she trusted not to collapse on her in her sleep. She might have worried that Nash would be angry at her for departing – that he would write her off as a coward, unable to weather the storms of St Bede’s – except that his mood seemed entirely changed this morning.

‘Is Henry all right?’ she ventured.

Nash glanced up at her and then shrugged, a dismissive roll of his shoulders.

‘I’m sure he’s just fine.’

This did not even begin to answer her question, but as he sat down at the table, Eddie noticed that the silver locket was no longer hanging around his neck.

Perhaps therehadbeen a shot, but it had left both Nash and Henry unscathed. Perhaps it really had just been a tree branch breaking. Perhaps all that had happened the night before had been a long, strange nightmare, from the moment she ate those damned mushrooms.

Regardless, it was more than a little unnerving, watching him shrug this off entirely and then sit down at the table with his wife and pull the plate of eggs towards him, merrily tucking into the two that Eddie had, in fact, cooked for herself. Valentine and Kitty came down and betrayed no hint of surprise when they saw Liza sitting at the table. They greeted her amiably, Valentine limped off to fetch more food, and then they indulged in a friendly, polite breakfast, without a whiff of violence or paganism about it.

Eddie watched it unfold in silence, as if it were a play.

‘I brought my maid with me,’ Liza said. ‘She cannot cook to save her life, but shecanheat water for baths. I had asked her to draw me one, but, Miss Miller, perhaps you would like to .?.?.’

She gestured at Eddie, who touched a hand to her hair and accidentally set off a small avalanche of dried mud.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I .?.?. I will.’

The bath had been arranged in the Gold Chamber, Nash and Liza’s room, which Eddie had never before had cause to enter; she crossed the threshold tentatively, taking in the ornate four-poster and the sheer volume of gilt in the room. It only looked like Nash at all because of themess: piles of clothes on the floor; empty liquor bottles on the baroque dresser; a colony of books and parchment on the desk where apparently hehadput pen to paper at some point. The fire was mercifully lit, the bath tucked behind a silk screen; Eddie felt tears spring to her eyes when she stepped into it and was pleasantly scalded up to her knees.

It was impossible not to think of Rose, sinking down among the curling steam. She would likely haunt every bath Eddie took for the rest of her life. All the anger that Eddie had been using to keep thoughts of her at bay had been replaced with utter exhaustion, and thus depleted, she couldn’t really find it in herself to hate her.

In fact, Eddie missed her so much that she felt herself start to cry with relief at the thought that she was going home to her, even if they were sure to quarrel. Even if nothing could be as it had been before.

When she was scrubbed clean and hot through, the water murky with the residue of her night in the woods, Eddie stepped out and wrapped herself in the towel that had been left neatly folded on a chair. She felt stupefied and off kilter, the comfort a shock to her system after being cold for so long, and the dash she attempted to get back to her room without being spotted was more of a stagger.

It was a good thing that she wasn’t going at top speed, because when she entered her bedroom, she ran straight into Valentine.

Chapter Thirty-two

‘Christ, be careful – I cannot lose the other ankle, I’ll have to slither out of here like a worm.’

Eddie was too confused to laugh.

‘What are you doing in my room?’

‘Um .?.?.’ said Valentine. ‘You are losing your towel.’

Eddie fixed this post-haste. As she did so, she noticed a brown package sitting incongruously on her unmade bed. It had already been haphazardly torn open at one end.

‘What’s that?’ she said.