The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

refuse, then turn it to your advantage—you say you ought to be a queen—”
    “But no one will
listen
—no one
imagines
—”
    Miss Temple was growing annoyed. “If you truly want to—”
    The woman snatched up her glass. “You all sound the same, with your prideful
wisdom
—when it only serves to justify your place at my table! ‘Be free! Expand your perceptions!’ A load of mercenary rubbish!”
    “If you are so assailed,” replied Miss Temple patiently, “then how have you managed to come here, masked and alone?”
    “Why do you think?” The woman nearly spat. “The St. Royale Hotel is the only place I
can
go to! With two coachmen to make sure I am delivered and collected with no other stop in between!”
    “That is ridiculously dramatic,” said Miss Temple. “If you want to go elsewhere,
go
.”
    “How can I?”
    “I am sure the St. Royale has many exits.”
    “But then what? Then where?”
    “Any place you want—I assume you have money—it is a very large city. One simply—”
    The woman scoffed. “You have no
idea
—you cannot know—”
    “I know an insufferable child when I see one,” said Miss Temple.
    The woman looked up at her as if she had been struck, the port dulling her reactions, her expression tinged with both incomprehension and a growing fury, neither of which would do. Miss Temple stood and pointed to the somewhat isolated swathe of red drapery on the left-hand wall.
    “Do you know what that is?” she asked sharply.
    The woman shook her head. With a huff, Miss Temple walked over to the curtain and yanked it aside—her ingenious plan momentarily crushed by the flat section of wall that was revealed. But before the woman could speak, Miss Temple saw the indented spots in the painted wood—that it
was
painted wood and not plaster—where one could get a grip, and then the deftly inset hinges that told her how it opened. She wedged her small fingers into the holes and pried up the wooden shutters to reveal a darkened window, the reverse of the golden-framed Dutch mirror, offering the two of them an unobstructed view of the lobby of the St. Royale Hotel and the street front beyond.
    “Do you see?” she said, herself distracted with the strangeness of the view—she could see people who were only three feet away who could not see her. As she looked, a young woman stepped directly to the window and began to nervously pull at her hair. Miss Temple felt a discomfiting shiver of familiarity.
    “But what does it
mean
?” asked the blonde woman in a whisper.
    “Only that the world is not measured by your troubles, and that you are not the limit of the intrigue that surrounds you.”
    “What—what nonsense—it is like looking into a fish tank!”
    Then the woman’s hand went to her trembling mouth and she looked anxiously for the decanter. Miss Temple stepped to the table and pushed the tray from her reach. The woman looked up at her with pleading eyes.
    “Oh, you do not understand! In my house there are mirrors
everywhere
!”

    The door behind them opened, causing both to turn toward the waiter Poul as he escorted another lady into their private room. She was tall, with brown hair and a pretty face marred by the dimming traces of a ruddy looping scar around both eyes. Her dress was beige, set off by a darker brown fringe, and she wore a triple string of pearls tied tightly to her throat. In her hand was a small bag. She saw the women and smiled, slipping a coin to Poul and nodding him from the room as she merrily addressed them.
    “You are here! I did not know you would each be free to come—an unhoped-for pleasure, and this way you’ve had time to get acquainted by yourselves, yes?”
    Poul was gone, the door shut behind him, and she sat at the table, in Miss Temple’s former spot, moving the port glass to the side as she settled her dress. Miss Temple did not recognize her face, but she remembered the voice—in the coach to Harschmort, the woman who’d told the story of the two men undressing her. The scars on her face were fading—she’d been the one in the medical theatre talking of her changed existence, her newfound missions of power and pleasure…this was Mrs. Marchmoor…Margaret Hooke.
    “I wondered if we would meet again,” Miss Temple said to her, somewhat icily, intending to alert the blonde woman to the obvious peril this newcomer presented to them both.
    “You didn’t wonder at all, I am sure,” Mrs. Marchmoor replied. “You knew,