The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

apparently grievous and painful injury he had suffered to his arm. She wondered how it had happened, and idly wished she might have witnessed it.
    The two men then stepped forward to pay their respects to the Contessa. Xonck first bowed and extended his hand for hers, taking it and raising it to his lips. As if Miss Temple had not been enough abased, she was aghast at the discreet wrinkling of Francis Xonck’s nose as he held the Contessa’s hand—the same that had been between her legs. With a wicked smile, looking into the Contessa’s eyes—the Contessa who exchanged with him a fully wicked smile of her own—Xonck, instead of kissing the fingers, ran his tongue deliberately along them. He released the hand with a click of his heels and turned to Miss Temple with a knowing leer. She did not extend her hand and he did not reach out to take it, moving on to nod at the Comte with an even wider smile. But Miss Temple paid him no more attention, her gaze fixed despite herself on Roger Bascombe’s own kiss of the Contessa’s hand. Once more she saw her scent register—though Roger’s notice was marked by momentary confusion rather than wicked glee. He avoided looking into the Contessa’s laughing eyes, administered a deft brush of his lips, and released her hand.
    “I believe you two have met,” said the Contessa.
    “Indeed,” said Roger Bascombe. He nodded curtly. “Miss Temple.”
    “Mr. Bascombe.”
    “I see you’ve lost your shoes,” he said, not entirely unkindly, by way of conversation.
    “Better my shoes than my soul, Mr. Bascombe,” she replied, her words harsh and childish in her ears, “or must I say Lord Tarr?”
    Roger met her gaze once, briefly, as if there were something he did want to say but could not, or could not in such company. He then turned, directing his voice to the Comte and Contessa.
    “If you will, we ought to be aboard—the train will leave directly.”

    Miss Temple was installed alone in a compartment in a car the party seemed to claim all for itself. She had expected—or feared—that the Comte or Contessa would use the journey to resume the abuses of her coach ride, but when the Comte had slid open the compartment door and thrust her into it she had turned to find him still in the passageway shutting it again and walking impassively from sight. She had tried to open the door herself. It was not locked, and she had poked her head out to see Francis Xonck standing in conversation some yards away with the Macklenburg officer. They turned at the sound of the door with expressions of such unmitigated and dangerous annoyance that Miss Temple had retreated back into the compartment, half-afraid they were going to follow. They did not, and after some minutes of fretful standing, Miss Temple took a seat and tried to think about what she might do. She was being taken to Harschmort, alone and unarmed and distressingly unshod. What was the first stop on the way to Orange Canal—Crampton Place? Gorsemont? Packington? Could she discreetly open the compartment window and lower herself from the train in the time they might be paused in the station? Could she drop from such a height—it was easily fifteen feet—onto the rail bed of jagged stones without hurting her feet? If she could not run after climbing out she would be taken immediately, she was sure. Miss Temple exhaled and shut her eyes. Did she truly have any choice?
    She wondered what time it was. Her trials with the book and in the coach had been extremely taxing and she would have dearly loved a drink of water and even more a chance to shut her eyes in safety. She pulled her legs onto her seat and gathered her dress around them, curling up as best she could, feeling like a transported beast huddling in a corner of its cage. Despite her best intentions Miss Temple’s thoughts wandered to Roger, and she marveled again at the distance they had traveled from their former lives. Before, in accounting for his rejection of her, she had merely been one element among many—his family, his moral rectitude—thrown to the side in favor of ambition. But now they were on the same train, only yards away from one another. Nothing stopped him from coming to her compartment (the Contessa was sure to allow it out of pure amusement) and yet he did not. For all that he too must have undergone the Process and was subject to its effects, she found his avoidance demonstrably cruel—had he not held her in his arms? Had he not an ounce