The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

but Miss Temple was not convinced it was where they ought to go. It seemed more likely that what they really needed—clothing, shoes, their comrades—would be found elsewhere, in some back room like the one where she’d met Farquhar and Spragg, the furniture covered with white sheets, the table littered with bottles and food. She reached for Elöise’s hand and had just found it when a noise behind caused them both to turn and break the grip. Marching toward them, driving the hurrying guests to either side of the corridor, an action marooning Miss Temple even more obviously in its middle, was a double line of red-jacketed Dragoons in tall black boots, a scowling officer at their head. She nodded Elöise urgently into the crowd but was herself jostled back into the soldiers’ path, ridiculously in their way. The officer did his best to stare her down, and she looked again to Elöise—vanished behind a pair of waspish gentlemen in oyster grey riding cloaks. The guests around them stopped to watch the impending collision. The officer snapped his hand up and his men immediately stamped themselves to a concise, orderly halt. The corridor was suddenly silent…a silence that allowed Miss Temple to hear what would have been a previously inaudible chuckle, somewhere behind her. She slowly turned to see Francis Xonck, smoking a cheroot, head cocked in an utterly contemptuous bow.

    “What pearls are found,” he drawled, “unexpected and unlooked-for, in the wilds of Harschmort House…”
    He stopped speaking as he took in the markings on her face. Miss Temple did not reply, merely inclining her head to acknowledge his authority.
    “Miss Temple?” he asked, curious and warily skeptical. She dropped into a simple, bobbing curtsey, and rose again.
    He glanced once at the officer, and reached out to take hold of her jaw. She passively allowed him to move her head around however he liked, never making a sound. He stepped away, staring at her evenly.
    “Where have you come from?” he said. “You will answer me.”
    “The theatre,” she said, as thickly as she could. “There was a fire—”
    He did not let her finish, sticking the cheroot into his mouth and reaching forward with his one unbandaged hand to fondle her breast. The crowd around them gasped at the cold determination of his face as much as his brazen action. With the sternest resolve Miss Temple’s voice did not shift in the slightest, nor did she pause as he continued to forcefully grope across her body.
    “—from the lamps, there was smoke, and shooting…it was Doctor Svenson. I did not see him…I was on the table. Miss Poole—”
    Francis Xonck slapped Miss Temple hard across the face.
    “—disappeared. The soldiers took me off the table.”
    As she spoke, just as she had seen in the theatre, and with pleasure, her hand shot out toward Francis Xonck, doing her level best to stab him in the face with the serpentine dagger. Unfortunately, he had seen the blow coming. He parried the blow with his arm against her wrist, then took hold of her wrist and squeezed. As it would give her away to struggle, Miss Temple released the dagger, which hit the floor with a clang. Francis Xonck lowered her hand to her side, and stepped away. She did not move. He looked past her at the officer, flared his nostrils in a sneer—which she was sure meant the officer had shown his disapproval of what he’d just witnessed—and picked up the dagger. He stuck it in his belt and turned on his heels, calling airily over his shoulder.
    “Bring the lady with you, Captain Smythe—and quickly. You’re
late
.”

    Miss Temple could only risk the barest glance for Elöise as she walked away, but Elöise was gone. Captain Smythe had taken her by the arm, not roughly but with insistence, enforcing her compliance with their speed. She allowed herself a look at the officer, masking herself with an expression of bovine disinterest, and saw a face that reminded her of Cardinal Chang, or of the Cardinal beset with the burdens of command, hated superiors, fatigue, self-disgust, and of course without the disfigurement of his eyes. The Captain’s eyes were dark and warmer than the bitter lines around them seemed to merit. He glanced down at her with brisk suspicion and she returned her attention to the receding, well-tailored back of Francis Xonck, parting the crowds ahead of them with the imperious ease of a surgeon’s scalpel.
    He led them through the thickest knots of the