The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

flexed her fingers wickedly at Miss Temple. “But then again, you know, I am quite happy to be as tall and slender as I am.”
    “I suppose you prefer Mrs. Marchmoor’s bosom above all,” said Miss Temple, her voice sounding just a bit raw, attempting to rally her caustic wit. Miss Vandaariff shook her head girlishly.
    “No, I don’t like her one jot,” she said. “She is too coarse. I prefer people around me to be smaller and fine and elegant. LikeCaroline—who pours tea as sweetly as anyone I have ever met, and whose neck is pretty as a swan’s.”
    Before Caroline could speak—a response that surely would have been an answering praise of Miss Vandaariff’s features—they heard a discreet tap at the door. A maid opened it to reveal three soldiers. It was time to depart. Miss Temple tried to will herself to run at the window and hurl herself through. But she could not move—and then Caroline was taking her hand.
    They were not half-way down the mirrored corridor when behind them erupted a clatter of bootsteps. Miss Temple saw the whiskered man, Blenheim, whom she took to be Lord Vandaariff’s chamberlain, racing toward them with a group of red-coated Dragoons in his wake. He carried a carbine, and all of the Dragoons held their saber-sheaths so they would not bounce as they ran.
    In a moment his group had passed them by, running ahead to one of the doors on the far right side … a room—she had tried to maintain Harschmort’s geography in her head as they walked—that bordered the exterior of the house. Caroline pulled on her hand, walking more quickly. Miss Temple could see that they were nearing the very door she had gone through with the Contessa, where she had previously found her robes, the room that led to the medical theatre … it seemed a memory from another lifetime. They kept walking. They had reached it—should she try to run?—Caroline did not release her hand but nodded to one of the soldiers to get the door. Just then the door ahead of them—where Blenheim’s party had gone—burst open, spewing a cloud of black smoke.
    A Dragoon with a soot-smeared face shouted to them, “Water! Water!”
    One of the Macklenburg men turned at once and ran back down the hall. The Dragoon disappeared back through the open door, and Miss Temple wondered if she dared dash toward it, butagain before she could move, her hand was squeezed by Caroline and she was pulled along. One of the remaining Macklenburg troopers opened the door to the inner room and the other anxiously shepherded them inside away from the smoke. As the door shut behind them Miss Temple was sure she heard an escalation of shouts and the echoing clamor of more bootsteps in the marble hall.
    It was once more silent. Caroline nodded to the first soldier and he crossed to the far door, the one cunningly set into the wall, and vanished through it. The remaining man installed himself at the hallway entrance, hands behind his back, and his back square against the door. Caroline looked around, to make certain all was well, and released her grip on their hands.
    “There is no need to worry,” she said. “We will merely wait until the disturbance is settled.”
    But Miss Temple could see that Caroline
was
worried.
    “What do you think has happened?” she asked.
    “Nothing that Mr. Blenheim has not dealt with a thousand times before,” Caroline replied.
    “Is there really a
fire
?”
    “Blenheim is horrid,” said Lydia Vandaariff, to no one in particular. “When I have my way he will be
sacked
.”
    Miss Temple’s thoughts began to race. On the far side of the theatre was another waiting room—perhaps that was where the soldier had been forced to go … she remembered that her own first visit had revealed the theatre to be empty. What if she were to run to the theatre now? If it was empty again might not she climb into the gallery and then to the spiral staircase, and from there—she knew!—she could retrace the path of Spragg and Farquhar across the grounds and through the servants’ passage back to the coaches. And it was only running on floors and carpets and the grassy garden—she could do it with bare feet! All she needed was a momentary distraction.…
    Miss Temple manufactured a gasp of shock and whispered urgently to Miss Vandaariff. “Lydia! Goodness—do you not see you are most lewdly exposed!”
    Immediately Lydia looked down at her robes and plucked at them without finding any flaw, her voice rising in a