Outside, the boy paced in front of the shop until something stole his attention. His head snapped up and he trotted off, as if answering a summons. Drawn to the window to satisfy a nagging curiosity, she barely caught sight of the boy as he rounded the corner and disappeared. One of these days she’d follow him home and speak to his mother. If he had one. The thought spiraled into a plan in the back of her mind as Mary descended the stairs with a tray laden with blessed relief in the form of tea.
Edwina joined her sister behind the curtain in the back room, where Mary poured a steaming blend of chamomile tea from their mother’s pot into two chipped china cups that bore similar yet different patterns. Cherry blossoms ran around the outside rim on one, rose tendrils on the other. While the patterns were complementary, Edwina had always been embarrassed by the obvious mismatch when set side by side. But then other days she was grateful to have a china cup at all to drink from, when half the time it seemed they had to practically steal from the Fates to afford anything new. And how thoughtful of Mary to set out two slices of brown bread for them to share as well, each with a smear of butter across the top.
“Better?” Mary asked before blowing on her tea.
“Very nearly.” Edwina sipped, knowing there was no remedy like hot tea to be found in any tincture bottle or spell book. It worked for fatigue, body ache, headache, and, she supposed, mild heartache as well.
“We’ll have a nip of Father’s sherry later on the roof.” Mary lifted her brows, smiling as she drank. When she set her cup down, she got that playful look of dare in her eye. “So what did you do all day?” she asked, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Did he try to kiss you?”
The tea was helping, but Edwina was in no mood to be teased. Not with so many unfinished thoughts still swirling in her head. What was she to make of Ian and his claims of experiencing another man’s memory of murder?
“Don’t be daft,” she said. “Mr. Cameron simply wanted to see the spot where he’d been clouted, as he put it.”
“It doesn’t take four hours to walk a man down to the river and back.”
Four hours? Had it really been that long? Time had passed as though she’d fallen down the rabbit hole. But she wasn’t so thick as to believe it had anything to do with where the day had taken her. It was Ian and the way he made her feel that made time disappear. Handsome enough, Mary had called him. Yet his attractiveness was bolstered by something beyond his physical features. He was active. Bold. The sort who went after life with a club. No waiting for adventure to come to him. He hunted it down, skinned it, and wore it like a trophy. She envied and admired his freedom, which made what she and Mary had done to him all the more grotesque. It was bad enough her life had been stifled by her sister’s dysfunction, but to think they’d nearly ruined such a man—
“Edwina?”
“Yes, we walked quite a bit,” she answered distractedly before changing the subject. “Mary, dear, you must realize by now I returned the wrong memory to Mr. Cameron. That’s what caused his terrible fit. Do you recall where you collected the orb I so dreadfully gave him?”
Mary took a bite of buttered bread and slowly wiped a crumb from the corner of her mouth. “I can’t really be sure whose memory he received. The remembrance was ruined by the time I removed it again. Nothing but chalk left.”
Edwina looked down at her hands, still smudged with ink from thumbing through the city’s newspapers. She’d left in haste. Perhaps too hastily. She’d seen her sister accused of ghastly things before. Sometimes the accusations were borne in a grain of truth, though they were always exaggerated to make her out to be a deviant worthy of scorn. But on reflection, she knew Ian hadn’t inflated the truth with rumor or innuendo. It was a poor choice of words on his part, certainly, but after what Mary had put him through with her magic, she supposed he had every right to say what he had. Especially given the current terror overtaking the city.
“And yet I know that’s not true,” Edwina said, pushing back. “You know every bauble by its unique properties. You’d know exactly which one was missing.”
“What’s happened? Why are you, of all people, asking me this?” Mary tossed the rest of her bread on the plate. “It’s him. He’s trying to turn you against me, isn’t he?”
“It’s all right,” Edwina said. “You’re not in any trouble. Not with me. Not ever.” She reached out to hold her sister’s hand, surprised to find her skin so cold to the touch. “You’re sensitive to these things, I know. But events have taken a serious turn again.”