Page 75 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

It still whimpers day and night, driving us all to distraction. I truly know not what I shall do with it if there is no improvement soon. I cannot keep the house shuttered much longer – the Ton are positively clamouring at my gates, all but begging to part with their coin.

Her heart now, it was all she could hear.

A cavern was opening below her feet.

The paper shook in her hand.

‘Frida?’ she heard from somewhere across the room.

She didn’t respond, the letter now in a death grip in her fingers.

I believe I have it at last, though! Henry – that scruffy old genius – has come through at the final hour, just as I was considering throwing him to Jane’s cursed seahorse. We have found a new method of containing our beasts, dearest Horatio, and I daresay it shall leave you astonished. As for those blasted artifacts – well, if fortune favours us, we will have no need of them at all in a few years’ time.

I shall tell you more when next we meet, and I must say, I enjoy imagining your expression of wonder, and hope I have stoked the fires of your curiosity.

God keep you safe.

Your devoted friend,

Joshua.

Frida stood up all in a rush. The letter dropped to the floor, and she shook out her hand as if the words had burned the skin off her fingers. Then she thrust back the chair, not even hearing when it fell with a mighty crash. Her brain was working a mile a minute, trying to catch up. The words seemed stamped in her mind, and she wanted to scrub them out, but she didn’t know how. Fury. Betrayal. Guilt. All these things raged through her, on Antony’s behalf, on her own, on her mum’s, on everyone’s who’d ever put their lives and faith in the hands of these men. She felt her bile rising and clamped her lips shut.

‘Frida?’ Dian repeated, standing up now from their chair. This time, she heard them clearly. They’d come closer without her noticing and were almost at the desk. ‘What’s wrong?’

She swayed. Suddenly she was peering at the map on the wall, the one she hadn’t even bothered to look at. It was a map of Brazil. The country Sir Joshua had visited as a child, and where he’d fallen in love with extraordinary creatures. But now as she looked at the map, all she saw were marked lines – divisions showing different territories. Gold mining, railways, engineering, water and gas pipelines.

‘I was wrong,’ she said hoarsely. ‘We have to leave.’

She’d been so blinded by all the ‘good’ Sir Joshua had done, by the fact that she’d wanted – so deeply – for him to be good. For the LEZ to be good.

Dian frowned. Their eyes flicked to the map. ‘Why? What’s happened? I thought—’

‘I was wrong! I . . . I thought it was just Henry, but it’s not. We have to – I don’t know!’ She was pacing back and forth, pulling at her ragged hair. She must have looked a state. ‘We have to go. Maybe we should go back to the Old Forge and look again to find a way to turn off the wards from in there. Or maybe we should go back to the fairies! Maybe they’ll be able to help. Or maybe we should try and speak to the sisters. I don’t know!’

Her brain was pounding as if it was being stabbed by Sir Joshua’s silver letter opener. Suddenly, everything was spiralling. Everything she’d believed, everything they’d all believed, everything they’d built their lives on. Frantically, she pulled at the curtains, dragging them open. They were still on the ground floor, and the dark night loomed before her, warm light spilling out over the grass. The gardens stretched away, a line of trees just visible in the distance behind the panes. Desperately, she started fumbling with the catches on the windows. Dian, wordless, came to stand next to her. Just as she’d managed to get the closest window open, the summer breeze washed over her, smelling of cut grass and the faint tang of tobacco smoke. Dian placed a hand on hers, and Frida winced.

‘Don’t,’ she cried, hating herself.

Dian flinched back, their eyes shuttering, but Moth had already jumped onto the window, and his row of dark eyes looked back at her like jewels, dancing with tongues of flame. ‘What did you learn? Tell us, please!’

She didn’t have a chance.

Suddenly, a face appeared at the window. Pale, with a shock of blond hair over a thin face, attached to a thick neck, and a body that was a wall of wiry muscle. She sucked in a terrified breath, and saw his eyes, reflected like Moth’s in the firelight. Small and grey, as if they’d been stripped of all colour.

‘There you are,’ the man said companionably. As if they were old friends.

His dour voice skated over her bones, and before she really even knew what had happened, he’d leant through the open window, grabbed the back of her head, and smashed her skull into the leaded pane. She didn’t hear the glass shattering. She didn’t have time to scream at Dian to flee, before the pain burst through her head, blooming like white stars, and she collapsed senseless to the floor.

Chapter Forty-Two

‘Move over, Charles, let me see it.’

Frida moaned.

‘Come come, hurry. What does the meter say?’

‘High, Sir. There’s extraordinary in it, I’m certain of it.’