Deceit Read Online Free Page B

wasn’t sure she liked it. Telling her she ought to try and keep her life as normal as possible and that skipping school was a bad idea and she’d fail her exams.
    “What a
stupid
thing to say,” she’d shouted at him. “As if I give a toss about exams when Matthew’s missing!” And she’d stormed off.
Whatever
Joe had to say, it wasn’t going to stop her going back to the park every single day. Sitting at the same table outside the café. Reliving everything that had led up to Matthew’s disappearance. If only she’d stayed at the swings a minute longer. If only she’d remembered to tell Joe about the orange juice before he went inside. If only she’d asked the family at the next table to look out for Matthew. And ithadn’t even been two weeks yet since Matthew had gone, but already the detail was getting hazy and she was embroidering over the facts.

    So there she was, sitting outside the café, at ten o’clock on a Monday morning when she should have been in a French lesson. She was breaking up the biscuit she’d got with her coffee and dropping crumbs for the sparrows that were hopping around under the table. One of them was looking sick. Its eyes were filming over and its feathers were fluffed out and it wasn’t moving. She started to reach down to it when its head just went limp and its eyes closed.
    She knew it was dead, poor little thing. She didn’t even stop to think. She just scooped it up. Held it in the palm of her hand close to her face and stroked its back with her index finger. Then she felt the vibration of every atom in her being build to a crescendo as she breathed out over the little body. And in a second the bird’s eyes were open and she launched it up into the air and it flew away. She was still smiling when she heard
his
voice.
    “
Claire
…”
    And smelled the cinnamon and flowers.
M ARGRAT
    It is early morning still on the fourth day of September, in the year of our Lord 1666. I, Margrat Jennet, have escaped from Nicholas Benedict and Darke House. But I am still close by it and fear is squeezing at my heart, for I am even now in plain view. What if Nicholas has escaped the mob I set on him after he hurried from the house? What then? How soon might he return?
    A river of people stream past me, intent on leaving the city before the fire that started in Pudding Lane and now rages out of control spreads further. I shout out, asking for anyone passing to take me with them as they leave the city. I offer money to anyone willing. For I have my three half crowns still, left to me by my mother, and have scoured Nicholas’s house and taken whatever coin I can find.
    A man stops his cart. It is filled with things. A gilded mirror. A rich tapestry. There is a glint, here and there, of silver and gold. But his clothes are ragged and dirty. He will not look me in the eye. He rubs his fingers against the palm of his hand; a rough, dry, rasping noise even though sweatdrips off him, making white rivulets through the soot that blackens his face. Can I put my trust in him? Do I have any choice?
    “I will take you on my cart, lady,” he says, “but we must go this minute. I can wait no longer… the fire may spread this way at any moment. Give me the sovereign you promised and let us be out of the city.”
    I give him the sovereign, hot from my hand, and I start to climb up onto the cart, my manuscript, the Emerald Casket and my precious bottle of laudanum bundled up in my shawl and tucked in close to me. But I can feel how he looks at it. How he will not be satisfied until he knows what is inside the bundle. How he will covet the casket the moment he claps eyes on it… and will try to take it from me the first moment he can. And even if he fails… there will be many others along my journey just like him.
    “I have forgotten…” I climb back down off the cart and turn towards Darke House. I am caught between fear of the Doctor’s return and fear that the casket will be taken from me by