Where Shadows Dance Read Online Free Page B

experience as a gentleman’s gentleman,” he was saying, “so if you would by chance know of anyone who is in need of a valet, I’ve excellent recommendations.” The valet stood with his hands together as if in prayer, his lower lip caught between his teeth, his eyes wide and hopeful.
    “If I hear of anything, I’ll be certain to pass your name along.”
    Noah Poole gave a grateful nod and bowed.
    Sebastian was turning to leave when Poole cleared his throat again and said, “You might try speaking to Madame Champagne.”
    Sebastian paused to glance back at him. “Who?”
    “Angelina Champagne—the proprietor of the coffee shop on the ground floor. She owns the entire house, actually. She sits by that oriel window most of the day—and half the night, as well.” Poole swallowed, both his chins pulling back into his neck so that they nearly disappeared. “In my experience, there is little that escapes her attention.”
    “Thank you. That might be helpful,” said Sebastian, and went in search of Madame Champagne.
    But when he entered the fragrant, noisy coffee room on the ground floor, it was to be told that madame had stepped out and was not expected back until late in the afternoon.
    Sebastian slipped his watch from its pocket and frowned.
    It was nearly eleven o’clock.
     
     
    Driving himself in his curricle, Sebastian arrived in Bloomsbury to find the big square just to the north of the New Road filled with an enormous circular wooden enclosure that looked for all the world like some primitive fortress in the wilds of America. Vertical boards twelve to fifteen feet high discouraged the efforts of a motley crowd of curious onlookers from sneaking a peek at the steam locomotive without actually paying to enter the gate.
    “If I’m more than ten minutes, walk ’em,” Sebastian told the young groom, or tiger, who clung to his perch at the rear of the curricle. From the far side of the palisade came a belch of steam and the shriek of a whistle. The chestnuts snorted and tossed their heads nervously.
    “Easy, lads,” crooned Tom, scrambling onto the seat. A half-grown urchin of thirteen years, he was gap-toothed and scrappy and utterly devoted to Sebastian. “Meybe I’d best walk ’em now.”
    “As you wish,” said Sebastian, hopping down. “Actually, you might use the time to see if you can discover where Foreign Undersecretary Sir Hyde Foley takes his nuncheon.”
    “Aye, gov’nor.”
    Dutifully handing over his shilling entrance fee, Sebastian pushed his way into the vast enclosure to find an open space circled by a single line of tracks laid just inside the wall. On the far side of the ring stood a small black steam engine mounted on wheels, with a modified open carriage bolted behind it. The engine’s boiler smoked and steamed, filling the air with the hot pinch of burning coal.
    Some forty to sixty brave souls ranging from well-dressed ladies and gentlemen to gawking artisans and apprentices milled about the enclosure. But the carriage remained empty. It was one thing, obviously, to pay one’s shilling for a look at the throbbing, hissing machine, but something else again to actually risk life and limb by going for a ride.
    Sebastian let his gaze drift around the assembled crowd, looking for Miss Hero Jarvis. It was nearly half past eleven; perhaps she had already come and gone.
    “I’d no notion you took an interest in the advances of modern science,” said a well-bred female voice behind him.
    He turned to find Miss Jarvis regarding him with an expression he found impossible to decipher. She was a tall young woman, nearly as tall as her powerful father, Lord Jarvis. No one would ever describe her as “pretty,” although she was handsome in her own way, despite having also inherited her father’s aquiline nose and haughty expression. She wore a carriage gown of soft moss with a matching parasol she held tipped against the glare of the sun, and a jaunty, velvet-trimmed hat from which