Page 74 of Dark Tidings on the Thames
Gyda looked up. “What are the odds that both of those girls were blonde?” she asked darkly.
No one answered.
Emelia sent Jeanette off, and she happily set to work changing linens and setting up cots and pallets. Emelia gave over her bed to Kara and Niall, and took a cot in Gyda’s room.
Once again, Kara was too tired to argue. She wrote a note to Harold and Turner and gave it to the staff while the arrangements were still being made. Rob was insisting on sleeping in front of Beth’s door when Kara gave up and went to Emelia’s suite. She didn’t even undress before crawling into the freshly changed bed. She fell instantly asleep when her head hit the pillow.
It seemed like mere moments later when someone shook her awake. “Kara! Niall! Come on and wake up now. We need to go.”
She was warm and cozy and tucked up against Niall’s chest. She didn’t want to wake, but she was prodded again. “Rob?” She squinted up at him. The room was mellow with afternoon sun. “What is it?”
“It’s Beth!” Rob’s tone was urgent. “Gyda was right. She is plotting something. I knew she was onto something when Beth insisted on talking alone with Emelia before she slept. It’s why I waited until she went to her room to drag a settee into the passage outside her room. And I was right!”
“She woke you, leaving her room? You sleep like a log at the best of times,” Niall said groggily. “And none of this can be counted as the best of times.”
“Ah, but I used the trick my mam used on us. You recall, when we kept sneaking out to smoke my grandfather’s cigars?”
Niall groaned. “You tied a thread from your wrist to the door latch?”
He sat up, but Kara moaned and hid her face behind the pillow.
“I did!” Rob said triumphantly. “And it worked. It woke me when she pulled open the door, but I pretended to be asleep when she tiptoed past me. She went to Gyda’s room, then she and Emelia slipped out together.”
That captured Kara’s interest. Tossing aside the pillow, she sat up too. “Where are they now?”
“I don’t know. Gyda followed them.” Rob’s expression darkened. “I don’t understand. That bastard tried to take her. He might try again.Why would she go out without me or you to protect her?”
“They left the house?” asked Niall. He had slept in his trousers, and now he pulled on his shirt.
“Yes. I meant to go after them, but Gyda wouldn’t allow it. She said they would spot me in an instant.” Rob sighed. “I know she’s right. Royston caught sight of me soon enough. But Gyda went after them dressed in boy’s clothes. I doubt they will notice her. I’ve been waiting for word—and she’s sent back a message, with an urchin. He says we have to go to the train station. And to hurry our arses.”
Chapter Seventeen
Niall was thefirst to climb the steps up onto the train platform. He caught sight of Gyda waving frantically from the ticket window.
“Hurry,” she called. “I don’t have enough coin on me for four tickets, even though Emelia took the last first-class compartment, curse her.”
Pausing in the act of pulling out his purse, Niall looked at the train steaming several feet away. “Emelia and Beth are both on board?”
“Did I not just say so?” Gyda gestured toward the front of the train, where the first-class compartments were located. “Get our tickets before the thing pulls away!”
“Where is it heading?” Niall asked, handing over the money to the ticket agent.
“West,” the agent answered.
“Are they heading to Bluefield?” Rob asked as the others caught up. “It makes no sense. Why not wake you, then?”
“Not Bluefield, I don’t think,” Kara said quietly. “But close.”
They boarded the second-class car and sat as close together as they could. After the last boarding calls, the screeching of the wheels, the huff of the engine, and all the noise of their departure had ended, Kara spoke softly to explain her guess and the reasoning behind it. “Beth has always been a great proponent of Lake Nemi.”
“But I thought Lake Nemi is the name of the club and boardinghouse?” Rob sounded confused. “Didn’t we justleaveLake Nemi?”
“We did. Emelia named the place after the ancient Greek temple at the edge of a lake, dedicated to the Goddess Diana. Diana is the protector of women and the wilderness, and the goddess of fertility and childbirth.”
“And the hunt,” Gyda reminded her. “And of crossroads, or choices we make in life.”
“She represents many facets of women, and so does the club that Emelia has created, where women may come to relax, to study, to explore their interests without censure.” Kara smiled at Gyda. “However, when I was inducted into the club, I purchased a pond a few miles from Bluefield, and we began to use it for ceremonies that bore a resemblance to those of old. They are mostly evenings spent dedicating ourselves to our goals, experiencing a wilder bit of nature outside London, and enjoying each other’s company. But we also use the pond, which we also call Lake Nemi, for wind and weather experiments, for entomology studies, and sometimes just for picnics and boating exhibitions.”
