A Broken Vessel by Kate Ross Read Free Book Online

invincible. How could it be? He was Charles, who had taught her to dance, to ride, to play piquet. Charles, with his boyish charm and his grown-up vices, his bursts of generosity and his core of selfishness. She knew him better than she knew herself. After all, she had been in love with him all her life.
    He did not kiss her. He said, “Well, goodbye,” thrust his hands in his pockets, and walked out, as if he did not much care where he went or what became of him.
    She was glad he was gone, yet, perversely, she went to the window to catch a last glimpse of him. He was just coming out of the house. His tiger, who had been ogling a maidservant across the street, ran back to the cabriolet. It was raining lightly, so he lifted the small folding hood over the driver’s seat. Then he stepped back, staring.
    There were three large slashes in the leather hood. They formed a big, bold letter R .
    “How the plague did that get there?” Charles exclaimed.
    “I dunno, sir. Knocks me acock, it does!”
    “Hell and damnation!” Charles sputtered. “Is this how you look after my property? By God, I ought to thrash you within an inch of your life—”
    Two respectable-looking elderly ladies were coming along the pavement. Charles choked down his rage and muttered something to the tiger, who let down the hood again. Charles leaped into the driver’s seat, the tiger clambered up behind him, and the cabriolet dashed off in a cloud of dust.
    Ada turned away from the window, knitting her brows. She was not surprised Charles was so angry. He hated to find a dent or a scratch on his swift little sporting carriage. She supposed one of his friends must be playing a prank on him. Still, it was very odd. Who would do something so destructive? And why the letter R ?

CHAPTER
5
Getting Past the Dragon
    O n the morning after Sally arrived, Julian was up bright and early by his standards—which is to say that he was shaved, dressed, and breakfasted before noon. Dipper summoned a hackney coach from the nearest stand, and he set off for No. 9, Stark Street, to find out what was at the address in the unknown woman’s letter.
    Stark Street was a cul-de-sac in a drearily respectable neighbourhood, south of the Foundling Hospital and east of Russell Square. Julian got out of his hackney coach at the corner, so that he could walk down the street and have a look around. He passed several nondescript houses, a chandler’s shop, a stationer’s, and a shabby-genteel boarding house with a sign in the window announcing that one of the lodgers taught French and another gave lessons on the pianoforte. The next house was No. 9.
    It actually consisted of two adjacent houses, loosely cobbled together. They were of the design used for houses all over London for more than a hundred years: narrow but deep, with two or three rooms to a floor. These were debased examples of the type, built of a sickly yellow brick that was probably only a veneer for cheaper materials. The front door of the right-hand house was the formal entrance; it had a bell-pull and a dignified brass plate, too small to read from the street. The left-hand house looked meek and self-effacing. The knocker had been taken off the door, there was no bell, the shutters were closed, and for good measure there were iron gratings on all the windows.
    Julian did not like the look of the place at all. The right-hand house had an air of rigour, stinginess, distrust. He would have liked to cut the two houses apart and set the left one free. He went up to the front door of the right-hand house to read the brass plate. It said: “Reclamation Society.”
    Reclamation of what? he wondered. Stolen goods? The American colonies? People’s lost buttons and boots? In reality, this must be one of those associations for improving the public morals. There were a good many of them springing up in London these days.
    He rang the bell. The door opened a crack, and a woman looked out. She had a small, square face, the