Crystal Gardens by Amanda Quick Read Free Book Online Page B

hall and watching for shadows at the bedroom window.
    She had met Beatrice and Clarissa shortly after joining the firm of Flint & Marsh. The bonds of friendship had sprung up very quickly among the three of them, in part because each of them was alone in the world and each was facing a lonely future.
    There were few options for women when it came to obtaining respectable employment. With marriage out of the question due to their poor finances and lack of social connections, they had each faced the gloomy prospect of making their livings as governesses or paid companions. Both professions were notoriously ill paid. After twenty or thirty years in either career, a woman was likely to find herself as impoverished as she had been when she started out. The only hope was that somewhere along the way a generous employer would remember to provide a tiny bequest in the will. It was a hope that was often cruelly crushed.
    When Evangeline had begun making the rounds of the agencies that supplied governesses and companions to the wealthy, she had heard rumors of a most exclusive firm. The Flint & Marsh Agency in Lantern Street, it was said, placed their employees in the most elegant households. And unlike their competitors, they were rumored to pay exceptionally generous fees. Evangeline had hastened around to Lantern Street. After an intensive interview with the proprietors of the firm, she had been hired on the spot.
    It transpired that there were two reasons for the superior fees. Flint & Marsh was no ordinary hired companion agency. The firm provided unusual services to its wealthy clients. And although the agency exercised every precaution, there was occasionally some danger involved. Not everyone was suited to the work, Mrs. Marsh had explained.
    The second reason the agency paid well was because it demanded an unusual characteristic in the women it employed—a degree of paranormal talent.
    The combination of psychical abilities and their determination to survive on their own terms in a world that was hard on women had bonded Evangeline and her friends as securely as a shared bloodline would have done.
Perhaps even more so
, Evangeline thought. In her work for Flint & Marsh she had seen enough of the intimate side ofsome of the most exclusive families to know that appearances were often deceiving. It never failed to astonish her how much jealousy, anger, bitterness and even violence could seethe at the heart of the most outwardly respectable families.
    By the time Evangeline arrived on the doorstep of Flint & Marsh, Beatrice and Clarissa had been employed there for a few months and had already agreed to pool their resources to lease a small town house. They soon invited Evangeline to join them. She had accepted the offer with gratitude.
    The prospect of sharing a house—to say nothing of expenses—held great appeal and not only because of the financial aspects. She savored the simple pleasures of taking meals with her newfound friends, sharing the news of the day and discussing the interesting work they did for Flint & Marsh. She had lived alone in the months following her father’s death and she had not enjoyed the experience. Not that Reginald Ames had provided much in the way of company when he was alive, she often reminded herself. He had been consumed by his obsession to invent mechanical devices powered by paranormal energy.
    She never saw a great deal of him but he had always been there in the background of her life. To be more precise, he was usually to be found in his basement workshop. Nevertheless, as long as he was alive, there was, at least, someone else in the house besides the housekeepers and daily maids, none of whom stayed long. Reginald’s experiments and unpredictable moods ensured a steady turnover in the small household staff.
    Evangeline had been lonely at times when her father was alive but she’d had her dreams of writing and her imagination to keep her company. She had not discovered what it was to be