Her Quicksilver Lover: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 6 by Lynne Connolly Read Free Book Online

stepping into the road, but too many carriages were rolling past them to make that choice possible, and in any case, the road was redolent with horse-droppings, despite the best efforts of the crossing sweepers.
    The rapidity of transitions in the city never failed to surprise Amidei. From gracious palaces and grand houses to smaller establishments seemed a matter of turning a few corners. Striding up the busy thoroughfare of the Strand, Amidei wondered how much farther they had to go. Not that the distance bothered him, but why did she not get a cab? Or a chair, even? The dome of St. Paul’s loomed ahead, its great classical design incongruous in the jumble of alleys and streets. The large coaching inns on Ludgate Hill were busy, as always, chairmen, hackneys and private vehicles jostling for space, the area before the inns open to allow the coaches to hurtle under the arches leading to the inn yards.
    Behind St. Paul’s was one of the worst rookeries in the city, a place authorities dared not go, the streets piled high with filth because night-soil men avoided it too. The occasional starved pig snuffled in the gutter, sometimes shoved aside by a skinny child rooting for the same food. To walk into the warrens, unprepared and unknown, was to court instant death. They’d slit a woman’s throat for twopence in Seven Dials and St. Giles.
    Joanna should not be going anywhere near these areas alone. Anxiety twisted its way through his gut. What was she thinking to wander through these streets alone?
    They must have travelled for two and a half miles before twilight settled in earnest and Amidei gave up any idea of a proper dinner. He’d pick something up at the club on his return. Joanna had not paused, not once. She had quickened her pace, if anything. She strode with an almost mannish gait, and had Amidei not taken note of her drab costume and old straw hat, distinguishing her in his mind from the other people thronging the streets, he might have lost her long ago.
    He had looked up her address at the club and recognised it as false. He had come to know this city well over the years, and he was sure that the address she gave the club, close to the corner of Hyde Park, near Tyburn, did not exist.
    He was right. She was not going there, had passed any turnings that might take her in that direction long ago. They skirted Smithfield Market, the meat market with its cluster of general shops selling secondhand clothes and pawned or stolen items. Some were still open, but even Amidei would think twice before entering the grubby, stinking premises.
    She plunged into the streets, not looking to her right or her left, as if she had taken this path many times before. Did she come all this way, there and back, every day? The distance had to be three miles or more. While that was nothing to a god in his prime, a young woman should never have to travel so far. He should send a carriage for her or—he laughed, a soft huff of air. She would not appreciate that kind of attention, even if he could render it.
    Did all his servants come this far, the ones who worked at the club by day? Most lived in, but Amidei employed a lot of people, and for some preferred to use their own lodgings.
    The streets became narrower, the tall houses reaching up to obscure the narrow strip of sky that stretched above them. Here, where the Great Fire had devastated the city a hundred years ago, most of the establishments were relatively new, but already they showed signs of degeneration. The stone was blackened by soot, the sills crumbling here and there, windows were broken, shutters flapped open. Other places, the prosperous ones, were neat establishments. They passed several coffeehouses and inns. Golden light streamed from the doors and unshuttered windows to splash passers by in puddles of brightness. Joanna took no notice, rapidly hurrying past, heading toward a destination that remained a mystery to Amidei.
    Half way up Fore Street, toward Moorfields, she