They were all a bit wistful and pensive when the Pecks departed.
“Well, I’m not sure I’dmindfilling the ballroom with babies,” Lucien allowed carefully that night in the smoking room.
Captain Hardy gave an almost pained laugh.
After a long silence, Mr. Delacorte said, “I’ve had a letter from the Earl of Highgrove offering to give his donkey to me.”
“Congratulations, Delacorte,” Bolt said warmly, as if he’d just announced he was going to be a father.
The morning after they said their goodbyes to the Pecks, Dot took the contents of the Epithet Jar—which had been nice and jingly thanks to her recent chess lessons with Mr. Delacorte!—to buy the morning papers and have a little wander around the market stalls that appeared twice a week before she was expected back at the Grand Palace on the Thames.
She’d reserved twenty pence of her own wages to buy something frivolous. Her last such purchase was the little journal that she’d christened “Dot’s Thoughts.”
Today she thought she might want a handkerchief or a ribbon. Something pretty and soft.
On a table scattered with what looked like ordinary detritus of daily life, things like clay pipes and plain hair combs and drinking mugs, her eye landed on a little vase. It was white, patterned with blue vines and flowers; a pair of lovebirds sat among them.
It seemed to snuggle right into her hand when she gently picked it up.
It was one of the loveliest things she’d ever seen.
“It’s ten pence, miss,” the merchant told her. “Pretty thing, ain’t it? Felt I couldn’t charge more fer it, as it’s got funny dark lines on the bottom.”
Dot peered; indeed, on the bottom were what looked like a set of six scribbled lines. It seemed like something that Daniel Peck might do to a vase if he got hold of ink and a quill.
It would look lovely on her writing desk next to her little wooden donkey named Fate, which she’d been mysteriously gifted, and her Dot’s Thoughts journal. Last night she’d written in it, “Mr. Pike believes I can be a story writer.” She’d stared at that sentence in wonder.
Ironically, she’d been unable to write another word after that.
Then again, that sentence seemed a story unto itself.
The vase perfectly matched the blue-and-white rag rug next to her bed. She wasn’t entirely certain why, but she always noticed colors and she liked them to feel just right.
She took an expenditure of ten penceveryseriously.
But lovebirds!
Surely it was a sign.
“I’ll have this then,” she’d told the merchant.
He wrapped it carefully up in newspaper, and she tucked it into her little net bag just as the sun was peeping out from behind a cloud.
She knew she’d best hurry. Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt especially liked to have the newspapers first thing—they shared them throughout the house and with all the guests, because they were expensive—and the maids expected her in the kitchen, because she read the gossip sheets aloud there every day.
Quite a few of the guests at the Grand Palace on the Thames had appeared both on the front page and in the gossip pages, which was always exciting. Not a day went by when she wasn’t astonished and grateful for her life here.
She burst through the door in time to walk through rainbows.
But she was walking perilously too fast.
Her slightly damp soles slid over the slick marble floor.
To her horror, she stumbled.
And fell.
Time seemed to slow as her package shot up, up, toward the chandelier, spiraling right into the rainbows. The vase was destined to become smithereens.