The Shadow in the Glass JJA Harwood (book recommendations for young adults txt) 📖

Eleanor pressed her knee against his. ‘When we’re in Scotland, it’ll be three weeks before we can marry. You’ll have to wait a little.’

‘It’ll be different then,’ he whispered. ‘You’ll be near me. We can take our meals together, stroll around the village, visit churches and ruins – anything!’ He gave her a sheepish smile. ‘Do you know how long I’ve wanted to show you off?’

She shifted closer, looking up at him through her lashes. ‘Won’t you miss keeping me all to yourself?’ she said, her voice low.

He slid an arm around her waist. ‘Eleanor,’ he murmured, pulling her close, ‘I have missed you every day—’

A cough echoed through the church. They flinched and broke apart.

‘I must go,’ Charles hissed, giving her hand one last squeeze. ‘I’ll write again soon.’

He left. Eleanor waited, pretending to pray. Her mind was teeming.

One wish would solve all her problems. Mr Pembroke was controlling access to her money. Mr Pembroke was preventing her marriage to Charles. Mr Pembroke was abusing Aoife. Eleanor wanted him dead.

All it would take was a word.

She lined the sentence up in her head. I wish that Mr Frederick Pembroke was dead. Even thinking the words made her feel powerful. There’d be nothing he could do to stop her. He could grovel and cry and fight and nothing he did would stop the black-eyed woman from coming for him, like an avenging angel. She’d see him beg.

Eleanor recoiled from her own anticipation. What was she doing? When had she learned to relish the prospect of death and violence? This wasn’t who she wanted to be. She wanted to keep her friends safe, she wanted to marry Charles, but surely this was not the only way to do it.

Surely she didn’t have to make herself into a monster.

Eleanor stared up at the stained-glass window. Saints wept and angels sang as Jesus suffered in brilliant colours. All their eyes seemed to be fixed on her. A better woman than she would have trusted in God, or Fate, or whatever it was that was supposed to reward the good and punish the wicked. Once upon a time, she would have done so. But now she had seen what life could do to people who trusted in a vague and benevolent higher power and nothing else. Perhaps such things were only there because other people believed them to be. Perhaps they weren’t there at all, and it was only the sheer force of millions of people desperately wanting something to be true that gave them the signs they were looking for. Perhaps that was all she could feel, prickling at the back of her neck.

Perhaps it was only because she wanted the black-eyed woman to be there that Eleanor saw her at all.

Eleanor shook the thought away. She’d gone to the inspector for help. She’d tried to take Aoife out of harm’s way with a deal of her own. She’d tried to get Mrs Cleary to give her the money to find Leah and buy Aoife’s way out of Granborough House. It had all come to nothing. Things had only ever got better when Eleanor took matters into her own hands.

She’d already done so many things she’d never imagined she would do. She had lain with a man outside of wedlock, threatened her employer, got rid of a child she had not wanted. How many of those things were truly evil? She and Charles were in love, threatening Mr Pembroke had got him to leave Aoife alone, and surely it was better not to have a child at all than to bring one into the world when she could not care for it.

Would killing Mr Pembroke really be a bad thing?

Eleanor gave herself a little shake and stood up. Fresh air would clear her head.

A fine haze of dirty rain drifted over the city. This close to Soho, Eleanor’s plain dress seemed fine among the patched and worn clothes of the crowds around her. Little girls selling watercress grown on dirty flannels trudged from door to door, their hair limp in the rain, while chimney sweeps hacked and spat into the gutter. Eleanor walked quickly, heading for the larger, cleaner streets. A woman in a fraying shawl started following her as she passed. It would not do to linger here.

Eleanor forced her way through the crowds, past brightly lit shop windows, painted Highlanders outside tobacconists’ and men wearing sandwich-boards advertising everything from shoes to sealing-wax. Booksellers scrambled to cover their wares in the rain; colourfully dressed women mended wicker chairs on the back steps of fine houses; a boy with hastily applied clown makeup handed out grubby leaflets for a passing circus. Eleanor drifted through the press and swell of the crowds and wondered what they might have wished for, or what they would say if they knew what she had done.

Before she knew it she was outside Granborough House.

It took her a moment to recognize it, because the house was all but crumbling. Tiles had fallen off the roof and smashed in the street below. A thick layer of grime coated every window and damp stains oozed down every wall. The drawing-room was shuttered, along with half the bedrooms, and one of the chimneys was not working properly, the smoke coming out of a long crack running down the side. The front steps, however, were still clean, and Eleanor felt a strange lump in her throat at the sight.

Behind the garden wall, Eleanor heard the back door open. Moments later, Aoife came through the gate, a large basket hung over one arm. Eleanor darted forward at once.

‘Aoife!’

Aoife’s hand clamped down on the handle of her basket the moment she saw Eleanor. She hurried away, but Eleanor was too quick.

‘Aoife, wait! I only want to talk to you!’

Aoife wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘The master said we’re not to talk to you.’

‘Of course he did,’ Eleanor snapped. ‘When did that ever matter? We’re friends, aren’t we?’

‘The master said we’re not to talk to you,’