The sky opened overhead like a broken water jug. Rain pattered over the roof, soaked their dresses and tangled their hair like seaweed. In moments, the gardens were a maze of ruined silk, mud, and slippery stone. A balding duke slid on his perfectly polished shoes right past them and into a hedge. A dowager who usually limped on a diamond-studded cane gathered up her hem and darted over the lawn, her wrinkled knees bare. Prim Aunt Mildred was shouting something about the apocalypse. Footmen passed buckets to one another, emptying the ornamental pond.
“Doesn’t this seem rather odd?” Emma asked, frowning. Earthquake, fire, Cormac. Something wasn’t right. She worried at it like a loose tooth.
Gretchen snorted. “I’m holding a pink dog. Odd doesn’t quite cover it.”
“Daphne just fainted,” Penelope pointed out, crossing her arms so her dress wouldn’t cling to her figure. Her grandmother would never forgive her the impropriety. Her parents wouldn’t care; they rarely came out into society. The other fashionable girls in their thin white gowns were soaked through, corsets, ribbons, and legs outlined in great scandalous detail. A young lord tripped over his own foot when he turned and saw through Emma’s wet dress. Penelope shifted to cover her, glowering at him so fiercely he hid behind a tree.
Gretchen tilted her head as chaos continued to boil around them. “Daphne is playacting,” she said dismissively. “And not very well, I might add. Who faints in such a comfortable position? Not to mention she ought to have toppled right into those rosebushes if gravity was at all involved.” She sighed. “And that footman is barely strong enough to hold that kind of bucket. He’s doing it all wrong.” She thrust the wet dog at Penelope. “Here, take the tea cake, would you?” She dashed away toward the struggling footman. “Lift with your knees, not your back, muttonhead!”
Emma watched her go, resigned. Gretchen would now classify this as the best ball they’d ever attended since she’d avoided the actual social gathering in favor of hauling buckets of water and battling a fire. In the rain, no less. Gretchen loved the rain. Emma was less enamored with it. She pushed her soggy hair out of her face where it clung uncomfortably to her forehead. At least it would help stop the fire from spreading. Already it seemed less virulent, its burning jagged teeth easing from bite to nibble.
“I suppose we ought to help,” Penelope said dubiously. She spotted Mr. Cohen cowering under the cover of an elm tree. “That tears it,” she muttered. “Let’s, shall we?”
Emma followed her gaze. “I thought you liked him.”
Penelope glanced away, her cheeks red as berries. “Not anymore.”
She scowled. “What did he do?”
“Nothing. It’s not important.”
“Penelope. I’m wet and cold and perfectly willing to shove him into the shrubbery.”
“He called me fat.”
Emma hissed out a breath. “I beg your pardon.”
“It’s nothing, really.” She forced her voice not to wobble. “He embarrassed me, is all.”
“Think how embarrassed he’ll be when I wrap his smalls around his fat head.”
Penelope, feeling decidedly more cheerful, had to drag Emma toward the burning house, where they stood uncertainly at the edge of a line of shouting men. Someone broke the window from inside the ballroom, glass cracking into the hollyhocks. Smoldering drapes followed, coiling like a smoke-breathing serpent.
“Why does Emma look like she’s swallowed a bee?” Gretchen asked when her cousins pushed their way toward her.
“Mr. Cohen called Penelope fat,” Emma replied.
Gretchen’s smile died. “Did he, now?”
Penelope now felt perfectly vindicated and couldn’t quite recall why she’d let Mr. Cohen hurt her feelings in the first place. “It’s nothing.”
“I hope he wakes up swollen like a balloon,” Gretchen muttered.
While her cousins stewed and plotted painful vengeance involving Mr. Cohen swelling to such proportions that all the buttons popped off his evening wear and he ended up naked in the ballroom, Penelope couldn’t help but admire the parade of half-dressed men under a flash of lightning. “Well, now,” she grinned appreciatively, wounded pride utterly erased. “There should be more fires, don’t you think?”
“What?” The sight of Cormac in his shirtsleeves, the wet fabric clinging to his muscles was particularly distracting. Emma felt compelled to stare, as if under some sort of spell. She blinked rain out of her eyelashes when Cormac went blurry. She had to remind herself that she’d sworn to hate him. She turned her attention back to the buckets sloshing from hand to hand, until her fingers cramped. Smoke stung her eyes and seared her throat.
“And I had no idea Tobias was so well-muscled, did you?” When the rain faded to a patter in the leaves, Penelope pouted. “Drat. What a shame. If we’re not all going to die horribly in flames, I’d rather like to see more shirtsleeves.”
Emma was still wondering why the sight of Cormac lifting heavy buckets and wiping mud off his face made her feel so peculiarly warm. Even her toes in her paper-thin dancing slippers were hot. She must be catching a fever from standing out in the storm. Cold water spilled down her dress but she barely noticed. The rest of her was burning with sweat and screaming muscles. She didn’t look up from the endless parade of heavy buckets until Gretchen came out of a cloud of smoke, grinning and covered in soot and dirt. “Fire’s nearly out.”
The rain started to fall again, the wind pushing it mostly toward the house. The cousins remained relatively untouched, darting under the widespread boughs of an oak tree.
“Should rain be able to do that?” Penelope asked, perplexed. “Not that I’m complaining but . . .” She shook her head. “Do you think someone slipped laudanum in the lemonade? Because this is turning out to be the strangest night.”
The pink dog leaned against Gretchen’s ankles, looking miserable. She bent to scoop him back up into her arms so they could shiver together. The guests became a river of silks and wilted cravats pushing toward the waiting carriages.
“I need to find the doctor,” Emma remembered.
“Why?” Gretchen looked instantly concerned. “Did you burn yourself? You should have left the buckets to me.”
“I didn’t get near enough to burn myself,” Emma assured her. “But a girl was hurt during the tremor. She’s broken her collarbone.”
“I thought I heard someone say the doctor was with the ladies near the hideous cherub statues,” Gretchen said. “They sent someone to fetch him as soon as the curtains caught fire. I’ll get this dog back to Lady Pickford, after I inform her the fire was no doubt penance for abusing this poor thing with pink fur and ridiculous ribbons,” she added, spotting Lady Clara self-administering smelling salts.
“I’ll get your Aunt Mildred to the carriage,” Penelope added to Emma before picking her way through the wet grass.
Covered in mud and soot, Emma went in search of the doctor. She found him surrounded by pale ladies clutching smelling salts, and a footman with a nasty burn on his forearm. His shirt was charred into tatters. She told the doctor where Margaret was waiting and then returned to join her so she wouldn’t have to wait alone. The main path was currently congested with girls in various states of dismay, both feigned and unfeigned, surrounded by attentive young gentlemen eager to help. Cutting through the garden seemed the path of least resistance.
She really ought to have known better.
She’d already had every indication that the night was an unmitigated disaster. She wasn’t sure what made her assume the worst was over. Chronic optimism, perhaps.
Or chronic madness.
It did run in the family, after all.
About the Author
ALYXANDRA HARVEY is the author of the Drake Chronicles— Hearts at Stake, Blood Feud, Out for Blood, Bleeding Hearts, Blood Moon, and Blood Prophecy—as well as the standalone novels Haunting Violet and Stolen Away. Alyx likes medieval dresses and tattoos and has been accused of being born in the wrong century—except that sh
e really likes running water, women’s rights, and ice cream. She lives in an old Victorian farmhouse in Ontario, Canada, with a few resident ghosts, her husband, and their dogs.
www.alyxandraharvey.com
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@AlyxandraH
Also by Alyxandra Harvey
Read the Drake Chronicles
from the beginning . . .
Ruling Passion—includes Hearts at Stake,
Blood Feud, and Out for Blood
Find out more about the Drakes at
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www.bloomsbury.com
www.facebook.com/BloomsburyTeens
The passion continues with three original
e-novellas featuring your favorite characters
from the DRAKE CHRONICLES . . .
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Copyright © 2013 by Alexandra Harvey
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
First published in the United States of America in December 2013
by Walker Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.
www.bloomsbury.com
For information about permission to reproduce selections from his book, write to
Permissions, Walker BFYR,1385 Broadway, New York, New York 10018
ISBN 978-0-8027-3773-1(e-book)
Alyxandra Harvey, The Longest Night
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