The Shadow and the Star
Chapter One
London. 1881
Leda came awake suddenly in the depth of night. She had been dreaming of cherries. Her body made the jerk of transition, an unpleasant startle that sucked in air and twitched muscles and left her heart pounding as she stared into the dark and tried to get her breath-to make sense of the difference between sleep and reality.
Cherries ... and plums, had it been? Cobbler? Pudding? A receipt for cordial? No ... ah-no... the bonnet. She closed her eyes. Her brain swam dreamily over the question of whether it would be the cherries or the plums to trim the ready-made, gable-crowned Olivia bonnet that she could buy directly, at the end of the week when Madame Elise paid out for the day work.
She felt instinctively that the bonnet was a much safer and more agreeable topic for contemplation than the one that she knew she ought to be contemplating -- which was her dark room and the various even darker corners of it, and what disturbance it might have been that had woken her from a sound and much-needed slumber.
The night was almost silent, except for the tick of her clo ... read full excerpt from Shadow and the Star, The ebook
