There were a few servants coming and going along the street. Dora picked out a distracted-looking maid who was currently carrying freshly-laundered sheets. She sped up her pace and plucked at the woman’s sleeve.
“Excuse me,” Dora said. “There are iced desserts in London, aren’t there?”
The maid turned towards her with a blink. “Er,” she said. “Yes.” She frowned at Dora’s attire, clearly attempting to suss out whether she was someone to be respected. The maid must have decided to err on the side of caution, because she added: “The ladies like to eat fruit ices at Gunter’s, on Berkeley Square.”
Dora smiled at her. “Thank you very kindly,” she said. “Could you tell me which way it is to Berkeley Square?”
Many streets and many strange conversations later, Dora found herself wandering a more mercantile part of London, with shops on every side. She meandered through a few of them, appreciating the sheer spectacle of so many fine goods in one place. More than once, she lost track of her original intent and had to ask directions again. By the time she made it to Berkeley Square, however, a dangerous rumble had started up in the sky, and cold raindrops had begun to pitter-patter against her skin.
Dora spent a few extra moments looking up at the clouds, shielding her eyes from the rain. Those clouds were dark and roiling, and she found herself staring at them with an awed fascination.
Nearby, a young lady squealed beneath her bonnet, rushing through the rain for the nearest overhang. Dora looked after her and remembered belatedly that she was trying to act as normal as possible while in London, in order to help Vanessa’s chances of finding a suitor.
Slowly, Dora backed her way beneath the closest overhang, and through the door of a nearby shop.
A bell rang softly as the door opened, announcing her presence. Dora glanced around curiously, taking in her surroundings. The shop was small but prestigious—many bookshelves lined the walls, filled to the brim with expensive-looking leather tomes. All of the books had the look of something handwritten, rather than cheaply printed. A wood and glass counter showed a handful of illuminated scrolls on display. An ancient silvered mirror hung behind that counter. In it, Dora saw a beautiful ballroom alight with hundreds of candles. The distant sound of violins played in her ears, and she leaned across the counter to take a closer look.
There was a Dora in the mirror as well—but this Dora was wearing the pink muslin gown that Vanessa had given her, and her hair was coiled up into a rusted red bun. There was a string of very fine pearls wound about her neck that she didn’t immediately recognize. An ominous crimson stain had spread across the front of the gown, beneath the pearls. As Dora lifted her hand to her own chest, she saw dark red dripping down the tips of her fingers.
As she watched, a tall man stepped up behind her. His messy, white-blond hair and pale skin flickered in the unearthly candlelight; his eyes were a peculiar molten reddish-gold that danced along with the flames. He was dressed in full evening attire, in a fine white jacket and a silver waistcoat. His neck cloth was subtly loosened, however, and the smile on his handsome face held a faintly devilish edge to it.
“Don’t drip on the books, dear,” he said in her ear. His voice was soft and low. He drawled his words with the slightest bit of a Northern accent, so that they curled down faintly at the end. Dora found herself so entranced by the sight and sound of him that it took her a spare moment to process his words.
The mirror Dora wasn’t the only one dripping everywhere. As Dora glanced down, she saw that she was soaked in very real water from the rain outside.
“Oh my,” she said, turning around to face him. “I haven’t dripped on any books, have I?”
The man behind her was not wearing evening attire—he was wearing a casually-buttoned brown jacket and a white neckcloth in a simple knot—but in all other respects, he looked quite like the man in the mirror. His eyes were even stranger and more arresting up-close, so that Dora ended up staring up into them, appreciating the way that they danced with some faint inner light.
He blinked very slowly and languidly as she looked up at him. “I don’t believe you have,” he said. If Dora wasn’t mistaken, in fact, he was briefly put-out by the fact that she hadn’t jumped into the air and screamed when he’d snuck up on her.
Dora glanced back towards the mirror—but the image of the ballroom was gone. The mirror had gone dull and black now, and it reflected absolutely nothing.
“Did you see something of interest in there?” asked the man next to her.
“I suppose I did, now that I think on it,” Dora mused. The sight of the ballroom hadn’t struck her as particularly unusual at the time, but now that she’d been asked to consider it directly, she could see where it wasn’t the sort of thing one normally saw in mirrors.
Presently, however, Dora became aware that there was another patron behind one of the freestanding bookshelves, watching them intently. Brown-haired and slightly shorter than the man in front of her, he would have been quite handsome in a more normal manner, were it not for the speckling of scars along his right cheek. Still, he was neatly dressed for the day in a stiff coat and sturdy Hessians, and he had a smile that seemed to make those scars disappear beneath its warmth.
“Now where did this young lady appear from?” the brown-haired man chuckled. “You didn’t
