Free Shanghai Sparrow by Gaie Sebold Page A

exceptionally temperamental.”
    He opened the door for her and handed her out, courteous again. She noticed a faint tracery of scar-tissue on both palms, a row of pallid overlapping crescents like the bite marks of some furious ghost.
    Eveline drew in a great gulp of spring-scented air. Her heart tugged in her chest, and despite herself she could not help looking out over the grass to where the shapes of trees clustered against the last faint light of the sky. They were properly out in the country, all right. She pulled her gaze away and stood blinking at the vast building in front of her.
    It bulked against the night sky, its roofline bristling with chimneys. A dozen faint slivers of light indicated the presence of firmly curtained windows; black bars crossed them, as though trying to prevent even that much light from escaping. A door big enough for a church, bound and riveted with iron, stood like a muscular sentry in a stone porch, faintly illuminated by a gas lamp in a wrought-iron cage.
    It didn’t look much like the village school Eveline remembered; one room, a thatched roof, and a privy out the back. Not that she’d gone herself, of course. Only the boys got schooled. She’d sneaked up to peer in the windows and listen, but the endless lists of Kings and Queens and the chanting of times tables had bored her. Her mother had been teaching her to read and write and reckon, in the cluttered, chiming, whirring room that served her as a study. Her father had occasionally, absentmindedly passed on such scraps of history or biology as he himself found entertaining.
    The building bore down on her, with its walls and bars and frowning ironwork, trying to make her small and helpless and afraid. She lifted her chin and glared at it. After what she’d been through, no mere heap of bricks was going to make Eveline Duchen feel like that.
    The door opened and a figure stood outlined against light. Tall, straight, female, hair drawn close to the skull; that was all that could be made of it.
    “Mr Holmforth,” it said.
    “Miss Cairngrim.” Keeping his hand firmly on her shoulder, Holmforth steered Eveline towards the door. “This is Eveline.”
    Close to, Eveline could see that Miss Cairngrim had a high-browed, handsome face, darkly drawn brows, greying hair, and an expression of chilly reserve, which changed not at all as she looked Eveline up and down. She had a strange, harsh, throat-catching scent that added to Eveline’s unease, making her feel suddenly weak and tearful.
    You’re hungry and tired, Eveline Duchen. Perk up and keep lively or you’ll get in trouble.
    More trouble.
    “I see,” Miss Cairngrim said. “You had better come in.”
    Eveline marched up the steps and through the door, holding her chin high.
    The hall was high-ceilinged and chilly, the floor laid with a complex pattern of black and white marble. A large, plain lamp hung from the ceiling. A small dark table with a mirror in a gilded frame, spindly gilded legs and a single shallow drawer stood against one wall, bearing a brass plate on which a lone letter sat forlorn. Eveline gave the table a professional once-over; the drawer might be worth a look, the brass plate would fetch a few bob, but the table itself was cheap, the gilding already flaking from the legs. That aside, the hall contained nothing but closed, white-painted panelled doors and a faint scent of cabbage and gravy.
    Miss Cairngrim’s dress was grey wool, with a narrow skirt and a small bustle that hardly seemed to move as she walked. Eveline followed the bustle down the hall.
    Miss Cairngrim opened a door to reveal a small parlour. It was just as chilly as the hall – the fire lay unlit in the grate. Three green-upholstered chairs stood at bay around a circular table shrouded in yellowed lace, and a faded red sofa huddled in one corner. A lamp with a yellow silk shade missing two tassels stood on a battered escritoire. The mantel bore chipped figurines of a shepherd and