She lay awake far into the night, listening to the rumble of carriages and wagons through London’s filthy streets and wincing at the shriek of steam locomotives. And the whole time she lay there, Margo wondered miserably what that kiss would have felt like against her lips.
Workaday London enthralled.
Malcolm made arrangements for a small flat in western London, sever streets east of Grosvenor Square, which was itself just east of the ultrafashionable Hyde Park in Mayfair. The West End was where, according to Malcolm-Britain’s ten thousand or so members of “Society’ (some fifteen hundred families) made their London homes. The houses were splendid, but their construction surprised Margo. Most of them were more like condos than individual houses. Immensely long stone and brick facades took up entire city blocks, subdivided into individual “houses” that each wealthy family owned.
”Its a law,” Malcolm explained, “passed after the Great Fire of 1666. Not only fewer combustible materials, but this construction plan was adopted to help combat the spread of another disastrous fire.”
”How bad was it?”
Malcolm said quietly, “Most of London burned. Only a tiny corner of the city was spared. One of its blessings , of course, was that the fire evidently destroyed the plague, since there haven’t been any outbreaks since then. Cholera, on the other hand, remains a serious difficulty.”
Margo gazed in rapt fascination at the long, mellow facades, the immaculately clean walks, the ladies being assisted by liveried footmen into carriages for their round of “morning calls.” They were gorgeous in heavy silks, furs, and luxuriant feathered hats. Margo sighed, acutely conscious of her charity-school costume and short, dyed hair; but she didn’t let that spoil the fun of watching the “quality” pass by.