And tomorrow they would find him. But tomorrow was already today. The long years of waiting were over.
She swung her legs to the floor and glanced across the darkened room to the matching bed where Isabelle slept. Her delicate face—surely as beautiful as that of the Blessed Damozel in Rossetti’s poem—was soft with sleep, and Cassidy felt a rush of affection and gratitude. Isabelle had been Mother’s friend, and now she was Cassidy’s. She was a real lady, just like those who rode in the carriages below. And she had been born in England. She, too, had come home.
Home.
Cassidy crept to the window and pushed it open, sifting the thick fog for a single familiar scent. There was a place of growing things in the midst of this endless city: they called it Hyde Park, and she could smell it, along with the other cramped, walled-in spaces the English made for their gardens. Far stronger were the odors of horse dung, and smoke, and the tang of stale water from the great river to the south. As far as she could see were buildings like ugly square cliffs above deep, noisy arroyos, marching row upon row until they were lost in the endless haze and darkness.
She wondered how anyone could bear to live among those cold canyons. The hotel walls seemed to close in around her, and she remembered with longing, the clean, austere beauty of the desert, unfenced and untamed.
But in New Mexico she had been alone.
A shiver of anticipation caught hold other like an unseen hand at the back of her neck. They were waiting for her, out there. She could feel them. A silent call hung in the heavy damp air, half-remembered like the soft cadence of her mother’s voice. The voice of the loups-garous. The language Cassidy yearned to make her own.
Isabelle had taught her something of city ways on the journey to England; here, a young woman didn’t travel alone. Isabelle would never approve of the thoughts that raced through Cassidy’s mind.
But Isabelle was fast asleep, and Cassidy knew how to move quietly. At night she could walk unseen, undisturbed by the throngs of people who made the streets impassable by daylight.
She could follow the call. She had to.
She hesitated in choosing her clothes; there was the plain broadcloth traveling dress Isabelle had bought her, but she couldn’t move freely in it. Her calico dress—the only one she’d owned on the ranch, saved for special occasions—wasn’t the kind of armor she needed to venture forth into the unknown.
She murmured a quiet apology to her sleeping friend and pulled on the denim trousers and old shirt she’d hidden from Isabelle’s critical eye. Isabelle had made her give up the battered work hat; she tucked her hair on top of her head and tied it back as best she could with a bit of ribbon Isabelle had left on the dressing table.
It wasn’t difficult slipping out the door and past the few people in the hall—hotel staff and guests about late-night business. She found a side staircase and followed her nose to a narrow door far from the grand main entrance.
In a few minutes she was out in a small alley. It was very dim and heaped with refuse, but she found her way to the main street, pausing at the corner. A row of streetlamps illuminated the way for passing carriages and made her choices clear.
To the north was the odor of grass and trees and water, to the south the great river called Thames. It was much broader than the Rio Grande, she’d heard, but no farmers worked its banks in London.
Somewhere, starting on this very street, lay the path to her future. In New Mexico she’d been able to trail a rabbit over miles of scrub and desert. All she needed was a sign, a track in this trackless place, to show her the way.
She closed her eyes and wished with all her heart.
The answer came as a thin, elusive wisp of scent that grew steadily more distinct, rising above the heavier odors like the cry of a hawk in a thunderstorm.