Sleeping Beauty, Borrowed Time by Maia Chance

Author:Maia Chance
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-05-11T15:02:13+00:00

Gabriel soon discovered that there was no spindle to be found in Dr. Hermann’s pharmacopoeia, nor anywhere in his office. And at any rate, the spindle’s luster had completely faded, eclipsed by a still more hopeless desire.

6

At dawn, Ophelia washed and dressed, and then took up a post at the end of the corridor near Miss Truley’s chamber. A nurse and a charwoman gave her funny looks, but no one told Ophelia to leave, and so, by gum, she wasn’t leaving.

Then—creaaaaaaak—a door opened and Miss Truley rolled out in house slippers and dressing gown, a towel in her lap, and a nurse manning the invalid chair’s push handles.

Ophelia stood quite still, and—thank the stars—neither Miss Truley nor the nurse looked her way. Instead, they made their way along the corridor to the shared bathroom and maneuvered inside.

And . . . they hadn’t locked Miss Truley’s chamber door.

Ophelia darted in and shut the door silently behind her.

The chamber was twice as large as Ophelia’s own, with an arabesque carpet, eiderdowns and silk-covered pillows on the bed, and a writing desk piled untidily with books and what appeared to be correspondence.

Ophelia meant to search for whatever Miss Truley had stolen from the pharmacopeia, but who is able to pass up on a gander at another person’s mail?

She went to the desk and shuffled through a stack of opened letters.

Mostly from America—Boston, New York, Philadelphia—save one from England. All of a personal nature, from ladies with spidery, looped, or precariously slanted penmanship. Then, there at the bottom of the stack, was a postcard from Imogen. The front depicted a tinted view of Amsterdam. On the back, Imogen had written, Amsterdam is simply lovely, Auntie, and we shall see you soon. —Imogen. This was the dull, obligatory note of a girl who had been, perhaps, forced to write by her parents. Imogen’s handwriting was uneven, and awfully smeary.

Catching sight of Miss Truley’s workbasket beside an armchair, Ophelia replaced the postcard beneath the other letters.

She opened the hinged top of the workbasket and dug through skeins of colorful embroidery floss, pincushions, thimble cases, folded cloths, and the round frame holding Adam, Eve, their fig leaves, and the serpent. At the very bottom of the bag amid pins, knotty balls of thread, and a few loose lozenges, were two tiny glass bottles and a brass syringe.

“I beg your pardon!” someone cried from the doorway.

Ophelia snatched her hands out of the workbasket. The lid smacked shut.

Miss Truley sat in her invalid chair in the doorway, her lips peeled back to expose long, stained teeth. “I demand to know what you are doing in my things! Stealing something, I suppose?”

“I—”

“Do not even attempt to defend yourself. Oh, I had you pegged the minute I laid eyes on you, little miss. A logger’s daughter from New Hampshire, I assume? Or perhaps an ice-cutter’s? Something coarse. Something low. Get out.”

“I was merely searching for a pair of scissors to snip a stray thread on my shawl,” Ophelia said. At least the nurse wasn’t here.

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