Night of a Thousand Stars

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I shook hands with him and stayed to tea, and attempted to make friends with Peeky, who stared down his nose and loathed me quietly. I would have to work on that one, I decided as I rose to leave. The colonel had slumped a little in his chair, snoring gently, and it was Talbot who showed me out.

We paused at the door. “Looks as if he’s taken quite a shine to you,” he said, jerking his head back towards the colonel’s sitting room. “Can’t say as I blame him.”

The eyes were dancing again, and I pulled a serious face. “Mr. Talbot, am I going to have trouble with you?”

“No more than you ask for,” he told me with a grin. Then he put out his own hand for me to shake. “You mustn’t take me too seriously, Miss March. I’m simply giddy with delight that there will be a prettier face than mine around here. It gets rather lonely with just us elderly bachelors, the colonel, Peeky and myself.”

I shook his hand, and he held it the merest second too long.

“Thank you, Mr. Talbot.”

He shook his head. “No, miss. The colonel won’t like that. You might work for him, too, but he knows you are a lady. To you, I’m just Talbot.”

“That hardly seems right,” I protested.

His expression was rueful. “You’ll find out soon enough—he might be a splendid old fellow, but this is not a democracy, Miss March. Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon, Talbot,” I said. I made my way out of the hotel and into a watery grey afternoon. A spring storm had blown up while I was inside, and the pavements were wet. The clouds were low and ominous, the wind cruel as only a March wind can be. I had forgot my umbrella and my coat was impossibly thin. Within minutes I was soaked through, but I didn’t mind. I was leaving for the Holy Land in a week’s time. I had done it.

Masterman was less impressed when I told her I had taken the post. We met in our little room at the hotel she had found, and I was crackling with excitement. Masterman was considerably more subdued as she hung up my wet coat and stuffed newspaper into my shoes.

“You cannot seriously mean to work for this man,” she protested. She set the shoes well away from the fire to dry slowly.

“I can and I do,” I told her firmly. “Now, we haven’t much time to make our arrangements. The colonel expects me to begin work the day of our departure, so that gives us only a few days to travel down to Father’s and pack up my things, and we still have to book your passage.”

She shook her head. “I feel peculiar.”

“Take a bromide.”

“It’s not indigestion,” she said. “And you mustn’t be flippant. It’s gone too far now.”

I blinked at her in astonishment. “Masterman, this is what we have been working towards. How can you possibly say it’s gone too far?”

She spread her hands. They were surprisingly elegant hands, but capable. They knew how to do things and do them well. My own hands seemed silly and childish by comparison.

“I thought you were merely having a little adventure, a grand little adventure.”

“And what did you think would happen when it was finished? How did you think it would end?”

“I thought you would realise you haven’t a hope of finding Sebastian. I thought it would all just...stop. I expected you would go back to the life you came from.”

I felt a surge of anger. “This isn’t just a lark, Masterman. Sebastian could be in trouble—injured or even dead for all we know.”

“And you really think you can find him?” she asked evenly. I had the strangest feeling she was testing me, and I rose to the bait.

My hands fisted at my sides. “Why not? Why should it fall to someone else to care what happened to him? He was kind to me when I needed it. He went out of his way to help me, and I owe him a debt, Masterman. I can’t just walk away now. I’ve spent my entire life walking away from things.”

Her expression was curious. “Miss?”

“Oh, very well! Gerald wasn’t the first,” I confessed miserably. “I’ve been very nearly engaged twice before. I’ve managed to avoid committing myself, but it was frightfully awkward. I’ve left schools, half a dozen of them. I’ve taken on pets and causes and friendships and let them go the moment they asked too much of me. I’ve never once in the whole of my life finished anything. Don’t you see, Masterman? If I don’t finish this, this one thing, I’ll never finish anything. I’ll never see anything through to the end. My family think it’s funny. They joke about the hobbies and romances and projects I’ve left undone. But it’s not a joke anymore. Because it’s become who I am, what I’ve become. I don’t want to be a joke, Masterman. I want to see this through. Not just for Sebastian—for me. Oh, never mind. I can’t explain it. I only know that this is something I have to do. Saying it aloud only makes it sound silly and melodramatic, but the truth is, it feels like a calling.”

“A calling?”

“Yes, isn’t that what clergymen say about their work? They’re called to it? Well, that’s how I feel about this. It’s not just Sebastian, Masterman. Can’t you see? It’s something much bigger, and I don’t understand it yet, but I know I have to go looking.”

Masterman said nothing for a long moment. Then she took a deep breath and exhaled it very, very slowly, and the fight seemed to go out of her. “Very well, miss. We’ll go.”

“You don’t have to—” I began.

The expression on her face was so fierce I flinched. “Yes, I do. However long it takes, wherever it takes us. ‘Whither thou goest,’” she finished.

I smiled weakly. “You’ll be my Ruth, then?”

“However long, wherever it takes us,” she repeated.

Six (#ulink_72de7602-0be7-58f1-b591-2797c78ec507)

A week later, I stood at the rail of the ship, watching the southern coastline of France recede, butterflies hurtling around in my stomach like bees in a jar. I was always slightly unsettled when I started a new sea voyage, but this time the feeling was largely one of pure elation. I had done it. Seizing every opportunity that had come my way, I had secured a position as companion to the elderly Colonel Cyrus Archainbaud, packed my bags, and set sail for the Holy Land. It had been a whirlwind of activity, from the first interview with the colonel to boarding the train in London. And in the meantime, there was Masterman to argue with. After an initial ding-dong that nearly had her marching straight to Mother to Reveal All, she gave in and packed my small trunk with perfect precision and very bad grace.

I had intended to talk her out of coming—the passage was eye-wateringly expensive and consumed almost all of the salary the colonel had advanced me—but she refused to let me go alone, and with a little careful extortion, she persuaded me that it would be far better for her to come along.

“I can keep an eye on things,” she said firmly.

“Masterman, a companion cannot travel with a lady’s maid,” I pointed out acidly. “How can I be in the colonel’s employ when you are in mine?”

She shook her head. “I won’t be in your employ, at least not publicly. I will go on my own, as an independent traveller. That way I can be at hand if trouble comes, and I can go and find things out. Two pairs of eyes and ears are better than one,” she added slyly. “And if it means we find poor Sebastian sooner, well, miss, it would be criminal not to try. As you said, what if he is come to some harm? What if he’s in need of friends to aid him? Just think of it, that poor fellow, perhaps chained to a wall somewhere in those heathen lands—”