The Secret Wallflower Society - Jillian Eaton Page 0,30

its intended target. He knew it had reached its mark when he saw the shadows stir.

She didn’t say anything. But he saw the flash of her white teeth as she smiled before she climbed into the carriage and closed the door.

Chapter Eight

“Well?” Helena demanded before Calliope had even sat down. “What happened? What did he say? What did you say? Was it a success? Tell me everything.”

Chuckling under her breath at her friend’s excitement, Calliope made herself comfortable before peeling off her damp gloves and pulling down her hood. Then she leaned back, closed her eyes, and sighed.

“It felt like a dream.”

“A dream?” Helena pounced. “What sort of dream?”

“The sort you never want to wake up from.” She opened her eyes. “He was everything you said and more.”

So much more.

Speaking with Leo had almost been like speaking to herself. He’d understood everything about her. More importantly, he’d seemed to understand everything inside of her. All of her suppressed hurts. All of her pain. All of the little nicks and cuts she tried her best to hide from the world. And he hadn’t cared that she wasn’t some perfect, shiny new thing. Because he knew what it was like to hurt as well. He had flaws, just as she did. Chips and cracks that had been forged with time and tragedy. But together, by some miracle she couldn’t explain, their two broken halves made a whole.

“Why didn’t you tell me how kind and sweet he was?” she asked.

Helena blinked. “Are we talking about the same person, or did you go sneak off with someone else when you went out to the terrace?”

Yanking out the sharp metal pins Helena’s lady’s maid had jabbed against her skull with the ruthless precision of a torturer from the Spanish Inquisition, Calliope groaned with relief when her hair tumbled free. “Of course not,” she said, massaging her scalp. “Don’t be silly, I – stop the carriage!”

“Stop the what?” Helena said blankly.

“The carriage! Stop the carriage!” Twisting in her seat, Calliope pounded her fist against the thin panel separating them from the driver and the hackney immediately cut over to the side of the street and lurched to a halt.

“Calliope, what are you doing?” Helena exclaimed when Calliope shoved the door open. The rain had intensified from a drizzle to a pounding, making it difficult to make out anything. But she was almost positive she’d seen…

“There!” she cried, pointing. “I thought I saw a woman, and I was right. She’s huddled there, in the alley.”

Were they in St. Giles or even the west edge of Mayfair, a woman huddled in an alley would have been a common occurrence and no reason to stop a carriage. But in Grosvenor Square it was quite an unusual sight. Especially since the woman in question was – Calliope squinted to make sure – wearing a ball gown.

“Do you think she’s hurt?” Helena asked, nudging Calliope aside so she could take a look.

“I don’t know why else she’d be out in this weather.”

“Well we can’t just leave her there.”

“Agreed.”

Without stopping to consider the dangers that might await them – they were in Grosvenor Square, after all – Calliope and Helena sprinted through the drenching rain to the woman Calliope had spied by pure happenstance out the window.

“Hello,” she called out as they neared the alley, not wanting to startle the poor thing into flight. “Do you – do you require any assistance?”

“Dear God.” Helena inhaled sharply when they finally reached the woman, and although Calliope bit her tongue her tongue she echoed her friend’s sentiments exactly.

Despite the wet and the cold, the poor girl – she could have hardly been older than seventeen, perhaps eighteen at the most – was wearing a short sleeved dress that had already been soaked through to the undergarments. Her shoulders were hunched and trembling. Long black hair was plastered to her skull. And her face…

“Who did this to you?” Heedless of her own gown, Calliope crouched down on the wet, muddy ground, drew off her cloak, and wrapped it around the girl like a blanket. She flinched as if she’d been struck, her left eye – the right was grotesquely swollen shut – glassy with terror.

“Who are you?” she gasped, her gaze darting between Calliope and Helena with the speed of a frightened rabbit. A rabbit that had been torn apart by a fox and barely lived to tell the tale.

“I’m Helena.” Kneeling beside the girl, Helena gently took her bone white hand and gave it