Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl (47 page)

“I’m afraid she’s fainted.”

Florence feared she would, too. That voice . . . a cruel joke. She said weakly, “Bram?”

He stepped over the threshold. Bram indeed. Tall, strong, smiling through his beard. He wore tight breeches and a loose white shirt. She looked at him, bewildered. “They said you’d died.”

“They thought I had. Oh, Florence, I have such stories to tell.”

“Why didn’t you telegraph? How did you get home?”

“I flew.” He flapped his arms. “Most exhausting.”

She cried then, tears of joy, and Bram took her in his arms. “It’s really you,” she said.

“Where is Noel?”

“I shall get him directly. Let me hold you for a moment. I’m worried you will disappear like a phantom. They said you were crushed under the pyramid’s stones.”

“I was,” he said, smelling her hair. “Somehow, I found the strength to escape. I crossed France. When I reached Calais I was bereft of the accoutrements a gentleman requires, having lost my wallet and most of my clothing in Egypt. I procured a peasant’s outfit from . . . well, a criminal.”

“I shall swoon, Bram, I swear. You had dealings with the underworld?
French
criminals to boot?”

“Briefly.” Bram smiled. “We . . . had lunch together. After a fashion.”

She shook her head and they held each other until Adelaide stirred. Florence stepped back, smoothed her dress. “When she is recovered, we shall have brunch. You must be starving.”

Stoker wiped an almost imperceptible red spot from the corner of his mouth, and smiled. He ran his tongue over his keen canines. He, too, had thought he’d died, especially when Elizabeth took his blood. But before she left, as he hovered in darkness, she’d gifted him a few drops of her own blood into his parched mouth. An acquired taste, but one he’d come to relish.

“It is quite all right,” he said, his eyes shining, where before they had only twinkled. “I have already eaten.”