Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 12
Once Emma had purchased herself a new book, something less likely to invoke horrid dreams, the ladies then strolled along the busy London streets. They, or rather Milli, admired all the window displays—milliners, tobacconists, linen drapers, mantua-makers, shoemakers, perfumeries, and sundry merchants scattered about the streets. Next they visited a confectioners shop, and then wandered around the more fashionable districts to admire the villas and mansions.
“I wager a sovereign your viscount lives there!” Milli pointed up to a rambling terraced mansion with Ionic columns framing its entryway.
“You shouldn’t wager, it’s indecent.”
When the door opened and a portly old man emerged with his lady and a little white dog, both sisters glanced at one another and giggled as they hurried off.
Milli’s gait slowed as the sisters passed before a modiste’s boutique window. “Emma, is that not the most beautiful muslin you have ever seen!” Her voice was rapturous as she pointed to a delicately embroidered muslin within. “Oh, let’s go inside!”
“Whatever for? You just gambled your last sovereign away.”
“Do be serious.”
“Do you not already own a muslin exactly like that?”
“Upon my word, Emma, you must see that this is vastly superior muslin. I know I shall absolutely die if I do not have it!”
“Then by all means,” Emma replied, gesturing towards the door with an impatient sigh, “we cannot have you dying before supper.”
But Millicent, upon entering the shop, was quickly diverted by a pretty turban and its melange of colorful plumage. The younger Miss Rose was not at all circumspect in her exclamations and awe, but on noticing the cost of the desired item, her felicity quickly waned. Her hopes were then instantly dashed again when she picked up and admired a lovely blue silk fan with a very extravagant price tag.
“Ten shillings!” Milli gasped in horror ere she carefully placed the costly piece back whence she’d found it. “I cannot even purchase a fan without being reduced to impecuniosity!”
“Well, at least you shall be fashionably impecunious.”
“And did you not see that hat, Emma? I am convinced that I shan’t find better feathers anywhere else in the world were I to spend a lifetime looking!”
“There, there,” said Emma, endeavoring—and failing—to hide her mirth, “it may be for the best lest you wish to look as bird-witted as I sometimes fear you must be. Besides” —Emma gave Milli’s empty purse a knowing poke— ”you haven’t a feather to fly with.”
At the close of their shopping adventure, Milli—despite the perverse injustice of costly feathers and fans—had acquired herself an elegant pair of gloves, as well as a bandbox containing yet another bonnet, and a vastly overpriced muff besides.
As these costly items were being packaged, Emma drifted towards the window to look out at the straining grey clouds that pressed upon the chimney stacks with foreshadowing twilight. In the quickening shadows across the street, she descried a black carriage. It was drawn by four black brutes that pawed restlessly at the cobbles with massive hooves, and was presently parked alongside a boot-maker’s shop with two forbidding footmen of matching livery and broad-brimmed hats standing sentinel beside it.
On the door of the vehicle was emblazoned a very singular coat of arms with a passant red dragon, atop which rested not a helmet but a castle shaped distinctly like a rook. The shield and mantling was supported either side by two identical black wolves, both of which were chained in gold. Inside the silver banderole at the base, only two words served as the motto: Vitam Aeternam.
Spontaneity was not a trait to which the elder Miss Rose had ever been much inclined, but on this occasion, without considering the impulse that suddenly spurred her to cross the street, Emma found she was very much compelled by a powerful need to discover the name to which that crest belonged. When she had stepped inside the boot shop, Emma scanned the rooms without much hope of knowing whom exactly she was searching for. Erelong, she perceived that she herself was being avidly watched, and thus turned to discover whence the strange sensation seemed to emanate.
The source of the impression, she realized, was a tall gentleman—leastwise he appeared to possess an uncommon length of frame even seated as he was—in the corner of the shop where the bedimmed light through the glazing offered very little illumination. He was dressed to match the shadows, his clothes as black as his shock of cropped curls, the ivory neckcloth and his pale skin contrasting diametrically. He was very striking, thus indolently reposed in his chair, one leg bent over the other and his beaver hat and cane resting on his knee. She found herself gaping at him like a pigeon until she suddenly realized that he too was staring. Staring right at her! She nearly gasped aloud at being so boldly scrutinized, but collected her senses enough to avert her eyes quickly.
Milli chose that moment to burst in like a gale through the shop door, panting. “Oh! It’s a boot shop. Well, that’s all right then,” she said, looking around with a relieved grin. “I should have been obliged to sit on your head and restrain you if you’d been in here replacing those horrid spectacles.”
“Did you not take a moment to read the sign printed on the window,” Emma chided, shooting her younger sister an embarrassed glare when Milli drew up alongside her.
“You know I do not mind boring signs.” Milli favored her sister with a patient shake of her head. “Not especially when there is a four-in-hand blocking the shopfront! Good Lord! Who is that gentleman?” Milli spilled her words with little care for their volume or for the horrified