Merry Christmas Verity Fitzroy Read online

room to the lift, and then out of the building altogether.

  No ticking was in her brain, no angry thoughts about her own failings. All she thought of was the feel of the snow on her face, and getting back to the safe house in Kensington.

  “Verity?” Harrison Thorne stepped out of the shadows, his bowler hat gleaming white with fresh snow. He was locking the door behind him. “Whatever are you doing here?”

  Verity spun around, feeling her cheeks blushing hard. “I met a lady called Doctor Josepha Blackwell, she let me in, showed me something horrible and marvelous.”

  A frown formed on Harrison’s handsome face. “Doctor Blackwell? I think you must be mistaken; she left two days ago to meet her family in Jersey. I saw her off on the airship myself.”

  Verity tilted her head. “I…I must have…well I must have been mistaken.” Had she really met Doctor Blackwell, or had it all been a hallucination…or something even wilder?

  “Is everything alright, Verity?” the agent enquired, shifting the large package he was carrying to his other hand.

  In the end, did it really matter who it was that had let her in and shown her the terrible reality? What mattered was that she’d found the will to return to her loved ones, because she wasn’t alone. She did have family.

  Verity turned to him, and let out a laugh. “Everything, everything is just topping, Mr. Thorne!” She glanced down at the package he was carrying. “Is that what I think it is?”

  He tilted his head. “If you are thinking it is a goose…then indeed you are right.”

  Somehow she knew exactly what he was up to. “And am I right in presuming that is bound for a house full of ragamuffins in Kensington?”

  He tipped his hat. “As always, Miss Fitzroy, you are sharply observational. I was just heading there. Since…well…I have no family of my own to share the Eve with. But tell me…what are you doing here at Miggins?”

  Verity thought of her fellow Ministry workers, their sharp little faces, and the many, many good times they had shared. Then she thought of her lost mother and father, and how despite all that she had managed to find herself a family again.

  “Why Mr. Thorne, I have come to fetch you to the table.” She tucked her arm under the elbow of the startled agent. “No one should be alone on this day of all days.”

  As they walked down the street, she whispered to herself. “And apologies and forgiveness will hopefully be just as welcome as that goose.”

  Snow was falling in London town, there was a strange automaton following her, and an even stranger ticking in her head—yet Miss Verity Fitzroy put all those things away from herself. Tomorrow was Christmas, she had family to welcome her, and the days after that would have to look after themselves.

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