“I most certainly did not claim any such infatuation,” Wendy protested, her cheeks flushing. “I said only that they were fascinated with me, which is another thing entirely. It was as though some of them had never met a woman before! They were curious about me, and Peter Pan promised to save poor Reginald on my behalf. That is why they did not pursue the men.”
“He promised to save the dead man,” Hook stated, and his eyes were cold and hard now, glittering in the lamplight. It was another question that was not really a question, his voice dripping with condescension.
“He did,” Wendy said. Her jaw thrust forward at a decidedly stubborn angle. “And then he accomplished it. He healed poor Reginald’s leg and returned him to life. Just as it says in the report.”
“After severing it clean through and killing him first, lest we forget,” Hook growled, and his eyes flashed dangerously, a warning that Wendy did not find herself inclined to heed.
“It was a battle,” Wendy found herself arguing, “as you said yourself. Yes, his men killed poor Reginald. But still, Peter didn’t have to save him afterward. He was the enemy, and Peter showed him mercy.”
Hook sucked in a sharp breath and stood perfectly still for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was utterly devoid of emotion, every word pronounced with clipped, military precision.
“The everlost made us the enemy, Miss Darling, when they attacked our homeland. They made us the enemy when they kidnapped our children. They made us the enemy when they killed my men, sending their bodies home for their mothers and their widows to bury. And Pan made himself the enemy when he cut off my hand. As you can see, he did not show me any mercy on that day.”
Wendy gasped as he raised the steel hook before him, the lamplight gleaming over its polished surface, reflecting her own visage back to her, wild and distorted by the curve of the metal.
“Do not be fooled by a single kindness shown to a pretty young woman whose favor he might wish to curry for any number of ignoble reasons,” Hook finished quietly. “Pan is the enemy of His Majesty’s Kingdom of Great Britain, and you would do well to remember it.”
Wendy had not known it was Peter who had severed Hook’s hand from his body, but after what she had seen at Dover, she knew he was capable of it. The miraculous resurrection of poor Reginald had also made her forget—at least temporarily—the many reports from London of kidnappings and missing children. And of the dead who had tried to protect them.
Staring now at Hook’s cold, steel hand, she thought back on the first time she had seen Peter Pan, when he and his band of everlost had only just descended from the clouds. She remembered his wolflike canines, shining in the darkness. And the hardness in his ice-blue eyes. The captain was right—she had forgotten, in the charm of Pan’s manners and the allure of his magic, that he was their enemy.
She would not forget again.
Their conversation afterward veered toward Peter’s words that night, which Wendy provided as directly and exactly as she could remember—managing, with extreme effort, not to comment on Hook’s continuing disparagement of her gender. She realized at some point that he didn’t even know he was insulting her, but she wasn’t sure whether that made matters better or considerably worse.
Yes, she told him, Pan mentioned an island. No, he did not give the name of the island, nor a distance, nor any particular direction for it. Yes, she was quite certain. Yes, even she, a mere woman, was familiar with compass points and with the essentials of land measurement.
Yes, she understood also that resurrection was medically impossible, as was the restoration of a fully severed limb. Yes, scientifically impossible. Yes, empirically impossible. Nevertheless, that was precisely what had occurred. Yes, she was absolutely certain. No, her feminine sensibilities were not commonly subject to either shock or hysteria.
The interrogation went on for a surprisingly long time until Wendy was fighting just to keep her eyes open, having eventually slumped (still uninvited, mind you) into an armchair, propping her head up on one hand in a decidedly unladylike manner and watching Hook pace tirelessly back and forth, his energy never flagging.
No matter how many questions she answered, however, Hook never seemed satisfied, and she began to wonder whether he could tell that she was holding back certain details, the divulgence of which she felt would only lead to trouble.
She did not mention, for example, that she had disobeyed a direct order in following the men out to Saint Mary. She also failed to mention the doffing of her dress and her protracted sword fight, both of which she had agreed with John and Michael to omit from the report as a matter of propriety. A decision for which she was now exceedingly grateful.
Throughout their discussion, Hook’s countenance remained devoid of any further expression, so she had no way of knowing whether he was taking any of her answers seriously. She suspected, however, that he was not. By the end of it, she couldn’t help but feel as though the entire exercise had been a lost cause from the very beginning.
There was no way she could ever impress the man. Her gender alone had blinded him thoroughly to her abilities. She had finally met the renowned captain of The Dragon, and what did she have to show for it? Nothing but a sympathetic tale to tell Michael when she returned to her post, destined to stare wistfully out to sea for all the rest of her days.
“Thank you, Miss Darling,” Hook said finally, interrupting her sad reverie. “This first interview has been quite productive.”
Wendy sat up straight.
“I’m sorry,” she said carefully. “Did you say, ‘first’ interview?”
“Why yes, of course,” he assured her. “Surely you did not expect us to extract all the important details of your encounter in a single evening?”
“I had thought your questions to be quite thorough,” she replied, which was a rather delicate way of phrasing it, given what she wanted to say—which doesn’t bear repeating.
“Be that as it may,” he said, nodding at what he believed to be a compliment, “there is more to be discovered here, I think. New developments may arise over the coming weeks—”
“Weeks?” she interrupted, but she was speaking mostly to herself.
“Yes, weeks. As I was saying, new developments may arise over the coming weeks that could raise new questions. And your insights, given your direct contact with the everlost, could prove to be more valuable than you think.”
You mean more valuable than you think, Wendy thought bitterly, but of course she didn’t say this out loud either.
“To that end,” he finished, “I should like you to stay reasonably close to this office for the immediate future. Accommodations will, of course, be provided.”
“But, I—”
“Miss Darling,” he said darkly, “the direct order of a superior officer is not a matter for negotiation. Have I made myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” she replied quietly, and she meant it in more ways than one. But at least she could try to make the best of it.
I suppose I can do some good while I’m here, she thought to herself. The Foundling Hospital can always use an extra hand. And perhaps I might pay a quick visit to Mr. Equiano, if I can figure out how to handle the niceties. James Hook will realize soon enough that my account of the incident isn’t going to change.
But as Wendy was soon to discover, Hook’s idea of “reasonably close” and Wendy’s idea of “reasonably close” were not, in fact, reasonably close to each other at all.
ertfordshire!”
This was the first word Wendy spoke when she stepped off the coach at St. Albans. It was also the first word she had spoken when she had stepped onto the coach back in London, and it was the only word she had spoken since.
There was simply nothing else to say.
Hook was sending her to stay at his family’s estate in Hertfordshire. Where she would be safer than she would be in London, he explained, and yet still close enough that he could speak with her again as new questions arose.
Wendy hated this plan.
Nevertheless, that was where she was going, and there was nothing whatsoever that she could do about it. To disobey him would have meant an immediate dismissal from the Nineteenth Light Dragoons, and then she would never get back to John and Michael and Nana, let alone win her place on a ship. Doomed instead to take the first miserable position she could find. Probably as a milliner.
No. That alternative was simply unacceptable.
All she could do, in the end, was keep her chin up and hope that Hook decided sooner rather than later that she had nothing useful to tell him. But that didn’t mean she had to like it. She had boarded the coach in London with a grim countenance indeed, and her mood had not improved since.
Throughout the entire journey, she had sat across from a slightly plump woman with a kind smile, impeccable manners, and an impossibly large yet fashionably debonair yellow-feathered hat. The woman had prattled on cheerfully about her husband and her children and her first grandchild on the way, beaming with pride, to which Wendy had smiled as best she could. She even nodded at the most important bits whenever she felt prompted to do so, her expression gracious but distant, her eyebrow lying low, lost in its own quiet melancholy.
But whenever the woman began to hope that Wendy might offer some comment upon her soliloquy—some word of encouragement or approval regarding her husband or her children or her grandchild-to-be—Wendy would lean forward as though preparing to share some observation of the utmost importance and would say again, both eyebrows raised momentarily for emphasis, “Hertfordshire!” before slumping back in her seat once more, the moment having passed.
Then the woman would tsk-tsk in sympathy and reach forward to pat Wendy’s knee, waiting politely to see whether she might have anything more to offer on the subject. When she did not, the woman would launch once again into a litany of her own invention, which made the hours pass by a bit more quickly for them both, truth be told, despite Wendy’s lack of enthusiasm.
“Miss Darling? Miss Wendy Darling?”
The boy who approached her as she disembarked in St. Albans could not have been older than twelve, but he wore the livery of a coachman nonetheless.
“I’m Wendy,” she admitted, sighing a little.
“Colin Medcalf, at your service,” he replied. “They sent me to get you.”
“So you’re one of Hook’s cousins or nephews or some such, I suppose?” She tried very hard to keep any trace of annoyance from her voice, as it was hardly this boy’s fault whom he was related to, but she found the effort more difficult than she would have liked.
“Oh, no, miss. The family lives up in Yorkshire. The estate here is more of a hunting retreat. It’s just the staff most of the time. I’m the cook’s son. It was Huxley who sent me.”
“Well then, I’m very pleased to meet you, Colin,” she said, her voice warming considerably. “But who is Huxley?”
“Oh, sorry. He’s the butler. He runs the place. He’s good people, miss. Don’t you worry. You’ll like him. Everybody likes Huxley.”
“I’m sure I will,” she agreed. “And who’s this then?”
The ‘who’ was a dog—a Dalmatian, to be precise. She had slunk up behind the boy and was now hiding behind his legs, craning her neck around them to look up at Wendy with interest.
“Athena!” the boy exclaimed, following Wendy’s gaze and discovering the dog behind him. “You know better than that! If you’re here with me, who’s guarding the carriage?”
Athena’s ears pricked up at her name, but she made no move to return to her post. As there was nothing in the carriage worth stealing at the moment, and as it was so very interesting to meet new people, she couldn’t help but feel that this was a much better use of her time.
“Athena’s our coach dog,” Colin explained. “She’s supposed to guard the coach when we go places.” He said this last with a distinct rise in volume, and he stared at the dog as he said it, but the comment didn’t seem to faze Athena in the slightest.
“Perhaps she isn’t meant to be a coach dog,” Wendy suggested. “People don’t always end up being what’s expected of them. Look at me, for example. Nobody thought I could be a … a nurse, and yet here I am.”
She had wanted to say that no one had thought she could be a member of a secret platoon, fighting supernatural forces in the name of the king. But technically, no one thought that to this very day, as it wasn’t something she was allowed to admit to anyone who thought otherwise.
“Well, that’s all well and good for a person, I suppose,” Colin countered, “but a dog’s supposed to be what a dog’s supposed to be.”
Wendy knew, however, that sometimes the best way to win an argument was not to engage in it. So she dropped the subject entirely, turned her luggage over to Colin, and then followed him dutifully to the carriage. But when they were all ready to go and Colin had climbed up into the driver’s seat, Wendy snuck open the carriage door for Athena, who was perfectly happy to jump inside rather than running along next to the horses like a proper coach dog.
“I think you’re very beautiful,” Wendy told Athena as the dog curled up on the seat next to her. Athena thought that was very nice of her to say, and she laid her head upon Wendy’s lap, hoping for a proper scratch behind the ears.
“I don’t think it suits you to be a coach dog, though. Do you?” Athena couldn’t have agreed more. It wasn’t so much that she disliked being a coach dog; it was just that the coach hardly ever went anywhere, so it really wasn’t much of a job at all.
“On the other hand,” Wendy continued, “you make a lovely companion. Quite fetching. And soothing too. There’s a dog waiting for me back in Dover, you know. She has a very important job there, watching over the men, so she had to stay behind. I think you would like that sort of job very much.”
Athena closed her eyes blissfully while Wendy stroked her head.
“Would it be all right if you were my companion dog while I’m here in Hertfordshire? And perhaps if I called you something else, more suited to the position? Your lovely spots remind me of a field of poppies. Not that I’ve ever seen a field of poppies,” Wendy admitted, “but I saw a painting of them once. It was almost as beautiful as you are. Would it be all right if I called you Poppy?”
Poppy flopped onto her side and closed her eyes, understanding thoroughly, long before anyone else, that the Hertfordshire estate had just come under new management.
Dogs always know.
y the time Wendy and Poppy arrived at the Hook Estate, they had already decided how Wendy was going to spend her time there. First, she would continue her research into the everlost. Second, she would continue her training in both swordsmanship and marksmanship. Third, she would find some way to help the local orphans and foundlings.
She had no idea how she was going to do any of those things, but at least she knew what she wanted to do, which is the most important part of any plan—even one that is not entirely worked out yet.
The coach had just pulled up to the grand entrance of the manor house, hardly coming to a full stop before Colin leaped out of the driver’s seat and scrambled around to open the door for his lovely passenger. He held Wendy’s hand, blushing a bit, as she stepped down from the carriage, and he was just about to shut the door behind her when Poppy poked her head out and jumped down after her.
“Athena! What were you doing in there? Bad dog!” Colin said sharply. He turned to Wendy with a look of profound chagrin. “I’m so sorry, miss. She’s never done that before. I don’t k
now what got into her!”
“Oh, now don’t be cross with her, Colin. Poppy didn’t do anything wrong,” Wendy assured him. “I invited her to ride with me. For the company.”
“Poppy?”
Colin looked down at the dog, confused, while Poppy looked up at Wendy obediently, awaiting her orders.
“That’s right,” Wendy affirmed with an approving smile. “Come along, Poppy. I’d like very much to meet this Huxley I’ve heard such nice things about.”
“I’m Huxley, miss. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Huxley had been standing at the grand entrance this entire time, and Wendy had already suspected that he was Huxley due to his proper butler’s uniform and his excellent posture. But she had found in the past that it tended to set things off on the right foot for a new acquaintance to overhear something complimentary about themselves before proper introductions had even begun.
“Huxley!” she exclaimed. “I am Wendy Darling, and I am very pleased to make your acquaintance as well. The estate is just lovely, I must say. Captain Hook has made a fine choice indeed leaving it in your care.”
“Why, thank you, Miss Darling,” Huxley said. And then he smiled. It was a very small and proper smile, of course, but a smile nonetheless. He was a slight man—in his mid-forties, Wendy suspected, and hardly any taller than she was herself. But despite his stature, he carried himself with the confidence of a man who had been in charge of things quite successfully for a good number of years.
“We only just this morning received word of your arrival by courier,” he continued, “and I’m afraid there were no instructions regarding your preferences, so if anything is not to your liking, please be sure to let me know. Dinner will be served at six o’clock. If you missed lunch, Mrs. Medcalf will be glad to see to that as well. There is a room made up for you in the east wing. Colin can escort you there, and then he will be glad to show you about.”
If Colin seemed more than pleased to be assigned that particular duty, Wendy was polite enough to pretend not to notice. She was also genuinely glad to have his assistance, as the estate house was so large that she might have gotten lost in it without him. The fact that this was not the family’s primary estate spoke volumes about their wealth, as did their library, which was the very first thing Wendy asked to see after Colin had deposited her luggage in her room.
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