James pressed the money into Neddy’s hand and sent him on his way, just as the door to the carriage opened, and a slim hand in a dove-colored leather glove appeared, followed by sweeping ivory-colored skirts and a short coat of pale mink, topped with a head of upswept silver-blond hair, glimmering like metal in the sun.

It was Grace.

Cordelia fished a long woolen scarf from her handbag and wrapped it around her hair, securing her hat firmly to her head to keep it from flying off in the wind. Even slowed down by the London traffic, the little car felt wildly fast; it was able to nip in and out of spaces that a carriage would never have been able to navigate. Feeling somewhat windblown, she tied her hat down more firmly with her scarf as they zipped between two horse-buses and a milk cart and narrowly missed swerving onto the pavement. Several workmen by the side of the road cheered.

“Apologies!” yelled Matthew with a grin, spinning the wheel deftly to the right and shooting across another junction.

Cordelia eyed him severely. “Do you actually know where we’re going?”

“Of course I do! I have a map.”

He produced a slim red clothbound book from a pocket and handed it to her. The Bath Road, read the cover.

“We’ll definitely need a bath, by the time we get there,” she said, as the car splashed through a muddy puddle.

Their route took them through Hammersmith, roughly following the course of the Thames, visible in glimpses through the factories and houses of the outer suburbs. As they passed a sign for the turning toward Chiswick, Cordelia thought of Grace, a sort of humming discomfort behind her ribs.

Once they were through Brentford, its busy high street clogged with buses, the traffic thinned out and the buildings gave way to a more rural landscape. Open fields stretched out in front of them, pale with frost tinged pink by the early-morning sun. Matthew, hatless and grinning, his hair whipped back by the wind, beamed at her.

She had never experienced anything like this before. The world was unfolding before them, promising the unknown. Every mile they drove made the ache in her chest recede further. She was not Cordelia Herondale, who had just lost her father, who loved a man who would never love her. She was someone free and nameless, flying like a bird above the road that blurred beneath their wheels.