A train pulled into the platform opposite with a screech of brakes and couplings and wheels. Great clouds of smoke and smut and steam filled the air. Doors opened and a handful of tired passengers emerged, a porter came running. Alice handed over the baby and by the time the doors of the carriages closed again and the train had gone to the sidings for the night Alice was already hurrying back to Elizabeth Bay before she was missed. And the baby was—

Well, who knew where the baby was?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: DECEIT II

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

DECEIT II

Eleanor did not sleep. She sat at her desk, protected by the darkness. She listened to the rain on the windows and on the roof, so insistent and unceasing that the days of blue-skied sunlight seemed like they belonged to another city in another climate. She pressed her fingers into the flesh of her upper arm and felt the tenderness there in the shape of a man’s grip.

She heard the sounds of the house, at one point imagining footsteps on the stairs, the sound of a door far off at the rear of the house closing, and had leaped up, confused, the blood roaring in her ears, but not going to the door, not going to the window. Simply standing in the darkened room, waiting, every nerve raw. After a time, and when it became clear she had imagined it, she sank down once more to the chair.

The clock in the hallway struck and chimed its way around the hour and on to the next hour, charting a passage through the night.

What had she done?

A year ago, when they were still grieving the loss of their child. She had no idea at all. She had remained in bed for a time. A long time. The vote had been held and lost and Alasdair had moved into the second bedroom. After a time she had got better, or that was how the doctor had described it: Mrs Dunlevy getting up from her bed, getting dressed, venturing outside, accepting one or two visitors. Getting better.

After a little more time she had attended a reception at Parliament House, her first engagement since the loss of the child, arriving by cab to meet Alasdair there but arriving too soon and finding, quite suddenly, that it was more than she felt able to do, entering the reception on her own. It was too soon—though the doctor had assured her she was better. She must enter the room on her husband’s arm and that way, if there was sympathy, if there were silent looks, she could endure it, she felt.

But she had arrived too soon.

There was no sign of Alasdair and all about her people were massing, cabs were pulling up outside, more and more of them. In a moment someone would see her.