Written to Die for the Angel, So I Exposed Her First novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Girl in the Rain

Odile Merrin came to the loft at midnight, in the rain, without a cloak.

Perrine heard the knock from the cutting room, where she sat with a lamp and a bolt of canvas she wasn't sewing.

The guard Lucan had posted on the quay was a stout young man with a cough.

He let the girl through the door, and then, after a look at her face, took himself politely out of earshot.

She stood dripping on the boards.

Her lilac gloves were gone.

Her hair hung in rat-tails, and the pretty round face that had looked so innocent over a teacup was hollow and grey.

"I won't stay," she said.

"You're wet through."

"I don't care," Odile said.

"Sit down by the stove, Miss Merrin."

"I said I'm not staying." Her teeth chattered. "I came to say a thing and I'll go."

"Then say it by the stove."

Odile hesitated.

Then she crossed to the iron stove in the corner and sat on the bench in front of it.

She hugged herself and stared at her knees.

Perrine poured tea from the pot and put the cup in her hands.

She drank without seeming to know she was doing it.

"They put us out of the house," Odile said at last. "Papa's chandlery was the Quillon account for twenty years. They stopped it the day after the tea. Then the others stopped. The yard, the Fund, the carriage trade. Papa's let go six men."

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