The Blue Hour Read Online Free PDF

young man beside her who is watching me with candid interest, “this is Mrs Rosina King. I’ll be back to make introductions soon. Mrs King, would you accompany me to the powder room?”
    As well as the striking man named Freddie, I feel the weight of Grace’s stare from across the room as I hasten after Eve. For all I know, Charles has seen. I’ve ceased to care. I follow her exposed back, unable to shake the feeling I have lost something, some vital thing that I never knew I needed.
    As soon as we are shut inside the single ladies’ room, Eve rounds on me, drawing the small brass bolt across the door, leaving my back pressed against it with her arms braced on either side of my shoulders.
    “I’m sorry.” I stare at a cracked tile on the wall behind her and try very hard not to cry from embarrassment, and hurt, and yearning.
    “That’s Freddie out there.”
    Her voice is low and steady. Her scent is more pronounced in the small space and my chest constricts.
    “Freddie’s reading Law at Oxford and bombed down here to visit me for the night. His friend George is around too, somewhere. Off chasing some skirt at this precise moment, most likely, so Freddie humoured me with a dance.”
    I know that if I dare look at her eyes, they will be watching my face. Instead, I fixate on the fault line of the damaged tile. They would have to take out several to replace the broken one.
    “He’s come to see my new place and to check I’m not causing too much pandemonium.” She pauses, then adds a theatrical whisper. “It tends to follow me.”
    At my silence, she says gently, “He’s my brother, silly girl.”
    “Oh.”
    And that is exactly what I feel like. A silly girl, having things explained to her by a worldly woman—who owes me nothing, absolutely nothing. And yet ... Over and above any embarrassment, the tiny seed of insight grows rapidly into a crushing bloom of relief: she understood. Eve saw my foolish upset, and rather than ignore me as was her right, for whatever reason, she is here with me now, taking pains to reassure me when I don’t deserve it. My mind whirrs.
    What do I want from her? What could I ever give in return? What do I possibly expect to come of this... of this...
    What is this?
    My breath is shaky when I finally exhale. “I’m sorry,” I tell her again.
    “You have nothing to be sorry for.” Her voice is careful, neutral. I don’t hear she’s sad; I feel it.
    Muted strains of a foxtrot seep through the wood at my back. I jerk in sudden remembrance: Grace. Charles.
    “I have to go back.”
    She presses closer, urgent now. “Come tomorrow. To my house. There are things... I need to talk to you.”
    I want to. I swallow hard.
    “I can’t. Charles said—” I shake my head. “He’ll never allow it.”
    “Rosina.”
    I still can’t look at her. I stay silent.
    “What do you want, Rose?”
    It’s no use. I take a deep breath through my mouth to avoid breathing in her perfume, and tell the truth.
    “Honestly? Right now, I want to go to sleep. Forget all of this. Forget I’ve met you.”
    “That’s frightfully dramatic, darling. You’re complicating things.” Her tone is lighter, but unnaturally so. “This could all be so much simpler.”
    “How can this possibly be simple?” I’m angry now. Not with Eve, although it’s her I hiss at, while I press my palms hard on the flaking wood behind me and rail against the futility of my life. “I have nothing. No means of my own. No family any more, except...” I can’t bring myself to say his name. “I answer to him,” I say after a moment. “I can’t even vote at my age. You have the vote now in the US, don’t you? Well, things are different here. They’re certainly different for me.” I push a sigh through tight lungs, exasperated. “You don’t understand. How could I ever expect you to? We’re from worlds quite apart, Eve.”
    The skim of a fingertip over my cheek makes me close my eyes.
    “Darling girl.” Her