Will’s First Glimpse of Lena
EXTRACT FROM HEART OF IRON
Will could remember the first time he’d ever seen her, bustling along Petticoat Lane with her gray Serge skirts swishing around her ankles and her battered bonnet barely protecting her from the rain. Clutching a sodden newspaper over her head, she’d slipped on the edge of the gutter and the newspaper had torn in two, disintegrating in Lena’s hands. With a helpless laugh at a pair of street urchins, she’d given a shrug, then tossed the newspaper aside. The sound of her laughter went straight through him; it was the type of sound that always made Will feel like an outsider looking in. Joy radiated off her, like warmth from the fire on a cold winter’s night, and Will felt an almost envious stirring, as if he wanted to stretch his hands out and catch some of her effervescent happiness. Dragging her bonnet off her head, she’d tilted her face up to the rain as it wet her lips, her eyelashes fluttering against her pale cheeks, and Will had almost fallen off the roof as he strained to look.
Women made him uncomfortable at the best of times. His own mother had sold him once it became clear he was verwulfen, and the only other woman in his life had been Esme. After a year or so of her presence at the warren, he’d started to relax around her, but everything about Lena set his hackles on edge. A curious, uncomfortable feeling that he didn’t understand. With a vampire stalking the rookeries, he’d been in charge of keeping an eye on the younger Todd siblings and protecting the house at night. Every day he’d followed Lena to work and then home again, without her even knowing. He complained about it to everyone he knew, but the truth of it was that he began to relish the moments when she’d appear at the door of the clockmaker’s, giving a cheery little wave back into the shop. In the grim reality of Will’s life, Lena became the one bright spark, a yearning for something he’d never had or felt before.
It was safe for him to feel that way. She was a stranger still, no threat to him, nor he to her. It wasn’t until he came face to face with her that he’d realized how different reality might be. Stepping out onto the roof one night in her nightgown, of all things, Lena had stared at him as if he were some hulking brute, darting a swift glance at the window she’d come through.
