The Missing Pages

Chapter Twenty-Eight

FORGET THE SMOG, THE DAMP AIR, AND THE RAIN. BEING in London felt glorious! It pulsed with its own energy with its slick cobblestone streets, rolling black cabs, and marbled horizons.

But best of all, the city smelled of books to me.

From the moment I stepped off the boat, I knew the places I wanted to go to inhale the luxuriant scents of paper and pulp, of leather and ink.

Bookshops were plentiful. One could pop into Fortnum her throat was wrapped in the same lavender scarf she was wearing the first time I’d met her.

She offered the book to Quaritch with reverence, but her eyes lifted and she looked only at me.