Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven by Mercedes Lackey Page A

you behind. In the meantime… Nan, Jenny
is
too soft and cry-babyish. Why don’t you take her on? Help her grow a little more backbone. Sarah, help ayah Gulzar with the babies. They’re too young to wrap you around their fingers, and Gulzar could use the help.”
    Nan and Sarah exchanged another pained look. This was make-work, and both of them knew it. But what else was there to do? Well, other than figure out just what they
might
be able to do with themselves…
    Don’t accept the walls that other people want to place you behind?
Nan thought, as she took herself off to find Jenny.
That’s all very well, but that means having to keep them from doing it in the first place, doesn’t it?
And really, how many options did she have? She had no talent at writing or art. Clearly she had no talent for teaching. Nursing made her ill. She wasn’t any kind of a scholar. Working in an office or a factory or a shop would give her even less freedom than the stage for doing what she really felt she
must
do, the sort of occult work that Memsa’b and Sahib did. And she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, sit idle.
    “Bother,”
she said aloud, crossly. Why did things have to be so complicated? It had all seemed so simple when they were children! They had it all planned; everything would be safe, they would know what to expect, and everything would go on much as it always had, except that instead of being the students, they would be the teachers. There would be no surprises.
    Wasn’t that how things were supposed to go?

    “So what
do
we do with ourselves?” Sarah asked that night, as both of them were brushing their hair before bed. She sighed. “Memsa’b suggested we should work with the women’s suffrage movement.…”
    Nan frowned. “I think that would be a very bad idea. You know what my temper is like. The first policeman who tries to bully or hurt someone is very likely to discover five inches of umbrella pointin his belly or find his head broken by the shaft.” She gazed fondly at her new acquisition, funded—with some trepidation—by Sahib. It was an umbrella made to the same specifications as their patroness’s in Egypt. It had a backbone of stout steel as strong as a crowbar, the tip was sharp enough to pierce flesh, and the handle housed a small kit containing many useful objects.
    “Surely you wouldn’t…” Sarah trailed off as Neville gave a derisive
quork
, and Grey snickered.
    “See? Even they know I would.” Nan sighed. “You can take the girl out of Whitechapel, but you can’t take Whitechapel out of the girl.”
    “I wouldn’t say that,” Sarah said weakly.
    “You don’t have to; I already did.” Nan brushed her hair the last of the mandated one hundred strokes. “And there’s another thing. You know we’ll be thrown in jail. Have you any notion how haunted every jail in London is?”
    Sarah paled. “You’re right.”
    “And I can just see myself telling our jailor, ‘Please sir, let my friend out. She has thirty ghosts trying to talk to her; half are insane, and the other half are murderous.’ I’m sure that would do us and the cause a world of good.” She began braiding her hair deftly. “Neither of us are any good at public speaking, and we don’t have secretarial skills, so there we are again. The most use we could be is as slogan shouters. Not very useful. Curse it all, I want to be
useful
, not ornamental or idle.”
    “I wonder…” Sarah began, then shook her head. “No, that probably wouldn’t work.”
    “What?” Nan asked, a little more sharply than she had intended. “Come out with it! You never know unless you bring it out in the open.”
    “Well… I wonder if Lord Alderscroft could find something for us to do. He certainly hinted at it.” Sarah sounded hesitant, and Nan wasn’t entirely certain this was a viable idea either.
    “Doing what?” she asked.
    “Looking into things, I suppose,” Sarah replied vaguely. “I’m not sure how we would do that,