Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Most Anticipated Books of 2025!

Excerpt from The Girl in His Shadow by Audrey Blake, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Discuss |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Readalikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The Girl in His Shadow by Audrey Blake

The Girl in His Shadow

by Audrey Blake
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Readers' Rating (6):
  • Paperback:
  • May 2021, 384 pages
  • Rate this book

About this Book

Print Excerpt


Water, she mouthed. There was none in the room. "I'll be right back," he said and went to find the kitchen. There was no water to be had, but in the teapot on the table was an inch of cold brew gone sludgy at the bottom. It would do.

He tried dripping it onto her lips, but the liquid rolled away before she could catch it. Anxious now, he soaked it up with his handkerchief. When he laid the wet cambric on her mouth, she sucked. Her fingers, already skeletally thin—cholera was terrifyingly aggressive—came up to clutch the cloth. He let her work on it, then had to pry it away to soak again. Her grip was stronger than he'd expected, but he warned himself against hope. It was easy, depressingly easy, to imagine patients looking better. Hadn't he thought the old woman would pull through? This child looked as fragile as a dandelion puff.

She couldn't stay here alone. She must be bathed and put into clean clothes. Someone must soak the handkerchief for her and, in all probability, watch until she gave up and died.

Ah. There were curtains. Good enough, and probably the cleanest linen in the house. With two hands, Croft gripped the child's soiled nightdress and tore it down the front. She flinched, but whether it was his hands or the noise that disturbed her, he couldn't say. She was too blue, too thin. With the spare, efficient movements of a battlefield surgeon, he peeled the dirty garment away and pulled at the curtains. The rod broke, and the rings tore and crashed to the floor in a swirl of dust and plaster as sunlight knifed into the room. He squeezed his eyes shut and coughed. The girl made a sound. Leaning close, he cataloged the flicker of her hollowed eyes, the tremor of her lips.

"Hush. We'll get you covered. These curtains will do."

He picked her up and swathed her in the yards of sturdy cloth. Even with the wrapping, she felt no heavier than a good-sized border collie. Croft was sturdy and used to lugging around deadweight, but the extra fabric was a hazard, tangling his arms. He looped it around her slack legs and carried her down the stairs. No one stopped him on the way out, but he made himself knock at the neighbor's door.

"You must send for someone to carry away the bodies," he said to the tired-eyed woman peering suspiciously through the peephole.

She blinked. Croft resisted the urge to blast her. The fool woman must have known the Beadys were ill but hadn't moved an inch to help them. "And that one?" she asked.

"I'll take her."

The woman didn't argue, blind or indifferent to his contempt. In the street, the eyes that found him and his burden swerved away. By the time he got home, he was breathing hard, unable to manage his key. He had to knock and wait for his housekeeper.

"What's this?" she demanded. "You can't bring corpses in the front door." His regular deliveries always came in the dead of night, at the back, because flaunting the fact that he bought stolen bodies was a good way to get his windows smashed.

"This one's alive. You're blocking my way, Mrs. Phipps."

Her face blanched. "You can't bring cholera here!" But she stepped aside. Croft marched upstairs, Mrs. Phipps fretting behind him. "She's sick! What am I supposed to do with her?"

"Get her some water. No, sweet tea. We'll try that. And fetch something for her to wear. One of my shirts will suffice. I'll need your help to bathe her."

No response. He looked back, fixing his housekeeper with a stern look. "Everyone in her family is dead."

Mrs. Phipps sighed with exasperation. "And you think you can save her."

Horace lifted one side of his mouth. With the girl in his arms, it was impossible to shrug. "Probably not. But I'll try." When he reached the next floor, she called after him. "Not the blue guest room! Those are the best sheets!"

~

Unlike her employer, Mrs. Phipps was religious. When she arrived with a sponge and a basin of water, she forgot her desire to safeguard the best household linen. "God in heaven," she murmured. The girl's skin was almost transparent, her eyes sunk in hollows of plum-dark bruise. Her dark-blond hair spilled in a tangled mass against the pillowcase.

Excerpted from The Girl in His Shadow by Audrey Blake. Copyright © 2021 by Audrey Blake. Excerpted by permission of Sourcebooks Landmark. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book:
  Early Anesthetics

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: City of Night Birds
    City of Night Birds
    by Juhea Kim
    City of Night Birds opens in the present day with a flight to St. Petersburg—a homecoming for ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The Memory Library
by Kate Storey
Journey through the pages of this heartwarming novel, where hope, friendship and second chances are written in the margins.
Book Jacket
Babylonia
by Costanza Casati
From the author of the bestselling Clytemnestra comes another intoxicating excursion into ancient history. When kings fall, queens rise.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Going Home
    by Tom Lamont

    Going Home is a sparkling, funny, bighearted story of family and what happens when three men take charge of a toddler following an unexpected loss.

  • Book Jacket

    The Secret History of the Rape Kit
    by Pagan Kennedy

    The story of the woman who kicked off a feminist revolution in forensics, and then vanished into obscurity.

Book Club Giveaway!
Win My Darling Boy

My Darling Boy by John Dufresne

The story of of a man whose son collapses into addiction and vanishes into the chaotic netherworld of southern Florida.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

Y C L a H T W but Y C M H D

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.