To Save the Realm, first 10 lines of Chapter 2

The street outside the St. Albans Hotel was misty gray with rain. Great pots of colorful, raindrop-covered pansies stood on both sides of the hotel's frosted glass doors. A continuous train of black taxis was swooshing through the puddles that flowed out from the curb on Bedford Place. The weather seemed to Brock to be more like December than mid-October. He was wearing a heavy wool sweater, navy blue trousers, and a charcoal grey overcoat. He didn't like to carry an umbrella, so he had on a woolen Irish hat that he'd bought in a shop yesterday to keep the rain off his head. From To Save the Realm at Amazon.