A Study in Darkness (56 page)

Imogen slid down in her chair, shuddering. Tobias looked around, but of course there were no wraps or blankets in the study. Comfort wasn’t his father’s way. Alice caught his eye. She took off her own shawl and held it out. With a nod of thanks, he draped it around Imogen’s shoulders.

“You were ill, Imogen,” Bancroft said slowly, “but Anna
was far sicker. The doctors never knew the name of the disease, but it affected the two of you differently. While you grew thin and wan, your sister’s limbs began to twist, as if the bones themselves were writhing in pain. Soon, she could not walk, or even lift a spoon. My beautiful, vibrant little girl, who once loved to dance. And then came a time when Anna never stopped wailing in pain.”

“I remember,” Imogen whispered, clutching at the edge of the shawl. She looked as if she were about to cry.

Tobias remembered, too, with the sharp edges that only childhood horrors could hold. But what he remembered even more than his little sister’s agony was his mother’s fear and his father’s desperation. That was how he’d known the earth was crumbling beneath their feet.

Bancroft’s voice became hard, as if that were the only way to marshal the words. “In the end, I could barely recognize her as human, much less my own daughter. Your mother became hysterical. The physicians feared that she would waste away with the same fever. To make matters worse, none of the servants would come near Anna. They were all terrified of her. So I did the only thing I could think of.”

He paused and swallowed convulsively, as if he were choking. “I hid my daughter away in the highest room of the east tower and prayed for a miracle. As a final act of folly, I asked Magnus to make the automatons her nursemaids.”

Bancroft drifted to silence, as if he, too, were clockwork and the spring had wound down. Anger crawled through Tobias, but this time it wasn’t on his own behalf. The little girl who’d been Imogen’s twin—his sister—had been abandoned, alone and in pain with nothing but inhuman servants to watch over her. And the man on the other side of the desk had done it.

He knew what came next, and he didn’t want to hear it out loud. Alice pressed her hands to her face, as if she wished she could block it out, too.

“And then,” Bancroft said so softly that Tobias barely heard him, “Magnus made me an offer. He said he could end Anna’s suffering.”

“How?” Imogen said. It came out almost as a whimper.

“He said he could put her soul into one of the automatons. Let her live in a whole body, without pain. I begged him to do it. I offered him money.” Bancroft had his elbow on his desk, one hand over his eyes.

“What?” Imogen stumbled to her feet. “Dr. Magnus killed Anna?”

Bancroft didn’t budge. He didn’t even speak at first, just worked his lips as if in prayer—but to what deity, Tobias refused to even guess. “Her body died. I came to his chambers after it was all over. The scene was like some trope from a Gothic novel, a stone room in a tower marked with chalk circles and guttered candles. But something had happened. I felt it like foul offal running down the walls, down my own soul …” His voice trailed off to a harsh rasp. “It was then I knew how evil he truly was.”

Horror swarmed over Tobias’s skin, kicking his heart into a shallow, quick gallop. This part hadn’t been in the letters. He had to summon enough spit to wet his tongue before words would come out. “What about the doll?”

“Magnus said Anna was inside, but trapped. The spell had been imperfect.”

Imogen sat down again, her mouth agape.

Bancroft took his hand from his eyes. They were bloodshot, his expression more naked than Tobias had ever seen it. “That was why I could never destroy the automatons. I believed just enough to wonder if that would be infanticide. It sounds like madness, but I couldn’t accept that risk.”

“She was my twin,” Imogen whispered. “You paid Dr. Magnus to lock her soul forever in a prison of sawdust and cracked porcelain. A prison she could never escape.”

Bancroft cleared his throat, the accusation seeming to steady him. The horror on his face faded to something bitter. “And, according to Magnus, that made destroying them doubly dangerous for you.”

Imogen made a sound that raised the hair along Tobias’s arms. It wasn’t quite a scream, but a bleat of pain from somewhere deep inside her. “You put her in a dark, terrible prison for the last dozen years!”

Something stirred in the back of Tobias’s mind, but Imogen spoke again before it was fully formed. “She would be mad by now. A little child, alone with no love and no light.”

“We don’t know if that’s true!” Bancroft snapped.

“I do. I dream of it. Her soul is lost and can’t get back to where it belongs.”

Twins share a soul
, Tobias thought, his insides bleak with cold.
At least in fairy tales. If it’s true, no wonder she has nightmares
. Then he looked at his father, who seemed to be hiding his shock beneath a mask of contempt.
This is even worse than he knew
. For an instant, he almost felt sorry for his father.

Until the foggy idea at the back of his mind coalesced. “You put them both at risk, because every time the automatons are moved, Imogen falls ill.”

Both Imogen and Alice stared at him, eyes huge. He saw the realization click into place for his sister, followed by helpless fury.

“I tried to save my daughter,” Bancroft said coldly. “Wait until you hold your own child in your arms before you judge. There is no folly you will not commit.”

Tobias took out the letter his mother had given him, and set it down on top of the others. “And that’s how Magnus is still blackmailing you? He still has the automatons, doesn’t he?”

His father made an exasperated grimace. “My, my, is nothing in my private study actually private anymore?”

“Dr. Magnus is alive?” Alice asked softly. “He has these automatons?”

“He reminds me of my situation almost daily,” Bancroft said icily. “But before you run and tell the Gold King, madam, that I’m in the clutches of a madman, consider what Magnus might do.”

“As I said, this is none of my father’s business,” Alice said defiantly.

“I’m glad you understand that so well,” Bancroft said in a tone Tobias couldn’t decipher.

“Does Mother know any of this?” Imogen asked suddenly.

“No,” Bancroft said harshly. “I spared her that much. You may loathe me. You may never forgive me, but know that I desperately wanted to give her back her child.”

But you failed, and that is why you are the way you are—lost in your own twisted games, because there you can fool yourself into believing that you might still win. But nothing will ever make up for consigning your own ailing child to a solitary prison, and then to murder by an agent of evil
.

Imogen had gone entirely white. She slowly slipped off Alice’s shawl and handed it back to her. “Well, Tobias, now that you have found the hidden wound in our family history, are we on the road to healing?” Her voice was thin and high with strain. In the uncertain light, her pale gray eyes were translucent, almost as if there were no color at all.

He couldn’t answer. There had been no plan beyond finding the truth.

Imogen hovered a moment, her presence seeming to shrink until she was no more than a flickering ghost. Tobias took a step forward, instinctively wanting to wrap her in human warmth. But Imogen made a gesture, her palm turned to the lot of them, and stalked out of the room. It said more than any speech that she’d closed a door between her world and theirs.

After a hesitant look at Tobias, Alice followed. That left Tobias alone with his father.

“You know, I spent hours bullying the servants, but no one could say who took the key. And here it was your little wife.” His father’s voice smoked with angry sarcasm. “You should keep your eye on that one. She’s going to give you trouble.”

Tobias rounded on his father. “Don’t.”

“No? I thought you hated her.”

“Don’t,” he repeated. “You don’t have the right.”

“Not after this confession, you mean?” His father’s mask was back in place, the vulnerability Tobias had glimpsed banished from view. “Tell me,
did
you learn the secret that will stitch us all back into one big, happy family? Imogen has a point. There had better be some benefit to making us live through that misery again.”

Tobias glared at him. “I hope you rot in hell.”

Bancroft shrugged, plucking a cigarette out of the box on his desk. “Oh, no worries on that score. I’m halfway there already. However, you’ve left me with quite the little problem on my hands. You see, some secrets are better off buried.”

Tobias turned his back on his father and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. Childish, but it released a tiny part of the pent-up tension twisting his guts.
Was that a threat?
Probably, but then his father threatened someone at least once a day. Maybe more. But it was high time he and Alice left, whether or not his own townhouse was ready.
There is still that honeymoon trip
.

He turned his feet toward the stairs, mounting them two at a time. Would Alice really keep all this from her father? He didn’t know her well enough to tell. What he did know was that she’d come to him with the letters, even after he’d treated her abominably. That said something about her will to make things work.

He stopped in front of her door and knocked, but there was no answer. He turned the knob and slipped in anyway, turning up the key on the lamp enough to see. His father never did have gas laid in on the upper floors—something a steam baron’s daughter must have found odd.

Tobias made a circuit of the room, suddenly curious about her in a way he’d never been during their supposed courtship. The maids hadn’t been through since Alice had left her bedroom. The suitcase was gone from the bed and sat closed and accusing by the wall. The wardrobe door was half open, a dress draped over the mirror and another dangling off the knob. The dressing table was a mess, lids off the jars, nothing arranged with even minimal care.
Not a natural housekeeper, then
. But there was a stack of unfamiliar books on the bedside table. Alice was a reader. And the box with the emeralds teetered carelessly on top of those.
She likes pretty things, but doesn’t treasure them the way some women do
.

He’d made her so unhappy. He’d
been
so unhappy, but like some broken sewer pipe, he’d made sure everyone had the benefit of his mood. Remorse hunched his shoulders.
His father wasn’t the only one tearing the house apart at the foundation.

The bed was littered with clothes. He picked up one of the finely knitted stockings and it draped over his hand, clinging softly. He recalled peeling just such an item from her calf last summer, the silky smoothness of her inner thigh damp under his hand.

“Tobias?” Alice said from the doorway.

He dropped the stocking as if it were a serpent. “Are you all right? After all that?”

“I think so.” She went to the dressing table, pushing a few objects aimlessly around, but not bothering to screw the lids back on any of the jars. “I gave Imogen a sleeping draft and put her to bed. I don’t know how well she’s going to take this.”

“She’s tougher than she looks,” he said, but knew Alice was right. They would have to take extra care with his sister for a while. “Speaking of sisters, was Poppy in any way involved with this escapade?”

“Whatever makes you think that?” Alice said, meeting his eyes in the mirror. She wasn’t a very good liar.

“Thank you for protecting her.” And he put his hands on his wife’s shoulders, hardly adding any weight at all. He’d forgotten how small she actually was, barely coming up to his chin.

And then she put her hand on his, brushing his fingers with the tips of hers. “I’m sorry. None of this can have been easy for you.” And then she laughed nervously. “How is that for understatement?”

He just gave a slight squeeze by way of reply. They could have talked about the horrors of what they’d learned, but he didn’t want to right then. It was like a monster waiting outside the door, bloody ax in hand. There was every chance that fighting it would tear him limb from limb. Was it any wonder he didn’t rush to invite it in? Especially now, when he’d found some little crumb of peace between him and Alice.

“I can’t begin to make sense of what your father said,” she
murmured. “It’s going to take days to even believe I heard that story.”

“I can’t believe that you actually broke into my father’s study.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” He put a touch of levity into his voice.

The slightest smile touched her face. He turned her around to face him and cupped her cheek with his hand. Her blue eyes were open wide, reminding him of a startled bird. A messy, brave, capable little bird. “I’m an ass, you know.”

“Mm-hm,” she said, nodding.

He stroked her cheek with his thumb, tangling himself in a few strands of her coppery hair. In the warm glow of the flame, her skin looked ivory, the line of her jaw limned by lamplight.
Beautiful
.

And then, finally, Tobias kissed his wife—gently, sweetly, and with as much apology as he could put into it. The taste of her tugged deep inside him, calling up memories of lust. Her lips were warm, and not just in the usual way. There was something spicy about her, a bite that called to him in a way that sweetness wouldn’t.

The first kiss done, he paused, waiting for her to pull back. As their breath mingled, a little quicker than usual, he waited for the slap across his face, or the shove to his chest. After all, he deserved all that and more. He deserved a kick to the head. But Alice hooked her finger into his collar button, pulling his head down, and kissed him back.