A Study in Silks (13 page)

And his father was just as fond of throwing thunderbolts. He might have been Her Majesty’s
former
ambassador to Austria, but the pater wasn’t done mucking in politics. He was inching toward a seat in the government’s inner circle. Worse, he knew every lawyer and banker of note in London. If Tobias embarrassed him, he could bid farewell to his allowance. He might be thirty before he could stand another round of drinks.

Bancroft turned, and the expression on his face tightened Tobias’s stomach.

“What the hell happened to your face?” his father demanded.

Tobias touched his swollen eye. “Spot of bother last night.”

His father grimaced in his my-son-the-idiot fashion. He stepped on the claw of a man-height, chased-silver Phoenix, and a tiny blue flame blossomed to life in its beak. He lit one of his pungent Turkish cigarettes. “Have you read this morning’s
Bugle
?”

“About the murder?”

“No, thank God, not that.”

Bloody hell, then he knows about the squid
. Defiance and fear spiked through him. “I’ve just read the
Prattler
.”

Bancroft harrumphed derisively. The
Prattler
was something of a renegade paper, printing the news as they saw it rather than as the Empire—or the steam barons—demanded. No one respectable subscribed. “Then you won’t have seen this.”

He shoved a folded newspaper, carefully ironed by the
staff to make sure the ink did not stain his lordship’s fingers, across the desk. Tobias turned it around and noted the squid had made the front page of this newspaper, too, right next to an article about some actress taken into custody for use of magic. However, his father’s finger was pointing at something else. Tobias read the headline and the first few paragraphs of an article detailing a purchase of shares.

Confused, he looked up at his father. “Keating Utility purchased majority stock in the Harter Engine Company. Why does that matter?”

His father sank into the chair behind his desk. The gesture spoke of a weariness Tobias was seeing in his father more and more often these days. It seemed to occur in lockstep with the steadily declining tideline of his whisky decanter. “How well do you understand the Steam Council?”

Tobias knew it was made up of the men and women they called the steam barons—those industrial magnates who owned the power companies. “I suppose as much as anyone else does.”

“Coal. Steam. The railroads. The gas companies. Factories.” His father put bite into every word. “Next they’ll be controlling what bread we buy and what ale we drink.”

Tobias had never seen his father drink anything as common as ale, but he took the point. The steam barons ran their companies and, by extension, certain towns and neighborhoods with a combination of bribes and threats. Each baron had one or more streetkeepers—bully boys who turned threats into broken bones. A shopkeeper sold what the local steam baron told him to, and painted his steps blue or green or gold to show which baron had his allegiance. If he broke the rules, his gas went out and his pipes ran cold—and there was no place to buy his own coal. If he continued in his disobedience, more than his lights would be snuffed out.

“What I don’t understand,” Tobias replied, “is why the law doesn’t make a stand. Take away their fine clothes and fortunes, and the steam barons are little more than extortionists.”

His father gave him a sharp look, as if they were finally getting somewhere. “Can you imagine what would happen
if Parliament challenged them, and the Steam Council stopped supplying coal and gas?”

Tobias didn’t have to think long. No industry. Dark streets. No railway. Cold houses. “There would be riots in the streets. If it went on long enough, the government would fall. The
Prattler
is always going on about how there’s a rebellion just waiting to happen.”

“Precisely.” His father gave a fleeting smile. “And that is exactly why developing an alternative to their steam power is essential. Steam may be the engine that drives the Empire, but the steam barons are the knife at its throat.”

Tobias was beginning to follow his father’s logic. “And they bought Harter’s, which was trying to develop an alternative type of engine.”

“You can rest assured that now Harter’s prototype of the combustion engine will never see the light of day. They will buy the patents and bury them. If Keating Utility and their like prevail, steam power will be our only future. Right now, Jasper Keating is determined to seize the defense contracts for a fleet of weapons-class airships. It will be worth millions.”

Tobias frowned. “And?”

Here his father’s chin dipped a degree. “I felt it was my moral obligation to invest in Harter’s. It is in the best interest of England to break the stranglehold of the council. Unfortunately, I have just lost a great deal of money.”

A cold chill ran over Tobias as he recalled the wager at the opera, and what might have happened had his plans gone awry. He took a seat in one of the studded leather chairs facing his father’s desk. “How bad is it?”

“We should have been able to weather this better but, sadly, this is not the first such loss we’ve taken.” His father fixed him with a steady look. “I need your help to ensure there are no further blows.”

Tobias felt his whole body go still. Those were words he never thought he’d hear from his father. “What can I do?”

“We must remain respectable.”

“The murder.”

“Indeed.”

“Shouldn’t we concentrate on remaining alive? There was a killing under this roof.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. She was a servant.”

“Are you saying only the servants are at risk?”

His father reddened with temper. “Absolutely. A disgusting affair. Use your head, Tobias. Why would anyone kill one of the family?”

“Why indeed?” Tobias asked, letting a smidgen of sarcasm into his tone. There were footmen on every door now. His father was nowhere near as confident as he was trying to appear. “I do notice you’re not whisking your nearest and dearest to the safety of the country seat.”

“And broadcast to all of Society that we have something to fear?” Lord Bancroft tapped the papers on his desk impatiently. “This unfortunate incident must never become common gossip. Keating will wield it like a sword.”

Tobias unfolded the paper, checking the other pages. “He doesn’t appear to have done so yet. There’s no mention of it in the press.”

“That is the one boon of that buffoonery at the opera. It has made an admirable distraction in everyone’s minds. Utterly ridiculous.”

It’s not ridiculous
. “Don’t you find that it was an inventive sort of prank?”

His father’s glare quelled his enthusiasm. “I find nothing admirable in that degree of pointless destruction. And there are more important considerations at hand.”

Tobias lowered the paper. “Such as?”

His father narrowed his eyes. “Murder. Ruin.”

“Oh, that.”

“Do try to concentrate.” His father leaned forward, his face intent. “If news of a murder under our roof gets abroad, the chances of Imogen making a good match this Season will wither on the vine. And that would just be the first of our troubles. Once Society scents blood, they turn like rabid dogs. If you love your mother and sisters, your life and this house—if you love
me
, my son—it is imperative that the death of that damned scullery girl never reaches the papers.”

Tobias fell silent, thinking about Grace. Her beautiful
eyes, when she looked up at him last night, asking for help. Then her dead eyes, staring up from the floor as Evelina searched the corpse. The alteration had been horrific. It had happened in—what?—mere minutes? Less time than it took him to achieve a perfect knot in his tie.

As for loving his father … He’d always wanted to, more than anything, but his pater didn’t make it easy. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

“There is a potential problem I have tried to anticipate. I want you to take care of it.”

Tobias narrowed his eyes. As always, whenever he stopped resenting his father and began listening, he felt adrift between conflicting tides. Family loyalty. Justice. Honor. Pride. The desire for approval. They should all be pulling the same way, but they never were.

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

Lord Bancroft rose and paced to the window. “That Cooper girl was examining the body last night. You know who her uncle is, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.” Then the breath stopped in Tobias’s chest. “Oh.”

“See to it that there is no investigation. I don’t need to know how you accomplish it.”

“She has no reason to interfere, much less invite her uncle to do so.”

“She was curious.” Lord Bancroft tapped his foot, a sign of nervousness that told more than anything else. “I would appreciate it if you distracted her. I assume you know how to hold the attention of a young woman?”

Tobias’s gut began to knot. “What do you mean?” He rose from his chair, suddenly uneasy. He knew very well what his father wanted, and it made his stomach fold itself inside out. Evelina was innocent. Socially beneath him, certainly, but she was educated, pretty, and respectable—deserving of all the protection her status as guest commanded. And he wanted her in a way that kept him staring at the ceiling all night, which made this conversation all the more confusing.

Lord Bancroft said nothing, continuing to stare out the window.

“You want me to seduce her.”

His father’s tall, straight form didn’t move. The clock ticked heavily, beating out the minutes of Tobias’s life. Lord Bancroft reached for the decanter on his desk, poured himself a measure. He didn’t offer any to his son.

I want to seduce her. You want me to seduce her. Do I give in and please us both, or do I refuse because you asked me to? Or am I really more honorable than you? That would be a lark, wouldn’t it?
His father made even basic rebellion a convoluted, steaming mess.

When it became apparent that Lord Bancroft wouldn’t say anything more, Tobias left the room.

BANCROFT WATCHED HIS
son exit, and then turned back to the window. The April wind tossed the branches of the old oak tree, plucking a few of the pale green leaves and scattering them to the lawn.
So what will happen if Tobias fails, and the girl or her uncle uncovers the wrong secret? Do I lose all this?

Hilliard House had once been a large estate, but before Bancroft’s time, it had been whittled down piece by piece over the years, one street or square at a time. Now only the core of the place remained, a green and gracious oasis in the middle of the West End where terraced homes, one cheek-by-jowl to the next, were the norm. Bancroft had bought the house and its extended garden on his return from Austria, a showplace to go with his new title and fresh ambitions. The previous owner had been a different viscount, one who had been ruined by the Gold King and forced to sell. Whenever Bancroft ran into the steam baron, the jumped-up mushroom always managed to remind him of that detail.

Bancroft began to pace slowly, moving from the window to the desk and back again. The tiger’s head above his desk watched, unimpressed by the restless human.

The years as ambassador to Austria had ended gradually. Tobias had gone to England first to attend school, then, sometime later, Bancroft’s wife and daughters. Just two years ago, Bancroft had come home to find the Empire he’d left a quarter
century before had been taken over by the steam barons and their greed.

Right at that moment, his life had taken a sharp turn. No man of good conscience—and considerable political ambition—could stand by and watch upstarts take the reins of power, bit by bit, from the peers of the realm. And the Empire’s leaders had all but lost the struggle for political supremacy. The steam barons might not sit in Parliament or the House of Lords, but they could buy almost everyone who did. In short, they were meaner, smarter, and richer than any duke in the land.

And, oh, how grateful those dukes would be if someone came along and put the barons in their place! So, with an eye on making an even greater fortune, Bancroft had put his talent for backroom deals to use. Harter’s was only his most public scheme. There were others, buried deeper—the rebellion Tobias had alluded to was more than just talk—but the success of those depended on gold and secrecy. And both were difficult to get.

“And the very last thing I need is Sherlock Holmes or his niece investigating my affairs,” he said to the tiger. The yellow eyes glared back.

He’d dismissed Evelina Cooper as his daughter’s hanger-on. What he knew about her could be written on a calling card. The mother’s elopement, of course. The harridan grandmother. The famous uncles. That was all. He didn’t concern himself with schoolgirls. But it seemed that he was going to have to pay more attention—she’d been all over the corpse like a bitch on a scent. Cool as ice. Obviously, she had investigative ambitions of her own.

Bancroft’s lip curled in distaste. Well, Tobias could keep the Cooper girl busy. She played coy, but anyone could see she fancied him.
As if such a mismatch would ever be acceptable
. The question was whether his son had the sense to understand that. It would be like him to get caught up in the game.

When he looked at Tobias, he saw far too much of himself.
Is it wrong to hate my son for being the same fool I used to be? Is it even worse to wish I had his soul, clean and unblemished
by all my sins?
Well, perhaps the plan wasn’t fair, but there was too much at stake to quibble over a maiden’s virtue.

Bancroft had made exactly the same judgment when it came to Grace.
The corpse
.

His glass was empty, so he refilled it and drained it again, letting the harsh, sweet burn flame down his throat.
Think of her as the corpse, because that’s all that’s left
. But once his mind turned that way, there was no way to stem the tide.

It had seemed the easiest thing in the world, looking into her beautiful face, to convince himself that he
had
to seduce her. He had needed a messenger, someone anonymous. She had needed money. That was all very straightforward, but he had experience with spies and informants. She might sell his secrets for more money, but that kind of girl never betrayed the man she loved.