A Study in Silks (2 page)

She edged along, curious to catch more of the conversation, but the voices had died away. Her path toward them was blocked anyway. An oak tree grew beside the house, one of its thick branches angling up to scrape against the gutters. Evelina could easily reach it with one hand. Then two. She pulled herself up, swinging one leg over the rough trunk. Her skirts hitched, bunched, and generally got in the way, but she got to her feet and was soon moving cautiously toward the heavy foliage nearer the trunk. It wasn’t perfect cover, but a girl in a tree was a lot less visible than a girl silhouetted against a moonlit wall.

Evelina paused, crouching low and balancing with one
hand on a neighboring branch. Bits of bark scraped the tender soles of her feet, but she forgot the discomfort in a momentary rush of exhilaration. It was so rare that she got to really use her body since she had passed the divide between girl and woman. At Imogen’s house, where she could roam almost at will, Evelina enjoyed the freedom to think and work. But even at Hilliard House, a lady did not clamber about in trees.

She let the April wind play with her hair and skirts. It was chill, the scent of rain reminding her spring was slow to give way to summer. From up here she could see a sliver of London, gaslights tracking in zigzags across the richer parts of the city. And, besides the lamps on the streets, individual homes sported their own displays beside their doors, on balconies, or wherever smaller globes could be mounted. The more prosperous a household was, the more of the fashionable—and expensive—lights it had, until the richest parts of the city sparkled like the jewels of a fairyland queen.

The lights nearby showed a faint gold tinge, while those farther away were blue or green or red. The color of the glass globes marked the district and the company that provided them—and, by extension, which of the so-called steam barons controlled the light and heat for the people who lived there. According to Lord Bancroft, the owners of the great coal and gas companies had divided London—divided all the Empire in fact—into uneven slices like a pie. Steam was their mainstay, but they had bought up other things, like coal mines, railways, and even some factories. She understood the colored lights were a symbol of their stranglehold, but it did make for a pretty sight when the lamps came on at night.

Of course, there were always exceptions—those houses that sat dark and cold. There were whole neighborhoods like that in the poor districts like Whitechapel, but the rich streets had them, too. They were called the Disconnected, these people who had either lost all their money or, even worse, lost the favor of the steam barons.

The thought went by in a moment, as fleeting as the
breeze, but it was enough to distract her. When she shifted her weight to move again, her foot slipped. For a wild, heart-stopping moment, she felt herself falling. Leaves and branches rushed toward her, clawing at her hair and face. Reflexively, she hooked a leg around the branch while her hands flailed for something to grip. Then, with a hoarse gasp, she caught herself.

Now Evelina hung upside down, a gentlewoman’s version of a tree sloth. Waves of panic slid beneath the surface of her control, threatening to crack her to pieces. She squeezed her eyes closed, refusing to give in to the tears of fright and embarrassment prickling for release.

Hullo
.

The voice came from inside her head, but she felt the light pressure of the greeting like a finger prodding her consciousness. She opened her eyes. A faint, slightly luminous green smudge hung inches from her face.

“Hello,” she muttered.

The light bobbed, seeming to look her over.
What are you doing?

Evelina bit back a scathing retort. The creature was a deva, a nature spirit. They seemed to bear the characteristics of different elements: wood or air, fire or water, or maybe a combination in between. Some were tiny and others huge and fierce. The countryside was thick with them, though city gardens sometimes had spirits, too. This one had probably claimed the tree as its home. Those of the Blood—like her fortune-telling grandmother’s side of the family—could see them. Everyone else called them the stuff of fairy tales.

Just Evelina’s luck if someone found her stuck in a tree talking to an invisible creature. Lord B would send her packing before she could say “Bedlam.” Of course, it would be worse if anyone actually believed she could talk to nature spirits. That counted as magic, deemed by most as immoral and by the courts as illegal. Just today, they’d arrested a witch who was also a renowned actress named Nellie Reynolds. If someone as popular as her wasn’t safe, Evelina didn’t stand a chance.

I asked
, the deva repeated in a tart voice,
what you are doing in my tree?

“I’m stuck. I was running away, and I fell.” What had she been thinking? Evelina cursed her idiocy. She wasn’t one of the Fabulous Flying Coopers anymore and hadn’t been on a tightrope since she was a child.

You should leave climbing to cats
.

She just growled by way of response. Using her legs for leverage, she started to squirm in an effort to haul herself upright. Unfortunately, there were no handholds to help her get to the top side of the branch. It was a matter of pure strength and balance, both of which seemed to be fading fast. Her arms were starting to shake.
I’m getting soft
.

The thought made her jaw clench. “Give me some help, deva!”

Of course, it didn’t. They never did unless compelled, and her tools—the needle and grains of amber she used in the spell with which she bound a spirit—were in the wretched box, hidden where bothersome servants couldn’t find it. Making a last effort, Evelina wriggled and twisted until she found new handholds. When she finally got her bearings, she was facing the other way, toward the house, but she was upright again.

The deva had vanished. “Thanks for nothing,” she muttered. Now she had scrapes on her palms, and she was sure she’d heard her hem tear on the stump of a twig. Still, she had got herself back up on the branch. That counted for something.

She glanced toward the attic window, hoping against hope that the servants had left. No, she could still see their lamplight. What were they looking for?

More carefully this time, she moved along the upward-sloping branch just far enough to get a better view. Not too close, though. She didn’t want them to see her looking in.

The men had hung their oil lantern from a hook in the ceiling. A pool of light spread over the scene, far brighter than that of Evelina’s candle. Now that she saw the men’s faces, she recognized them as Lord Bancroft’s grooms.
From what she’d observed, he used them frequently for odd, hard-to-explain tasks.

Five huge brass-studded steamer trunks had been taken from a stack against the wall and moved onto the floor. Evelina remembered they bore a maker’s mark from Austria, where Lord Bancroft had served as ambassador.

“What’s in these?” asked one groom. She could just hear them through the open window.

“Don’t know.” The other stopped, wiping his forehead on his sleeve.

“Figure if we have to take them cross-country, we should know, eh?” The first one bent down, pulling out his pocket knife and worrying at the lock. She heard the click of the heavy mechanism. Heavy metal hasps sprang open, as if triggered by springs.

Evelina watched intently, fascination outweighing the cold and the discomfort of her seat. It took both men to lift the lid of the trunk. One of them stepped back, seeming to recoil with disgust.

“God in Heaven,” the man cursed. “It smells like something died in there.”

Evelina’s eyes widened, and she gripped the branch even tighter. The scent didn’t reach her, but her skin prickled as if doused with magnetic energy. Stale, bad energy that left her fearful of the dark.

The interior of the trunk was lined with blue satin and sculpted to hold the limbs, head, and torso of a dismembered body. Panic clenched her belly, and Evelina gasped loudly before she could stop herself.
Good God, what is this?

Then she caught sight of the metal joints at the shoulders and hips. The body wasn’t human. In fact, it was covered in coarse, dun-colored ticking, and the face and hands were painted porcelain, just like a child’s doll.
An automaton
. But it looked just real enough to send another shiver down her spine. She must not have been the only one to feel that way. The man pulled the lid down with a bang, shutting the frightful thing from sight.

She felt an almost palpable relief. That had to be the ugliest
automaton ever made, the face staring and slack-jawed. Was it one of Lord Bancroft’s souvenirs from Austria? She’d never heard anyone mention such a thing. Did each of those trunks have a monstrosity like that inside?

Of course, the appearance of the clockwork girl wasn’t the most interesting thing. Even from where Evelina sat in the tree, she could tell the automaton vibrated with magic. And not any magic, but sorcery of the wickedest kind.

A chill of relief, anxiety, and a peculiar kind of terror shivered through her. What she had just witnessed was both a shield and an Achilles’ heel. Whatever secrets Evelina was hiding, she now knew the impeccable Lord Bancroft was concealing much, much worse.

SPECULATION FADED AS EVELINA, TRAPPED IN THE TREE
, grew colder and increasingly disgruntled. It took another half hour before the grooms left, carting the trunks away to who knew where, then another thirty minutes to make sure all was quiet again. Finally, half frozen and aching, Evelina crawled back through the attic window.

Her first priority was safety. She willed her feet to make no noise as she crept down flight after flight of plain oak stairs to the soft carpeting of the second-floor corridor. Her box was nestled in a canvas bag slung crossways over her shoulder, and her breath was frozen in her throat. At every turn of the stairs, she paused to listen for the slightest movement, but so far her luck had held.

Her final task was to run the gauntlet of the family’s bedchambers, where the row of doors stood like oak-paneled sentries. Behind each, a titled or at least honorable head lay on goose down pillows. Her bedroom lay at the other end of the long hallway.

Pausing to listen, she heard only the ghostly
tap-tap
of the oak outside the stairway window. At the end of the corridor, a longcase clock beat a rhythm half the pace of her racing heart.

She shielded the flame of her candle with one hand, the light etching her fingers in glowing red. The glimmer that escaped touched the pattern of the Oriental carpet, the dark paneling, the glint of brass on doorknobs and wall sconces. Evelina tiptoed forward, catching the scent of wood polish and lavender. Lord B’s domestic staff ran his house with exacting efficiency.

She made it past Lady Bancroft’s chamber, then the youngest daughter’s bedroom. Poppy was in the country with her grandparents, so there was no need to worry about waking her. Then came Tobias, the handsome son of the family. Though he often sat up very late, there was no light under his door. There was under Imogen’s, but then she always slept with a candle burning.

The clock made a chunking sound as something inside it shifted. As well as the time, it told the date, moon phase, barometric pressure, and occasionally spit out a card in a cipher only Lord Bancroft understood. Clockwork drove part of it, but tubes of bright chemicals were also nested inside, powering parts of the machine. Evelina had figured out some of the workings, but by no means all. Every dial and spring worked perfectly, except for the function that predicted the weather. For some reason, it was wrong as often as not.

At least the clock, unlike some of Lord B’s other souvenirs, didn’t give her the shudders. Her mind went back to the trunks in the attic, the thought of them raising a chill down her nape. Why did the ambassador have those automatons? And why was he moving them?

Then without warning, Imogen’s bedroom door opened.

Evelina sprang into the air, barely stifling a squeak. The box rattled as if she had purloined all the silverware in the house.

Bollocks!

A figure stepped into the corridor, closing Imogen’s door. Despite the hour, the young upstairs maid was crisply turned out in black and white, though dark circles sagged under her eyes.

“Miss Cooper! Have you come to check on Miss Roth?” Her gaze flicked over Evelina, but only for an instant.

Evelina felt herself coloring. She had the bag slung over her shoulder, her hem was ripped, and no doubt her hair looked like she’d been climbing a tree. Yet the well-trained servant pretended to see none of it.

“What’s the matter, Dora?” Evelina asked. “Is it her old complaint?”

“I don’t think so, miss.”

“Is there a fever? Should Dr. Anderson be summoned?” The questions came out in a panicked rush.

Dora shook her head. “I don’t know, miss. Miss Roth simply said she could not sleep. I was going to prepare the draft the doctor left for her, miss, just as she asked me to.”

Evelina exhaled slowly. “Then you do that. I’ll look in on her.”

Dora nodded, visibly relieved to be able to share the responsibility. “Very good, miss. I’ll come back in a tick with fresh candles.”