A Study in Silks (45 page)

“Tradition might be dull, but it is seldom smelly, noisy, and greasy, not to mention vulgar.”

“You should come ’round to my in-laws at Christmas dinner. They might prove you wrong about that. Nevertheless, I’d watch what you say. With talk of the gentry joining the rebels, it’s best to love steam and all its workings, at least in public.”

She edged around the room, looking for someone she wanted to talk to. She thought she’d seen Alice Keating’s red head go by. Unfortunately, she got stuck in a crush near the doorway before she could find the Gold King’s daughter.

There was a conversation going on behind her. “Did you hear the Reynolds trial is set for next week?” asked a basso voice that sounded like a human tuba.

“That was fast,” someone responded in a light tenor.

“They don’t expect it to last more than a day or two. They’re already clearing the prison courtyard for the pyre.”

“I hope it lights faster than the last one.”

“You mean the sorcerer from the boys’ school?”

“I paid good money to get in to see that, and the man died of smoke before we got to see him burn.”

Agitated, Evelina inched back the way she had come, nearly locking bustles with Lady Liverton. When the clockwork trolley bearing drinks rattled by, she took a glass of sherry to fortify herself. There were just too many people in the room.

She’d just sipped the sweet liquid when a fat, jolly laugh sounded behind her. She turned to see the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police chatting amiably with Jasper Keating.
No wonder Uncle Sherlock is sometimes wary of the police force. They’re cozy with the steam barons
.

“It was the damnedest thing,” the commissioner was saying. “At least half a dozen bodies found in pieces yesterday, washed up by the tides. So sorry they turned out to be your cousin’s Chinamen. Damned inconvenient to lose a whole set. Some sort of tribal war, I suppose. Can’t get anything
out of that bunch. Can’t understand a word they say. Some babble about a dragon. Their kingpin, perhaps?”

“They’ve been smoking their own opium.” Keating sounded put upon. “Harriman will have to hire a fresh crew. I’ll tell him to make them local boys this time.”

Chill horror drove the warmth of the sherry from her stomach. Evelina bit her lip, recalling the blood Imogen had seen on the floor of the warehouse and the Chinese tailors who worked in the area.
Dragon? Bodies?
There hadn’t been anything in the papers, but then the death of foreigners, however gruesome, never seemed to count as much as someone like the Gray King.

She didn’t have time to think further. With a sudden start, she saw Dr. Magnus bowing over Alice Keating’s hand, giving the red-haired girl a lingering look that seemed more scientific curiosity than male appreciation.

Evelina calculated the distance to the door, but before she could react, he had seen her. His tall, dark form was coming her way, the force of his personality preceeding him like a wave. Evelina braced herself.

“My dear Miss Cooper, well met.” He bowed low, his dark eyes crinkling pleasantly. “I was hoping we would meet again. Our acquaintance has so far been limited to passing in doorways.”

“No, we’ve not been properly introduced.”

“I know such things are properly done by a mutual acquaintance, but they all appear to be having a splendid time elsewhere. I am Dr. Magnus, an old friend of the Roth family.”

He stood so close that she could feel power radiating from him. Evelina looked him in the eye, doing her best to hide the fact that she felt the prickle of his magic against her skin. It wasn’t a clean, bright power, but dark and somehow oily.

She was tongue-tied for a long moment, and then gave in to her impulse to come to the point. If he was as dangerous as she surmised, games were useless. “I understand you are the one who found my toy bird. I’m extremely grateful for its return.”

He gave a long, slow smile. “It was my pleasure to be of service.”

“How did you know it was mine?” She supposed that it was the feel of her magic that had given her away, but she was interested in his answer.

He flashed white teeth. “I have my means, which shall hopefully be made plain as the evening progresses. I do believe we are being called to dinner. Shall we?” He offered Evelina his arm.

She didn’t want to be near him a moment longer, but it would have been the height of rudeness to refuse. Gingerly, she slipped her gloved hand over his sleeve and let herself be led into the dining room. She heard Imogen’s laugh somewhere ahead, and wished she had stayed close to her friend, even if Imogen had been dogged by Stanford Whitlock and Captain Smythe all evening. The captain had nearly poured champagne down his front when Imogen had smiled in his direction—although that smile might have been meant for Bucky, who was standing directly behind him at the time. It seemed Imogen and Bucky hadn’t been more than a dozen feet apart all night. If there had been any doubt that something was going on between the two, it had been dispelled in Evelina’s mind.

And she felt just as overset as Smythe, but for quite different reasons. Dr. Magnus had a hungry look that reminded her of one of Ploughman’s tigers.

The room was large and elegant, the gaslights softened to cast a gentle glow on the glittering company. The table decorations were tastefully simple arrangements of spring blossoms set into chalices of silver. Footmen glided to and fro, all efficiency in their white gloves and stony faces. Evelina found her place card, done in Lady Bancroft’s elegant hand.

With a twist of anxiety, she discovered it was next to her escort’s. She swallowed hard, barely resisting the urge to tear up the offending scrap of paper. Dr. Magnus wanted a conversation with her, and she guessed he left nothing to chance. In some men it would be endearing, but after the bird in the bakery box, it was creepy.

“Are you going to sit, Miss Cooper?” he asked in a faintly mocking tone.

She didn’t like to be toyed with. Evelina’s vision blackened around the edges, anger and the tight lacing of her stays strangling her. She took a step back from the table.

Magnus raised an eyebrow. The room was filling with guests, the light shimmering on jewels and silks. A babble filled Evelina’s ears like a spring stream, making it hard to think. If she caused a scene, she would never find the nerve to return.
Courage. He’s just another bully to be faced down
. Evelina swallowed down her discomfort and settled into her chair.

The evening did not immediately improve. The first course was a chilled green soup the color of pond scum. There was no way it would pass her lips, so she had to look busy or get dragged into a chat with the doctor. She tried talking to the man on her left, but he was a banker who had no idea what to say to young ladies.

Bored, she looked around the table. Lord Bancroft had the flush of a man who had been drinking steadily. To his right was the Gold King. Despite their smiles, the air between them sparked with tension. If there had been any other option, Bancroft would clearly have tossed his guest into the street.

Both men were older, proud, and perfectly dressed, but there the resemblance ended. Where Keating was hard and clean-edged as steel, Bancroft was old stone, porous, and crumbling, his features blurring as time and drink had their way. Mind you, there was nothing indistinct about his bad temper that night. Lord B was watching Magnus with a look akin to hatred.

Keating’s perusal of Tobias reminded her of a scientist scrutinizing a new form of algae. Tobias appeared to be doing his best to entertain Keating’s red-haired daughter, but she could tell it was just good manners. He was restless and trying to hide it, while poor Alice was making every effort to charm him. Evelina felt a pang of dislike that had nothing to do with Alice herself and everything to do with her proximity to Tobias.

Seeing Evelina unoccupied, Magnus moved in like a polite
shark. “To answer your earlier question,” he said in a quiet voice, clearly meant for her ears only, “my first clue about your bird was easily obtained from the vibrations left on the metal it was made of. I think you and I recognize each other for what we are.”

She remembered Bird saying that Magnus had caught her scent.
So it’s true. Magic users can tell each other’s traces apart
. She’d been able to track the magic from Grace’s gold to the warehouse, but she’d never known enough practitioners to test the theory to any greater degree.

He smiled gently. “I am a mesmerist by profession, but we share an interest in imaginative mechanics.”

She wondered just how imaginative he meant. Up to and including bringing them to life? She struggled to find polite words. “Is that so?”

“How were you introduced to the subject?”

“Here and there. Machines are like puzzles to solve.” She gave what she hoped was a convincing smile. “And I do like a good puzzle.”

He met her smirk for smirk.

“Perhaps you will find this of interest.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew something. He kept it hidden in his palm as the soup plates were whisked away and turbot drizzled with lemon sauce was served. This dish smelled of cracked pepper and parsley, and Evelina’s stomach perked up.

When the footmen had retreated, Magnus set the device down on the white damask linen of the tablecloth. It was a tiny beetle, made of a black, shiny metal. He made a gesture with his fingers, uttering a single word under his breath. With a faint clicking sound, the beetle scuttled across the snowy table, hiding under the gold-edged lips of the plates. Evelina tensed, certain one of the ladies was going to scream and faint dead away.

“Put that away!” she hissed. “Lady Bancroft doesn’t deserve to have her dinner ruined!”

And that was the least of it. He was using magic. In public. Hadn’t he heard about Nellie Reynolds? Evelina started
to breathe hard and fast, her fingers digging into the edge of the table.

“I am a mesmerist of great renown, Miss Cooper,” the doctor all but purred. “People expect to have their perception dazzled when I am in the room.”

“You’re taking too great a risk.”

Magnus ignored her. The beetle burrowed unobserved through the wilderness of centrepieces and butter knives. It actually ran over Mrs. Fairchild’s wrist, climbing up and around her emerald bracelet, but she was too fascinated by her conversation with the younger Mr. Bellamy to do more than absently rub her skin after the beetle had been and gone. It puddled through some dropped sauce, tracking tiny dots of green behind it, before it finished its grand loop around their end of the table and returned to Magnus’s hand. He made another word and gesture and set it ceremoniously before Evelina.

“What do you make of that?” he asked.

Panic-stricken, she picked it up quickly, hiding it in her lap. It buzzed with the same slippery energy as she sensed from Magnus, and that made her want to wipe her hands on her napkin. She turned the creature over, half hiding it beneath the edge of the tablecloth and wishing the lights were brighter. A careful examination, however, revealed no way to wind the thing up. “How does it run?”

He bent close, so that his lips were close to her ear. He smelled of an exotic cologne. “A relatively simple spell.”

There is no deva!

“It’s a mere charlatan’s trick. The thing has no mind of its own, no independent intelligence. It burns with no more meaning than a match.”

Sorcery
. When she turned to stare, his face was far too close to hers. She could tell from his expression that he saw the mix of curiosity and alarm on her face.

Magic was life. If it didn’t come from a trapped deva, there were only two other sources of power. One was the magic user’s own energy—dangerous, but still ethical. The other was life stolen from another. The blackest spells came from murder.

Folk practitioners like Gran Cooper used devas. The rest was the shadowy domain of sorcerers. Evelina set the beetle down on the table as fast as if it were a live scorpion. “A dangerous toy, my lord, if the wrong person saw you at play.”
You could get us both imprisoned or killed!

To her vast relief, he scooped it up and put it back into his pocket. “Perhaps I am rash, but this demonstration saves a very long-winded explanation of what I am, and the fact that you comprehend the discussion tells me a great deal about you, Miss Cooper.”

His words jolted her like a hot needle.

“What do you want from me?” she demanded under her breath. If he found her understanding informative, she was learning a great deal by the fact that almost every word they’d exchanged had been in a whisper. Dr. Magnus wasn’t suitable for public conversations.

He waved his hand in the air. “My interest is in the search for truth. I have long believed that perfect truth will be found not as an abstract concept, but in living consciousness. Incarnate, so to speak.”

Magnus paused, surveying the next course. “Beef. How very English.”

Evelina tasted her food, but was too nervous to register the flavors. “And?”

“Mm. The rosemary is a nice touch. Where was I? Oh, yes. Truth is as old as creation. If you adopt the notion that man strives to reach perfection, to return to that perfect state of truth that existed at the moment of creation when spirit and flesh became manifest, you will have to concede that the rational mind, as demonstrated by our burgeoning level of technology, is an expression of our desire for truth and the blissful repose of perfect wisdom.”

“Excuse me?”

A flicker of impatience crossed his features. “Our inventions equal our desire to realize divine truth.”

“Because they’re rational and capable of perfection.” Despite her caution, Evelina was interested.

“Exactly.” He raised a finger in the air. “Machinery is rationalism meeting creativity. What’s missing from that
equation is spirit. If we could infuse spirit into a machine, we would have achieved the perfect balance of truth. Not like my toy bug, but true union of mind and machine. A completely rational flesh with all the godlike intelligence of spirit.”

Evelina tried to envision Bird as the expression of divine truth and failed. Still, Magnus was as equally curious as she was about blending magic and machine. The apprehension in her chest was joined by a fugitive flutter of excitement. Even better, he was willing to discuss it. “What would the combination of machine and spirit accomplish?”