A Study in Silks (71 page)

Harriman sucked in a whistling breath.

“He’ll be off to Newgate,” Lestrade said. “The rest of this conversation can take place there.”

With that, he dragged Harriman toward the door. The crowd parted, and many hurried toward the cloakroom. The evening was over, and the entertainment had not been at all what they’d expected.

Keating fixed Holmes with a keen look. “Athena’s Casket?”

Her uncle gave him a sorrowful face. “I suspect it’s been melted. A tragedy.”

The Gold King turned away for a long moment, his shoulders hunched. When he turned back, his face was stern but composed. “Still, I thank you for uncovering this treachery. If it had been allowed to fester, who knows what havoc Harriman might have caused. I underestimated him.”

Holmes blinked lazily. “So it appears.”

“You shall be recompensed.” Keating frowned.

Sherlock glanced at his arm. “I shall remember to forward my bill.”

With a stiff nod, Keating stalked away to salvage what he
could of the night. Evelina was free to scan the remaining crowd. “Where is Lord Bancroft?”

“He left as soon as the vase hit the floor.”

She looked at Holmes sharply as suspicion changed to certainty. “So he was one of them.”

“Undoubtedly. I suspect he was the key player. It remains to be seen whether Keating figures that out. I’m sorry for your friends, but it will be rough sailing for Bancroft if he does. That can’t be helped.”

She swallowed hard. He was telling her no more than the truth. “But what about Grace? And who shot you?”

Holmes made a face. His color had gone beyond white to a sickly gray. “The game is still afoot. It might be limping, but it’s not finished yet. Unfortunately, for tonight, I am.”

IT HAD BEEN UP TO TOBIAS TO CALL A HANSOM AND BUNDLE
his sister into it. Lord Bancroft had taken the carriage, and Tobias’s first priority was to exit the scene before anyone noticed that he and his sister had been left behind. After that shocking scene with Harriman, who knew what scandalous whispers the slightest misstep would cause?

The pater’s sudden departure said he was guilty, but how bad was it? Imogen had opened her mouth once or twice, but had not been able to force out a single word. Instead, she held her brother’s hand as if to comfort him. She was probably comforting herself.

Poor Im. She’s always the leaf caught in other people’s storms
. And she’d been looking ill again the past few days. She wasn’t made to withstand so many shocks.

Jolting along in the cab, Tobias wrapped himself in the tense silence with a species of bloody satisfaction. Whatever his father had feared, whatever guilt he had tried to hide, little Evelina Cooper and her peculiar uncle had found it. It served his father right for keeping it—whatever
it
was—from his own son. He’d assumed Tobias was too incompetent to be of help, but who was the family disaster now?

Tobias let the petty monologue run riot around his brain until the hansom reached their house. Bigelow, with the instinct of a well-trained servant, had already opened the door before Tobias reached the front walk.

“What’s going on?” Imogen asked once they were safely inside.

Tobias mused a moment, studying his sister’s worried
face. The worst, he knew, was yet to come. “Go look after Mother. I’ll try to talk to Father.”

“Tobias,” she grabbed his sleeve. “Grace Child …”

“You don’t really think Father killed her do you?” He did. He had since the disastrous dinner with the detective.

“I don’t know. There are moments I think I do. Other moments I’m so angry that I wish I could.” Imogen’s eyes were dark with fear. “But what do we do now?”

“We do what we need to.” He kissed her forehead. “You’re the sane one. The rock. You have to be strong for us.”

“But I’m not strong. I’m the one who is always ill.” Her voice shook just enough that he caught the tremor.

He wanted to take his little sister in his arms and hold her, but was afraid he might lose his courage. Instead, he gave her a little shove toward the stairs. “Go be the saintly daughter. See to Mother. I’ll come find you later.”

Tobias went to his father’s study, but paused outside with his hand on the cold brass knob. It had been little more than a week since he’d been summoned there after the squid affair. His father had told him to seduce Evelina in order to prevent exactly what had just happened.
So I would have ruined a girl’s life over what? Some gold pots?

He turned the doorknob slowly, part of him hating Evelina. She and her uncle had turned everything on its head. But he’d felt her lean into him on the dance floor and in that moment of tenderness, he’d known nothing was simple for her, either. She’d been wise to say she couldn’t afford him. And yet, despite her cool reasoning, her blood ran every bit as hot as his.

Only one thing was certain. Tobias was done being his father’s puppet.

The door swung open. His father sat behind the desk, the tiger’s head snarling above him. One of Lord Bancroft’s hands rested lightly on his silver-handled revolver. Tobias’s heart jerked in his chest, like a carriage hitting a rut. This was unexpected. For a moment, he nearly turned and ran.

He forced his voice to be light. “Are we so ruined that you need to blow out your brains?” He was being deliberately callous, but it got Bancroft’s attention.

His father glared up at him through lowered brows. “Get out.”

Tobias took a deep breath, forcing the air into lungs so tight they screamed a protest. Suicide? Truly? He’d always assumed his father too egotistical, but now he wasn’t sure. Like everything else, this assumption was crumbling away, leaving him standing on air.

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and sauntered in. “You’re guilty.”

“Yes.”

God help us
. “How badly?”

Bancroft stared at the middle of the desk. His voice sounded already dead. “I organized the affair. I knew jewelers who could recut the stones and sell them for a sizable profit.”

“Why do it?”

Bancroft made a minute movement, not quite a shrug. “Money. Ambition. Everything takes gold. I gambled and lost.”

That made Tobias swallow. Would this be him in twenty years, disappointed and holding a gun? In ten? “The Gold King doesn’t know you’re involved. Not yet. Suicide is as good as admitting your guilt.”

“He will. And a bullet might encourage Keating to spare my family.” Bancroft’s hands were starting to shake. He was a brave man, but no one could stay wound to the necessary pitch forever.

Tobias was counting on the fact. If he stalled long enough, his father would lose his nerve. “Don’t be an idiot. Killing yourself won’t spare us. It will shatter us to pieces.”

Bancroft’s hands clenched. He smelled of whisky. “Stop sniveling. If you’d been a man, if you’d stopped that girl, then none of this would have happened.”

Tobias gave a dry smile. “But it seems that, at the moment, I have Keating’s respect. He likes my spirit.”

Bancroft’s mouth worked. He’d never been able to bend. Now he was breaking. “Leave me.”

Tobias was losing patience. “No. I’m tired of dancing in your wake. If it’s not a scheme at Harter’s, we’re being Disconnected. One day you’re asking me to seduce an innocent
girl, the next someone is murdering our servants to get their hands on a collection of cursed automatons. The family cannot afford this insanity a moment longer.” Tobias still wasn’t satisfied by his father’s explanation about the automatons, but this wasn’t the moment to revive that argument.

His father finally met his eyes. His gaze was dull as rock. “How dare you presume?”

Tobias gritted his teeth, biting back his first retort. The second was only a sliver more civil. “I dare because if you don’t act like the head of this family, I will. Splattering your brains on the wall won’t fix anything.”

A look of pure rage crossed his father’s face. He gripped the revolver, raising the barrel to point right between Tobias’s eyes. “Get out.”

“What about Mother? What about Imogen’s Season? How can she find a husband if she’s in mourning? And Poppy is still a girl. She won’t understand.”

Defeat flooded Bancroft’s face, turning his eyes raw with despair. “Don’t you comprehend ruin? Those will be the least of their problems.”

His father’s face—that look of a drowning man—transfixed Tobias. He went utterly still inside, much the same way as when he was deep in the bowels of an engine. It was the same calm he felt memorizing how parts connected, cog and wheel, piston and pulley. He was a maker. Cause and effect worked the same way, inside a machine or out of it.

He had a flash of insight how his father, once a maker himself, got into the business of politics. It was all about pulling the right levers.

Tobias gentled his voice. “I understand there are broken things that need mending. I’ll kiss Keating’s arse if that’s what it takes to bring him around. I’m exactly the type of bright young aristo he likes in his retinue. And I can build a better machine than that prat Jackson. I can save this.”

For a moment they stood staring at each other. An understanding passed between them Tobias had never thought possible. It wasn’t enough.

Bancroft shook his head. “I’ve always told you to be like
me, but I’ve secretly taken comfort in the fact that you weren’t. You still have dreams. Don’t give them up. Not for Keating.”

“I’m doing it for us.” Tobias reached for the gun, feeling exhausted and exhilarated at once. It must have been the way those Japanese warriors felt when they drove a sword into their own entrails. Sacrifice and honor.

Tobias’s fingers brushed the silver grip of the revolver. Bancroft jerked the gun away. Tobias grabbed for it at the same instant, trying to wrestle it out of his father’s hand. It went off with a thunderous pop, blowing a plume of sawdust out of the tiger’s head. A fang clattered to the floor.

And then Tobias had the revolver. He was panting, more from nerves than from exertion. Bancroft looked amazed, then furious. The fleeting moment of understanding was over, and suddenly they were rivals.

“No!” Bancroft lunged across the desk.

Tobias had had enough. He’d had enough for years. “We’re done.”

“Stop being a child!”

Without exactly thinking, Tobias plowed his fist into his father’s jaw. Bancroft sprawled backward into his chair.

“We’re done,” he said quietly. Nausea seeped upward. He’d crossed a line, gone to a place he couldn’t retreat from. “I’m sorry.”

The study door banged open, Bigelow an uncharacteristic tableau of panic. He’d heard the shot. Tobias held up a hand, signaling calm.

Bancroft touched his face. Blood welled on his lip. “You’ll hate yourself for this.”

“I already do.”

It wasn’t just for the blow. He’d taken authority from his father he didn’t want. Now he had to keep his word if that gesture was to have an ounce of meaning.

Tobias turned and walked past the butler, still holding the gun.

HOLMES WENT DIRECTLY BACK TO BAKER STREET UNDER
Watson’s care. His wound had reopened, and the good doctor was ready to enforce bed rest at gunpoint if necessary.

Worry squirmed inside Evelina, pushing her into action. The Roths had left, Nick had fled into the night, and she needed to find a ride back to Hilliard House. She had to collect the last of her things and make her way to Baker Street. She’d been advised that morning that the moment her uncle was no longer an invalid, Lord Bancroft no longer wished to suffer her presence. She had delayed until after the gallery opening only because her uncle had required her presence and she had run out of time to pack. Now that Holmes had started a chain of events that would likely lead to Lord Bancroft’s arrest, she would be lucky not to find her underthings in the street.

How much has changed in such a short span of time
. She stood at the curb in front of the gallery, looking for a hansom to hire.

“Miss Cooper.” She turned to see the Gold King standing beside her. He gave a slight bow.