Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City (3 page)

Dear heavens, she’d been so very lucky, hadn’t she?

She looked to Rhys. With a single glance, she’d already seen how he’d spent part of his day—his valet had obviously forced him to sit still long enough for a trim. Mina would thank the man later. As much as she loved to sink her fingers into Rhys’s dark, overlong hair, she loved even more seeing those small gold hoops at the tops of his ears and the strong line at the back of his neck. “And you, sir?”

“I
wish
I could have tackled a dockworker—and I’ve already found my wife.”

He surprised her. Though he never made many jokes, his humor came more often and more easily than it once had. “So you have. Picked her right out of Anglesey Square.”

And thank the heavens for that, for his stubbornness that matched hers. While she’d been sitting alone at the feet of his statue, he’d come to her, insisting that they would be together, despite her protests and her certainty that he no longer wanted her. How long ago that seemed now—the pain of not being with him, of thinking that he was done with her. Whatever small doubts and aches still lingered, they were nothing compared to that agony.

“Yes, he has a wife to tackle dockworkers for us,” Scarsdale said. “So we have spent the better part of a day trying to put together an expedition to search for a lost ship in the Arctic, and offering absurd amounts of money for a Vashon to lead it.”

The famous family of airship captains. “Will you get him?”

“Her,” Rhys said. “And, yes. I want her, so I’ll have her.”

Of course he would say that. He hadn’t bought Mina, but the Iron Duke was still so certain that he could buy everyone else. Mina didn’t think she was the
only
exception . . . but there were apparently so few exceptions that his usual methods still worked.

She smiled faintly. “Hopefully you won’t convince her as you did me.”

Oh.
And that had not come out as lightly as she’d intended it. All remaining traces of humor left Rhys’s face, drawing his skin tight. Her heart pounded.

“No,” he said. His voice was gruff, as if rasped by smoke. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Partially because Captain Vashon has enough years on her to be his grandmother,” Scarsdale said easily, as if he didn’t notice Rhys’s tension—but of course he did. He always did. He knew Rhys well.

He knew Rhys
so
well—and perhaps that was why Mina was afraid to ask Scarsdale about certain things, fearful of what the answer might be. Perhaps he’d tell her that Rhys’s fierce lovemaking wasn’t just because she’d been injured, but because he was driven now and again by the same need that had driven him before: to possess her. But he
had
her now . . . and Mina was a liar if she didn’t sometimes wonder whether he felt his pursuit had been more satisfying than the having.

He loved her. She knew that. But maybe he didn’t love her more than he had eight months ago. He’d asked her to fight with him . . . but maybe he was fighting to stay excited, fighting to keep his desire for her alive.

The sick ball in her stomach became heavier. She needed him, needed to feel him against her, inside her.
Now.
Rising to her feet, she said, “Excuse me. I can still smell the slums on me, so I ought to change out of this uniform before dinner. I’ll return in a moment.”

Mina knew Rhys would follow her. That tension meant he’d devour her. She needed that at this moment, more than anything—the reassurance of his touch, of his kiss, of
his
need.

She almost ran into Mrs. Lavery outside the door. The housekeeper held a folded gram, her blue eyes wide and worried.

“A wiregram from Superintendent Hale, Your Grace.”

Likely a murder, then—one that the superintendent wanted Mina to handle, since she was being summoned after her shift had ended. Damn it. Mina unfolded the message, hoping she was wrong.

Viscount Redditch. By the heavens. She and Rhys had just eaten dinner with him the evening before.

She looked to Rhys, who’d come into the hall after her. “It’s Redditch. He’s been killed.”

Surprise passed over his expression. “Where is he?”

“His garden. In Westminster.” On the other side of London.

“Ask Mr. Muller to ready the two-seater,” he told Mrs. Lavery before catching Mina’s hand in his. “The balloon will be faster than the river or the roads. Do you want me to fly you there?”

It wasn’t the sort of time alone with him that she’d hoped for, but Mina would take it. “Yes.”

Chapter 2

Rhys had lived through
danger before, through hardship. He’d looked Death in the eye more times than he could count. Yet the past eight months had been the most terrifying of his life—and he feared the worst was still coming.

Rhys feared that he would lose the woman he loved.

He shouldn’t have been afraid of anything. He’d married Mina within a week after finding her in the square. He’d made her
his
. He’d thought the fear would diminish then, the terror that had followed him since he’d realized that he loved her—after she’d insisted that a relationship between them couldn’t work until everyone in England began seeing her differently. He’d thought the terror of watching her fall in front of a bullet would be over, along with the fear that she might never return to him.

So Rhys had gone to her when he’d found her in that square, desperate and afraid, and had insisted that she give him another chance. She’d changed everyone’s opinion by saving his life—and it
had
worked between them. She was his. The danger ought to have passed.

But she still lived in danger, and Rhys in fear. Every controlling instinct in him said to make her quit her job . . . but he
would
lose her if he did. He could effectively force her into a safer position by making her pregnant, but if she’d discovered that he had manipulated her in that way, she’d leave him.

He’d never risk that. So instead he watched her risk her life, every single day.

God. With the people who worked for him, it was easy enough to make demands or to take away choices to produce the results he wanted. He couldn’t do that with her.

And the doubt he saw in her expression every once in a while, the uncertainty—it was his damned fault. Rhys had no idea how to be a husband. Scarsdale had once said that he had the sensitivity and subtlety of a mud brick, and Rhys recognized the truth of it. But with Mina, Rhys fought to be better—yet he still cocked up and made the stupidest declarations . . . like how he wanted another woman.

But Mina had to know the want he’d spoken of wasn’t
anything
like his need for her. That was business, not his heart. She
had
to know. Didn’t she?

He followed her out the rear of the mansion, where the two-seater waited for them on the lawn. The gas lamps lighting their path washed its oval balloon in pale yellow. Unlike most two-seaters, they couldn’t sit side by side—his weight would unbalance it all, so they sat in tandem, with Rhys in front and Mina behind. Nor did they pedal to spin the propellers. The design already had to compensate for his weight, so he’d added an engine and speed.

The furnace beneath the tail had been stoked, the boiler steaming and the engine huffing. Rhys paused before boarding and let the noise cover his voice. “I wouldn’t.”

Mina looked up at him. God, her eyes. Flat and calculating, she was already working, already the inspector. They could look right through a man. He didn’t want her to see his terror. “You wouldn’t what?”

“The Vashon woman. It’s not the same.”

Her gaze softened. “I know.”

That should have eased his fear. But Rhys knew it wouldn’t ease until he could hold her, until he could feel her against him, around him,
his
. Then the panic went away for a while.

But he had to push it back now. She depended on him.

He climbed into the front, waited until she’d settled into the seat behind him. Muller tossed off the tethering cables, and the rattling frame lifted off the ground. Rhys eased open the propeller valve, lowered the flaps. The balloon flew forward, quickly gaining speed as they rose into the air. The Thames served as the perfect guide to the heart of London, several miles west of his estate. On the roads below, the lanterns from carts and coaches showed the haphazard tangle of traffic. Full-sized airships weren’t allowed over the town, but two-seater balloons were becoming more common—though not nearly as common as in the New World. Most people didn’t have enough money to buy the vehicles, and those who did had difficulty finding room to keep one.

He felt Mina’s hands on his shoulders as she leaned forward and called out, “Did Redditch seem at all concerned or upset when he was at our dinner last night?”

Not that Rhys had noticed. He shook his head.

“I didn’t think so, either!”

She leaned back again, and he knew that she was reviewing every moment of their dinner, wondering if she’d missed some sign, any indication that the man might have been in fear for his life.

A bounder who’d recently relocated to England from Manhattan City, Redditch had contacted Rhys several times, trying to drum up support for his labor initiative to reward factories that didn’t install fully automated machinery, putting manual workers out of a job. After Rhys had become active in Parliament, society dinners became an unfortunate necessity—and the night before, he’d invited Redditch to hear what the man had to say. At the end of it, though Rhys agreed that protecting the laborers was a fine notion, he thought Redditch’s initiative was the wrong way of going about it, and would eventually cripple England’s industries. When Rhys had told the viscount that he wouldn’t support the bill as it was currently written, the man had been disappointed, but not angry—and he hadn’t seemed concerned about anything else, either.

Ten minutes later, Mina leaned forward again, pointed past him to a circle of stone rubble that had once housed a bevy of Horde officials, and was now home to urchins and anyone else that cared to stake a claim on it. “There’s Grosvenor Square!” she called. “Portman Square is just north of it.”

That square had fared better during the revolution. All of the buildings still stood, and had become a preferred location for many of the bounders returning from Manhattan City. They’d replanted the small park at the center, poured money into the houses. Columned facades looked out over the square, freshly repainted and the windows all replaced.

Rhys lifted the flaps, opened the steam valves to stop the engine, and gently set the two-seater down outside the southeast edge of the park. He hopped out and tethered the balloon to the park’s wrought-iron fence before giving his hand to Mina. Her slim fingers folded over his as he helped her out—not that she needed help. He just couldn’t pass up any opportunity to touch her.

Thank God, her faint smile said the same.

Her gaze met his for a moment before searching the row of houses. “His is number thirty-eight. There.”

She nodded at a five-story house at the center of the southern row. Rhys scanned the lane that circled the square; he didn’t see her assistant’s police cart.

“Newberry hasn’t arrived yet,” Rhys said. “The traffic was locked up on Oxford Street. He might be some time.”

Even though her Horde blood no longer inspired as much hatred from Englishmen—and was hardly an issue for many bounders—he knew she still didn’t like going into the scene of a murder alone, preferred to have someone watching her back. He also knew she hated waiting.

“Yes,” she said, and before he could offer, added, “Will you come in with me?”

Rhys would do anything she asked, but he was surprised by her request. Aside from his front steps the night they’d met, he hadn’t yet been to a site of a murder with her, not while she was on the job. And though Mina hadn’t said as much, he understood that she needed to keep the Iron Duke out of her investigations. He couldn’t walk into a room without people looking to him as an authority; when Mina was investigating, she should be the authority. A ship didn’t run smoothly under two captains—and she couldn’t escape her own celebrity, but she could try to separate it from his, to the point of calling herself Detective Inspector Wentworth while she worked instead of taking his name or title. She had asked him once whether that bothered him, but of course it didn’t. That was her title, hers alone and appropriate for the job—and just as appropriate as when she filled her role as a duchess and signed her name Wilhelmina Anglesey on social correspondence.

By any name, she was his. That was all that mattered to him. And if she wanted him at her side, he’d be there. Hell, he’d have always been there if his presence wouldn’t have interfered with her work. There was nothing he wanted more than to protect her—but when Mina was on the job, she relied on Constable Newberry for that.

Rhys couldn’t even be jealous of the giant red-haired constable. He was too damn grateful Newberry was always there with her.

“I’ll protect you.” As if he would ever do anything different. “But I won’t be as useful as Newberry.”

“If I wanted you to be useful, I would have brought a police kit and ferrotype camera for you to haul around—though I suppose the magnetized iron might stick to your hands instead of creating a photograph.” God, but he loved how her eyes narrowed slightly and her incredible mouth thinned when she suppressed her humor. “Just be with me. And don’t touch
anything
.”

Rhys laughed. He’d listened to her rage about the destruction of a scene too many times to need that warning. “I won’t.”

He started across the lane with her, looking forward to seeing her in action. When they’d first met, her inspector’s mind had immediately fascinated him—all of that intelligence, the flat gaze that saw everything, the confidence in her own abilities . . . her refusal to bend to his will. Yet he’d also been frustrated by his difficulty reading her expressions and his inability to fathom the sort of woman she was. In time, he’d found that the clever, unflappable inspector was also strong, passionate—and to see her on the job now, knowing Mina as he did, she was beyond fascinating.