Mission: Improper: London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy (8 page)

"One of us has to be."
She continued on, detailing the layout of the manor from what she'd learned from Debney.
"Any questions?"

"I spoke to Debney about what to expect.
You'll be the center of attention," Byrnes warned, fetching the blud-wein and the brandy.
Ingrid idly watched him move, because the man looked damned good in black.
"Four years ago verwulfen were still outlawed and considered slaves.
In London you might have the protection of the Reformation of Verwulfen Bill, but the group we're joining are considered outdated even among Echelon standards, so expect slurs and certain jibes.
I'll do my best to protect you, but you may have to simply ignore the worst.
Though you bring an exotic element to the group, I'm not entirely certain how they'll accept your position as Debney's mistress."

If some blue blood lord thought he was going to put his hands on her, then she'd disavow them of the notion, but words and slurs were old news.
Ingrid shrugged.
"If someone gets too friendly, I'll make certain they understand the situation," she said.
"The rest is...
nothing new."

After all, she'd spent nearly half her life in a cage being spat upon and taken out only to be bloodied in a ring, where her sole aim was simply to survive.
Words couldn't hurt her anymore.

Indeed, ever since Will Carver's law had been announced just over three years ago and she'd been allowed onto the streets of London as a free woman, she'd found such a prospect the more frightening situation.
Leaving the dark shadows of Undertown—where she, Rosa, Jack, and the rest of the humanists had once discovered sanctuary—made her feel uncomfortably out of place.
She was still getting used to daylight, open spaces, and blending in to a crowd, as though there was nothing out of the ordinary about her.
Freedom was terrifying in a way that oppression never had been.

But she'd be damned if she'd admit that.

Byrnes looked away, tapping his fingers on the edge of the chair.
"I'm not going to be difficult to work with tonight," he said suddenly, and then their eyes met.
"This is not the time nor the place for the two of us to be clashing.
Ulbricht and the Echelon can be dangerous, and they've no liking for your kind or what you represent for them."

She breathed out a laugh.
"So it's a truce then?"

"A truce."

Ingrid's smile faded.
"You must be worried about me."

His look said it all, really.
Ingrid downed another finger of brandy.
"There's a possibility that they won't even know what I am.
As soon as we land, I intend to use the occipital lenses that hide the bronze in my eyes."

"And your scent?"

"A liberal dousing of perfume," she replied.
"Blue bloods like you have exquisite sense of smell, but in my experience the Echelon lords are too used to wearing colognes and perfumes.
It dulls their senses."

"Like your letter," he murmured, standing and heading for the small travelling case he'd brought.
"The one you left on my pillow.
I could barely smell you at all.
Here," he said, opening the case.
"We might as well finish the remaining preparations, if you're going to start disguising yourself."

She watched him gather up a handful of devices.
"It's quite convenient having the Nighthawks at your beck and call, isn't it?
Did you raid their equipment store on your way out?"

"I'm testing some new experiments for Fitz," he corrected, "the guild's weapons master."

"Does Fitz know this?"

That earned her a rare smile.
"Hold still.
And wear this at all times," Byrnes told her, brushing the honey-brown curls on the left side of her head behind her ear.
Ingrid's pulse hammered as he gently eased the small brass device inside her ear and fitted it carefully.
Byrnes looked up from beneath thick lashes, as if he'd noticed.
That touch gentled, tracing the delicate curve of her ear.
Then his gaze dipped, the back of his fingers twisting to brush against the delicate skin of her throat.
Right over the flutter of her pulse.

"Byrnes," she breathed, though it was a token protest.

Hunger flooded through his eyes, turning them darker, until only blackness remained.
Byrnes leaned closer, his breath buffeting her jaw, and—

Ingrid caught his wrist, breathing hard.
She knew what he was thinking, what he'd intended.
And so did he, judging by the sharp realization in his eyes as he blinked.
The darkness fled, leaving only the alpine clearness of his blue irises, but it unnerved her.
Blue bloods only reacted like that when their hunger was in ascendancy.
"You haven't earned your kiss yet."

"A kiss, is it?"
His voice roughened.
"This is a communicator.
You'll be able to hear me, and I'll hear what is being said around you too.
Once the ball's in full swing, I'm going to explore the grounds a little and see if I can find anything incriminating in Lord Ulbricht's study."

"Can I join you in rifling his study?"

"I'll think about it."
Easing out of his squat, the creases of his trousers falling into place, Byrnes turned away, toying with the various items displayed on the table in front of him.
Taking the time to compose himself, she thought, remembering that dark glint in his eyes.

The
hunger
.
She was still frozen, not quite certain what had just happened.
Something unusual, judging by the stiffness of his shoulders.

Once upon a time, she'd despised all blue bloods, considering them nothing but monsters; their inner predator hidden by a sleek exterior that was little more than a facade.
Byrnes himself had helped dispel that myth a year ago, when they'd worked together.
She'd expected a blue blood, driven by his desires for blood.
What she'd gotten was a man who held himself so chillingly composed that the only predator she'd seen within him had been the one who hungered to capture the Vampire of Drury Lane.
His needs were sharply focused; his thoughts trained solely on the mission.
If anything, she'd found his composure so supreme that it was almost insulting.

Except for the last couple of days, when the bet had been in place, and for the first time she'd seen a man with hunger in his eyes, a man who burned with it.

But not for blood.
Never for blood.

"Screamer," he said, turning and handing her a tube-shaped device.
Evidently they were pretending nothing had ever happened, which was fine with her.
"You press this button, and the device emits a high-pitched noise that will drive a blue blood to his—"

"Jack created these," she told him, taking the device and slipping it down her bodice as she stood, before adjusting the snug fit.
The gown was one she'd used in the past for undercover work, though times had been straitened then, and she'd evidently gained weight since.
"This is not my first undercover role, Byrnes."

He held up a slender dart.
“Then you know what these do?”

“Hemlock dart, meant to paralyse a blue blood,” she replied promptly.

He put the dart down.
“ Fine.
Just play it safe."

With her heeled slippers on, she was almost on a level with his eyes.
Reaching out, Ingrid smoothed her hands down over his lapels.
"I cannot quite figure out if you're worried about me, or worried that I'll betray the game before we have it figured out."
Though her voice sounded light, she felt that question curl through her.
Did he actually care more than he seemed to?

Byrnes's hands captured her wrists.
Something flickered in his gaze—consternation?
"If we get caught, then we get out as swiftly as we can.
It would be an inconvenience, but...
not unmanageable."

"You
are
worried about me," she blurted.

"The last time I worked with a partner, I almost got her killed," he admitted with a scowl.
Every word sounded as though she were threatening to pull teeth.
Clearly he loathed admitting his concern.
"I don't work well with others.
I never have, and I know that I frustrated you last night when I went behind your back with Debney, but...
working in a team has never been one of my strengths.
Sometimes I forget to cooperate, and when I find a clue my first instinct is to chase it, not to reconnoiter and plan our next step.
It wasn't personal, Ingrid."
Grudgingly, he added, "If I were going to work with someone, you seem as good as any of the others I've been partnered with."

Good heavens.
That was practically a compliment.
She didn't voice it, however, as Byrnes had clearly extended an olive branch toward her.
Instead, she shrugged.
"Apology accepted.
I will warn you though, I do expect better next time."

A sudden flash of smile made him shockingly handsome, then it was gone as he turned his attention back to her earpiece.
Ingrid couldn't help feeling as though she'd been jolted by a Leyden jar, however.

Byrnes was a complex man.
"Who was she?"
she asked, for his tone had softened at the mention of a “her.”

"My Nighthawk friend, Perry."
Byrnes let her wrists go.
"As you can imagine, Garrett was quite put out with me."

Perry...
Well, that was all right.
Ingrid had met the woman and decided that she liked her, thanks to a knife-throwing game when the pair of them had been into Rosa's sherry one night.
Besides, Perry was quite happily married to the guild master of the Nighthawks.
"It sounded as though you were quite put out with yourself."

"Yes, well."
He turned, the tails of his coat flaring.
Pouring a glass of blud-wein from Debney's decanter, he drained it in one swallow, and Ingrid enjoyed watching the muscles in his throat work.
"I care for Perry.
She reminds me of myself, in some ways, and I always....
She always seemed invulnerable to me."

"Until?"

"The day she was not."
Byrnes finally looked at her.
"Don't get yourself killed.
I still have a bet to win and a reward to claim."

Ingrid's breath flushed from her lungs.
For a moment, it had almost felt like something else lingered between them, but his words were a good reminder.
Byrnes considered life a challenge.
If he gave any indication that he cared for her, she would be a fool to believe it.

"Don't worry.
I wouldn't want to deprive you of such a challenge."

T
HE WELCOMING ball was a masquerade
.

"No mention of
that
on the invitation," Debney huffed, as though personally affronted, as they waited in the receiving line.

Dozens of gorgeously gowned ladies fluttered their fans, wearing an assortment of hawk masks, and butterflies, or even some masks with clockwork gears turning slowly over their faces.
At the door, a footman held a platter of assorted masks for those guests unfortunate enough not to have one, and Ingrid swept up a pretty gold-and-blue concoction of feathers that matched her gown.

Just as she lifted the mask to her face, the lordling in front of her tilted his head to the side, as though scenting something, and went deadly still.

Though the occipital lenses she wore should have hidden her eyes, Ingrid swiftly tied the mask on as he moved off, nudging someone else, who turned to examine her with a cold eye.
Both of them had pale silvery-blond hair, as though they were blue bloods well into the Fade.
Once upon a time, the Fade had led to a blue blood developing into a vampire, and they'd been executed when their craving virus levels grew too high, but there was some sort of transmutation machine now that helped dilute the craving virus levels in a blue blood's blood.

No blue blood had to fear the Fade anymore.

So why hadn't they used it?

"This way, my dear," Debney said, tucking her hand firmly in his.
He stared the pair of lords down, as though daring them to say something to her.

"You know," she murmured, glancing back over her shoulder curiously, "I'm not quite certain why Byrnes dislikes you so.
You are quite a charming fellow when you want to be, Debney."

The pair of blue bloods had vanished.

"It's a long story, and I don't take it personally, as Caleb dislikes most people."
Those perceptive eyes turned her way.
Debney looked like fluff, but was proving to own a shrewd mind behind those insipid blue eyes.
"Except, it seems, for some."

"I don't know what you mean."
Fanning herself, Ingrid looked away.

"He seems quite taken with you, my dear, if one knows him well enough to know what he's looking for."

A brief spurt of something—hope—flared in her chest, but she swiftly repressed it.
That was foolishness of the worst sort.
"I'm a challenge to him."

"Mmm," Debney murmured, but he said nothing more.

They swept into the ballroom, and she couldn't stop herself from lifting her eyes to the vaulted ceilings, dripping in gold, and the decadent chandeliers.
She'd never seen the like.
Dozens of servant drones roamed the ballroom with steam hissing from their exhaust vents.
More than one young lady's silk dress was ruined in the wake of the steam, and the room was intolerably hot and humid, considering it was October.
Ingrid slipped a glass of chilled champagne from the serving platter on top of one of the drones’ heads.

"Ulbricht used to be a scion of the House of Morioch," Debney murmured, guiding her through the crowd.
"Owned two of the London enclaves, and had exclusive shipping contracts with the prince consort.
He's practically a new-age Croesus."

"So he'd have disliked the fact that the revolution stripped his means of revenue so dramatically."
Good heavens, there were even girls dressed in watered white silk that barely covered them.
Her eyes narrowed as she saw the matching pearl chokers about their throats, complete with a small metal ring at the front.
They were very nearly reminiscent of the slave collars that the Echelon used to put on their blood-slaves.
"Isn't that illegal now?"

Debney knew exactly what she was referring to.
"Not quite, which basically describes Ulbricht and his ilk.
They push every law to the very limit, though they never seem to take that step over the line, leaving the queen with very little recourse.
Those girls are most likely paid to surrender to any who desire them for the night.
No matter what is asked of them."

Revulsion burned like acid in her throat.
This was what she'd fought so hard to prevent during the revolution.
It ached to see that the progress she saw everywhere in London was but a facade to these people.

"Relax."
Debney patted her hand, which she realized was clenched over his.
He didn't quite wince.

"Sorry."

"Don't be."
Behind the mask, his eyes seemed suddenly weary.
"It's nothing that I didn't flaunt in my heyday."
His gaze seemed to take in every girl, but there was no hunger in it.
Only shame.
"I never questioned it, as it was the way I was raised, but some of the stories you hear...."
His voice lowered, almost to a whisper.
"Some of the things that you saw."

"Or did?"

"Or did," he admitted softly, and to his credit, did not try to explain away his actions.
"You said that you weren't quite sure why Caleb dislikes me."
This time he did meet her gaze.
"I know.
When my father died, I...
I found myself lost to freedom for a long time.
I never thought of consequences.
Not until recently."

Ingrid frowned.
"Freedom?"

"My father was not a very nice man, and when you consider that I walked among those that surround us and thought them harmless, well...
let us just leave it at that.
There."
Debney tipped his head toward something behind her.
"There he is.
Ulbricht."

Applause and cheers tore through the room.
Lord Ulbricht appeared at the top of the stairs, impeccable in black, with his pale hair pomaded within an inch of its life.
The man wore a thin, well-pruned moustache, and faint lines shadowed his hawklike eyes as he smiled and greeted his guests with a wave.

Ingrid watched him saunter down the staircase, shaking hands with one young lordling and then offering a smile to another.
It was surreal, the way such evil wore a pleasant mask.
"I'm going to stop this, Debney."

For the first time, her mission—and Malloryn's—suddenly made sense to her.
She'd fought so hard with the humanists to destroy the prince consort and see his queen in a position of power.
The intervening years of peace and subsequent failed trips to Norway might have dulled her ambition, but this moment reignited her quest again.

Verwulfen, humans, and mechs were free now, but how long would that last?
Especially if Ulbricht and his friends had anything to do with it.
She was never going to live her life in a cage again.

"Perhaps you'd best look at me," Debney murmured in a nervous tone, patting her hand.
"You're drawing attention."

And she was.
Her stare had become an almost incinerating glare, and from the swift glance that Ulbricht shot her, she knew she'd captured his notice.
Ingrid looked away, sipping at her champagne.
"Thank you."

"You're welcome."
Debney ushered her through the crowd, and this time Ingrid forced herself to watch everyone.

Ulbricht reached the bottom of the stairs and a woman stepped forward to meet him.
White was always something that debutantes wore to symbolize their purity, if they had never been taken as a thrall before, but the fashion had died out recently.
Though gowned in a voluminous gown of pearlescent white, with dozens of pearls embroidering her bodice, this woman looked neither innocent nor pure.

A pearl choker dripped from her throat and her mask covered the entire top half of her face, with gauze obliterating even the eyeholes.
A glorious swan mask, but something...
something
about her seemed wrong.
Perhaps it was the way she surveyed the gathering with the same regard that Ingrid had given to the buffet earlier.

"
What is it
?"
Byrnes's voice murmured in her ear, which shocked her.
She'd forgotten that he was keeping watch, and had no doubt listened to the entire previous conversation.

She couldn't quite put her finger on it.
Exchanging her champagne glass for a fresh one, she put the glass to her lips to disguise the words.
"I don't know, but all the hairs on the back of my neck just rose.
That woman...
on the stairs, in white."

There was a moment's silence.

"
The swan?
"

"Yes."
Ingrid shivered.
The feeling quite reminded her of a child's chalk scratching over slate and the resulting sound.

"
She seems harmless."

"She looks like a predator," Ingrid countered.
"Look at the way she's watching all of the blood-slaves in here.
It's almost hungry, as though they're naught but cattle to her."

Silence.
"Hmm.
You might be right.
She's certainly not his plaything.
Not with the way she just grabbed his hand."

Though they might have been an entire ballroom apart, Ingrid felt as though Byrnes stood at her side, watching as the swan caught Ulbricht's arm and reined him to her side, murmuring swiftly in his ear.
Ulbricht looked startled, then followed the swan's gaze to something at Ingrid's left.

When Ingrid turned, all she saw was Debney, clasping hands in welcome with someone in an embroidered green waistcoat.

Ulbricht's smile sharpened as it locked on Debney, and then the pair of them separated, slinking in different directions through the crowd, as though circling Debney.

"Did you just feel a cold shiver down your spine?"
Ingrid looked away, masking her words with the glass.

"
I couldn't see what just happened
."
Byrnes's voice had softened.
"
Someone intercepted me, wanting more blud-wein.
But I'll keep an eye on her
."

"Don't.
Keep an eye on Debney instead.
I have a feeling that Ulbricht's up to something."

"
What do you mean
?"

"It's the way he just looked at him."

"What are you saying?"

"What if he's outlived his usefulness?"
she murmured.

"Are you certain you're not imagining things?"
Byrnes murmured.
"
Everyone looks normal to me.
And he's safe here, in the ballroom."

Ingrid looked around.
Nobody was focusing on Debney anymore, nor her.
People laughed.
Ulbricht held court in front of the automaton quartet, and the swan...
was nowhere to be seen.
She rubbed her arms.
"Perhaps I'm on edge.
I'm not used to this."

"Take your glass, ma'am?"
someone murmured, and as she set her empty glass on the tray, she realized it was Byrnes.

His eyes twinkled behind the plain black velvet domino mask he wore.
"Calm down," he murmured.
"I'm watching over you
and
Debney.
And I have a highly developed recurring pistol in my pocket, packed with firebolt bullets that could tear a blue blood in half."

"Thank you," she replied, cocking her head and then turning away.
It wouldn't do to have someone notice that she knew him.
"Who did you knock out to steal that costume?"
she whispered, fluttering her fan in front of her face.

Byrnes moved away from her.
"
Tall fellow.
Punches like a brute, but he went down eventually
.
Not a footman, no matter what he was wearing.
Undercover guard, perhaps.
Ex-soldier, back from the wars in France.
Unusual type of servant at a place like this."

"You think something smells fishy."

"Something is definitely going on.
I can't wait to do some breaking and entering."

"When?"

"Give me a half hour, then meet me in the hallway that leads to the powder room."

"And Debney?"

"Safe here, in public.
Nobody would dare touch him, if your little theory proves right."

A strange little flutter went through her.
He'd promised to keep an eye on her, but it was surprising how much it meant to know he was here.