Phoenix Rising (10 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN
In Which Our Intrepid Heroes Call a Truce
and Rise to the Challenge of Revels and Mirth!

S
ince his colleague simply started rather than replying, Books asked, “Is the gruel here as good as the papers claim it to be?”

Braun raised her eyebrow. “Oh, the slop here is par excellence. They could tidy up the place a bit though. Better have a discussion with the management about it.” She pursed her lips together, considering him for a few seconds. “Keeping secrets from me, Books?”

He straightened up slightly on that. “Whatever do you mean, Miss Braun?”

“For an Archivist who seems to rarely leave the Ministry dungeons, you were able to track me without fail. How'd you manage that?”

Wellington shook his head and reached into his coat pocket. “The same way you found me bound for Antarctica.”

To the cursory glance of a passerby, the device he held in his hand would have appeared as a compass, but this compass rang with a tiny, single chime. The needle that one would assume pointed north instead pointed at Eliza. Underneath the needle was a tiny map of their current city block, and of its two inset lights, the green one blinked cheerfully.

Eliza looked down at her ring. “The Emergency Tracking System.”

“Amazing possibilities wireless telegraphy offers, wouldn't you agree, Miss Braun?” he quipped, before shutting the tracker's domed lid with a quick
snap
.

The silence they shared, save for the clamour of London bustling around them, could have well been a shouting match. Eliza's anger at being followed and at getting caught—and by an Archivist no less—was evident. Wellington in turn however did not let his displeasure at being betrayed show. His thumb absently rubbed the Ministry's coat of arms etched into the tracker's cover. They were still part of Her Majesty's government, and both bound to that service. In that much, they were equals. He needed to consider her well-being as a fellow agent.

“How is he?” Even Wellington was surprised by how calm his question sounded.

Braun adjusted her hat. “As if you really give a toss about Harry? He was merely another name lost in your precious Archives until a few days ago.”

“Yes,” he replied. “And I suppose this is simply your weekly visit to see him?”

She took a step closer. “Don't, Books.”

“The posturing is trite, Miss Braun, and I would advise the same to you: don't think you can hoodwink me without a thought. As you have noted, I am a resourceful gent.” He looked down at her. “I do not appreciate such deception, especially from a colleague.”

Braun tightened the shawl around her shoulders and shivered as she cast a final glance towards Bedlam. “I'm done here.” She gave Wellington another perusal, and then asked, “Did you plan to spend the rest of the day standing here, or were we to head back to the office?”

He shook his head lightly, pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose, and offered her his arm. “Come along, Miss Braun.”

“If you please, Books,” she snapped, brushing his offer aside, “when we return to the office, address me by my proper title.” Eliza glanced around her and whispered, “Agent.” With a curt nod, she added, “Don't think I've not noticed that little tactic of yours.”

“A tactic which apparently is not working, Miss Braun—seeing as you have decided to take this matter into your hands. On Ministry time, no less.”

“Yes,” she rolled her eyes as they started walking, “because as we know, the Archives will fall into ruin if I miss a few days of cataloguing.”

Wellington grinned a bit, but cast the idle thought aside. “You have a duty to the Ministry; and as we are both well aware of, you do wish to keep your position there. I can say I have seen what you do in the field, and regardless of your liberal application of dynamite you are a . . . valuable asset to the Ministry. It would truly be a loss to not have you within the ranks.”

Their walking ceased. Braun looked into Wellington's eyes and then nodded. “It hurt to admit that, didn't it?”

“Far more than you can fathom, yes, but I do believe it. Completely.” He motioned ahead, and their walk resumed. “So consider what I am doing to be for your own good.”

“Remember what was once said about the road to hell and good intentions, Books,” she quipped.

“Perhaps, Miss Braun, but let us also agree your failure is a failure on my part as well. I have been given the responsibility to acclimate you to the inner workings of the Archives, and so far you have not spent a full day there.”

Braun took objection to this assessment. “Hold on a moment! I have accomplished a few things.”

“Yes, you have destroyed one irreplaceable vase, mis-catalogued several items between the Stone and Bronze Ages . . .”

She muttered, “The green makes things look more stony than brassy.”

“. . . And you have entered in the inventory one book. Have I missed anything?”

Eliza rapped his arm and beamed. “I fixed the leak.”

“Your position at the Ministry is Archivist, not Plumber.”

“All right, so I am not going so elegantly into my new service, what of it?” She gave a shrug, her hands imploring as she continued. “Books, you saw what I love to do firsthand. Do you expect me to give that up so easily?”

“Yes I do, Miss Braun,” Wellington stated. “As a field agent, you were expected to follow orders and, from what I saw firsthand, you did just that and it saved my life. So yes, I expect you to do as you did back in Antarctica, and follow orders.”

They continued in silence, Braun's face now blushing brightly. The last thing he wanted or needed to do in order to build a rapport was to embarrass her, but what were his options? It ate away at her, he could see, as she attempted to tell him something several times, failing to do so when her mouth opened.

Finally she let out a disgusted sigh and tapped him on the arm again. “Come on, Welly,” she said, ignoring the silent “
Ow!
” he made. She appeared to be undeterred in her next bold question. “Where is your sense of adventure?”

“Well,” he winced, continuing to rub his arm, “if I did have your definition for a sense of adventure, do you think I would take such an assignment as Archivist at a place called the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences?”

Braun went to answer, but paused.

With a nod that spoke a silent “Exactly,” he went on. “For me, the excitement is in the mystery, in researching something I am unaware of on that particular morning. The artifacts your lot bring back from various missions all have stories to tell. I've been quite content going beyond what the field agents accomplish. In many ways, a case cannot be closed before it is truly solved.”

“And that, my dear Agent Books,” stated Braun, her eyebrow crooked sharply as she spoke to him, “is where you contradict yourself. You say you love a good mystery and yet down in the depths of the Archives are cases which have stumped the field agents and even the old man upstairs.”

“Miss Braun,” Wellington said, looking at her over his spectacles, “I doubt if Doctor Sound would appreciate such a moniker as ‘old man.' ”

“The point is you are an agent of the Ministry. Regardless.” She stopped him in the middle of the sidewalk, catching him in the chest with a single finger. “You had to go through the same training, the same evaluations, the same rigours; and here you are, taking great pride in your involvement yet trying to remain as far from the field as possible, surrounded by the mystery you tell me you are so attracted to.”

“Miss Braun—” he began.

“And if we are to be working together, as partners,” she said, gingerly placing her hand flat against his chest. “
Eliza
.”

“Miss Braun,” he said, removing her hand, “I find it most intriguing you speak of contradictions only a moment before calling me your partner. A partnership is based on many things, but at its core is trust. You must admit that we are off to a bad start in that department, aren't we?”

Braun looked away for a moment, and then conceded, “That was before I knew if I could trust you.”

“And what makes you think you can trust me now?”

“Because if you were truly all rules and regulations as you carry yourself, you wouldn't have been waiting for me at the entrance of Bedlam. You would have been waiting for me in Doctor Sound's office. With Doctor Sound debriefed on my behaviour over the past week, I have no doubt.”

A single finger went up to contradict her, but no voice came out. In fact, he felt quite exposed in that moment. Granted, reporting this to Doctor Sound may have relieved him and his Archives of her permanently, but instead he had chosen to deal with her himself.

She was right.

He did not dare examine the why in that judgement call. A judgement call he hoped he would not regret.

“So there is a spirit of adventure in you?” Eliza proclaimed with an amount of satisfaction—so much satisfaction that passersby cast worried glances their way. “I knew it.”

“That will do, Miss Braun,” replied Wellington, straightening his waistcoat and then proceeding back to the office as he spoke to her. “I am trying to nurture a relationship between us, a healthy,
working
relationship, mind you. And it would have accomplished nothing—”

“Welly?” Braun called out to him.

He stopped, and then looked around him. Wellington was talking to open air, nothing more. He turned around to see Braun still at the street corner, pointing in a different direction from where they were headed initially.

“And what is in tha—” Wellington then heard the oncoming rumble of a carriage. He sprinted back to the street corner, back to the damned contrary woman.

“This way, Welly,” she said.

“But the Ministry isn't that way,” he insisted. “In fact, I do not even require the tracker to tell me that this is most certainly
not
the way back to the Ministry!”

“Yes, but I have a more efficient route, if you would follow me.” And with a slight laugh, Braun spoke over her shoulder. “Besides, I think your spirit of adventure needs a bit more exercising.”

Wellington looked back up the street anxiously, back the way he had been heading. He
knew
this way was the shortest distance between the Ministry and Bedlam. So did the tracker. Exactly what Eliza Braun was up to and where she was headed was a mystery, and he knew what the mystery pertained to. She had already proven to be something of a woman who insisted on having her way in a situation, whether her way was proper or not.

Then again, she was a talented field agent and could very well know of several alleyways that could get them back to the office faster than his preferred route. He had, inadvertently, gained her respect—for the time being—by showing up to Bedlam alone. It was a start, and he needed to build on this sliver of trust earned.

Therein was the mystery: what was Agent Eliza D. Braun up to?

“Eliza!” Wellington marched up to her in wide strides, a skeptical look fixed hard in his features. “I honestly do not recall any clever shortcut from this area which can get us back to the docks. As you have placed a bit of assurance in me, now I need a bit in return. We are headed back to the Ministry, yes?”

“Eventually,” she said, her smile far too wicked for his liking.

“Now, Miss Braun, we really should be getting back to the Archives. I think this love of mystery and pursuit of adventure has enjoyed plenty of exercising for—”

Wellington suddenly found himself spun around and shoved against the side of the nearest building. Eliza was clasping tight onto the lapels of his frock-coat, and holding him still by virtue of the fact she was pressed against his whole length. One of her legs was jammed between his, giving the suggestion that damage to his nether regions could be in the offing if he moved.

“Bugger the exercise, Books.” Her words came out as a hiss on his face. Her lips were scant inches from his. “I'm tired of playing gentle with you. You could have been a librarian—”

“Archi—”

Her grip tightened on his coat, and now her leg was starting to move slowly up and down along the inside of his thigh. “—
librarian
anywhere, but instead you chose a career in the Ministry. So now you're in the Ministry. Wonderful. Now, how about the rest of you?”

Wellington dare not look down, but he could nevertheless feel the rise and fall of her breasts against his chest. His blood was rushing to all sorts of inappropriate places, and he found himself breathing faster. Yes, she was using her feminine wiles on him, he knew that; but Wellington also knew with the right application of effort on her part, this slightly arousing and highly delightful position he found himself in could easily turn painful.

“Go on, Welly,” Eliza cooed, “tell your new partner how long it's been.”