Tarnished (18 page)

“I’m
a
madman’s daughter,” I replied immediately and without thought, “but if I’m the only one in existence, I shall requisition a banner to proclaim my exceptionality. Perhaps I shall drape it across Westminster Abbey?”

Gasps resounded around me.

Lady Rutledge’s mouth pursed. “Your mother was a friend of mine.”

“My mother was the toast of the ball, I gather.”

“That she was, much to the dismay of
some.
”

I tilted my head. “Who?” The words were exchanged too quickly for me to leash my tongue.

She squinted at me through the monocle. And then she smiled, but only enough that her eyes narrowed with it. Her fleshy cheeks raised up. “A certain marchioness, for one,” she told me. “Don’t tilt your head like that, you look like a rotund bird.”

I resisted both the urge to compare her gray gown to the hide of a pachyderm and the sudden desire to look around me, scanning the crowd for icy green eyes and a pointed stare. The marchioness had disliked my mother? That certainly explained much of her disdain toward me.

Well, that and her son’s determination to play the gentleman probably made her want to spit brass tacks.

I straightened my posture. “My apologies.”

Lady Rutledge nodded, as if pleased. “Are you a reader, girl?”

I tucked my hands behind my back. “I am.”

She sniffed. “Fashion and gossip, no doubt.”

“I detest fashion,” I returned, “although I’m quite taken with the concept of tea gowns.” Her eyes narrowed. “Unfortunately,” I continued gamely, “my chaperone refuses me to have any.”

“Hmph. Gossip, then?”

“I hate, loathe and abominate gossip,” I replied, but my civil tongue had developed an edge.

My throat dried as she stared at me.

“What say you about the current hypothesis of aether-to-oxygen?”

“Cherry,” murmured Fanny beside me, her expression worried, but she subsided as Lady Rutledge raised a silencing hand.

“Well?” she barked. “Have you anything?”

With my knees shaking, and my stomach flipping over in the strict confines of my corset, I seized on the only thing I could. “I think it’s bollocks.”

Gasps became an outraged din. One or two ladies swayed, but Lady Rutledge’s oddly pink mouth twitched beneath a beauty mark I wasn’t sure was real. “Go on.”

I sucked in a steadying breath, aware of Fanny’s fingers tight around my upper arm. “As discussed with”—I mentally slapped a hand over my own mouth before I cast Teddy’s reputation to the gossips—“acquaintances Wednesday last, I believe that it is impossible to ignite raw aether without any presence of oxygen. It’s been thoroughly argued to death in the interim. Until I see evidence to the contrary, I’m of a mind that we should not attribute to aether any properties that we wouldn’t ordinarily attribute to any other compound.” I paused, then added, “My lady.”

Oddly shaded eyes narrowed at me. Were they violet? No, perhaps blue. I couldn’t tell. “Interesting,” she said. “Why must you see it yourself?”

“Why must I take the word of men who too often cannot be bothered to speak to a woman as if she has a mind of her own?”

Someone tittered.

Lady Rutledge leaned in, studying my every nuance through that single spectacle lens. “Do you hold with the hypothesis that aether is magic?”

“I don’t believe in magic,” I replied evenly. “Magic is simply what we mortals call a thing that science has not yet unraveled.”

“And what of alchemy?” the lady asked baldly, and I blinked at her.

“I—what?”

“Alchemy, girl! Where do you hold?”

Dangerous ground. I didn’t frown, though I had to force myself not to. “Alchemy is a hairsbreadth from magic, in my view. Useless theories dreamt by stuffy old men seeking answers at the looming end of possibly wasted lives. One never knows, really. Intelligent minds are better suited to science.”

Her eyes crinkled. “You’re not as gracious as your mother, I’m afraid, but you clearly have Mad St. Croix’s gift of speculation.”

“Science,” I corrected, and then bit my tongue as someone inhaled sharply in the crowd.

“And his miserable grasp of manners,” she added. She waved at something behind me. “Off with you, then.”

I hesitated. “My lady?”

“Go on,” she barked, raising the gold monocle to her eye once more. “I’ve already handed you an invite, must you demand special direction to enjoy my hospitality?”

“No, my lady,” I whispered, and fled before I said something else I’d live to regret.

Had I
really
claimed bollocks to Lady Euphemia Rutledge?

The earl found me near the windows, sucking in the cool air as it drifted across the stately veranda. My legs had stopped shaking, but I was too hot. Too crushed and off balance.

He didn’t seem to notice, offering his hand. “Miss St. Croix, would you do me the great honor of a dance?”

I wanted to say no. I wanted to invite him instead to the veranda, where we could enjoy the cool air and the privacy afforded by the cover of night. And, most important, where I could
not dance
.

Instead, as his eyes held mine in simple patience, I slipped my fingers into his.

For the second time that day, I felt the earl’s body heat against mine. His gloved hands against my skin. In front of all, we danced a waltz; and though it lacked the secret thrill of a kiss amidst empty display tanks, I couldn’t help but be exceedingly aware of every movement of his body against mine.

This was a man who wouldn’t allow me to make a misstep. Whose guiding hand could steer me through the shark-infested waters of the society in which I lived. Here was temperance and stability all in one go.

Until now, I had never thought that such things could be so attractive.

But was it worth it?

I felt as if the world had been dropped out from under me. My stomach flipped around and around.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked me.

“I am,” I lied. I think I smiled. I must have, because his eyes softened as he gazed down upon me. “I met your brother, my lord.”

That softness . . . changed, somehow. His shoulders stiffened, his grip tightened at my waist. “Did you? And did Piers behave himself, then?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, did he keep a civil tongue in his head?” he clarified, looking quite pained.

I wondered what on earth could be so bad that he’d worry about
my
sensibilities. “He was more than polite,” I assured the earl. “Truly, he was quite kind.”

He looked over my head, as if searching the crowd, and I was left with the distinct impression that the brothers weren’t nearly as close as brothers should be.

“Are you all right, my lord?” I asked cautiously.

“Quite.” And then, as if aware he hadn’t even convinced himself, much less me, he looked back at me and allowed a small smile to curve his lips. Those lips that had touched mine. “Quite,” he repeated, more warmly.

I didn’t broach the subject of his brother again, but the conversation left me certain that the man held more secrets than even Society suspected.

It was one more thing that we had in common, the earl and I.

Chapter Eleven

T
here was no newspaper in the morning.

I sat down, feeling oddly thick. As if I hadn’t slept at all. As if I’d woken with my bedclothes stuffed into my skull. I’d done neither, although the state of my nightmares was increasing. I had slept, but fitfully, and with visions of fires and body parts raining down around me.

I’d imagined the earl as a white-winged angel again, and this time, it was his judgment I’d been forced to endure.

In short, it had been a long, bloody night.

Bleary, I clutched my teacup at the table and ignored Fanny’s overwhelming delight as she recounted the evening for Mrs. Booth.

In the cold light of day, I wasn’t ready to examine anything but my paper.

“Where is the
London Times?
”

Fanny leveled a look at me that suggested this wasn’t the appropriate response to her trilling excitement. “How on earth can you be so cool about this?” she demanded.

“About what?” I braced my elbows on the table. Lasted all of a breath before the weight of combined disapproval from both matrons coaxed me into removing them. “It was just one ball. And a disastrous one, at that.”

The door swung open, foreshadowing Booth’s uneven cadence as he carried in the breakfast tray. The housekeeper threw up her hands. “Just a ball,” she repeated. “Just a ball!”

“Cherry,” Fanny said, too calmly for it to be anything more than carefully maintained control in the face of my obstinacy. “You were escorted to one of Lady Rutledge’s soirees by none other than the Earl Compton. That is
more
than just a ball.”

“Is it?” All right, so it was. Maybe. But I was feeling spiky, and so I set my teacup down. “I flustered him, you know.”

“Cherry!”

I shrugged. “Apparently, the earl doesn’t much care for his younger brother.”

She waved that away. “He’s a younger son, and hardly worthy of attention,” she sniffed. “I gather he prefers to remain nothing more than a wastrel. He’s lost quite a bit at the gaming table, they say.”

They. It always came down to
they
, didn’t it?

“So Lord Piers is an inveterate gambler,” I mused.

“That is not our business, Cherry.”

I wondered if I could garner any more information from below. Surely, a young lord caught in the net of the gaming hells would leave a trail.

Wait, what was I thinking? Wander on down to become good friends with the earl’s gambling brother? I must have been out of my head. I caught myself before Fanny’s infectious excitement fanned any more of these useless thoughts. It didn’t matter. We’d see what would happen when and if the earl came by again. Brushing the entire conversation aside with a flick of my hand, I repeated, “Where
is
my paper?”

“It didn’t arrive,” Fanny said quickly.

Too quickly.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “It never fails—”

“Your pardon, miss, but your periodical was only just delivered,” Booth interrupted smoothly. Features impassive—ignoring both my chaperone and his disapproving wife with equal aplomb—he laid the folded paper down beside my tray.

Fanny’s mouth sealed, and she busied herself with arranging the toast and eggs laid out on her plate.

“Thank you,” I told him. With short, sharp gestures, I unfolded the paper, making certain it crackled and rustled as much as humanly possible.

What the devil was my problem that morning?

Speaking of devils. I glanced at the table, and the empty chair at the head of it. “I gather my guardian will not be gracing us with his presence again?”

“I am sure he sends his regrets, miss,” Booth said quietly. “He is not quite recovered.”

I blinked. “Is he ill?”

“Cherry,” Fanny said with a sigh. “Mr. Ashmore travels much too long and keeps unfortunate hours doing it. Allow him the courtesy of recovering in his own home in peace.”

My back teeth ground together. It was
my
home he recovered in. I said nothing, shaking the paper to align the fold, and removed my attention from the table pointedly.

I only had to scan the headlines this time to learn exactly what was so important that Fanny didn’t want me to see it.

The tableware rattled as I slammed the
Times
to the surface. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Cherry St. Croix, ladies do not—”

I cut her off, pointing to the bold print. “ ‘Professor Murdered,’ ” I read. Each syllable bitten off as if made of poison and swallowed bitterly. “ ‘Philosopher’s Square now the site of an ongoing investigation. Has Leather Apron moved to more academic pursuits?’ ” I looked up. “Fanny, did you know?”

She avoided my eyes, concentrating on smearing her egg just so with the small tines of her fork. “I may have caught sight of the article,” she allowed. “But I—”

I made a rude sound, once more rustling the paper loudly. Ignoring whatever explanations my chaperone, well-intentioned or otherwise, meant to frame for me, I read the article top to bottom.

Professor Elijah Woolsey had been found dead in the early hours of the evening. Just after eleven o’clock.

One hour after I was supposed to meet him.

Guilt slipped into my heart like a knife. If I had been there, would he still have died?

What if I could have seen that something was wrong? Warned him?

Saved him?

In a bitter twist of irony, half of the man’s stomach had been carved free of his body. But unlike the others found in such brutal circumstances, it wasn’t missing. Nor was it on display in one of his many tanks.

They found it strung across the floor. Sliced to ribbons.

None of the other organs had been touched. Just the professor’s own. His face had been sliced to ribbons, unrecognizable beneath the damage. They were calling it a crime of extreme hatred.

I didn’t touch my plate again. “Professor Woolsey,” I murmured.

Fanny sighed softly. “I’m sorry, my dove.” I looked up, met her eyes and the very real regret there. “I’d hoped to save you the sorrow.”

The paper slipped to the floor as I rose. “E-excuse me,” I murmured. “I don’t feel well. I think I’ll retire for a while.”

“Do you need—”

“No,” I hastened to say before any suggestions could be made. Booth’s fingers caught my arm, a brief squeeze as I passed.

“Poor poppet,” Mrs. Booth said behind me.

I hurried up to my room, gathering my skirts high to take the stairs two at a time. Woolsey was dead, murdered on the very night I was to meet him.

Like the boy I’d sent to deliver a message, hung with his own innards.

As I shut the door behind me, Betsy looked up. Something on my face must have translated my anger, because she straightened from the corners she was tucking at my bed and reached for me. “What is it, miss?”

I shook my head. “Lampblack,” I said hoarsely. “Quickly. I’m going below.”

“So soon?”

I caught her hand when she would have gripped my shoulder, shaking my head over and over. “Professor Woolsey is dead, Betsy. For me. He was killed over me.”

Her eyebrows furrowed, her hand still in mine. Cautiously, she guided me to the vanity chair and I sat, my legs no longer willing to support me as the guilt rose like a bitter tide in my chest. “Certainly not because of you,” she said, frowning. “The Square is not the most safe—”

“No,” I whispered. “I know it. I’m to blame. I should have been there when he asked. He knew my mother and father, Betsy. He could have told me—” I met my own green eyes in the mirror, my gaze stricken. My mouth set into a thin, white line. With an angry sound, I tore the pins from my hair. “Lampblack, Betsy. Now.”

B
y the day’s half-light below the drift, the Menagerie became something much less exotic. Simple grounds, with simple workers. There was no violin this time, no laughter or cheers. Empty tents, abandoned stalls, and a ringmaster who became a foreman.

Micajah Hawke was no stranger to difficult labor.

“Put your backs into it,” he ordered. From the full lawn away, I could hear the ringing authority in his trained voice.

In the company of three other men, he stood out even without the mystique of the nighttime masquerade. All clad in shirtsleeves and working trousers, it was Hawke that my eyes pinned on. His broad shoulders, the edged muscle of his arms as he hauled back on a rope affixed to something high atop the largest circus tent.

The queued tail of his dark hair, scraped back from his square features.

“And,” rang out Hawke’s calm order, “heave!” All four men pulled back on the rope as I approached. High above, barely visible, a pulley snapped taut. The whole side of the crimson canvas tent rippled.

Two of the men were white, notable for the lacquered circus spikes one had made of his hair and the unusual thinness of the other. The last was a dark-skinned man, as tall as Ishmael but only a fraction as wide. He was whipcord lean, shirtless even in the cold, and his rangy muscles gleamed with the sweat of his exertions.

“And, heave!”

I drew to a stop, glaring at Hawke. I waited for him to notice me, to say or do anything to acknowledge my all-but-vibrating presence.

He didn’t. “And, heave!”

The men hauled back, muscles popping. The canvas tightened.

I opened my mouth, but then studied the tense rope worked between four sets of hands and shut my mouth. I didn’t want to be responsible if anything broke loose.

I’d seen circus tents fall. Too many pounds of thick canvas could kill a man easily.

Stewing in my own anger, I waited. But I did not do so graciously, pacing as frenetically as a caged tiger.

Finally, the rope went slack, dropping to the ground. Hawke’s gaze remained up, head tipped back even as the other three men sucked in air.

And watched me.

Hawke frowned. “Kelly?”

“All set!” came a high voice from far above.

My gaze flew up to the circus top. Was there a woman above? A child?

And why not? Monsieur Marceaux had proven time and again that women could do what men could on the rope. In the hoops, high above on silk scarves.

Although they fetched better on the auction table.

I saw no sign of the owner of that voice. But when I dropped my gaze to the men, I found Hawke finally watching me. Silently. Weighing.

One of the men, the tall bloke with his lacquered sideshow spikes, adjusted the flat, worn goggles over his face. The lenses were tinted dark by a thin coat of something I’d never seen before, shrouding his eyes.

The pale, thin man cleared his throat awkwardly.

Hawke only held my gaze, and I knew that all of them were waiting to take their cues from him.

Bugger that for a lark.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the murdered sweets?” I asked flatly.

Hawke’s ungloved hands settled on his waist. “You have your tasks,” he said quietly. The two white men suddenly scattered, as if they couldn’t wait to be as far away from me as possible.

The third, the Negro I didn’t recognize, studied me for a moment with tawny eyes nearly gold. His hair was long enough to reach the middle of his back, braided in a multitude of very tiny plaits and held back with a leather thong.

I glared back at him, raising my chin at the unspoken challenge in his expression.

Micajah said something in a language I’d never heard before, sounding not so much like words as a series of syllables and clicks. The man glanced at him.

His grin revealed even white teeth, startling against his dark skin. Nodding to me, he sauntered away, fishing the tail end of his shirt from its loop at the back of his trousers.

My eyes flicked to Hawke. He didn’t move. He didn’t address me, either, but that muscle in his jaw was pulsing as if he ground his teeth. His eyes pinned mine, razor sharp. I didn’t know what kind of game he was playing, but I was sick of it.

Ignoring the now departed men, I closed the distance between us, raising a finger to shove against Hawke’s solid chest.

“You lied about Cummings, too,” I seethed at him, picking up the trail of thought where I’d left it.

He looked down at me, his eyes as inscrutable as ever. Save for the streak; that devil blue swath of flame. I’d swear it glinted. “Are you here on business, Miss Black?”

I lifted my chin. “Yes.”

“Whose?”

I opened my mouth to say Zylphia’s name, then caught myself before I could. Had she told him anything?

I doubted it. And I wouldn’t be the one to get my friend in trouble. I didn’t even know if the sweets were allowed to purchase or hire anything on their own.

It occurred to me that I didn’t know a lot about Zylla’s life.

I flicked my fingers at him, dismissing the question as unimportant. “That’s twice you’ve tried to manipulate me,” I said, flattening my voice to icy calm. I jabbed my finger into his chest again. “And twice you’ve gotten in my way.”