Tenfold More Wicked (17 page)

A puzzled frown. “I investigate. I reach conclusions. I report, with varying levels of honesty. Oh, and I try to stop Lady Lovelace learning my secret and burning me to death. That rather fills up my day.”

His discomfort—nay,
resentment
—stung her heart. How she longed to turn the conversation to happier things. But doubt ate at her, a hungry parasite that wouldn't be sated by less than abject, painful truth. “Have you ever burned anyone?”

“I've questioned people who went on to be executed,” he admitted, “but no, not personally. Please tell me what this is really about—”

“Have you ever tortured anyone?”

He swallowed. “I'm a soldier, not a brute. I don't hurt people. My job—and I'm good at it—is to extract information and confessions.”

“How?”

“Do you really want—”

“I must know the kind of man you are,” she said simply. “Don't you see? That's all that matters.”

He sighed, dark. “First, I ask nicely. I say, ‘just a chat between friends, tell me everything and we can all go home for tea.' If that doesn't work, I frighten, then offer safety. ‘Enforcers aren't renowned for mercy. Suggest you confess while you're still talking to a human being.' Next, I appeal to reason. ‘Think we don't know what your friends are plotting? Whom do you think you're protecting? Confess now, and this can all just go away.' Finally—and I don't often get this far—I threaten.”

“With what?”

“Eliza, please. You're talking about a systematic process of eroding a person's desire to remain silent. I consider it my purpose at the Royal to get results in a civilized manner. It's unpleasant, but surely it's better I do it than some cross-eyed idiot who
wants
to watch people bleed.”

Her fists clenched, guilty. So
reasonable
. Why couldn't she accept it? “And what if someone calls your bluff, and won't talk? Or hadn't you thought of that?”

Lafayette gave her a bruised look. “Is this your way of calling me a liar? Because it seems to me you're searching rather desperately for a reason to despise me so you won't have to face the truth, whatever it is. Forgive me, madam, but your failure of courage surprises me.”

Her heart stung, poisoned. “So sorry to disappoint,” she retorted. “I believe we're done here. I'll let you know what my analysis shows. Good day, Captain.”

She hurried away, blinking smarting eyes. Hipp galloped after, but she barely noticed. Emotions clashed, using her body as a battleground. How she longed to lie down and sleep, lose herself in Lizzie's nightmare world.

Forget that Lafayette had called her a coward.

Her guts watered. He was right. She could invent all the reasons in the world, but it didn't alter the truth: she was afraid.

Of Todd. Of Lafayette. Of her own duplicitous heart.

Determined, she shook it off. The facts were plain: Captain Lafayette had everything to gain by betraying her to the Royal, and—his frankly unlikely marriage proposal notwithstanding—not much to lose. She daren't take a chance. He'd never made any secret of his allegiance. So why was she disappointed?

She stalked along the paved Embankment, where beyond the stone barrier, smoke-stacked barges inched on pallid gray water, engines coughing in the fog. Her boot heels clacked, stinging like her temper. This unprincipled anger was liberating. Fine. She'd investigate the case without him.

“Oh, aye?” Lizzie shoved her in the back, sending her stumbling towards the barrier and the stinking Thames. “How'll you pull that off? This is his case, remember? Since you bollocksed it up with Chief Inspector Prat-face, you ain't even working for the crushers no more. Ha ha! Think yourself so smart. Can't even get that right!”

Eliza's vision doubled alarmingly. She wasn't herself, not since that pink-purple remedy. How could Lizzie
push
her? Lizzie wasn't REAL. “Shut up and leave me alone! I don't want you here.”

Lizzie pirouetted, red satin flouncing. “I've 'ad a gutful of you telling me ‘do this, don't do that.' This is my body, too. It's my
life
.”

“It is
not
your life! Stop pretending you're real, because you're not. You're just a . . . a shadow in the mirror. You're a bad dream!”

A snide chuckle. “I'm real enough for Remy. He told me what he's about in Soho, y'know. He just don't want to tell
you
.”

“Rubbish. I don't believe you.”

“What if I told you he and I spent last night together?” Lizzie skipped backwards in Eliza's path, mocking, just out of reach. “You remember, don't you? We lay together naked, I
took
him from you, and ain't nothing you can do. Ha ha!”

“Don't be horrid,” snapped Eliza. “He's better than that. Why must you drag him with you into the gutter?”

“Better, is he? I were good enough for him once. I know how to give a man what he needs. Think he'd want you when he can have me?”

“That's it. I'm not letting you out again until you promise to behave.” And Eliza whipped out her pink remedy, and took a defiant strawberry swig. It boiled in her stomach, ice hissing in fire. She burped, unladylike. “Now stay there.”

“Try and make me . . .” Lizzie twirled away along the Embankment, fading, until nothing remained but the cruel ghost of her laughter.

Eliza kicked the ground, scattering frustrated pebbles. Irrational emotions scratched inside her, a pink-stained fever of doubt and suspicion that tormented her beyond reason.
Delusions of persy-cootion.
Couldn't be real . . .

She shook her woozy head. No, she wasn't going mad. Lizzie must be right. Lafayette's “secret business” was all a plot to trap her, Eliza. The memory of his open, honest face
when he
lied
to her—she knew a lie when she saw one, oh yes—knotted her guts into an inextricable snarl. And that duplicitous pink remedy only murmured sly encouragement.

He and Lizzie were keeping secrets. Both of them. The thought of it chewed her knuckles raw, rats at a corpse. If Lafayette lied about that . . . what else was just a sham?

She jammed the bottle back in her bag and strode off. Her mutinous mind rattled, plotting and scheming. She'd find them out, mark her words. And
both
would be sorry they'd crossed her. Yes, they surely would . . .

Oof!
She collided with a warm shoulder, hard enough to knock her sideways. Rich fabric, an unsettlingly familiar antique-paper scent.

A man's gloved hand gripped hers. At her feet, Hippocrates whirred and muttered “Oops.” And with a sick thud, Eliza's heart dropped into her guts.

“Egad,” remarked the Philosopher dryly, “Dr. Jekyll. I was only this moment thinking of you.”

Her wits lurched and scrambled. She risked a swift glance along the Embankment . . . but Lafayette and Lizzie were gone. She was alone.

She smoothed her skirts. “Sir Isaac. How nice to see you again.”

The Philosopher surveyed her, his ageless, unfathomable eyes the non-color of rain. His long hair—same washed-out hue, his characteristic style a century and a half out of date—was tucked under a sharply modern brushed-felt hat. Charcoal coat, silver watch chain, kid gloves, and a shiny black cane.

On his arm, her steel-gray gown gleaming, was Lady Lovelace.

Eliza blanched. The countess constructed a smile, empty as death, and the hinges in her metal jaw made a grinding sound.

Around them, the crowd parted, oblivious. Strolling ladies, harried servants on errands. A fellow pedaled madly by on an immensely tall bicycle, long ears flapping. As if this man she stood next to wasn't an impossible aberration. As if he didn't possess the power to burn her.

“You didn't answer my last letter,” Sir Isaac accused. “Are we no longer friends? Alas, whatever shall I do?”

A few weeks ago—after solving the Chopper case—Eliza had agreed to inform on Mr. Hyde for the Royal. She'd had no choice. Since then, she'd stalled for time. She drummed up a weak smile. “Did you not receive my reply? I'll check my records.”

“Don't trouble yourself. I've a fresh task for you.” That strange gaze, dead yet alive.

“Excellent,” she said briskly. “Would you mind terribly to put it in another letter? I'm afraid I'm—”

“In an awful rush, yes, so on, so forth. I shan't take up much time.” He extended his cane:
walk beside me, if you please.
His empty stare:
I dare you to refuse.
Dismissively, Lady Lovelace sniffed, averting her face.

Eliza obeyed, but her skin zapped in warning. Sir Isaac's politeness—like Lafayette's?—was sugar-coated poison. People whispered that he, not Her Majesty, ruled the Empire. That the Mad Queen lived in terror of his temper, submitting meekly to his every command, like a child obeying her schoolmaster
to avoid a beating. That the Prince of Wales, her drooling simpleton of an heir, was no simpleton at all, but brain-poisoned, rendered witless and obliging by the Philosopher's evil drugs.

Hipp jittered nervously beneath her skirts. She toed him aside lest she trip. Alongside them, the river burbled, coated in a patina of filth, and an evil urge gripped her to shove the Philosopher and his horrid metal countess over the side. Whipping children and poisoning addled princes seemed just the kind of things these two would enjoy.

“What can I do for you, sir?” Her voice strangled. Mr. Finch's incriminating pink remedy bubbled up in her throat all over again. Couldn't the Philosopher smell the alchemy clinging to her clothing? Her skin bulged like a stretched rubber ball, hidden serpents wriggling to be free . . .

“I want to talk to your King of Rats.” He tapped his cane on the cobbles, a hint of old-fashioned swagger.

“Mr. Hyde? I can't do that.”

“Your enthusiasm for public service shines on undimmed.” He grinned, and it made him look young again, imbued with wonder and curiosity. “Hyde and I have business. The terms of his surrender.”

“Surrender?” she repeated stupidly. The second time her wits had floundered in his presence. Probably happened to everyone. No doubt he counted on it.

“Don't pretend ignorance.” Impatient, sick of explaining himself to idiotic inferiors. “Everybody knows what he's up to. Civil disobedience, chaos, anarchy. I said I'd crush his wretched rebellion, and so I shall, but the Rats and the Royal might still come to terms. Once the Palace have exhausted
their idiotic attempts at French
diplomacy
.” He ejected the word like a rotted plum pit.

She shivered, recalling what he'd once told her of his ambition to set the world right.
When blood runs in English gutters, it shall belong to bishops and sorcerers and anyone who dares defy the truth . . .

“Areas of mutual interest,” he added. “Certain upheavals that might benefit us both. Hyde has a second option, of course. He can defy me and see what happens.”

Her head ached. “You want me to broker a truce?”

“Don't bother dissembling. I know you're thick with him. In one fashion or another.” A sly, utterly unendearing wink.

He knew Hyde was her guardian. Did he know about her double life, her use of Mr. Finch's potions? Heavens, was Finch in danger?

Lady Lovelace studied Eliza's face with dead eyes: one red, one black. She tilted her chin, sun flashing on silver. “Untrustworthy,” she concluded, a metallic contralto that scraped Eliza's nerves like nails on slate. “Knows more than she's offering. I recommend immediate search and seizure.”

Involuntarily, Eliza backed off, clutching her bag. “You can't do that. I've done nothing wrong—”

“Come, that won't be necessary.” The Philosopher patted Lady Lovelace's hand, placating, but his gaze didn't let Eliza go. “Or will it? I once hunted counterfeiters, did you know? Caught them, too, forced them to give up their overlords. Traitors, the lot of them. They all cooperated, Doctor, and so will you. Or I'm afraid I'll have to allow my colleague . . . shall we say, her
over-zealous
way?”

Lady Lovelace flexed steel fingers, and laughed. A broken, corroded noise,
rrrk! rrrk!

Eliza's skin shrank, cold. She longed to cover her ears, block out that rusted mirth.
The subject's fear is the primary weapon.
Lafayette's statement resounded in the primitive lizard part of her brain. Words threatened to spill from her mouth. Any words. Just to make Lady Lovelace stop
staring,
with that terrifying, burning eye . . .

An animal urge clawed her—Lizzie's?—to inform on Moriarty Quick.
Here's an alchemist for you! Strap him to the stake and stoke the fire!
Memory made her head swirl. Whiskey-rich breath, tinted spectacles, a man's finger toying with a mahogany curl on her shoulder.
Shall we say, the shadowy side of chemistry?

She gulped down crazed giggles. Good lord, she
was
going mad. Imagining the whole thing. The Philosopher and Lovelace knew nothing of Finch, or the elixir. Hyde interested them, not she. She was merely the means to their end. Right?

Sir Isaac sighed. “Pros and cons, ifs and buts. Shall we get on?”

She mustered her courage. “Very well, sir. If I've no choice—”

“At last! We approach the point.” He inclined his head. “My compliments to your
King
. Tell him I wish to see him. In person. Soon.”

She almost guffawed. Edward Hyde and the Philosopher. The murderer and the megalomaniac. “And if he refuses?”

“You're a scientist, Dr. Jekyll. Make sure he sees reason.”

Now that she'd spoken her assent aloud, her treachery stabbed her heart cold. Hyde was her
father,
for heaven's sake. He'd only ever wanted the best for her.

Sir Isaac stared, pale like death. “Oh, and might I expect the pleasure of your company at my skyship launch later this week? The new Skyborne Fleet's flagship, fabulous scientific work. I named her
Invincible
.” A brittle smile. “One's permitted the occasional whimsy.”