The Chemickal Marriage (2 page)

The newspapers said nothing of the Duke of Stäelmaere’s death, and thus no official appointment of a new head for the Privy Council, though the Council Deputy, a Lord Axewith, had assumed a prominence simply through his regular denials of irregularity. No word of Robert Vandaariff. No word of the Parchfeldt battle. No mention of the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza. No one called round at the Boniface to arrest Miss Temple. It was as if the Cabal’s machinations had never taken place.

Miss Temple had taken another room on a lower floor for business dealings, ignoring the attendant overtones of impropriety. She knew that to the staff of the Hotel Boniface she had become an eccentric, tolerated as long as each breach of decorum was plastered over by cash. Miss Temple did not care. She installed herself on a sofa, the clutch bag on her lap, one hand inside the bag holding her pistol.

A footman knocked to announce a Mr Pfaff. Miss Temple studied the man who entered, and did not offer him a chair.

‘Your name is Pfaff?’

‘Jack Pfaff. Nicholas suggested I call.’

‘Nicholas?’

‘At the Rat.’

‘
Ah
.’

Jack Pfaff was at most a year older than Miss Temple herself (a ripe, unmarried twenty-five). His clothing had at one time been near to fashion – chequered trousers and an orange woollen coat with square buttons – as if he were a young fop fallen to poor times. Miss Temple knew from his voice that this was not the case, and that the clothes represented an impoverished man’s desire to climb.

‘You can read? Write?’

‘Both, miss, quite tolerably.’

‘What weapons do you possess – what
skills
?’

Pfaff reached behind his back and brought out a slim blade. His other hand slipped to an inner pocket and emerged with a set of brass rings across his fingers.

‘Those are nothing against a sabre or musket.’

‘Am I to fight soldiers, miss?’

‘I should hope not, for your sake. Are you
averse
to killing?’

‘The law does prohibit the practice, miss.’

‘And if a man spat in your face?’

‘O goodness, I would step away like a Christian.’ Pfaff raised his eyebrows affably. ‘Then again, most incidents of face-spitting can be laid to drink. Perhaps it would be more proper to cut a spitting man’s throat, to spite the devil inside.’

Miss Temple did not appreciate trifling. ‘Why does this Nicholas consider you fit for my employ?’

‘I am skilled in opening doors.’

‘I requested no
thief
.’

‘I speak broadly, miss. I am a man who finds
ways
.’

Miss Temple bit back a tart remark. A man like Pfaff, now unavoidable, must be met with intelligence and a smile.

‘Did you know Cardinal Chang?’

‘Everyone knew him – he cut a rare figure.’

‘You were his friend?’

‘He would on occasion allow a fellow to stand him a drink.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘You knew him, miss – why would I
not
?’ Pfaff smiled evenly, watching
her bag and the hand within it. ‘Perhaps you’ll enlighten me as to the present business.’

‘Sit down, Mr Pfaff. Put those things away.’

Pfaff restored the weapons to their places and stepped to an armchair, flipping out his coat-tails before settling. Miss Temple indicated the silver service on a table.

‘There is tea, if you would have some. I will explain what I require. And then you – with your
doors
– will suggest how best it can be done.’

Miss Temple soaked again that night in the copper tub, auburn hair dragging like dead weeds across the water. Her thoughts were stalled by fatigue, and the sorrow she strove to avoid loomed near.

She had told Mr Pfaff only enough to start his work, but his mercenary trespass of the roles formerly occupied by Chang and Svenson left Miss Temple feeling their absence. Even more troubling, close conversation with Pfaff had awakened, for the first time since leaving Parchfeldt Park, the spark of Miss Temple’s blue glass memories. It was not that Pfaff himself was attractive – on the contrary, she found him repellent, with brown teeth and coarse hair the colour of dung-muddled straw – but the longer he had remained in her physical proximity, the more she felt that dreaded bodily stirring, like a stretch of invisible limbs too long asleep.

In the copper tub, Miss Temple took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, inching herself towards the brink of her fears. In her struggle against the Cabal, she had exposed herself to the contents of two blue glass books. The first had been deliberately compiled by the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza as an opium den of pleasure and violence. Staring into its swirling depths, Miss Temple had experienced the bright, hot memories of innumerable lives – in
her
thoughts and in
her
limbs – and Miss Temple’s literal virtue became a mere scrap of protest before the debauchery she had known. Ever since, this book’s contents had lurked beneath her thoughts, and a glimpse of skin or smell of hair, a mere rustle of cloth, could call forth pleasures sharp enough to drop Miss Temple to her knees.

The second book had contained the memories of but a single man, the Comte d’Orkancz, preserved in blue glass by Francis Xonck aboard the
sinking airship in the very moment the Comte’s life bled away. The great man’s mind had been captured, but the contaminating touch of death had corrupted its character, twisting the aesthete’s discrimination into a bitter disdain for life. Miss Temple’s glimpse of this second book had left her gasping, as if her throat had been coated with rancid tar. Ignorant of the tainted nature of these memories, the remaining factions of the Cabal had convened at the Xonck Armaments works at Parchfeldt and agreed between them to infuse the book’s contents into the emptied mind of Robert Vandaariff – hoping at a stroke to regain the Comte’s alchemical knowledge for their use as well as take control of Vandaariff’s fortune, the largest in the land. Resurrected in Vandaariff’s body, the Comte, despite his unbalanced soul, had quickly triumphed over his former servants: Mrs Marchmoor, Francis Xonck, Charlotte Trapping and Alfred Leveret were all dead. Only the Contessa had survived to stand against him … only the Contessa and Miss Temple.

At Parchfeldt Miss Temple had received her own revelation. As she walked through the factory, she had suddenly
known
the task of each machine. However poisonous, her touch of the Comte’s memories had provided insights into his science. If Robert Vandaariff did still live, it was possible that Miss Temple – throughout her life indifferent to any study – could anticipate the Comte’s dire imagination.

Stunned by grief, both books had lain dormant in Miss Temple’s mind, just long enough for her to hope they might remain so. But now, prompted by the unsightly yet provocative vision of Pfaff’s tongue dabbing at his cup rim for a drop of tea, they had returned. Naked and alone, Miss Temple knew she must make herself mistress of these wells within her, or forever be their slave.

She sank deeper, until the water touched her chin, and extended one leg so her pale foot dangled, dripping. She listened for Marie, heard nothing and settled her hips with a squirm. The fingers of her right hand grazed the hair between her legs, teasing the skin beneath. Miss Temple shut her eyes, willing her thoughts to a place she had never allowed herself, apart from the one impulsive moment in the darkness of Parchfeldt, the rash action she was sure had been the ruin of them all. She had kissed Cardinal Chang. She had felt his lips on hers, had pressed her tongue into his mouth, had thrilled at his
firm grip upon her body. Miss Temple’s left hand traced circles across her inner thigh as the fingers of her right slipped further down, stroking her arousal to a glow. She frowned against the press of blue glass memories, pursuing her own private need, the slicking quickness beneath her dipping fingers. A flick of bile from the Comte’s memories – she swallowed it back and bit her lip, concentrating. Chang had pushed her away, arching his back as the Contessa’s blade struck home – she opened her legs to imagine him between them, pulling his sweet weight onto her body. Her thumb swirled a tight circle and she gasped, ignoring another chorus of lurid incident inside her, cleaving again to Cardinal Chang. He had carried her shivering body from the sea after the sunken airship – she sank two fingers deeper still – he had cradled her, nearly naked, white with cold. She pushed her foot against the tub, holding her desire firm, cutting through the noise in her mind like a ship through the foam on the sea. She knew he was dead, even as the remembered strength of his legs drove her deliciously near the breaking of an almost painful wave. She knew she was alone, even as the crest of pleasure finally spilt, flushing her breast like a bird’s – opening her heart as it had never been in life, and thrusting it beyond the living world.

She slept more deeply that night, waking after five hours instead of three. With a determined grunt Miss Temple rolled onto her front, face deep in her pillow, her fingers digging beneath her body. This time it was easier to keep the foreign memories away – perfumed seraglio, church confessional, the back of a jouncing wagon – each banished by a fierce deployment of her memories of Chang. When she again lay spent, the pillow moist with her hot breath, Miss Temple began to sob. She wiped her nose on the edge of her pillowcase. Another hour of fitful dozing and she rose, pushing the hair back from her puffy eyes.

She was still at her writing table in her shift when Marie entered hours later, a box tied with ribbon in her arms.

‘Sent from downstairs, miss – and just in time for your day …’

At Miss Temple’s curt nod, the maid set the box on the bed, pulling apart the paper inside to reveal a new pair of ankle boots, the leather dyed dark green. Her old pair had been placed in the wardrobe, split and scuffed by too
many perils to name. She hiked up her shift as Marie fitted both feet in turn. Miss Temple flexed each arch and felt the bite of hard, new leather. She crossed to her pillow and flipped it up, revealing the knife. With a satisfying ease the blade slid into the lean sheath the shoemaker had – under protest – stitched inside her right boot. She dropped the shift and caught Marie’s troubled expression.

‘Stand up, Marie,’ she snapped. ‘Tea first, then ask what fruit is fresh.’

Mr Pfaff sent four more men to the Boniface for her scrutiny – ex-soldiers, discharged from colonial duty – jobless men inured to following orders and unafraid to fight. As the men stood towering above her in a line, Miss Temple imagined how the Contessa would serve each a special smile, applying a delicate adhesive of desire to their purchased loyalty. Miss Temple was not ugly – if her face was too round, her limbs were well formed and she bore a complete set of bright teeth – but she wanted no piece of these men’s desire. She gave them money, her grey eyes coldly fixing theirs as the coins were taken.

With a pang she remembered her pact with the Doctor and the Cardinal. But she did not want to be encumbered – her heart could bear employees, but no longer allies. To Pfaff and his men she was a source of money. They could have no great opinion of her character – and with no ready way to prove herself otherwise, she did her best not to despise them in return.

Three of the new men were sent out of the city to gather news: Mr Ramper to the factory at Parchfeldt, Mr Jaxon to Tarr Manor (whose quarry had provided the Cabal with raw indigo clay) and Mr Ropp to Harschmort House. The fourth and most presentable, Mr Brine – late Corporal Brine, 11th Territorial Fusiliers – Miss Temple kept near her at the Boniface, with the firm provisos that he never enter her private rooms unless requested, nor on any occasion – requested or no – insinuate himself with Marie.

Mr Pfaff himself brought a steady stream of information. The Contessa had not returned to the St Royale. Harald Crabbé’s widow still occupied their home, as Roger Bascombe’s mother remained sole resident of her son’s. The homes of Leveret and Aspiche were quite empty apart from servants. Xonck’s rooms had not been touched. Of all the addresses on
Miss Temple’s list, only one had received any sort of return. Confirmed by several witnesses, Charles and Ronald Trapping had been delivered home by two uniformed dragoons.

As Pfaff helped himself to a seat, Miss Temple passed him another page from her stack of papers. ‘The Comte’s house in Plum Court – it appears derelict, but the rear garden held a greenhouse where he worked. Also the art dealer that exhibited the Comte’s paintings. And then the Royal Institute. If Vandaariff is alive –’ She sighed. ‘How can there be
no
word whether the richest man on three continents has died?’

‘Soon now,’ Pfaff chuckled indulgently. ‘Once Mr Ropp returns from Harschmort –’

‘The Royal Institute,’ continued Miss Temple. ‘Since every one of the Comte’s laboratories was destroyed, he may have sought other facilities. Also, he will need particular supplies to rebuild – and in such quantities that must reveal the effort.’

‘An excellent stratagem.’

‘It is, actually,’ said Miss Temple.

Pfaff stood with a smile, and called to Mr Brine, who sat impassively on an upholstered stool. ‘Keeping the mistress safe, then, Briney?’

To Miss Temple’s disgust, both of Mr Brine’s cheeks flushed pink.

Cramming her hours with tasks brought welcome exhaustion that served to insulate her grief. In the night she cleaved to Chang, but through her days, passed in a world that so assailed Miss Temple’s senses, he was gone. It was a widening divide she fought to ignore.

Mr Ropp did not return. Pfaff speculated the man had received better work elsewhere, or given himself over to drink with his advance wages. When Mr Jaxon delivered his report from Tarr Manor (the house occupied by Roger Bascombe’s cousin and her young son, the quarry empty and unguarded), Pfaff sent him – at Miss Temple’s insistence – after Ropp to Harschmort, this time with instructions to approach Robert Vandaariff’s mansion cautiously on foot, through the dunes.

The longer she waited the more the Boniface felt like a prison. Without revenge to shape her character, doubt gnawed at Miss Temple’s mind. Her
efforts had been directed against Robert Vandaariff – since, as master of the blue glass, he represented the greatest threat. Yet the Contessa was Miss Temple’s primary enemy – her
nemesis
– and had eluded her altogether. The woman had fled Parchfeldt with the glass book that held the Comte’s memories. She had also captured young Francesca Trapping. Heiress to the Xonck Armaments fortune, the child offered the Contessa brutal leverage over Vandaariff.