A Study in Darkness (11 page)

Heat crept up Evelina’s cheeks. Whoever said her uncle didn’t understand the human heart was mistaken. He simply would rather stab himself in the eye than talk about it. “You’re quite right. My apologies. I will leave a note with instructions once I’ve come to a conclusion.”

He gave the paper an irritable snap, disappearing behind it once more. “The point is, you cannot have Mr. Roth. For good or ill, he chose another and is therefore not worth losing a moment’s sleep over. Someday you will meet him, and it will hurt, but the time after that, it will be easier. The pain fades. Believe it or not, I have some little experience in such matters.”

Evelina bit her lip, saying nothing. Her uncle might be making logical sense, but she couldn’t get Tobias’s features out of her mind. He was smart, talented, handsome—and the subject of many a girlhood dream. A few months’ misery couldn’t erase everything that had come before. Not completely. And the last time they were together, he’d told her that he loved her. A moment later—the moment she’d figured out he’d shot Holmes—he’d denied any feelings at all. He’d been lying then, trying to save her and his family from Jasper Keating, but what would he say now?

Then she realized with an embarrassed start that her uncle was still talking. “Difficult times do not last. Difficult, obstinate, and impertinent people do. If you’re going to raise a flag in academic life, I suggest you cultivate those qualities. A meek manner and clean gloves will get you nowhere in the thrust and parry of intellectual debate.

“Furthermore,” Holmes continued, blithely leaping to a new topic, “I would propose that grouse is not the reason Jasper Keating has bought a place so far north.”

“Oh?” She tried to scrape her thoughts into straight, logical, nonromantic rows.

“Scotland has so far resisted the Steam Council’s influence, not only through an instinct for independence, but also because the mountainous terrain is much harder to control. Consequently, it’s become a favorite bolt-hole for the resistance.”

Evelina cleared her throat. She was too hot, her chemise sticking to her skin, but it had far more to do with emotion than with the temperature in the room. “You think Keating wants a foothold up north. Someplace convenient where he can start putting out feelers.”

“Spies, you mean. You would be right. His new hunting
lodge—every gentleman’s accessory come shooting season—is a nearly invisible means of establishing a base.” Holmes tossed the paper aside. “What a pity you won’t be going north. I would delight in knowing who says what to whom.”

“You want me to spy for you?” she asked incredulously.

Holmes made an innocent face. “Ladies don’t spy. They gossip. Copiously. Bring me something useful about Keating’s activities.”

SO IT WAS
she found herself with a first-class ticket going north. Evelina stared out the carriage window, hypnotized by the rhythmic rattle and sway of the train. The late summer landscape was still lush, with only an odd field more tawny than green.

The carriages along the way were as comfortable as one could hope for, and she was never obliged to endure more than three other travelers in the car at any one time. It was a far cry from her early years with Ploughman’s Paramount Circus, when the entire troupe would have to crush into a handful of the cheapest cars available, animals and all.

They hadn’t been bad years. She had been loved and still too young to understand what her widowed mother meant when she said that they were poor. Her mother—daughter of the genteel Holmes family and sister to Uncles Sherlock and Mycroft—had eloped with Captain Cooper, a low-born infantry soldier who had risen to an officer’s rank through conspicuous bravery. He in turn had been one of the Fabulous Flying Coopers and a member of Ploughman’s circus, but had run away as a youth to make his fortune in the army. By the time Evelina was an adolescent, both her parents were dead and her Grandmamma Holmes had plucked her from the circus and enrolled her in Wollaston Academy for Young Ladies. Years later, now a properly educated young miss who had been presented to the queen and had danced at the Duchess of Westlake’s ball, Evelina kept her early involvement with the circus to herself.

However, it was delicious to be traveling again, indulging her wanderlust. Of course, traveling in first class was scarcely
a hardship. There was no shortage of personnel to see to her every need, and Mrs. Hudson—off to spend a fortnight with her sister and recover from the explosion—had gone with her as far as York before turning off for Scarborough.

The last leg of the journey found Evelina in the company of a middle-aged woman, a wheezing pug in a wicker cage, and a plump man in a brown suit. The woman was engrossed in a novel and the man was engrossed with Evelina.

“My dear,” he said, edging closer to the lip of the worn velvet seat opposite her. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mr. Jeremy.”

She rearranged her skirts so that they did not brush his knees. The woman looked up from her book, giving the man a hard stare. Gentlemen did not introduce themselves to young ladies journeying alone. “A pleasure, sir,” Evelina said in cool tones—not impolite, but not inviting further conversation. That seemed to shut him down, and then the only sound in the carriage was the pug snuffling against the bars of its cage.

The train slowed as it passed a miserable smudge of a town, choked with coal dust and overcrowding. Seeing it made her chest hurt, as if a fist had closed around her heart. Now Evelina drew back from the window, needing that extra few inches between her and the poverty. Women dragged children away from the tracks, their arms so thin their elbows looked like knots in a rope. Dogs sniffed hopelessly for food, their ribs stark beneath patchy fur. Evelina’s life had never been that dire, but some winters had come close enough that sometimes she still had trouble leaving food on her plate, or throwing a garment away before it was completely worn to bits.

“Pathetic creatures,” said Mr. Jeremy.

She didn’t answer. He’d probably never done a day’s manual labor in his life, much less in one of the steam barons’ foundries—for she was fairly sure that was what they were seeing. Crates of gears and giant spools of chain sat on the platform, waiting for the barons’ own trains to whisk them away to their gas plants or railways, manufactories or perhaps one of the great steam boilers that heated entire neighborhoods
through underground pipes. Supplies like these weren’t for the ordinary citizen to buy—just to die of the black lung making them.

He leaned forward, his knuckles brushing her knee. “I am sorry such a beautiful young lady is obliged to see such a sight.”

She again snapped her skirts back out of his reach. “Better than that I remain in ignorance.” She regretted the words the moment she spoke, because speaking had given him an opening for further conversation. He opened his mouth, ready to take advantage of the fact.

“Sir,” said the lady with the pug. Her voice said she’d been a schoolmistress at some point in her past. “Pray leave the young lady in peace or I shall call the conductor and have him escort you to another car.”

Red faced, the man settled back with a muttered complaint about aging harridans. Evelina shot the woman a grateful look. After that, the train was quiet except for the wheezing of the dog and the rattle of the wheels.

Evelina fell into a kind of fretful daydream, imagining what she’d find when she got to Maggor’s Close. Scene after scene played itself out in her mind, reinforcing her anxiety. She still wasn’t sure how she was going to face Tobias.
It shouldn’t matter now. He is engaged. He’s beyond my reach
. And yet some part of her wouldn’t let him go.

She had been poised to fall in love, like a swimmer in a fast-flowing river with just one hand clinging to the bank. She had been so eager to let go and surrender herself, had only been waiting for one last sign that everything could work. And then he had declared his love—but withdrawn it almost at once.

Now she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to feel. Tobias had shot Uncle Sherlock, but he had been defending his mother and sisters from ruin. Could she despise him for doing a horrible thing when it was for the most honorable of reasons?

She was sick to death of going around and around the question. Evelina closed her eyes, afraid of her own emotions, dreading what the coming weeks would bring. Her
uncle had sent her to spy on the party, and no doubt he wanted to know which business magnates came and went and what deals they discussed over whisky and cigars. But, she guessed, he also wanted her moping presence out of Baker Street. She couldn’t blame him.

The train slowed, the steady chugging growing more and more arthritic until it slowed to a crawl. A sign that read Pletherow Saint Andrew’s flashed by the window, and Evelina realized she had reached her destination. She slipped her timetable back into her open carpetbag and edged forward on her seat.

“Do you need help with your cases?” asked Mr. Jeremy.

Before Evelina could reply, the lady with the pug rose and pulled the cord for the conductor. “We shall request a porter,” she said sweetly to Evelina.

As the train stopped with a final lurch, Evelina rose and tugged at the hatbox on the iron rack above. As she did, her carpetbag tipped over, spilling the contents across the wooden floor. Before Evelina could set the hatbox on her seat, Mr. Jeremy had set about scooping up her things.

“Please don’t trouble yourself,” she said hastily. “I can do that.”

Matching actions to words, she started shoveling combs, notebooks, needlebooks, and coins into the bag. She grabbed the leather train case that had all her supplies for spellcasting and clockwork repairs—neither considered ladylike nor completely legal—and stuffed it away before it could unlatch and spill a million tiny gears across the floor. At least her emergency pair of unmentionables hadn’t fallen out, but that wasn’t what she was worried about the most.

“What’s this?” The man held up a small steel mouse and flicked its cleverly articulated tail with one finger. “You’re a big girl to play with toys.”

Although it was barely perceptible, she saw the mouse’s whiskers twitch with irritation.
Would you kindly convince this imbecile to put me down?
it complained.
His hands smell of stale ham and pickle. It’s like being grabbed by sweaty pillows that have been gently rotting in a trash bin for six weeks
.

Evelina snatched the mouse out of his hand. “It’s a present for my nephew,” she lied and stuffed the mouse back into the bag. Then she rummaged around until her fingers closed on her clockwork bird. Good. She had them both. Snapping the catch of the carpetbag shut, she rose and gathered her bags and hatbox.

“Good day, Mr. Jeremy. Have a pleasant journey.” Then she turned to the pug lady. “And thank you, ma’am, for all your help.”

The woman smiled, a touch of mischief in her comfortable face. She had clearly enjoyed frustrating Mr. Jeremy. “Certainly, miss. And you.”

The porter slid open the compartment door and began the process of depositing Evelina and her bags and trunks onto Pletherow’s tiny platform. Then, with a hiss of steam, the train chugged forward, gathering momentum until it pulled away in a whirl of cinders and dust. Evelina looked around, taking in the ornate ironwork bracketing the platform roof, the black and white sign with the station’s name, and the fact that there was nothing else but heather and scrub grass and tracks for miles around.

She’d seen too many places like this in the past, except back then she would be one of a troupe, stranded in the dust or the rain with a heap of gear and an ever-growing Noah’s ark of animals. In the earliest days, there had just been the horses—and Nick, a little more than three years her senior, always holding her hand until the train was safely away. No one knew where he had come from, or his last name, or who his people had been. A Gypsy, perhaps, or some sailor’s spawn with a magical Bloodline so different that no one at Ploughman’s could teach him to use it. But he had been the best trick rider and knife man she’d ever seen.

And her most loyal friend. If it hadn’t been for their incompatible magic, there might have been more.
But he’s gone now, too. I can’t even think about that
. The pain of it closed her throat until she felt as if she were suffocating.

There was scrabbling inside the bag. Since there was no other human in sight, Evelina set the bag on top of her trunk and opened the catch. Mouse and Bird poked their heads
out. They were both tiny, barely four inches long, but the bird was the flashier of the two. Whereas Mouse, with its gray steel fur and velvet-tipped paws, had been made for stealth and silence, Bird was as beautiful as its wild cousins. She’d given it crystal-tipped wings and eyes of paste emeralds—but there were also scars and patches where a streetkeeper named Striker had repaired it.

But what made them precious to her were the spirits that gave her clockwork creations life. The tiny creatures were a synthesis of her mechanical arts and the magic her Gran Cooper had taught her as a child. Like many circus folk, her father’s family was of the Blood—and Evelina had a unique gift that could coax devas into inanimate objects.

But no magic—light or dark, high or low—could make earth devas civil. Bird flitted to her shoulder with a whirr of wings and looked around critically.
You’ve taken us to the end of the world
.

“We’re not even to Scotland yet. The end of the world is a bit farther north.” Evelina sat down on her trunk and checked the watch pinned to her jacket. The train had been on time, so it was the cart that was supposed to meet her that was late.

Did I hear something about shooting birds?

“You did. This is a shooting party, so don’t go flying about unless you want to end up in someone’s game bag.”

Or slobbered on by a dog
, Mouse added darkly from the mouth of the carpetbag.

Bird gripped her jacket, driving brass toenails into her shoulder.
A party for shooting birds? What sort of bizarre, sadistic impulse prompted you to take me to a mass murder?

She plucked Bird off, setting it on the edge of the trunk. “I could have left you with Uncle Sherlock.”