A Study in Darkness (42 page)

“My
business
isn’t open for discussion. And she doesn’t want to be taken care of.”

“Oh, bollocks. You don’t leave women like that roaming around, Gypsy boy. Not anywhere, but especially not here.”

“It’s my—”

Striker poked him in the chest so hard it hurt. “I’m your friend, so take this right. Get your house in order. You’re the captain. Your business is ours if it puts you off your game.”

Nick glared at him. “I’m not off my game.”

Striker glowered back, his dark face hard. “Think a while about that one.”

Nick’s face heated. “What are you saying?”

Striker repeated his battering ram poke in the chest. “You’re walking around like a man who’s sunk his own ship. Same as when you two parted before. You’ve got some choices to make, so make them. But make them quick, because you need to be sharp or it’s all of our necks in the noose.”

Striker turned and walked back into the market day crowd, coat shining in dull flashes. It was probably the longest speech he’d ever made.

Nick watched until the man had disappeared from view, biting back the dozen retorts he longed to make. But you didn’t mouth off to Striker unless you meant it. And the man wasn’t wrong. What the hell was Nick going to do about Evie Cooper?

EVELINA TURNED A
last corner and found what she was looking for. The Posy Street market occupied a small square from edge to edge, the outermost tables squashed up against the brick sides of the surrounding warehouses. The booths were ragged and nothing looked particularly well organized, but the place was thronged. She waded into the madness of the market with a will to buy everything on her list. The day was clear and the late September sun still warm. In the press of the market, it might have still been summer.

If she hadn’t had to think about chatting up makers and spying on the Gold King, she would have been in heaven. Color and plenty was here in abundance. There were baskets of smooth apples, pears, and quince, bushels of nobbly squash, and nuts in the shell. The sweet smell of the fruit hung in the air, overpowering the rankness of the drainage gutter running through the middle of the square. Evelina stepped carefully, avoiding rotten fruit, children, dogs, and squishy piles she refused to contemplate. A herd of geese terrorized passersby, earning a vengeful glower from a man selling sausages. Evelina recognized her pie man, who had set up shop beside a woman selling bread and buns. But Evelina passed all the food vendors, thinking she would save those until last.

She was looking for craftsmen who sold supplies. Two of the dolls required a touch-up of paint, and Serafina’s dancing shoes needed a layer of fresh stitching on the toes. Embroidery thread was easy enough to find, and pale pink was a common color. The paint was harder, mostly because Evelina wasn’t sure what she needed. Art and music had always been more in Imogen’s line. Still, she found something to try. The brass screws were another matter—they wouldn’t be on display. If she wanted to find anything here, she would have to ask the right people.

And, of course, once she found them, she could steer the conversation toward the question of the Blue King’s armaments. She knew from her grandfather how much shop talk these unassuming makers knew once you got them chatting.

A man was selling cheap jewelry, the shining treasure gleaming on what looked like the remains of a black velvet curtain. But what interested her more was the steam-powered press that formed the cheap metal into the shapes needed for the gaudy bracelets and chains. Along with a handful of other spectators, she watched it hiss and stamp, hiss and stamp, wondering what else it might make if she asked. What the maker might know if she asked.

“Let me guess. We’ve lost your custom already.”

She looked up, startled. Nick stood across the table, his weight on one hip. She wouldn’t have noticed him but for his
voice. He’d pulled back his hair, showing the clean lines of his cheekbones, and was wearing a low-crowned hat with a tuft of hawks’ feathers in the band. Her gaze traveled downward, taking in the waistcoat of figured black silk, the snow white shirt, and golden watch chain. She’d never seen him dressed in such finery, and it all looked new. He wore his pirate riches well.

Something low in her stomach fluttered. She ruthlessly smothered it, or tried to, as he circled the end of the table, every movement smooth and deliberate, his weight perfectly poised. She’d never known a man who moved the way Nick did, like he was about to take flight. Well, she supposed he finally had once he’d found his air deva.

“I wasn’t sure whether to run away from you or toward you,” he said teasingly, his showman’s mask firmly in place. They’d caught each other by surprise the other night. Today, he was armed.

“Am I less fearsome in the light of day?”

“That depends on how badly you wish to decapitate me for behaving like an ass.” He tilted his head, giving her the full force of his dark, liquid eyes. In the sunlight, she could see the thin white scar that tracked beneath one eye where a knife fight had gone wrong.

The fluttering in her stomach started up again. “Decapitation is always so messy. But you didn’t say anything you didn’t mean.”

“No.” He drew himself up. “But we never gave each other a fair chance.”

“You look good, Nick,” she said, conscious that she had given up her finery to come to the East End.

“You have the advantage of me. They say a fine tailor makes a gentleman, but a lady shines under any circumstances.”

His accent lacked refinement and, now that she looked more closely, his boots were scuffed and his fine shirt soiled with dirt as if he’d been in a fight. She was suddenly more at ease. Nick was still Nick.

And he held out a hand. After a moment’s hesitation, she took it. His fingers were rough and warm—far from a gentleman’s
soft skin, for all his new clothes. But she felt the strength there, and remembered how well he could handle a knife or gentle a horse. She wondered what else his hands could do.

Like an eager hound, her magic leaped for his, but she firmly jerked it back. A public market would be the worst place to call wild magic—and that always happened when they were like this, skin to skin and with the unspoken yearning that it would be more than just fingers that touched. It quivered now, rippling over her skin like a breeze over a lake, raising her awareness of Nick in a way that went beyond simple touch. And with that knowledge came magic, bone-deep, earth-deep as the stuff of life itself. His power brushed against hers, making her shiver like the wind through pines.

And then it stopped as if a door had closed. And then their touch was just a touch, warm and human and familiar as from the time they had been children. “I can’t believe this,” she whispered. “There’s no silver light. No devas.”

He gave a slow smile, using his flirtatious showman’s persona the way some women used fans to coax and tease. “Would my lady care to walk awhile?”

She swallowed, her mouth terribly dry. “If you like.”

“You say that like you’re afraid.”

She didn’t know how to answer that. “I’m not sure what’s happening here.”

His eyes were serious. “We got off on the wrong foot, Evie—and have been so ever since I climbed through your bedroom window last spring. I wanted to see you, desperately so, but I didn’t give you any warning, and that wasn’t fair of me. So let’s take this slowly, take the time to get to know each other again.”

“Very well,” she said in a tiny voice. She slid her arm through his, feeling his magic as a low and pleasant tingle, as welcome as the sun on her shoulders. They fell into step, walking toward the place that sold ale and cider by the glass. She noticed people moved out of Nick’s way, and that he knew exactly where he wanted to go.

“I’m not sure how you do this in your expensive Mayfair
houses,” he said, still mocking, but there was a thread of uncertainty beneath his words. She’d known him too long to miss it.

“Do what?”

“Court a girl,” he said slyly. “Do I bring you sweetmeats and roses and take you to a show?”

She dropped her voice to a murmur. “Can you even walk the streets without fear of arrest?”

“Evie,” he said, his voice holding emotions she couldn’t name. “I’d walk through Newgate if I thought it would win you.”

“That’s not the point,” she said sharply.

“Then what is?”

She stopped and the crowd eddied around them. He was taller, and she had to tilt her head to meet his eyes. “I’m afraid for you.”

“And you think I don’t worry about what you’re up to?” His words matched hers, edge for edge. “What Keating has to do with your being here?”

There were so many dangers caught up in that question, her mind couldn’t hold them all. She put her hand on his chest, spreading her fingers against the splendid waistcoat. “You said it yourself,” she said in a softer tone. “We take this slowly. Get to know the people we’ve both become. Then we can deal with the difficult questions one at a time, without fighting. It’s too easy for us to fight, because neither of us has an easy temper.” She envied Imogen and Bucky right then—they were loving people who simply wanted peace and laughter. She and Nick were far more volatile. They had also damaged each other’s trust, and that had to be repaired.

Nick released a sigh, putting a hand over hers, trapping her fingers against his chest. The cloth was warm, but the silver buttons cool in the September air. He lifted her hand and kissed her fingertips, sending a thrill down her arm. “Could it be that one of us has grown wise?”

Relief washed through her, the tension in her shoulders seeping away. “Only in that I’ve learned to hesitate before
touching a flame. The day I learn to leave it alone altogether is the day I attain true wisdom.”

He smiled, and it was his real smile, quick and wicked. “Then how do we do this, Evie?”

“Perhaps we should begin with light conversation.”

“Such as?” They began walking again, arm in arm, stopping only to avoid a near miss with a rampaging goose.

“Captain Niccolo, do you enjoy your time aboard an airship?” Evelina put on her best Society manner, and realized how much she had grown used to leaving it off. All of a sudden it felt as false as Nick’s showman’s patter.

“Yes.” His smile finally reached his eyes. “Although I do miss my horses very much. And you, Miss Cooper, how do you find your new situation?”

She could hear him burning to ask exactly what that situation was, but he held to their agreement. “Tolerable. It is harder in some ways, but far simpler in many. However, I confess that I miss good Assam tea and baths with lavender.” And she was very, very conscious that her clothes were worn, the soft leather of her boots starting to split because they had never been made for such hard use. Nick didn’t seem to notice, but she felt like a garden going to seed.

Another beat passed. Nick turned away from the stall selling ale, and aimed for a shadier part of the market. The shadows were cool, filled with the dusty scent of the fading summer.

“Since you are buying parts for machinery, does that mean you’re making your living with the skill at clockwork that Grandfather Cooper taught you?” he asked, the words painfully polite.

“Yes.”

He digested that a moment. “Are you happy?”

She was suddenly taken aback. The question was so like the other time he had found her, back at Hilliard House. Just as he said, he’d climbed through her window then, wanting to know if she was all right after so many years apart—it had caught her utterly off guard. “I like the work,” she said. “That part of it suits me.”

He cast her a sidelong look. “Striker says there are lots of new inventions. Ways to signal without wires.”

He caught her off guard, and she slipped. “They used that on the Baker Street bomb.” Perhaps there was no harm in telling Nick that detail, but she hadn’t had time to consider it, either.

“Who made it?” His words were sharp, and suddenly the fiction of polite conversation was gone.

Evelina quailed a moment, but her words came out hot. “Keating Industries. Jasper Keating tried to blow up my uncle, and Tobias Roth designed the remote detonator. Was that what you wanted to hear?”

Something flickered over his features, as if he’d figured something out. “I’d like to wring their necks for putting you in danger.”

Without her realizing it, he’d somehow steered her into the shadows behind one of the roofed stalls. On the other side of them was a warehouse wall, giving them almost complete privacy. He plucked the string bag with her shopping from her wrist, setting it down at the foot of the wall, before taking her hand again. Despite the heat in their words, they couldn’t seem to stop touching one another.

“What are you doing?” she asked, feeling a flutter of nerves.

“I can’t go on without setting a few things straight.”

“Such as?” Evelina was breathless, but whether it was from fear or eagerness, she couldn’t tell.

“I’m going to ask you this only once,” he said.

She could feel his tension through his grip and it made her stomach clench in response. “What?”

“Are you still in love with Roth?” The words sounded sharp, as if they’d hurt coming out.

He was searching her face. She wanted to hide.
I wanted Tobias. Did I love him?
She had, and she’d meant every soft word they’d spoken, and some piece of that affection would never die. But so much had happened in the last weeks, it felt like something she’d read in a book.

Nick stood there, his face utterly neutral, and waited for her answer.

Evelina swallowed, her throat raw with pain. “I loved who I thought he was, and who he wanted to be, but that person is gone. He wasn’t strong enough. Keating killed him.” The honesty of the answer surprised her. Some part of her had obviously been figuring things out.

“Then it’s over?” Nick asked. “I don’t think I would survive a third blow from you.”

She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Nick. About the past. But there was always the matter of our Bloodlines. They never mixed.” But now they were holding hands, and there were no excuses to hide. And part of her was terrified.