A Study in Silks (11 page)

He found the glitter of the man’s eyes in the darkness and gave him stare for stare. The stranger didn’t flinch.

Finally, Nick shrugged as if the law was a mere annoyance at best. “True enough, sir. I’m not a front door kind of man, and that has its price.” One he was in danger of paying. Now he could hear the scuffle of running feet. He began walking backward, still not convinced he shouldn’t be running
at top speed—and yet too uneasy to leave the stranger with a clear shot at his back.

As Nick moved, the man took a step forward. “You mistake my intentions.”

I’ll bet
, Nick thought silently, calculating the number of yards between them. It wasn’t enough.

“I don’t care what you were doing there,” said the man, starting after him in earnest. “And I’m not particularly interested in your minuscule powers. I simply want some information.”

“About what?” A stab of protective anger ran through him.
About Evelina?
He wasn’t sure why, but every instinct he had said to shield her from this man.

He caught up to Nick and slapped him on the shoulder, a friendly gesture no doubt staged for the two policemen who rounded the corner at a run, puffing like overfed poodles. They’d gone around the wall instead of over it. How
did
they ever catch villains? Under ordinary circumstances, Nick would have been streets away by now.

Nick’s retreat had taken them to a curve of the alley that was better lit, and he finally got a good look at the man. His strong features were aquiline, his hair dark and threaded with silver. His skin was nearly as brown as Nick’s own. Definitely not of English ancestry.

The stranger lowered his voice, putting his face close to Nick’s. “How well do you know the inmates of the house? Or were you merely there to burgle the place?” He said it so matter-of-factly that it took a beat for Nick to catch up to his meaning.

“I was there to talk to a girl.”
And make a fool of myself
.

“Ah, good. I thought as much.”

“Why?”

“You’re young, handsome, and you aren’t carrying a sack of valuables.” The man twisted the ring around on his finger.

The constables thundered to a halt, wheezing. The one in the lead drew himself up, inflating a massive chest. “ ’Scuse me, sir, did you see a thief hop the wall and scarper, like?”

Nick felt weirdly invisible. His clothes alone should have
given him away. He felt an irrational urge to dance a jig right under the policeman’s nose.

“No, no,” said Nick’s new companion. “Though when I entered the lane, I thought I saw someone hurry that way.” He pointed with the cane, indicating the opposite direction from where he and Nick were going. “A thief, you say? How very disturbing. I was just escorting a young lady to her rooms—imagine if I had not been there to take charge of her safety. What outrages might have occurred?”

Uncertainty crossed the big constable’s face, as if he couldn’t quite tell if he was being mocked. “Very good, sir. Much obliged.” He signaled to his smaller partner, and the two jogged off after Nick’s phantom doppelganger.

The man lowered his cane with a silent laugh.

“They didn’t even see me,” Nick said.

“I didn’t want them to.” Again, that matter-of-fact tone.

Nick’s instincts itched, telling him to get away from this fellow as soon as he could. Curiosity, however, had a siren’s pull. For starters, what sort of a young woman would this man be squiring about? Did she even exist, or had he invented her on the spot?

The man steered him toward the street, moving away from the pursuing police. “Where were we? Ah, yes. I am in need of an informant. Someone who can come and go less conspicuously than I can.”

“Why me?”

“Because when I need something, it generally falls into my lap. You very nearly made that a literal event.”

Nick mulled that over, finally placing the oily feel of the man’s energy. He gave the heavy ring the man wore a suspicious glance, remembering that his savior had been fiddling with it the moment Nick became invisible to the coppers. Sorcery used objects to focus power—far more than the practitioners of folk magic ever did—and sorcerers were quick to use that power to control other people. Between the blind police constable and falling into Mr. Opera Cape’s lap, Nick was getting a definite whiff of brimstone.

The man twirled his cane, the silver top making a lazy circle in the darkness. “An intriguing event occurred tonight.
One even more fascinating than lovelorn swains dropping from the skies.”

Lovelorn swains? Nick bristled, but held his tongue.

“I was at the Royal Charlotte attending a production of
The Flying Dutchman
when a large mechanical creature lumbered from the wings and launched upon an orgy of destruction. I’ll grant you that Wagner engages in some fanciful devices—dwarves, bridges made of rainbows, and the like—but I don’t recall a kraken in the libretto.”

So it’s not Evie he wants?
“And how does that get us to your need for an informant?” They were reaching the mouth of the lane. The street ahead glowed with a soft golden light. Instinctively, their steps slowed, as if it was important to keep the conversation in the shadows.

“I want to locate the man who built the machine,” announced the stranger. “Needless to say, executing such a feat requires an impressive level of expertise. Furthermore, the steam barons disapprove of private citizens building engines willy-nilly and have bought up most of the foundries. Materials are expensive and hard to get. So who can afford to waste so much money on an episode of mindless vandalism?”

“You already know who did it.”

The man flashed another smile. “I suspect. I’ve seen Lord Bancroft’s work, though it was years ago. He was a maker of rare distinction, and that creature would have been well within his capabilities.”

Lord Bancroft? Nick couldn’t imagine the stuffy ambassador getting his hands dirty. “But why would a lord do such a thing?”

“When I knew Bancroft as Her Majesty’s ambassador to Austria, the heart of a rebel beat beneath his watch chain and waistcoat. However, you’re right, there is no immediate logic that fits. I saw my old friend tonight, and though we did not speak, I could see that he was not pleased by the chaos.”

“Then why assume he did this?”

The man gave Nick a look that said he asked too many questions. “Because what I saw was too like Bancroft’s handiwork
to ignore the possible connection. That is where my informant comes in. There is no workshop in Hilliard House, so does one exist elsewhere? If Bancroft is not personally flouting the will of the steam barons, then is it someone close to him? A hireling? A student? A peer, as I once was? Makers gossip together like fishwives in the market. If he is not the author of the creature, he may well know who was, even if he despises what he saw tonight.”

“Is that all you want to know?”

“Is that all?” The man laughed. “It is the cornerstone to a vital foundation. Find out if Bancroft or one of his intimates has a workshop. If he does, tell me what he creates there. I will reward you well for that information.”

Nick wavered for only a second.
What the hell
. He’d be in town for a little while longer. As the saying went, there was a sucker born every minute—and, truth be told, he knew accepting the task was far wiser than refusing a sorcerer. “Give me good silver, and I’ll find out everything I can.”

The stranger’s words turned silky. “Excellent. You may call me Dr. Magnus.”

EVELINA CLIMBED THE STAIRS BACK TO HER BEDROOM, HEAD
spinning with fatigue and far too many unpleasant thoughts. If she closed her eyes, she listed as if slightly drunk. Not a good mix with long skirts, steep stairs, and the open flame of her candle.

The tall clock on the landing chimed the half hour. The hand that foretold the weather pointed to thunder and lightning. It was wrong as usual. Outside, the stars twinkled from a clear sky, with not a cloud in sight.

She stopped at Imogen’s door, opening it just enough to see that her friend was sound asleep, her chest rising and falling in slow, steady breaths. She had slept through everything, thanks to the sedative that Dora had brought her. Relieved, Evelina turned her steps toward her own bedroom. The way her mind was scrabbling for logic, she wasn’t going to sleep for some time.

Tonight her world had suddenly turned a corner. The question was—what had changed, and who had done the changing and why?

Her thoughts turned immediately to Tobias and his black eye. He was brilliant, handsome, and—for an idle rich boy—essentially kind. If he survived to maturity without drinking himself into the grave or contracting the French pox, he would probably become a better man than his father.

So why would he be involved in Grace’s death? He had his pick of well-dowered debutantes, and kept mistresses one after the other like the links of a colorful paper chain. Many men took advantage of their servants, but she’d never suspected him.

She turned the door handle, still mired in speculation.
He seemed genuinely shocked to see that it was Grace who was dead
. And he’d promised that he had nothing to do with it, but—despite the fact she longed for and even
liked
Tobias—could she trust him? His room had been dark when she passed it on her way down from the attic. He hadn’t been there. But why lie and say he was? If he was innocent, what did it matter what he was doing? Was he the man she’d heard talking outside? Or the figure who had passed her in the hall?

Closing the door behind her, Evelina stood in her own bedroom once more, heartsick and confused.

She knew instantly that Nick was gone. In the soft stillness, shadows settled in the corners like sleepy cats. The only motion was the wavering candlelight, the only scents cosmetics and old book leather. Nothing of Nick. The air was blander for his absence.

Evelina let out a disappointed cry, soft and private. Nick had always been a combination of older brother and dashing hero. He had taught her trick riding and knives and walking the high wire above a sawdust ring—not that she could do half those things any longer, not after so many years. Tonight’s escapade in the tree had proven that.

Time changed everything, taking pieces of her life away, putting new ones in. When she had stood with Nick on the threshold of adulthood, Evelina had overheard the elders of the circus talking. Gran Cooper had been terrified that the strange energy that sparked between Nick and Evelina would become ever stronger. She had called it wild magic—by definition unpredictable because of the devas that flocked to it like butterflies to nectar. The effects could be benign or deadly, but so much power in one place was impossible to hide. Its inevitable discovery would be their downfall and, by extension, that of every member of the circus. The only answer was to send one of the two sweethearts away.

Nick—still an orphan and stranger, despite all the time he had spent with Ploughman’s—would have been the one to leave. No one would ever have asked a Cooper to go. But then chance had intervened, and Evelina suddenly had another
option. She could go to a new future, and Nick—who had already been cast adrift once in his short life—could stay. To save him, she’d had to leave him behind.

Not that she had ever told Nick—she had gone without a word. Although the circus was all he had, he would never have accepted her sacrifice. Even now, the knowledge would cut his fierce pride to the quick, and that was a bigger price than she was willing to pay.

And now she’d lost Nick once more. After finally seeing him again—and when she was at last of an age to look at him as a grown woman looks at a man—he had vanished like a flash of lightning, leaving barely an afterimage.

The older, wiser Evelina knew that was how it had to be, for his future and hers. Still, a mass of sadness pulled at her.
How could he be in London all this time and I never knew it?
She sank into the chair by her writing desk, suddenly exhausted, and picked idly at a spot of blood that had dried on her skirt before she realized what it was and snatched her hand away.

What a horrid tangle
.

There was only one good thing to come out of the whole night. At least Nick had not run afoul of Tobias. Nick might be expert with a knife, but Tobias could shoot the pip from an ace half drunk and ragged from a night of whoring. The two of them bashing heads was the last thing she needed.

After so much exertion, Evelina was growing cold from sitting still. The candles had died down, letting the shadows creep from the corners.

A new thought cropped up unbidden. Had Nick really come in through her bedroom window? Like any showman, he could tell a good tale when it suited him.
No, it couldn’t be him. Or Tobias. I know them both at least that well
.

But how objective was she? Wishful thinking, no doubt, was what got Grace Child with child, and then dead. Look at what had happened to her own mother, Marianne Holmes, eloping with a handsome captain only to end up disgraced and in an unmarked grave at five and twenty. No woman could afford willful blindness.

Evelina rubbed at the blood spot furiously.
No man is an angel, however handsome he looks
.