Cold Stone and Ivy (43 page)

He rose to his feet and she stepped back. He cocked his head.

“Are you afraid of me?”

“No—”

“You run around the countryside shooting people with my brother, yet you’re afraid of
me?”

“I’m not.”

“How do you know he’s not the Ripper, Ivy? There hasn’t been a murder for weeks, and now, the very night he arrives, two.”

“He’s not the Ripper.”

“How would you know? You were drunk in a coach. And Bastien
is
a killer, you know he is.” He moved over beside her, picked a fresh cup, began to pour. “Two whores this time, Ivy. Two in one night, a Double Event, the papers are calling it. Took a kidney and a womb this time and, I believe, an ear . . .”

“Christien, please.”

He arched a brow by way of asking.

“It’s not true.”

“But I say again, you don’t know that. He’s black and blue, Ivy. How did that happen if he was with you on the pier? What happened afterwards that you don’t know about?”

“Why do you hate him so?”

“Because it’s his fault our father is dead, that’s why! If he hadn’t . . . If he had just . . .”

She saw the tears in his eyes as he struggled for control, took a deep breath and then another, and for the first time, she wondered what he remembered. He had been in the room when his father had killed himself. Two little boys living with the same horror. Her heart broke for them both.

“I love him, Ivy, and I hate him. He’s my brother, and he’s mad and dangerous and yet, to see him with his dogs and his horses and he’s so very happy. I wish life could be that way for him always. I wish he would just stay north. I just . . . I wish . . .”

He released a long deep breath, doing it again, placing the porcelain tightly over his emotions. The fine black glove and the methodical stirring of the spoon in the china cup. It was a very English ritual, tea.

“He doesn’t need to be encouraged.” The splash of milk, the level spoon of sugar. “He needs to be medicated, hospitalized, and treated.” The slow, hypnotic circles caused by the stirring. “He is an innocent, Ivy. A wild, brutal child. He needs to be protected from people and people need to be protected from him.”

She swallowed, watched him drop two tablets into the tea.

“Vitamin supplements,” he said. “He doesn’t eat when he’s manic.”

She remembered the pasty, three knife holes bleeding gravy.

“And what if he decides that I’m next? You know his women want him to shoot me.”

“He won’t,” she said. “He’s promised.”

“What about you then? What if he decides to shoot you? Or stick a knife into you just to make sure you’re real?”

“He won’t hurt me,” she said.

“Until the ghosts tell him to.” He smiled sadly and held the cup and saucer out to her. “I’m sending him back north. Take this to him, say your goodbyes, and never see him again.”

Her eyes flashed now, and he could tell.

“The last door on the right before the second-floor terrace,” he said, and he raised the cup once more. “Go on. Be a good girl.”

Be a good girl.

She
was
a good girl. She had
always
been a good girl.

Reach a little higher, then . . .

For some reason, the tears began to sting now.

She took the cup and fled back up the stairs.

THE TEARS WERE
flowing down her cheeks as she knocked on the door, the last door on the right before the second-floor terrace. There was no answer, so she tried the handle, relieved to find it unlocked. She nudged it open and peered inside. A great expanse of draperies was drawn shut and the fireplace had dwindled down to a few glowing coals. She glanced at the bed but it was empty.

There wasn’t even a spread on it.

She stepped in and closed the door behind her.

“Sebastien?” she called softly into the room. “Sebastien, it’s me, Ivy. I, I have tea . . .”

In the far corner, she saw a strange shape and she moved closer. Someone was sitting on the floor, underneath a blanket, like a little child hiding from its parents. She crossed the room to kneel beside it.

“Sebastien? Would you like some tea?”

The spread moved for a hand to slip out and she saw his wrist, swollen and blue from his late-night adventures. Christien had been right—she had been drunk in the cab. She barely remembered him after the pier.

She passed him the saucer and it disappeared under the blanket.

“May I join you?” she begged, wishing just for one moment that she were a little girl. She and Davis would make tents under their blankets, pretend they were adventurers in Africa and India, fighting lions and tigers on the frontier of the Empire. She had been eleven. She’d had to grow up very quickly after that.

He said nothing, so she lifted an edge and peered under.

The side of his face was purple, and he was cradling his right arm as though it were still in its brace. The spread draped from his head and he was staring into the teacup, although, like her mother, she doubted he was seeing anything. She could imagine him very much like this at Lonsdale. The only thing missing was Mumford.

It broke her heart all over again.

She slipped underneath the blanket, wrapped her arms around her knees, and tears spilled fresh from her lashes. And so she sat, weeping silently until he raised his eyes to look at her.

“Why are you crying, Miss Savage?”

“Me”—she smiled through her tears—“I’m a good girl, aren’t I?”

“Yes. A very good girl.”

“I hate it,” she sniffed. “I hate being a ‘good girl.’ I hate having to follow orders. I always have. I am so stubborn but I hate being told what to do, when to do it, how to do it, why I should do it, what I should think, how I should think. I wish, I wish . . .”

Her breath shuddered in her chest. “I wish life was very different . . .”

He blinked slowly. “Me too.”

“And I try to reach higher, really I do. But I think I only succeed in making a mess of things. Do you ever feel that way?”

“Always,” he said. “I am a madman and a failure.”

“No, Sebastien. At least, no more than me.” She smiled, and this time it didn’t feel forced. “Quite a pair, we make, yes?”

“Hm.”

“Are you going to drink your tea?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, and raised the cup to his lips. “Thank you.”

“How are you feeling this morning?”

“Not so good.”

“I’m terribly sorry. Can I help?”

He shook his head. The blanket moved when he did so.

“I think you shot one of the men on the pier,” she said. “I found blood and fabric next to a hole in the plank.”

“Hm.”

“Did you find them, then? The ‘head’ men?”

He shook his head again.

“Oh. Well, how did you get so clobbered up?”

“The Ripper is as good with a spade as he is with a blade. He is also left-handed, by the way.”

She felt the blood drain from her face. “Sebastien . . .”

“He was going to kill me, but he didn’t.”

“You need to tell the police. My father will listen.”

“I saw him.”

“What? You saw him?”

“The Ripper. I saw him. It’s my father.”

She stared at him.

“My father, who’s been dead for years, is killing women in Whitechapel.”

“But . . . but he’s dead . . . How can he?”

“It’s a challenging question. I think I’ll stay in here for a while. The dead don’t come under blankets.”

She didn’t know what to say to that.

He sipped his tea, and once again, she noticed a tremor in his hands. She had never seen that before London.

They sat in silence for a moment, and finally, he laid the empty cup on the floor. Between his feet was a small golden tin, which he picked up and began to fold over in his hand. Inside, it rattled like crushed stones.

“Lithium,” he said. “Christien wants me back on it.”

“I know. What do you think?”

Finally, he looked up at her.

“I felt a woman die last night. I’ve never felt that before, but I was no more than fifty feet away, so it stands to reason. It was like nails in my skull. My dead father almost beat me to death with a spade, and when I came home, there were nine women in the hall. One of them had barely a face. They don’t want to be dead, and they’re very angry about it. There are four torsos, Ivy. Four dismembered women everywhere I go. I’m not doing enough but honestly, I can’t do any more, and I want it to stop.” He looked down at the tin in his hand. “I want it all to stop.”

“Oh my dear Sebastien . . .” She frowned, hugged her knees. It never occurred to her that it was odd, conducting such a personal conversation under a blanket in the corner of a room. “So, with the lithium, you don’t see the dead?”

He frowned now, blinked as if trying to focus.

“No,” he said slowly. “I don’t see the dead. But the problem is that I don’t see much of the living either . . . Hm . . .” He frowned again, rolled his head on his shoulders. It caused the blanket to bunch and pull. He said nothing more for some time, and so they sat, toe to toe, saying nothing.

“Would you talk to my father, Sebastien? If you fought off the Ripper, you should tell him what happened.”

“No.”

“Maybe it was someone who looked like your father. You could describe his height, his frame, his clothing—”

“No, Ivy.”

“Sebastien, you are a witness to a terrible crime.”

He said nothing, didn’t even seem to have heard. In fact, he was blinking very slowly.

“Sebastien?”

“Hm,” he said again, and reached for his cup, fumbled with it, then stared into it as if it were a puzzle. “Lithium in the tea. Quite clever. I never expected it . . .”

Ivy looked up. “What?”

“It dissolves quickly in hot water. Well done. Rupert was right.” His voice was sluggish and slow. “You’d make a tidy spy. Christien has you trained.”

“What? Sebastien,
no.
He said they were vitamins . . .”

“Please leave.”

“I—”

“Now. Please. You are filled with shadow.” He pulled away so that the blanket slid off of her head, and suddenly, she was sitting on the floor in a corner of the bedroom of a man she barely knew.

He won’t hurt me
, she had said.

Shaking, she rose to her feet.

Not until the ghosts tell him to.

She fled the room and ran down the stairs, seeing neither Christien nor Pomfrey when she left the house, a fact for which she was grateful.

Of Alexander Dunn, Henry Babbage,
and an Engine Named ERICA

IF THE SUN
was sweet in Kensington-Knightsbridge, then it was positively sugar along the ivory streets of Pall Mall, where all the Clubs of the civilized world set up shop. She kept her head down as she walked past them. It would take many hours to get to her home in Stepney, for she didn’t have the money for a cab, and her mind was racing faster, more furiously, with each step.

Christien had deceived her.

She had trusted him and he had deceived her.

She twisted the ring on her finger as she walked, wondering if this was really what she wanted for herself, this marriage to a very fine man from Kensington-Knightsbridge. It had made sense, once upon a time. It still did. Her father liked Christien, liked the stability and security he brought to her life, and the fact that he could help the family with Catherine’s care. And she liked him too, liked the fact that he was interested in Forensics and crime and mysteries. He was better than she could have hoped for, better than she deserved, as stubborn and willful as she was. But still, she couldn’t shake the image of the Mad Lord from her mind, sitting like a child under a blanket, standing under an umbrella on a rainy pier, lying on a hospital slab with a knitted dog under his arm. He had managed to strike a chord deep inside. She barely even knew him, and yet he resonated like a very familiar song.

Alexander Dunn had stolen Penny’s heart.

She shuddered to think of it—it had happened so quickly. Penny had been happy until she’d met Dunn but now, how could she ever look at Julian the same way after that? Not when there was always the possibility of Dunn lurking around the corner with his thievery, his tricks, his devilish smile. What did that mean for her stories? What did that mean for her?

No, it was better for Sebastien in the north. London was hard on him, he’d said it himself. She’d seen clear evidence of that this morning. He was stranger than he’d ever been, and she found herself wondering how much to believe. She had seen the head in the water, but had he really fought off the Ripper? How in the world could she believe that same Ripper was his dead father? How could she possibly believe any of it?