Gilded Lily (25 page)

“I'm sorry,” he murmured. He was glad to have seen her this one last time, if it was to be the end. It didn't feel like it ought to be the end, though. There were four of them there, ranged against Furneval. Surely they could do something to save Sophie and themselves, with the numbers so clearly on their side?

She just looked puzzled. “What for? None of this is
your
fault.”

“Shut up, both of you,” snapped the man with the gun, who Barnabas presumed was Rollo Furneval. He
looked
like a drug kingpin. A claret jacket, too bright for the current fashion, with flashy velvet trim and brass buttons. An ornate gilt poppy at his lapel, that looked familiar. The man wasn't tall but he was powerfully built, with dark hair mussed with sweat, and intelligent but shifty eyes. He looked like he might easily be a cold-blooded killer.

Sophie was pale, and her usually serene face now showed all her distress. Panic flared in her eyes, and where she clutched the arm that pinned her so close, Barnabas could see her knuckles were white as bone. She would leave a fine set of bruises on Furneval, at least. Dan and Freddie stood motionless, hands raised over their shoulders, and Barnabas quickly assumed the same pose. His pistol was still in his pocket, but it was useless to him at the moment.

“Right, then. The four of you are going into a cargo hold.” Furneval nodded his head toward one wall of the warehouse, where Barnabas could see a line of doors. “Straight line, quick march. Or the lady gets it.”

As the last words left his mouth, the earth shifted beneath their feet, the boards creaking ominously as a rumble began to build.

As they were thrown off balance, Furneval's grip on Sophie loosened, and she leaned forward, trying to break free.

Barnabas reached out a foot and touched Dan's boot, getting his attention. They shared a look, Barnabas thinking his hasty plan as hard as he could.
If we rush together, now while he's distracted, perhaps it will work.

Dan blinked, then nodded. Barnabas glanced to his left to see Phineas watching him too. Three against one.

Barnabas folded down the fingers of one hand, counting down silently. On zero, they ran, closing the paces between them and Furneval in the second it took him to raise his gun and fire.

Not at Sophie, who had ducked under his arm and raced away, but at the closest of the three men. Dan howled in pain but kept running, diving straight into Furneval's midsection and flattening him to the dock. Freddie rushed past Barnabas and Phineas to kick the gun from Furneval's hand, stumbling as the floor pitched.

She ran to retrieve the weapon while the brothers dog-piled onto Dan and Furneval. Punches flew, bodies flailed, and eventually they wrestled Furneval into something like submission. Dan rolled away, his arms falling limp at his sides. His shirt and jacket were blood-soaked, but black powder marked the wound near his left shoulder.

“No!” Sophie shouted, running to his side. “Daniel, no!”

“Rollo Furneval,” Phineas said, jerking Furneval to his feet and neatly twisting one of the man's arms behind his back to hold him. “I hereby arrest you in the name of—”

“Dear God in heaven!” Furneval shouted, eyes widening as he looked toward the water. “Run.
Run!
”

“I'm not falling for that one,” Phineas snorted, jerking on the pinned arm. “Oldest trick in the—oh,
hell
.”

It might have been hell, at that. A watery hell, a maelstrom leading to the abyss, with man-thick tentacles rising from Satan's pit to drag sinners down to their doom.

The thing was pulsing in that same pattern . . . no, more than one thing, Barnabas realized with growing terror. He counted at least two heads and far more than the eight tentacles and two additional “arms” of one creature. And the appendages were busy, some of them, exploring out of the water.

A groaning metallic screech sounded from one side of the dock, and one of the tentacles raised something high in the air. In the dim light, Barnabas only made out a hazy rectangle, a darker frame with some translucent material in the center.

Water roiled over the edge of the boards, the product of either the flailing creatures or the still-trembling earth.

“He's right, we need to get out!” Freddie shouted. But another seismic jolt sent them reeling, and a pile of crates, stacked too high and precariously by Furneval's careless crew, chose that moment to topple. The top crate knocked the next row over as it tumbled down, the start of an oversized domino effect that left the warehouse floor between the group and the doors a nearly impassable landscape of upended containers. Some of the crates split as they fell, adding jagged splinters and stakes to the hazardous mix, as well as mounds of packets wrapped in burlap and oilcloth.

Sophie and Phineas pulled Dan clear of the danger zone, and then they all watched in horror as one of the larger tentacles, seeking restlessly along the dock, came within a few feet of their position. In desperation, Sophie seized one of the dark, greasy-looking bundles, which was at least as big as a small loaf and looked more solid in her hand. Barnabas thought she would fling it at the creature's limb like a projectile, but instead the clever woman bowled the packet into the path of the tentacle's next questing undulation.

The moment the cuttlefish's sensitive suckers contacted the thing, it wrapped its tentacle around it like a python and snatched it away . . . straight into the ready, gaping maw at the base of its appendages.

“My product!” Furneval bellowed, and sprang toward the dock's edge, ignoring the revolver Freddie still had aimed at him.

“Stop right there or I will shoot you, sir,” she shouted at him. He slid to a halt on the slick, shaking boards, skidding around to face her. “And before you think to yourself, ‘She's a girl, she doesn't have the nerve,' I feel I must tell you I look on that man you injured as a brother. Furthermore I have no intention of shooting to kill, and I shall feel no hesitation or guilt whatsoever about shooting to maim.” She shifted her aim from his head to his leg. At point-blank range, there was no way to miss. Barnabas wanted to applaud.

It happened so quickly they had no time to react. Another massive tentacle, fast as a striking snake, encircled Furneval's waist and pulled him off his feet, dragging him inexorably over the edge. He grabbed at something, though, before the beast could pull him under. A mesh container of some sort, perhaps for shellfish or the like, had been fastened to the dockside and suspended in the water. Though being dragged over it must have cost him more injuries, Barnabas thought the odd cage might save the smuggler's life. While he hung over its lip, head and shoulders barely out of the churning water, Barnabas and Phineas had time to react, lunging toward him to help him struggle free of the monster's death grip.

Freddie had time to regroup as well. Furneval saw her pointing the revolver at him and screamed, but she shot true—straight into the meat of the tentacle, severing it from the creature.

“Good shot, sweetheart!” Barnabas shouted, grinning at her astonished expression. He and Phineas reached for Furneval's grateful outstretched hand when a change in the lighting registered with him. Instead of their steady blinking, the cephalopods had suddenly begun to shimmer in rippling waves along their length, mesmerizing.

All of them, including the two-foot-long specimen in the cage. Before they could reach Furneval, the small creature launched itself straight into his face, wrapping its tentacles around his head. His body twitched violently for a few seconds, then went limp, arms losing their hold on the cage. He sank back, the baby cuttlefish clinging to his face, and the swirling water covered him as though he'd never been there.

Barnabas registered, through his horror, the danger they were all in. More giant cuttlefish had risen to take the place of the injured beast and, he realized, the one that had swallowed the bundle of opium.

Freddie and Sophie, however, had already come up with a solution. They threw brick after brick of opium toward each tentacle as it approached their position, occupying and disabling the beasts, while Barnabas and Phineas cleared a navigable path through the wreckage of the warehouse.

“At least the earthquake has stopped,” Freddie pointed out when he and his brother returned to show them all the way out.

“Small blessings.”

Not nearly enough to balance out the greater misfortunes. Sophie had left the opium-tossing to Freddie and returned to Dan's side. Weeping, she pressed a fold of Dan's jacket against the hole in his chest in a vain effort to staunch the blood. The cloth was long since saturated, and Barnabas didn't have the heart to tell her that the hole in Dan's back, where the bullet had left his body, was thrice the size. Barnabas had glimpsed it in the melee and been momentarily astonished at the man's ability to keep fighting, before his attention was drawn to more pressing matters.

But even Dan's size and strength were no match for a bullet in the chest. Not the heart, perhaps, or he'd never have lasted as long as he had. But certainly his lung had been hit. Air bubbled ominously from the hole when Sophie took her blood-drenched hands away.

“Don't die. Please don't, Dan. I'm not worth this.”

Phineas knelt beside her. “You are, but I know that hardly helps. I think it's time to say your good-byes.” He put a comforting arm around her shoulders, but she shoved him away angrily.

“Don't touch me! You did this. If it weren't for you being such a juvenile fool in the first place, running off to cavort in opium dens and abandoning your post and—”

“But I . . . I was assigned to—”

“Daniel would never have been here, and this never would have happened.”

Freddie flung another several thousand pounds sterling worth of opium into the water, but the cuttlefish seemed to have retreated once the quake stopped, either the seismic easing or the consumption of raw opium soothing their agitation. The small one too might have been sending a distress signal. Once it was free, perhaps the creatures saw no reason to stay.

When the water remained still for a few moments after the last packet had splashed down, she joined the group huddled around Daniel, taking one of his oversized hands into her two smaller ones and pressing it to her cheek.

Dan smiled in her direction, his strength waning fast but the shock evidently numbing him to some of the pain.

“Can't . . . feel . . .” he attempted, but lacked the wind to finish the thought.

“It was my fault,” Freddie told him, leaning close to make sure he could hear. “You did the right thing, Dan; you were absolutely right to be worried. If I'd stayed where I ought to, this wouldn't have happened. You're a good man, and I'll make sure your mother knows. I'll see to it she knows you were a hero.”

He blinked at her, then turned his head just far enough to see Sophie. He bestowed a final smile, sweet and boyish, on her.

“Lady . . .”

He used his last breath on the word. Barnabas didn't realize how loud his wet, sucking gasps had grown until they stopped, leaving only the plaintive sound of sobbing behind.

Kneeling by Freddie, Barnabas put his arm around her and pressed a kiss to her temple. She'd lost the cap at some point in her adventures that evening, and her ember-bright hair fell loose, tickling his nose.

“I love you,” he whispered in the vicinity of her ear. “I love you.”

She nodded, and replied in a voice choked by grief. “Yes. I love you too. Take me home, Barnabas.”

H
E DID TAKE
her home, though not as soon as Freddie would have liked. First they had to return to her father's home and face what Freddie was sure would be a storm of wrath like she'd never known.

Instead, when they trudged through the front door, heartsick and weary, Freddie was nearly bowled over by her mother.

In a stream of nearly incoherent French, Maman excoriated her father, wailing her chagrin over leaving Freddie alone and subject to the fickle lunacies of the English, and then several items about the state of her soul and the lackluster tone of her complexion that Freddie allowed herself to gloss over. She calmed her mother as patiently as she could, assuring her that she was safe, that England was hardly to blame for the state of her soul or skin and that they ought to be speaking English in deference to the others. Sophie spoke beautiful French, of course, but she had no idea if the Smith-Grenvilles knew a word of it.

Then she attempted to make introductions, but as soon as she spoke Barnabas's name, her mother went off again.

Halfway through the fresh spate of outrage, her father stepped into the front hall, his aristocratic face lined with sorrow and relief.

“Oh, thank God, you're alive. Is that—the blood, is it yours? I'll send for the surgeon.”

“Not mine,” she hastened to assure him. “None of ours. It's . . . it was Daniel Pinkerton. He saved Sophie. Saved all of us, I suppose.” But he was, very obviously, no longer among their numbers.

Murcheson turned white and swayed on his feet, grasping for the banister post to help support himself. His wife rushed to his other side, though whether to offer or receive comfort it wasn't clear.

“His mother. What will I say, how can I . . . I only wanted to keep you safe, Freddie. And keep the damn station open, though now that seems so unimportant.”

“It's strangely beautiful,” her mother said. “I had wondered all these years what the appeal could be. I'm glad I saw at last, even once.”

“I sent for your mother as soon as I realized you were gone from your room. She'd just made it through the tunnel and up the lift on this side when the quake hit. In the nick of time.”

“It's an uneasy place to be during an earthquake,” Freddie agreed.

“How would you—never mind, it's better if I don't know. The station is gone, at any rate. Oh, it's still there, but we'll never get the funding to repair the damage it took during this big quake. And for all we knew it had to be coming, for all our scheming and secrecy, we weren't able to do much to prevent the damage. That failing will only increase the pressure to scrap Atlantis and the Glass Octopus.”

“Even if the station and the submersible fleet had been instrumental in breaking up one of the largest illegal opium operations in the world?” Phineas stepped forward, nodding pleasantly at Mrs. Murcheson, then more soberly at her husband.

“Good God! Is that—but it can't be! You should have died from opium abuse long ago.”

She thought that disingenuous at best and started to protest, but Phineas ignored her father's unconvincing interjection and continued.

“I can tell you everything, or rather Barnabas and I can. All the details you need to make the Agency out as the hero in all this. The two of us, along with the ladies. You'll get the credit, and we'll even return your submersible unharmed. Well, we'd have done that anyway. But the information won't be free, sir. I suspect you can guess what our various prices might be.”

Freddie's heart thumped uncomfortably in her chest as her father looked from one of them to the other, assessing their collective and individual determination. They would never be sterner of heart than they were at this moment, though, with Dan's blood still staining their clothes and hands and his dying breath still fresh in their memories.

As if he sensed Murcheson might need convincing, Phineas began unwrapping the dark, dripping package he had carried with him from the warehouse. He let the contents roll from the cloth as it unfurled. The unsavory object landed with a wet smack on the polished marble floor, where it lay exuding the curiously enticing smell of very fresh salt fish.

“This was what killed your smuggler and his men. It's a fascinating story, and if any of these things survived, the story may be far from over. Do you want to hear the first part?”

Her father nudged the tentacle with his toe. Though the section was only the yard or so that had been wrapped around Furneval's body, then snagged against the water cage and been stuck there as the small squid attacked him, it was horrifying enough and hinted at the scale of the creature it had come from. Freddie's mother eyed it with a different kind of speculation. She adored seafood.

“Yes, Lieutenant Smith-Grenville. You have my attention.”

 • • • 

F
REDDIE HAD COUNTED
her bath upon her last return home as the best in her life, despite the aftermath. This one was better, however. She didn't know if she could ever soak long enough to wash the feel of Dan's blood from herself, but she could enjoy the effort. She felt she'd more than earned a nice, hot, rose-scented bout of indulgence in one of Sophie's large, comfortable tubs with the hot water piped in.

She had declined to stay at her family home once the long debriefing ended, and returned with Sophie and the Smith-Grenvilles to Wallingford House to spend the night, propriety be damned. Her father had explained, he had cajoled and wheedled and nearly returned to threats before he remembered how ineffective that tactic had proven to be. What he hadn't done was the one thing that might have persuaded her to stay. He hadn't apologized.

Her mother knew, but to her credit, she didn't tip him off. When Freddie went to her room to gather a few things, her mother went with her.

“He won't say it, you know. He never does. And in this case I believe he doesn't regret what he did, only that you escaped. Stupid, to imagine you were still too frightened to attempt the drainpipe. He should have known. He thinks of you as a child yet, because you've never been away from him.”

“How do you stand him?” She wasn't really attending to the answer, focused as she was on finding her hairbrush and fresh drawers and the like. Her mother took her time answering, though, giving the question more thought than Freddie had put into asking it.

“I still love him,” she said at last. “I don't particularly want to, but I do. And he loves me, which I am vain enough to find endearing. He pursues what he does with passion and conviction, and if he too often believes the ends justify the means, well, at least it doesn't often affect me directly. But I always know. Sometimes I know more than I like, and then I choose to leave him for a time until I feel less involved with his other passions. It also gives him time to miss me.”

“That's why you stayed in France?”

“I really do despise England,” her mother reminded her. “You've grown very English yourself. And your young man, he's the image of the young British gentleman. But he is beautiful enough, I suppose. The grandchildren will be attractive.”

She didn't feel especially English at the moment. In fact, she felt that the entire Commonwealth could go straight to the Devil, beginning with all of Whitehall and the entire senior command staff of the Royal Navy. Perhaps her father too, since he had left off his attempts to convince her and gone straight back to Whitehall to try to convince those same damnable people that he deserved to get his precious station back. She wondered if anything would change if he succeeded, if he would study and learn to work with the squid, or destroy them as an inconvenience? Either way, she was done trying to intervene there.

“I think you're getting ahead of yourself, Maman. Lord Smith-Grenville is a dear friend and I confess I'm fond of him. But he'll be returning to the Dominions with his brother soon, I expect. I have things to do here. There can't be any future in it.”

Her mother just smiled and helped her pack, but Freddie had cause to recall her words later, when Sophie came knocking on the bathroom door.

“Freddie? It's me. May I come in for a moment?”

“Of course. It isn't locked.”

Her friend entered the room looking fresh and dewy, clearly fresh from her own bath, wrapped in layers of frilled white linen. Her dark hair fell over her shoulder in a long plait, giving an impression of youthful innocence that Freddie hadn't seen in many years.

“I wouldn't have interrupted, but I'm too tired to stay up much longer and I wanted to talk before we went to bed.”

“Talk away. I'm nearly done anyway. I'm knackered too.”

Sophie frowned ever so slightly at the common turn of phrase, then shrugged it off. “I meant it when I invited you to stay. I wanted you to know that. And I suppose you still may for a time. I can keep a staff here in London, and I've no plans to sell the house.”

“But?” Freddie urged with a sinking feeling. Not more change. Anything but more change.

“But . . . when the Smith-Grenvilles leave for New York, I'm going with them. I've decided. There's nothing for me here anymore, your own dear self excepted, and listening to them talk about the Dominions has made me long to see for myself. And to really do something useful. They've spoken of returning to California to help the remaining workers from Orm's ranch find their families or perhaps find new homes. I could help, I could . . . start again. In a new place, as a new person.”

Freddie rather liked the person Sophie was already, but she knew what her friend meant.

“That does sound like heaven.”

“Do you really think so? Oh, I hoped you would. Because Freddie—oh, I know I should let Barnabas be the one to say it, because I know he wants to, but I can't help it. I'm selfish and I'm asking you for myself, because I worry you'll say no to him just to be contrary. Will you come with us? Please say you will!”

 • • • 

B
ARNABAS FOUND HER
the next day in Sophie's coach yard, packing her tools from the pony trap carefully into a small trunk. She was wearing a blue and white striped morning gown to do this, and the juxtaposition of the dainty dress and the heavy tools gladdened his heart for reasons he was at a loss to name.

“I missed you at breakfast.” He tried not to pout as he said it but thought he was probably not too successful.

“I was still asleep.”

“Sophie said she told you.”

“I was glad she did. Glad it wasn't you who asked, I mean.” She fitted a set of long pliers next to a spool of copper wire, jiggling the trunk's contents to settle them.

Barnabas's world shifted under his feet, for a moment more terrifying than any earthquake. “Well, I . . . don't know what to say, then.”

Freddie looked up over her shoulder at him, then chuckled as she rose from where she'd been kneeling over the tools. “Silly.”

“Am I?” He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or insulted, but a wind of hope blew over his heated, frazzled mind.

“Suppose you had asked me. It would have been tantamount to a proposal, wouldn't it? I would have been following you to your home, or off to California. Going for you as much as for myself.”

“That would have been bad?”

“No. But it wouldn't have been the same decision to make. This way is better. I'm going on an adventure with a friend. With friends. It could lead to anything, but at least I would start off on the right foot.”

He gazed at the trunk, pretending an interest in the tools so he wouldn't have to meet her eyes. “You . . . you are going, though? You told her yes?”

Freddie laid a hand on his arm, probably smudging his coat with tool grease. He didn't care.

“Silly,” she said again, squeezing gently. “Of course I'm going. Don't they need tinkers in the Dominions as well as they do here?”

“The guild has too much power there. At least in New York. You'd have to become a makesmith to work as one there. I don't know about California.”

“Barnabas, are you sulking?”

He wasn't. Well, maybe a little. “If I had asked, would you have said yes?”

“Had you planned to ask?”

“Yes.” As soon as he'd mustered sufficient nerve.

“Then I probably would have said yes.”

She sounded cagey, and that emboldened him to slip his arm around her waist and pull her closer. “Probably?”

After a moment of musing, she replied, “Most likely.”

He caught her saucy mouth under his, savoring her taste and the freedom of kissing her where anyone might see them.

When he finally let her go, her eyes were closed, and a dreamy smile curved her kiss-reddened lips. “All right. I almost certainly would have said yes. Especially if you'd phrased the offer that eloquently.” Opening her eyes, she lifted on her toes and awarded him another brief kiss before returning to her task. “But I'm still glad Sophie asked first.”