Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles (4 page)

This was why I chose to remain
un
seen.

Unfortunately for us, half past one of the clock still left a number of folk about. Many traveled by gondola—no proper gentleman would be caught strolling across the arched bridges connecting each district to the next, and certainly no miss of any distinction—but many of the aether-driven devices had windows, or remained open despite the chill.

It would not do for any gentleman to escort a lady in a closed gondola box, unless they were already wed.

Dirty, damp, coal-smudged and dressed as a man as I was, I did not fit in with the standards above the drift.

“How do we get home?” Zylphia asked me, her voice low. Like myself, she had stripped off her goggles before stepping foot on the ferry. Captain Abercott had a keen eye for business. Which translated to a tendency toward blackmail, when he thought he could get away with it.

I paid him well enough to keep his trap closed, but not so well that greed could overtake what few good senses he retained through drink.

Now, without protectives or respirator, I surveyed London proper with a critical eye.

Decades ago, the Queen’s Parliament finally addressed ongoing complaints from the peerage forced to endure the oily smoke and thick fog surrounding the factory districts. Every year, the fog grew in mass, pushing its borders relentlessly. Her Majesty retained, among various other unique habits, a decided view on etiquette and propriety. The end came with a simple declaration:
Rise above it.

This sparked one of the greatest auctions the civilized world has ever seen, culminating in the efforts of a minor German baron and his son. Baron Irwin Von Ronne went well and truly mad before the first stilts could be completed, but his gifted son completed the plans and construction rather more quickly than expected. The end result was the cleaving of London’s well-to-do from its poor, its immigrants and those who couldn’t maintain appearances. The accordion girders now held London proper high above the fog bank, leaving canals between districts spanned by walking bridges.

Hackneys had been replaced by gondolas, but much like the drivers below the drift, gondoliers were known to be just as chatty as any fishwife. Zylphia’s question wasn’t simply an inquiry as to the means of getting home.

She meant how to do so without speculation.

I have been a collector since I was fifteen years of age. I knew London, above and below, as well as I knew my own name. “Stay close,” I told her, and set off across the nearest bridge.

This near the docks, we’d like as not get mistaken for laborers. Once we stepped into some of the more posh districts, we’d keep to the back streets and servants’ footpaths.

I was very careful. The servants’ routes weren’t as keenly lit—the better to retain focus on the more attractive byways—and there were few who took to the streets this late. By Society’s standards, the evening was well under way. Those who labored would be abed, and those with less
kind
motives would not wait about so far away from the fog that protected them.

A faint blue glow lit the canals, visible as far as the eye could see. It is entirely possible to note the most popular soirees simply by the glow cast off by the aether engines affixed to each gondola. Where the blue sheen was brightest, the more gathered.

My own district tended toward a constant shine, but it did not come from the peerage’s gondolas these days.

Within half of the hour, we made it to the safety of my Cheyne Walk home. Set in the bohemian—and rather more unfashionable—district of Chelsea, flanked on both sides by neighbors with a penchant for enormous hedgerows, my home is an elegant thing large enough to hold myself, my chaperone, a maid, butler, housekeeper and one houseboy.

And, upon the rarest of occasions, one demon in human flesh.

Mr. Oliver Ashmore, my mysterious guardian and the executor of my father’s estate, spent most of his time abroad. I had only seen him once in my five years as his ward, caught in the throes of one of the worst night terror episodes in memory, and the event had left me terrified of him. Logically, my scientist’s mind knew him to be just a man—a seasoned traveler, wealthy enough by Society’s standards, but apparently less keen than I to indulge the peerage with his company. I did not know his profession, or if he even had one.

I did know that many of the house’s foreign furnishings were in part due to him. He shared the same taste for exotic decor as my father and mother before him. This, at least, was not a trait I disliked.

I simply disliked
him
.

“There are lights in the parlor,” Zylphia whispered behind me. We crept along Lord Pennington’s carefully manicured hedges, keeping to the shadows as much as we could. I had no fear of discovery from my neighbors. Lord Pennington’s mother-in-law, a delightfully wicked woman with a penchant for painting the most extraordinary nudes upon her balcony, kept early hours and would be long abed.

The house on the other side was empty for the rest of the year, to be aired out once more come the next Season.

It made keeping out of sight quite simple—child’s play, by this point—and we crossed the small yard easily. Yet what should have been the end of it turned into something much less fortuitous.

I rubbed at my throbbing shoulder, frowning deeply. “Where is the ladder?”

Zylphia made a small inquisitive sound behind me. A lilting note given form with a baffled “Whatever do you mean? I left it out as— Oh, no.” That lilt soured.

I knew why. Once, some years ago, I’d smuggled a ladder made of rope into my bedchamber for nights just as this. It allowed me to retire for the night and leave without my staff being the wiser.

It did not occur to me—and perhaps it should have—that I would have to be even more clever, now that my secret had been unfortunately tipped. Someone had been inside my boudoir. Taken the ladder in. Left me stranded without.

I suspected I knew just who.

“Fanny,” I muttered dourly.

As if on cue, light seamed around the kitchen entrance. The delicately painted door creaked open.

Bother.

I did not attempt to do anything more than straighten from my criminally inspired repose within the shadows. The jig was decidedly up.

The silhouette framed in the dim light cast by candle was poker straight, unyielding as the ramrods my butler used to clean his unique collection of pistols. The small, pointed chin and elegantly coiffed hair caught in the flicker were pale, but there was no mistaking the edged gleam in eyes I knew were pale as the morning sky and, at the moment, just as cold.

“Inside,” came the clipped order, delivered in tones that offered me no chance to explain.

Not that I needed to.

My chaperone, the widow Frances Fortescue, had once been my governess. She’d been with me since my arrival, had seen me at my best and my worst—more often, my worst. She’d stayed on when nannies had fled, and taken me into her own hands when all others swore I’d end up an unfortunate victim of Satan himself.

But until the events of early September, she had never known about my propensity for collector’s business, or my routine outings below. Not until the day I’d first run afoul of the alchemical serum Abraham St. Croix had concocted, and lost my mind for a day and night.

I had unwittingly tipped my hand—my father’s meddling tipped my hand—and now my chaperone knew what she’d never even had reason to suspect before. Of the many consequences my father’s desperate acts of alchemy and betrayal had left me to shoulder, Fanny’s knowledge was one of those I regretted most. Now, every foray below had to be carefully timed, and I never would know if she’d check upon me during the night when I should be abed.

She had not quite come to terms with my choice of entertainments, as it were. This without the accompanying knowledge of my steady laudanum intake; I shuddered to think what she would do if that truth came to light.

I hastened to the door, well aware of the lampblack coating my cheeks and the trousers outlining my legs in stark relief. “Fanny, I—”

Her thin lips tightened, drawing the fragile, lined skin taut over her cheekbones. “I refuse to hear it,” she said, cutting my words off in icy reproach. The door closed softly behind us—my proper chaperone was not a woman to give in to fits of violent pique by slamming doors, but she may as well have. I heard the gentle
thud
, felt it all the way to my bones. “Get yourself upstairs and bathed immediately.”

I could not argue with such cold tones. Even the glint in her candlelit eyes seemed remote. “Yes, Fanny.”

Unappeased by my capitulation, she glared at my maid. “You, girl. Prepare a bath. We will converse about your role in this mischief tomorrow.”

I winced at Zylphia’s meek “Yes, madam.” In trouble again, and on my behalf.

I turned, caught my maid’s hand and tucked her behind me. Unlike my diminutive stature, Zylphia had the length of leg and torso to place her nearly a head’s height above me. Fanny was also a tall woman, a creature of fashionable length, though as an aged widow she no longer felt the sting of fashion’s consequence.

Still, I stood between them, frowning at my chaperone. “Zylphia is not to blame, Fanny.”

“She is a girl of her own mind,” Fanny told me, neatly cutting through my argument with a well-placed observation. The same type I have been known to make just to spite her. “She will be responsible for her own actions.”

“You’ll not lay a finger on her,” I warned, a fit of anger curling in my chest.

Fanny stared at me over the candle’s dancing flame. The light was kinder to her aged features, smoothing lines I knew marred her cheeks. Deep lines had settled into the corners of her eyes, bracketed her mouth, and it startled me to see them.

Had they been there forever? Or was I only recently all too aware of my dear chaperone’s aging demeanor?

She sighed softly, the sound keener even than her anger and thrust straight to my heart. “Go on with you, Cherry.”

I fled. The weight of Fanny’s disapproval settled hard upon my shoulders.

I could not afford the laudanum to ease it.

Chapter Three

“T
he
London Times
is growing lazy,” I observed the next day at the breakfast table. I spoke to myself, and to the pages of the newspaper I held in front of me.

There was no need to pretend otherwise. Fanny had not yet forgiven me my evening’s excursion and was not currently speaking to me. Guilt stung my conscience. It found a ready home in the dark hole already carved into my chest.

I’d slept eventually, finally giving in to the night’s disquiet by taking a small amount of the dwindling laudanum that was all I had stocked, but I did not sleep well. Guilt and anger and frustration conspired to wend through my dreams, leaving me feeling as if I’d spent all of my sleeping hours running through vista after vista. Chasing something.

Chasing someone.

I did not wake refreshed, and this was a startling habit seeded sometime in early September. I once slept the sleep of the dead.

I had not felt the same since my father’s conspiracy unfolded beneath my feet.

Zylphia had been reassuring as she dressed me in a gown of peach poplin trimmed in chocolate. The color flattered my hair, turned my cheeks pink. A fine choice.

I felt like summer when all I wanted was to hide away in my bedroom until nightfall.

Nevertheless, I knew Fanny would be hard-pressed to find fault with my appearance. Especially since the fitted jacket helped conceal the mild swelling at my shoulder. The bruising there came in spectacular colors. I would have to be ginger with myself for a time.

The
Times
headlines said nothing of murder; a far cry from the broadsheets printed earlier this month. I wasted no effort on the articles within—I could peruse them at my leisure another time—and turned instead to the Society columns.

The rhythmic and unique cadence of my butler’s approach served to ease the heavy weight of silence from the table.
Step-thunk, step-thunk.

I smiled cheerfully at the man who, with his wife, had run my home with an iron-fisted rule marred only by the subtle indulgences of a childless couple. Booth was a broad-shouldered man, a fine figure impeccably garbed at all times. Unlike most men sixty years at least, he sported a full head of thick, leonine white hair, impressively groomed white sideburns, and a rather surprising collection of firearms from his infantry days in Her Majesty’s service.

Not even the ornate brass crutch affixed to his right knee marred the appearance of irreproachable civility. Upon meeting the man who was to run my new house, I had very seriously informed him that he struck me as fine a figure as any gentleman pirate.

He had bowed most seriously, thanked me in his deep, elegantly educated voice, and won my heart forever.

“Tea, miss,” he offered, setting a tray before me. On it, I knew there would be toast and boiled eggs, sausages cooked fresh by Mrs. Booth, and jam. I peeked around the papers.

Strawberry. My favorite, and well my housekeeper and cook knew it.

“Thank you,” I said, the very model of propriety, just as Fanny offered a regal nod and echo of the same.

Booth withdrew, leaving me and my silent companion to regard one another across the breakfast table.

Fanny considered my interest in the papers a waste of time, and a gentleman’s domain, at that. I considered that idea worthless as a rule. I believed in knowing what went on in the world.

But it was not worth arguing anymore, and Fanny had stopped commenting. In turn, I stopped needling, and offered her news from the pages she preferred. I knew the key to Fanny’s conversation.

I smiled and dropped my gaze to the paper once more.

The Society columns exasperated me.

Up until a few meager weeks ago, I had happily ignored its existence. Unfortunately for me, this was not to last. While I trusted my staff to keep my secrets, I had no control over anyone else and could not risk the chance of my name serving as grist for the gossip mill. Too many strange things happened last month, too many indications that at least one fiend knew my identity.

I needed to stay aware of the rumors, and do my best to remain out of them.

Unfortunately, this was easier planned than carried out.

For now, I could speak a language Fanny knew well. “Mrs. Bingham’s eldest daughter is to be wed,” I said aloud, reaching around the paper for my toast.

Fanny’s reply came oh-so-politely. “Is that so?”

“A Christmas wedding, it seems. I imagine there’ll be snow, don’t you?” I kept my tone light and sweet, just the way she had so often demanded of me. A lady was to converse on things that would not strain the mind. Needlework, music, fashion, soirees and marriages; social topics salient to a lady’s place in Society.

Bugger that for a lark.

But for this moment, I allowed it. I so wanted to mend this breach between us, and I knew that simply explaining myself would never do. I could not tell my chaperone, who worried for my well-being since I was thirteen years of age, that I continued to travel below the drift because I owed a dangerous criminal enterprise a debt.

Or because the stipend my guardian allotted was not hefty enough to carry the price of the opium I purchased alone.

“Lovely,” Fanny said from behind the mask of my paper. “Lord Datchery is a fine match for the family. A second son, already secure. She could have not done better for herself.”

So the columns assured me. I skimmed them as quickly as I glanced over the rest, seeking only references to anything that might stand out to me. Or as me.

I did not like Society’s speculation as a rule. I have no love for frippery and balls, either, but my role as well-to-do heiress sometimes demanded my tolerance.

I attended when I had no other choice, or to make Fanny happy. And when I did, Almira Louise Compton, the Marchioness Northampton, made certain that I knew the value of my company. To wit, less than nothing. I was a boil on the face of Society, a thorn in her side. She has always been a clever cat and holds considerable power among London’s most fashionable peerage.

The evening I met her much vaunted eldest son is the same evening that her family delivered the cut direct—thereby cementing my reputation as worthless.

This kind of terrible blow should have spurned me from every parlor here to the Brick Street Bakers’ territory below the drift. And it did, for a time.

Until the marchioness’s eldest son, Cornelius Kerrigan Compton, returned me to Society’s good graces—and the gossip pages—with an interest in my company that waned as mysteriously as it waxed.

I sometimes wonder if Earl Compton had somehow learned of my evening activities. But surely, he was a man more likely to confront me himself over it.

Whatever the case, he left London within a fortnight, and I stopped receiving the invites to this ball or that soiree. Much to my relief, of course, but also to my chaperone’s dismay.

Since the earl’s departure, it seemed as if any temperance once displayed by the marchioness faded. She turned back to her old tricks, and with a vengeance. She and her salon of like-minded bats—called the Ladies of Admirable Mores and Behavior—had once more taken to slandering me in their nasty little columns. Oh so subtly, of course.

The ladies’ sermons were cleverly crafted around the expected behaviors of the Society female, artfully arranged in such language that could be mistaken for objective encouragement to the girls I was positive lapped up every edifying word. Yet buried within these lectures, I often found a reference to a faux pas I made, or a bit of strained conversation made under duress at a function where our paths had crossed.

Had it been anyone but a marchioness at the head of that salon, I would have considered the words a threat. Perhaps they were; or could be, if I gave a toss for her much-vaunted company. I did not.

Yet in her language, I suspected that she offered a none-too-veiled suggestion that I—and girls like myself, of which I knew none—was a hairsbreadth away from joining the unfortunate slatterns plying their trade below the drift.

She had said as much before, and to my face. I expected nothing less of her column.

Such remarks did not concern me overly much. To my regret, I knew they hurt Fanny. Not only on my behalf, but her standing among the matriarchs and chaperones in her own social set suffered when she could not go out on invite.

For this reason, I said nothing about LAMB’s latest snide suppositions, folding the paper closed. There were days—many days—when I fantasized about the many and varied creative analogies I could make about that den of sheep and their viper-tongued mistress.

Today, I set aside the irritation and the paper that carried it, and turned to my breakfast instead. “It seems all has gone quiet,” I said before filling my mouth with toast and sausage.

Fanny, who ate much more delicately than I, sipped at her tea. It gave her the freedom to talk, though I often thought this a rather unfortunate side effect rather than the purpose. “The bulk of the Season is done. Many have retired to their estates. It shall remain quiet, as is usual for the winter.”

“A breath of fresh air, then.” Or as near as one could achieve in London proper. Murders notwithstanding.

Fanny, lovely in deep purple with her gray hair pulled into a sleek chignon, studied me from across the table. Her eyes were a pretty shade of blue, as expressive as they were pale, and I had many fond memories of the way they crinkled when she slipped a rare laugh or a warm smile.

But her features tended toward stern, and her posture was as unforgiving as the many hours she’d spent forcing mine.

I owed this woman much; yet I could not stop myself from doing what I did best. I was a collector. I took to the streets for coin and adventure, it’s simply what I
did
.

Because the alternative—find a husband, marry—robbed me of breath. Of freedom.

For now, I held my tongue and my temper, and said innocently, “What is on our agenda, Fanny?”

“Luncheon with Lady Rutledge,” she said. “I would like you to wear the bronze silk.”

I wrinkled my nose. The three-piece walking gown was among my loveliest, admittedly. The color turned my hair into an autumnal sunset, and flattered my fashionably pale skin. That she wanted me to be seen in it spoke of machinations. “Who is attending?”

“Don’t make faces, Cherry.” I smoothed my features by rote, though it didn’t do anything to soften Fanny’s stern regard. “As we are talking of Lady Rutledge, I assume it shall be an eclectic collection of characters.”

I brightened.

“Do not look so pleased,” she added dryly. “I’m not entirely convinced you should be attending such functions.”

“Lady Rutledge is—”

My chaperone was nobody’s fool. “A pillar of the scientific community, yes, I’m aware. You’ve said as much time and again.” She reached for her teacup once more, taking a delicate sip.

The act gave me just enough time to mutter, “Well, she is.”

“Don’t mumble.” Fanny laid her napkin upon the table by her half-emptied plate. “Whatever her scientific accomplishments, the fact remains that she is the last ally you have in this world, and she could be a powerful one.”

“Teddy—”

“
Mr. Helmsley
remains, to my great dismay, a fine friend, but he is not intent on offering for your hand,” she cut in smoothly, her shoulders straight as a board. She lifted a finger at me, a gentle admonishment. “Nor does he have the wherewithal to protect you from your own nature. You are bored. There can be no other explanation for why you continue to gallivant—” She hesitated, then dropped her voice several octaves. “
Below.
A family of your own, social engagements, these things will occupy you.”

Not in the slightest.

I stared at the food left on my plate—much less than left on Fanny’s—and resisted the urge to rub my throbbing shoulder.

“Lady Rutledge will provide you the means,” Fanny told me, as sure in her knowledge of the workings of these strange politics as I was in the street gangs that ran below the drift. “However, as the Season is all but finished, there are no other invites to busy yourself with. There are no balls, no soirees.”

Just as I liked it. Yet I understood Fanny’s concern. I sighed, pushing the last of my eggs about my plate with a delicate silver fork. “I am sorry.”

“You are not.”

I refrained from smiling, even if there was a wry note to her rebuttal. “What would you have me do? The marchioness is intent on keeping me from my own ambition. This appears to mean all of Society.” Save for Lady Rutledge, who seemed quite keen on thumbing her nose at the marchioness.

“If only the earl hadn’t left.” Fanny sighed.

“Better that he had,” I returned, raising my chin as Fanny’s eyes narrowed. “I did not fancy him in the slightest.” A lie.

A part of me fancied him. The inner thoughts of a girl flattered by the attentions of an earl. Even I, for all my bluster, was not immune to charm.

“You speak of love, Cherry.” There was steel in her voice. Strong as the girders that held the city high. “You are nearing one and twenty years of age, this is an ideal time for marriage.”