Heart of Brass (5 page)

“Excellent. We’re off!” She released the break, adjusted the accelerator lever and wrapped gloved fingers around the steering wheel. The carriage jerked into motion, eliciting a small squeak from Hannah and a burst of laughter from Arden.

In the country, or late at night when city streets weren’t so terribly congested, she would drive fast—the carriage could reach speeds in the vicinity of 35–40 miles per hour. That wasn’t possible now, not with the streets thick with carriages and horses. Once they left Mayfair it would be even worse, with omnibuses, bicycles and pedestrians added to the throng.

The new elevated train system would help with congestion and with the unfortunate mess that was the subterranean train system. Who would want to chug through the foul-smelling darkness of belowground when you could zip about above it all? It would be like riding a low-flying dirigible through the city.

Personal flyers—that’s what the people of England needed. That would truly be exhilarating. Imagine buzzing around town on an ornothopter! Perhaps she would work on a design for such a contraption.

On the way to Madame Cherie’s Oxford Street location, they passed support structures for the elevated rail system. Arden turned her head to glance at Hannah. “Extraordinary, aren’t they?” The base was big enough for two carriages to drive through side by side, and at least four stories high. There would be hundreds of these bases all over the city, each supporting a large section of track.

“Yes,” her friend agreed, not looking. Her knuckles were white on her bonnet ribbons and the side of the vehicle, hanging on to both as though her life depended upon it. “A tad fast for my liking, however.”

Arden smiled and turned her attention back to the street, turning the wheel to avoid a dog that ran toward them barking like mad, tail wagging. Hannah gasped beside her.

By the time they reached the pretty little storefront of Madame Cherie’s
Maison de Couture
, Hannah was positively stiff and Arden was having difficulty hiding her annoyance behind amusement. Honestly, did her friend have to be so distrusting as to think she would allow her to come to any harm?

But Hannah had been raised in a sheltered environment, much different from Arden’s own upbringing in a house ruled by a man dedicated to creating the impossible and a woman determined to make certain her child was fearless. Hannah had been raised to be a proper lady—afraid of most of the world and its wonders—while Arden had been tossed into that world with all the hope and excitement of a penny dropped into a wishing well. It was no wonder they gravitated toward each other in school—each so fascinating to the other despite their difference in class. Of course, once Arden married Luke, class ceased to matter.

“Come inside, dear,” she cajoled, taking one of Hannah’s stiff hands in her own. “A little shopping will soothe your nerves.”

Hannah obeyed, and by the time they entered the pleasantly warm interior of the shop with its swaths of beautiful fabric and air that smelled faintly of perfume, some of the color had started to return to the dark-haired woman’s cheeks.

They were greeted by Madame herself. “Darlings!” she cried, opening her tattooed arms.

Madame Cherie was a little shorter than Arden, putting her somewhere in the vicinity of about five and a half feet. She had thick black hair streaked with white that she wore piled haphazardly on top of her head, dark eyes thickly lined with black kohl and bright red lips. Her skin was the color of cream with just a touch of coffee, and decorated with so many colored pictures Arden often made a game of trying to sort them all out. Today Madame Cherie showed a shocking amount of skin by wearing the latest fashion amongst the artistic crowd—a short violet leather vest that left her midriff bare and a long, gauzy skirt in black and silver.

“Bonjour, Madame,” Arden replied.
“Comment ça va?”

“
Tres bien, mon amie.”
The woman, who was no more French than Arden was, but far more convincing, fixed her with a direct look. “I had hoped to see you soon, Arden.”

“The
countess
is in need of a new wardrobe,” Hannah interjected coolly, having found her voice.

Madame—whose given name was Zoe Harper—arched a brow as black as a crow’s wing, calling attention to the tiny crosses tattooed along her temple. “
Mais oui
.”

Arden didn’t really fancy being caught in the middle of a female equivalent of a pissing contest, so she patted her friend on the shoulder. “There’s no need to stand on ceremony here, Hannah dearest. Madame and I have known each other too long to be concerned with titles. Why don’t you pick out some fabrics while we discuss designs? Whatever colors you think I should have.”

There wasn’t a woman in the fashionable world who would turn down the chance to dress a friend however she wanted. Hannah’s green eyes brightened considerably before she scurried off to begin hauling bolts of brightly colored silk off the walls.

Both of Zoe’s brows jumped at one particularly garish shade of puce. “I believe you might regret that, my friend.” There was no hiding the amusement in her voice—not that she would have tried.

Arden smiled. “I still reserve the right to veto any choices. Might we step into the back, dearest? I have something I wish to discuss with you.”

The darker woman linked her arm around Arden’s. “And I, you.”

They left the main room of the shop and passed through a curtained doorway into the sewing room where both humans and automatons—or
androïdes
as the French called them—worked on stitching and constructing gowns for the shop’s many clients. The automatons worked much faster and more precisely than the humans, but there were simply some things metal could not do better than human hands.

Zoe’s office was located just off this room, so they could sit in relative privacy, their conversation muffled by the sounds of the workroom. Zoe closed the door all the same.

“I believe my husband has returned,” Arden said, wasting no time in getting to the point of her visit. She stripped off her gloves with perfunctory tugs on each finger. “He snuck into my room and was hovering over me when I awoke. Do you know anything?” Zoe knew almost everything that happened in London, having contacts in all levels of society. She was one of W.O.R’s best intelligence gatherers, though there were some that sought to brand her as a spy-whore—selling secrets to the highest bidder.

Arden knew better. Her friend’s moral code might be a tad ambiguous, but once she gave her loyalty to a person she never wavered. Arden was equally loyal to her in return.

“Your…husband.”

“Yes, only he doesn’t seem to know me. It’s as though he has some kind of amnesia.” Frowning, Arden finished with her gloves and looked up as she slapped them into one palm. Zoe was watching her with an expression that could only be described as a mixture of trepidation and horror. “Good lord, Zoe, what is it?”

Her friend took a bottle of whiskey from a cupboard behind her desk, removed the top and took a deep swallow. Then she passed the bottle to Arden. “It all makes sense now.”

Without being given or demanding an explanation, Arden took the bottle and drank, shuddering as the potent liquor hit her stomach in a most comforting manner. If Zoe hadn’t bothered with glasses it had to be bad.

She took another drink, then gave the whiskey back. “All right, tell me.”

Her friend also tipped the bottle as she leaned against the edge of the desk. Her handsome face wore a ravaged expression, and her dark eyes were bright and rueful.

“Word has it that the Company has sent a ghost after you.”

Arden’s stomach rolled, threatening to send the whiskey back up. “Ghosts” were Company assassins, called such because they were often able to achieve their bloody goal without being seen or heard. She pressed a shaking hand to her abdomen, but the sick feeling remained. She didn’t know how or why, but she knew who the assassin was. “Luke.”

Chapter 3

Five paused in the stairwell of his lodgings and pressed the heel of one palm to his forehead. It felt as though there was something worrying at his brain—like a cat pawing at a closed door.

Luke.

He clung to the rail with one hand, trying to keep himself from falling down the narrow stairs as
her
voice rang in his head. He hadn’t been able to get it out. Every time he thought of her, pain followed.

Luke.
It was what she had said to him in her bedroom. She had said it as if he should recognize it, and it had sounded almost plaintive—regretful.

She knew him, and though he knew everything about her he didn’t know the connection. She had the upper hand—had him at a disadvantage.

He despised vulnerability. That she made him feel that way was simply one more reason to kill her. And he would. She had done something that marked her for death—made her deserve it—and as her personal grim reaper it was his duty to deliver her judgment.

He would not fail next time.

The Company knew he hadn’t completed the mission and had ordered him to report to an address in Whitechapel this afternoon.

The hem of his leather greatcoat swished against his legs as he continued down the stairs, the pain in his head lessening. As he stepped outside, Five slipped on a pair of tinted spectacles that eased some of the ache in his skull. He swung his leg over the seat of a heavy black-and-copper-colored velocycle parked near the door and slipped on soft, worn leather gloves before starting the machine’s engine. It chugged and roared to life, eager to tear through the damp, cobblestone streets.

It didn’t feel right to him to stay in this particular part of town. There was somewhere else he should be, but he had no idea where. He had no idea who he was, but his accent was English, so it made sense that he came from London or perhaps nearby. It was a posh accent too, which didn’t make sense with what he had been told about his background. It made him think of other things that didn’t make sense in his life. But those thoughts hurt too, so he tried not to think them.

He steered the heavy machine into traffic, its ridged wheels gripping the cobblestone street. As he maneuvered the steering bars to guide him around a slow-moving omnibus, an image flashed in his mind—of him, driving a cycle of much higher quality than this one down a dusty country lane. A woman’s arms were wrapped around his middle, and her laughter rang with wild delight in his ears.

So clear and sudden was the vision that he almost lost control of the cycle. Swearing, he managed to keep from taking a spill into a rather nasty-looking gutter.

He shook his head as he righted himself. A memory. Could it be that he was regaining his past? The thought plagued him all the way to Whitechapel, where he stopped in front of a nondescript building off Dorset Street, near Miller Court.

He knocked on the door and waited. Within a few moments he heard footsteps approach, and then the heavy portal opened to reveal a tall, thin man he’d seen perhaps two or three times in the past.

“Ah, Number Five. Right on time, I see. Promptness is a virtue, you know. Well, inside with you. I’ll take you to the Doctor. He’s been waiting for you.”

The Doctor. A slight coil of unease wound low around Five’s spine as he tucked his spectacles into his coat pocket. He couldn’t remember the man ever doing anything awful to him, but wariness filled him regardless. He followed the thinner male down a narrow hall to the last door.

“Here you are. Go right in, lad.”

Five thanked him and settled his gloved hand on the latch. It clicked under the pressure of his thumb and the door opened, creaking wide to reveal a small sitting room.

The man he knew as the Doctor stood just inside, on a worn but quality rug of bright crimson and dark blue with traces of gold. He was dressed in crisp trousers, snowy shirt and cravat and a dark brown waistcoat embroidered with hunter-green. His dark hair was heavily pomaded back from his high forehead, revealing the craggy countenance of his face. His moustache had traces of gray in it, but he didn’t seem old, yet neither was he young. He was short and lean, but he was the kind of man that made others shift uncomfortably from the coldness of his gaze.

“Five,” he said by way of greeting, not looking up from the tray of implements on the table beside him. “Come in.”

Five did as he was told. He always did as he was told. Odd, but he suddenly realized he hated being told what to do. He was accustomed to giving the orders. How would this man react if Five told him to go straight to hell and walked out? “What is this place?” he asked.

“Just a building the Company owns,” the man replied. “We acquired it after an associate of ours did some work here back in ’eighty-eight. He was one of our best.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was killed by the Wardens.”

The Wardens. In the business of spying, the rivalry between the Wardens and the Company was the longest and the most volatile. To say that the two were on opposite sides would be an oversimplification. Sometimes they were on the same side, and even then they fought one another. No, it went beyond right and wrong. Their dissension was based on something more complex than morality. They were enemies hell-bent on destroying each other, but wouldn’t know what to do without the other there to fight against. The only relationship he could compare it to would be a marriage between two people who despised each other but refused to separate.

Or like that of England and France. “Is that a bloodstain on the wall?”

The man didn’t glance at the mark. “Yes. A woman named Mary Kelly was killed in this room.”

“Was that the ‘work’ your ‘best’ man was up to?” He wasn’t certain what made him ask, or what put the sardonic twist in his voice, but he knew he didn’t need to hear the other man’s answer—the stiffening of his shoulders was enough.

“I hear you’ve been having some difficulty carrying out your present task.” The Doctor finally deigned to look at him—barely a passing glance. “I’m going to remedy that. Have a seat.”

The chair was like a barber’s chair, only with shackles on the arm and leg rests. Five eyed it warily, not quite ready to give himself over just yet. “Since arriving in London I’ve been…remembering things.”