Heart of Iron (13 page)

“Brute?” he snarled. “A mech brute like me? What, you think you’re better ’an us?”

Around them, people were starting to take an interest.

“Let her go or you’ll feel the wrath of the Duke of Caine!” Mrs. Wade snapped back, as though that name would hold any weight here.

Lena hastened to diffuse the situation. “We don’t think we’re any better, or different or—”

“’Ere now, lads!” he roared. “This bit o’ fluff’s turnin’ her nose up at us!”

Mutters and grumbling sprang up. Lena looked around desperately. “No, I don’t! I never said that.”

“You in the city, you turn your noses up at us. Well, just you wait. Your time’s comin’.” He leered at her. “We got ways of dealin’ with your sort now.”

“Unhand her!” the footman insisted, taking the man by the arm. “Miss Lena, are you all right?”

Whistles suddenly screamed through the air and as one the crowd turned with a gasp.

“It’s the Trojan cavalry!” someone yelled.

Frightened cries tore through the crowd and they erupted into a panicked mob, streaming for the safety of the square ahead. Lena was swept up in the edges of it, her wrist torn from the man’s grasp.

Someone grabbed her around the waist, lifting her off her feet. “Beg pardon, miss,” Henry, the footman, said. A strapping lad of nearly six feet, even he had to fight to keep his feet against the horde as he pushed through to the side of the crowd.

Mrs. Wade leaned in a doorway, fanning herself with her hand. “Oh, Lena! Oh, thank goodness!” She dragged her into the safety of the alcove and Henry used his body to shield them from the crowd.

“What’s happening?” Lena peered under his outstretched arm.

“The Echelon must have released the cavalry, ma’am,” Henry replied, his face pale. “Please don’t move. They’ll cut down anything in their wake.”

“But not everybody is causing trouble,” she protested.

“It doesn’t matter.”

A beat began to ring on the cobbles. Like the sound of a hundred horses marching in perfect unison. A chill ran down her spine. The Trojan cavalry were used to clear most mobs and riots—since the firebombing Spitfires could cause too much damage. There was little that could stand up against the heavily armored metal horses, and she’d heard rumors that they simply rode a man down. Nothing was destroyed that way. Only the man.

Lena looked toward the far end of the street. “What are we going to do?”

“Stay here,” Henry said grimly.

The narrow doorway was barely wide enough to fit the three of them. Most of Henry was sticking out into the street. Even now the terrified crowd bumped and knocked him as they streamed past.

“We can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous.” Mr. Mandeville’s wasn’t far away. They could make it if they hurried. And she knew these streets like the back of her hand.

Mrs. Wade coughed, her face as white as a sheet. Lena’s heart sank. Her elderly companion would never make it so far in such a hurry. From the sound of her gasps, she was verging on a hysterical fit.

Unless…

Ducking under Henry’s arm, Lena looked up at the gutter overhang. “Henry, when they send the cavalry out, do they send any of the Spitfires or metaljackets?”

“No need for it. There isn’t much left once the cavalry rides through.”

Most of the crowd had vanished. At the end of the street, sunlight reflected off the burnished armor of a row of metal horses.

“Come, Mrs. Wade,” she said gently, taking her companion by the arm. “We have to hurry.”

Mrs. Wade shook her head. “No, no, I can’t! They’ll ride us down.”

“Henry, do you think it at all possible to lift her?”

He gave the question some thought, a dubious expression on his face. “I can’t say as how far I could carry her.”

“Not far at all.” She looked up. “We’re going across the rooftops.”

“Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?”

Because he’d never lived in the rookery, where Blade and Will—and most of his men—used the rooftops as their own highway.

Coaxing Mrs. Wade out, she helped Henry lift her. “You’re going to have to grab for the gutter!”

“I c-can’t!”

“You can and you will,” Lena snapped. “I’ve had enough of these hysterics. If you don’t hurry up, then Henry and I shan’t have time to follow and then
you
will have to explain to my guardian how you managed to get me trampled!”

That caused a great scurry of activity. Mrs. Wade kicked and puffed, scrabbling for the roof. Henry struggled to lift her above his shoulders, his eyes squeezed tight whilst the voluminous folds of Mrs. Wade’s skirts revealed a great deal of her unmentionables to the world.

Steel shod hooves echoed off the cobbles. Lena glanced nervously up the street.

“You next, miss,” Henry said.

Lena stepped up onto his bent knee and then shoulder, catching hold of the gutter. She had to hurry. Mrs. Wade had cost them a great deal of time. Biting her lip, Lena hauled herself up onto the roof, then turned and lay down, peering at Henry.

“Hurry!”

The cavalry was almost upon them. The horses were eight feet high at the withers, with broad, heavily-plated chests and enormous, soup-bowl hooves. Designed like a destrier, steam puffed and snorted from their nostrils. The sight was enough to curdle her stomach.

“Henry!” She extended her arm. His wide blue eyes looked up at her.

“I’ll only pull you down,” he said, shaking his head.

Lena snatched the parasol off Mrs. Wade and dropped it into his hands. “Hook it into the gutter and use it to help ease your weight! Mrs. Wade!” She looked behind her to where her companion sprawled on the tiles. “Hold my ankles and whatever you do, don’t let him pull me off!”

A pair of meaty hands wrapped around her ankles, with the considerable weight of Mrs. Wade to anchor her.

The metal cavalry broke from a trot into a canter and then stretched out into a gallop. A man ran ahead of them and went down beneath the crushing steel hooves. In their midst rode the handlers, each steering a herd of ten with their small, spiked little boxes and the radio signal that controlled them.

“Henry!” Lena screamed, reaching out to clasp his arm as he struggled valiantly to haul himself up.

Behind her, Mrs. Wade cried out and slid a few inches down the roof. Lena shot forward on her stomach, her face and shoulders dangling over the gutters. She wrenched at Henry’s arm, but he’d lost the tentative grip he had on the gutter and was dangling by her parasol.

“Don’t you dare let me go!” Lena yelled.

Henry tucked his feet up desperately, trying not to get hit as the first line of the metal horses thundered by. Choking dust rose from the street. The inch of sleeve she held slipped even farther through her fingers until—

“
No!
”

Behind her, Mrs. Wade cried out and let go. Lena’s eyes shot open and she fell forward, her skirts sliding over the tiles. She caught a glimpse of Henry’s wide, horrified eyes as she fell toward the street and then—

Something grabbed her by the skirts.

With a wrench she landed flat on her back on the tiles next to Mrs. Wade, blinking up at Will. His broad shoulders were outlined against the inclement clouds, the muscles in his bare arms bunched as his fists curled. “Ought have known you’d be in bloody trouble.”

“Henry!” she gasped, pointing to the edge of the roof.

Will knelt, the leather of his trousers straining over his heavily muscled thighs. He reached down and caught the parasol then straightened as if it were barely any effort at all.

Henry rose in the air, kicking feebly at the end of the parasol. Will snatched his hand and yanked him onto the roof where he collapsed in violent shudders.

“Oh, Lord,” he whispered. “Oh, Miss Lena! I thought you were going! You should never have risked yourself.”

“Well, I wasn’t about to leave you to fall.” Kneeling beside him, she checked him over for injuries. Her own hands were starting to shake.
So
close. Too close, actually
.

A shadow fell over her. Lena’s stomach dropped.

When she looked up, Will wore a murderous scowl. “What the bloody hell were you thinkin’?”

“I—”

“You weren’t!” His arms exploded into the air. “You couldn’t have been! What idiot gets out of a carriage in the middle of a friggin’ mob? Did you not once think about how dangerous it was?”

“I was trying to avoid it. Mr. Mandeville’s is two streets over. If we’d—”

“That’s two streets too far! Do you have any idea what went through my head when I found the bloody carriage? Turned on its side and abandoned? With your bloody footmen sittin’ on a roof, smokin’ cheroots!”

Lena stood up, shaking out her skirts. “I didn’t think a riot would erupt so quickly. And obviously the carriage was no safer.”

“Didn’t think?
Didn’t think?
” The last came out as a roar that made both Mrs. Wade and Henry flinch.

Heat burned her cheeks. “I made a mistake. But I’ve been in these kinds of situations before. I wasn’t just—”

“What do you mean, been in these situations before?”

Lena took a steady breath. By the look on his face, she was one step away from being shaken like a rag doll. “When I was working at Mr. Mandeville’s. There wasn’t money enough to catch the tram home, so I had to walk. I got caught in the edges of a riot twice.” As his expression darkened, she hastened to assure him. “I climbed up on the roof the first time and hid in a man’s home the second. He was terribly nice about it.”

Will took a deep breath. Then another. His shoulders were still tense, his eyes wild. “If you
ever
go out into these streets unprotected again, I’ll throttle you.”

“I spent six months walking home through these streets when I was sixteen,” she snapped. “And I had Mrs. Wade and Henry with me this time. That’s a lot safer than when we were poor and in hiding from Vickers.”

A strangled noise came from his throat. Lena shut her mouth. Not the time to mention all of the horrid things that had happened to her during that awful time after her father’s death.

He turned and raked Henry with a gaze that made the lad swallow. “Never again, do you understand me?”

The lad nodded sharply.

“Come,” Will snapped. “I’ll get you back to the warren. Then we’ll see about gettin’ you home.”

“I have to see Mr. Mandeville first.”

He spun on his heel and Lena took a step back.

“He’s expecting me,” she said. “If I don’t arrive, I shouldn’t want him to come out into the streets looking for me.”

His lips thinned. As he turned back around, she thought he murmured something but she couldn’t quite make it out.

She could, however, see the blood rush out of Mrs. Wade’s face.

Nine

“Thank goodness you’re all right!”

Mr. Mandeville swept her up into his arms and breathed a sigh of relief.

Lena gave him a swift hug. “Did you see any of the trouble here?”

“Not this time. I could hear them shouting though, streets over.” His gaze flickered over her shoulder. Then froze.

“You know Mrs. Wade and Henry.” She gestured at the weary pair. Will turned from where he’d been staring out into the streets. The light from the window lit his burning amber irises. “And this is William Carver. A friend of my sister’s husband.”

The stiffness in Mr. Mandeville’s shoulders spoke volumes. He knew exactly what those eyes meant. “A pleasure to meet you,” he said, with a sharp jerk of his head.

Lena pasted a smile on her face to cover his rudeness. “Will helped us with some unpleasantness in the riot. He’s here to escort me home.”

“I see.” Mr. Mandeville’s gaze shot between her and Will. “Did you get my message?”

“I did. I wanted to discuss the commission further, if you will?”

“The back rooms?”

“I won’t be a moment.” Seeing Will’s glower, she hastened to add. “I promise.”

Taking Mr. Mandeville’s arm, she steered him toward the back room. As soon as the door closed, he turned on her, but she held up a warning hand and tapped her ear.

“So someone wished to purchase the transformational clockwork?” she asked, picking up one of his spring pens and writing on a piece of paper.
Say nothing you don’t want overheard.

Mr. Mandeville stroked the end of his moustache. “I relayed word of it to a certain friend of mine.”
Mercury
, he wrote. “He’s interested in presenting it as a gift to the Scandinavian Ambassador once the treaty is signed. He was most impressed with the detail.”

For what purpose?
The incident with the draining factories was still fresh in her mind, though she could think of no foul use for her transformational clockwork.

He wants to make his own agreements with the Scandinavians
. Out loud Mr. Mandeville added, “He’s never seen anything like it.”

Then, taking a deep breath—and asking how much the commission was likely to pay—she hesitantly wrote.
Do you know anything about the content of these letters? Or about the draining factories burning down?

Mr. Mandeville stroked his moustache. “I should imagine you could charge a handsome fee. He wants it complete within two weeks.”

“Two weeks?” she squealed.

“The Scandinavians arrive next week. I assume there shall be the usual rounds of talks and social entertainments.” Taking the pen he wrote,
We’re not the only ones working against the Echelon. There is another small faction with rather more drastic notions of how to bring them down. The letters, as far as I know, contain dates and times for meetings.

He’d barely put the pen down before she snatched it up.
But you don’t know that for certain?

A hesitation
.
No. I don’t. But I wouldn’t condone such outright acts of terror.

Good.
She met his gaze pointedly.
Because I want no part of that either.

I have another message that needs to be delivered. Will you do it?

Lena stared at the sheet of paper. Doubt was a small, restless tickle. An itch she couldn’t scratch.
I want to meet Mercury.