Heart of Iron (42 page)

“He’ll like that,” she murmured. “He likes puzzles.”

“Are you goin’ to tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“About Rosalind?”

Lena thought about it. “No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t owe her nothin’,” he growled. “They’ll cause trouble, you mark me words.”

“I can understand how she feels,” she replied. “Helpless. Fighting for a lost cause. I won’t betray her, Will. Not unless she makes a move against anyone I love.”

He stroked a hand over the silk corseted boning covering her back. Her innate sense of loyalty was one of the things he liked most about her. “She makes one wrong move and I’m straight to Leo.”

“Thank you.” Lena’s finger tangled in his shirt collar. She lifted her tearstained face, bright eyes burning with unsaid emotion. “Will…are you angry?”

“Angry? About what?”

“About the trick Astrid and I played? About demanding you as ambassador in exchange for the Norwegians’ allegiance.”

He thought about it. “It’s not somethin’ I would have wanted for meself.” Sensing the tension in her small frame, he hurried on. “But I’m the only one as can. The thought of change scares me, Lena. I hate the Echelon, hate dealin’ with ’em. I were happy bein’ Blade’s second-in-command, because it meant I never had to leave me safe, little world.” He took a deep breath. “You were right. About lettin’ ’em make me what I were. Whitechapel were just another little cage that I were allowin’ meself to be put into. Can’t say I’m thrilled ’bout it, but maybe I need this.” He squeezed her tight. “I know I need you.”

“You’re not mad?” She traced her fingers over his lips.

Will shook his head. “Life were gonna change anyway.”

“Oh?”

“You,” he admitted. “I couldn’t expect you to live with me in that little hovel.”

A shy smile touched her lips. “Staying there with you were some of the happiest moments of my life.”

The fist in his chest grew tighter. “Me too,” he admitted gruffly. Capturing her face, he dragged it to his, forehead to forehead. “You’re everythin’ to me.”

Playing with his collar, she gave him a saucy little smile. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Tell you what?”

“How much you adore me?”

Will kissed her cheek.
Maybe
.

“How much…you care for me.” Another slightly flirtatious look at him. Her eyes sparkled with mischief as she stroked the rough stubble of his jaw. Then they sobered. She opened her mouth, but he sealed it with a kiss. A way to tell her the answers to the questions she was asking without saying them.

She was breathless by the time he drew back. But not silenced. “How much you love me?” The whisper was a challenge.

He didn’t know why she needed to hear the words, when he’d been damned certain he’d shown her exactly how he felt. This was some unknown neediness he hadn’t expected to find in her, she with her confident ways.

Will kissed her lips lightly, chasing away the questioning tone. “You know I love you,” he said. Her body quivered against his, but he pressed a finger to her lips, stalling her. “I would die for you,” he told her. “I’d kill for you. I faced down mechanical squid, rampagin’ humanists, and lessons in etiquette for you. I
danced
at a
ball
for you.”

The smile on her face warmed his heart. Radiance shone from the center of her being. He didn’t care what he had to say to keep that look on her face.

“I love you,” he told her sternly. “I always will. You’re the only woman I’ve ever seen. The only woman I ever wanted. I know I ain’t much of a catch—”

This time it was her turn to put her finger to his lips. “Don’t you dare.” Heat flared in her beautiful amber-ringed eyes. “I’m the luckiest woman in London. In the world.”

“Aye, mebbe.” He slid his arms around her waist. “Are you tryin’ to tell me somewhat?”

She laughed. “Look at you, fishing for compliments.”

“Not compliments,” he warned.

Lena kissed him, cupping his face in her hands. “I love you too,” she said quietly. “Oh, Will. I think I’ve been half in love with you for years.”

“It just took me a while to notice.”

“How could you not? I gave up the Echelon for you. I faced randy dukes, clockwork bombs, and verwulfen clans. I ruined three sets of gloves.”

“Three?” He smiled. “I’ll have to replace ’em.”

“Yes, you will,” she warned. “I won’t be showing off my wrists in public ever again.”

Possession curled through him. His arms tightened. “No, you won’t be. Only I get to see your wrists. Among other things.”

Drawing back, Lena toyed with the ribbons of her bodice. “Speaking of… We don’t appear to be moving very far with this traffic. I don’t suppose that you’ll be willing to entertain me…?”

“Entertain?” he drawled, heat sliding through his groin. “Is that what they’re callin’ it now?”

“Indeed.” She tugged the ribbons open. “I believe there are some areas of my education that are lacking. I’ll teach you how to belong in this world as long as you teach me something else…how to please you.”

The faint swell of her breasts curved over the top of her corset. Will’s mouth went dry.

“Trust me, luv,” he said, sitting up to help her undress. “You know how to please me.”

“What the hell happened here?”

The prince consort strode in through the double doors. Cold fury tightened his features and a handful of Coldrush Guards swarmed through the room, ensuring it was safe for him and destroying half of Sir Jasper Lynch’s evidence.

Lynch exchanged a telling glance with Barrons. “Don’t move,” he warned one of the guards. The man froze and Lynch pointed to the bloody footprint he’d been about to step in. “Ruin that and I can’t track the owner.” He straightened, meeting the prince consort’s hard gaze. “Your Grace. It appears the Duke of Lannister has been murdered.”

The prince consort peered at the body. Then spun on his heel and broke into a string of invective. “Bloody bombs! The Scandinavians howling for answers and now this! How?”

“Blade to the chest, shot that took off half his arm and near-decapitation. I believe it was the decapitation that killed him, though the shot bothers me,” Lynch recited. “It’s one of those firebolt rounds we’ve discovered on certain members of the population.”

“Humanists,” the prince consort spat.

“Perhaps,” Lynch replied. He never made a judgment until all of the evidence was in. And there’d been more than one person in this room. He’d managed to track the signs; the strands of hair, splatters of blood, even the scent trails. Four people and a fight, if he wasn’t mistaken.

And he was fairly certain he knew who had struck the killing blow. How the others couldn’t smell the heavy musk of a verwulfen man—a man Lynch knew well—he’d never know. Perhaps it was all the cologne they wore? Or perhaps, he thought, looking at Barrons’s cool gaze, some of them knew precisely who had been here.

“We’re uncertain whether the murder was connected to the bombing, or simply an opportunity that someone took advantage of,” Barrons said. He paused for a telling moment. “Your Grace, Lynch informs me that one of his humanist informants passed along information about a potential bombing last week. As Colchester was in charge of finding the humanists, Lynch reported the finding directly to him.”

The prince consort turned, fury whitening his face. “Are you telling me that Colchester knew about this?”

“Yes,” Barrons said softly. “As much as Lynch himself knew.”

Waiting for the explosion, Lynch held himself stiffly. “If I’d believed he wouldn’t pass it along, I’d have sought an audience with the Council. It was my oversight, Your Grace. And the information spoke only of a possible assassination attempt.”

“Why would he keep this information to himself?” the prince consort asked softly. The tone set Lynch’s nerves on edge. This was when the consort was at his most dangerous.

Barrons hesitated. “He made no secret of his feelings about this treaty and the Scandinavians. And if you look at the people closest to the bomb—the Council, yourself, even the queen—there was a chance that he might be the most powerful man remaining in the Empire.”

Stillness. The prince consort’s eyes glittered. “I will see the House of Lannister
destroyed
.”

“Such an act would leave the Council unbalanced,” Barrons protested.

Casting a harsh look around the room, the prince consort ignored him. “Who was the girl? The one who screamed the warning? I want her found—”

“She’s my ward,” Barrons said swiftly. “Miss Lena Todd. She creates clockwork toys and jewelry and sells them to a clockmaker in Clerkenwell. She recognized that the automaton had been tampered with and cried the warning.”

Lynch said nothing as the young lord settled into silence, but he could read the undercurrents in the room. Barrons was protecting someone. The obvious answer would be his ward, but Lynch often found that taking the obvious path blinded one to the truth.

A scrap of material caught his eye. Black. And stained with blood. It was caught on a stud from the upholstery of a chair.

“You.” The prince consort stabbed a finger toward Barrons. “You’re in charge of discovering who tried to assassinate half of my court. And how they got into the heart of the bloody tower itself. And you…”

Lynch straightened.

“Find the humanists.” The prince consort spun on his heel, toward the door. “And bring me their heads.”

Barrons let out a deep breath as the doors slammed shut behind the prince consort and his men. “Well,” he said. “That went well, I thought. He wasn’t too concerned about who murdered Colchester.”

Lynch knelt down. Touched the piece of fabric. Blood stained his finger and heat swam behind his eyes at the sight of it. “They probably saved him the hassle.”

He licked his finger. Taste exploded over his tongue, the ecstasy of a thirst long denied. His mouth went dry and he had to force his body to calm. From the faint scent on the fabric, it had once adorned a woman.

“What have you found?”

Lynch rubbed the smear of blood between his fingertips. The lingering residue of gunpowder caught his nose. “A mystery.” He looked up. “There were four people in this room. Colchester, two verwulfen, and this one. A human.”

“What’s the mystery of that?”

“This one…this one was the humanist,” he said. “The one who fired the gun.”

And he would find her.

Read on for an early look at

My Lady Quicksilver

Coming soon from Sourcebooks Casablanca

Steam hissed as the enormous piston rolled through its rotation. The woman known as Mercury hurried past, her breath hot and moist against the silk mask over her face and her eyes darting.

Here in the enclaves, hot orange light lit the steel beams of the work sheds and enormous furnaces. The place was riddled with underground tunnels where the workers lived, but above ground the work sheds dominated. It wasn’t quite a gaol—mechs earned a half day off a fortnight—but it was close.

Metal ingots glowed cherry red and the air was thick with the smell of coal. Men worked even at night to keep the furnaces hot, silent shadows against the shimmering heat waves. Rosalind slipped past a mech in a pitted leather apron as he shoveled coal into the open mouth of a furnace, the blast of heat leaving a light sheen of perspiration on her skin. Droplets of sweat slid beneath her breasts and wet the insides of her right glove. She couldn’t feel the left. Only a phantom ache where the limb used to be and where steel now stood.

Damn it. Rosalind tossed aside the spring-recoil grappling gun and started tugging at her right glove. Her heart wouldn’t stop rabbiting in her chest, her body moving with a liquid anticipation she knew well. Foolish to relish such anticipation, but the danger, the edge of her nerves, were a drug she’d long been denied.

She couldn’t believe her bad luck. The Nighthawk himself, in the flesh.

A man of shadow and myth. Rosalind hadn’t gotten a good look at his face in the darkness, but the intensity of his expression was unmistakable and she’d felt the heavy caress of his gaze like a touch upon the skin. Her most formidable opponent, a man dedicated to capturing her and destroying the humanists. The shock of his arrival had thrown her and Rosalind wasn’t a woman who was surprised very often.

She slipped between rows of fan belts with heavy metal automaton limbs on them. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She’d known it was risky, making this one last trip but she didn’t have any choice. Martial law had choked the city ever since the bombing of the Ivory Tower and she needed the parts the mechs had promised her.

The bombing had been a mighty blow for the aristocratic Echelon. Every major blue blood lord in the land, including the Prince Consort and his human Queen had been gathered. If the attack had succeeded it would have wiped out nearly all of the parasitic blue bloods, leaving the working classes—the humans—to cast off the yoke of slavery and servitude. No more blood taxes or blood slaves. No more armies of metaljacket automatons to keep them suppressed.

A bold plan.

If it had succeeded.

For a moment Rosalind almost wished she’d thought of it, but the group of mechs she’d rescued from the steamy enclaves to work steel for her a year ago had gone behind her back. For the past six months she’d urged for patience whilst the mechs had whispered that she was too soft, not merciless enough to lead the humanist movement. In the end they’d taken matters into their own hands. Rosalind tried to stop the bombing attempt before it was too late, to try and save her younger brother, Jeremy. Instead the mechanists had used him, seducing him with grand stories and sending him to deliver the bomb himself.

It had been a catastrophe. The Echelon now understood the threat the humanists posed. Rosalind had been forced to scatter those still under her command as martial law settled its heavy weight over the city and the Echelon put a bounty on their heads. She and her older brother Jack had gone into hiding whilst they tried desperately to discover any word of Jeremy.

Of the mechanists who’d betrayed her and the rest of the movement, there was no sign. All she had left of them was the rancid taste of guilt in her mouth. She knew Jeremy had been fond of their leader, Mendici, and his brother Mordecai, but she hadn’t stopped the hero worship. She’d been too busy with the cause and her own personal project to see what was happening within her family.