Mission: Improper: London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy (18 page)

I
NGRID WOKE UP
with one hell of a headache.
Grumbling to herself, she swiftly dressed and then made her way downstairs in the house at Baker Street.
Malloryn had set aside rooms for all of them if they required, but this was the first time she'd actually stayed there.

"Breakfast, miss?"
Herbert asked, appearing out of nowhere.

Ingrid's stomach growled.
"If you find me breakfast, I promise I'll marry you.
Herbert."

The tall, possibly-a-blue-blood smiled back at her.
He was mostly invisible, but always in the background somewhere, she realized.
“Not necessary, Miss Miller.
But I’ll keep it in mind.”

In the dining room Gemma rested her head in her hands.
Her usually neat hairstyle was missing, replaced by a messy chignon.
"The next time I mention a night of debauchery," she pointed out, "remind me of this moment."

"You did seem to be having a rather lively discussion with Charlie when I left.
You two still haven't decided what we're going to call ourselves?"

"A Company of Crackpots," Gemma replied with aplomb.
"That's my vote this morning."

"Good morning," Ava said brightly, slipping into the seat opposite Ingrid and thanking Herbert as he brought her a tray of toast and warmed marmalade.
"What are the plans for today, ladies?"

"Dying," Gemma groaned.

"Eating my way through this entire breakfast," Ingrid replied, reaching for the plate of fried beefsteak.
"If anyone else wants some, I'd advise you take it now."

"Oh."
Ava poured herself a cup of tea, blinking at them.
"Both of you look half-dead.
I've seen more color in the corpses on my examination table.
You do realize what your livers probably look like this morning?"

Gemma paled.
"Please.
No mention of bodily organs.
At least not until lunch."

"Well, look at the team," called a slightly amused voice as the baroness strode into the room, her red skirts swishing.
"Busy night, was it?"

All three of them sat up a little straighter.

The baroness arched a brow at Gemma as she handed the woman a folder.
"Malloryn's not going to like it."

"Well, Malloryn needs to locate a sense of humor," Gemma retorted, sipping her morning cup of blood.
"I'd suggest he look inside the part he sits upon, to start with."

The baroness's lips twitched.
"I'll pass that along to him when he arrives."

"You are prime evil, Isabella," Gemma shot back fondly.
"No wonder the two of you get along so smashingly."

The baroness's sable eyebrow lifted.
"Someone has to keep you rabble in line."

Gemma winced.
“I’d continue sparring, but I don’t think I have the temper for it this morning.”

The baroness smiled, and Ingrid realized the two of them knew each other quite intimately.
“Meeting in two hours," the Baroness said to Ingrid.
"We need to discuss what to do about the Ulbricht situation.”

“Kidnap him?”
Ingrid suggested.

“Kindly ask him to provide more detail about this SOG?”
Gemma added.

Ava frowned.
“That sounds like torture to me.”

“Ulbricht’s a powerful lord,” the baroness replied.
“I’m not suggesting anything until Malloryn approves it.”
She glanced at Ingrid.
“Do you know where Byrnes is?"

"Probably at the Guild."

"Then find him," the baroness said.

"As you wish," Ingrid muttered to her back.
She looked around.
"I suppose I've been given my marching orders."

"Good luck,” Gemma called.
“Byrnes looked like he went home in a hurry last night.
Something you said?”

The last thing she needed was the rest of the company thinking there was something going on.
Ingrid forced a smile.
Malloryn would be certain to hear of it then.
“Probably.
But then, with Byrnes, it often doesn’t take much.”

H
e wasn't
difficult to track from the Guild.

Blue bloods might have no personal scent, but they absorbed the scents surrounding them.
Byrnes was leather, steel, and oil, with the faintest hint of the cinnamon he sometimes chewed.
That scent was engraved on her skin, on her memory.
Ingrid growled under her breath as she stared up at the building in front of her.

She'd never have thought it to be here.

Ingrid found him in the third room along the top floor of Miss Appleby's Home for the Elderly.
Or more specifically, she tracked him there by his voice, which was strangely soft and lyrical, reading some sort of romantic comedy about a Mr.
Darcy.
She'd never considered his to be the kind of voice one could listen to for hours, but as she paused by the door she heard something there she'd never heard before.
Warmth, perhaps.
A trace of gentleness, as if he'd let down his armor, revealing hints of the man within.
It reminded her of the way her mama had read to her as a child before she went to bed.

The door was cracked.
She almost didn't hear the soft footsteps approaching until the door spilled open and Byrnes stared out at her, still reading.

Their eyes met, his blue and cool, and narrowing faintly.
There was a much-loved book in his hands, and she couldn't stop herself from peering past him.

Ingrid caught a glimpse of blankets and a bed, and a frail hand resting upon the covers, and then Byrnes stepped forward, shielding the occupant from view.

"What are you doing here?"
he whispered.

"I followed you."

"Clearly."

Frustration surged.
"The baroness requested your presence for a meeting with Malloryn."

"Tell him I'm occupied."
His mouth thinned to hard lines.
"Go home, and—"

"Hello?"
called a frail voice.
"Hello?"

Byrnes paled and swore under his breath.
Then he shot her a look so severe that she almost stepped back.
"Keep your voice lowered, and don't make any sudden movements.
And for God's sake, if you tell anyone about this I will wring your bloody neck."

Swinging the door open, he gestured her inside.
"My mother," he breathed, before raising his voice.
"Moira?"

Mother?
Ingrid's gaze shot to him in shock.

At first glimpse, the woman in the bed was much older than she'd expected.
Long white hair streamed over her shoulders, and she wore a blank, faded expression, her mouth hanging slightly open.

"She doesn't like loud noises, or new experiences," Byrnes warned.
"It scares her."

"Is she—?"

"Moira," he greeted, easing his hip onto the bed and taking the older lady's hand.
"You have another visitor.
This is my friend.
Ingrid."

The very idea that sardonic, sarcastic Caleb Byrnes could be this gentle was like discovering that a vampire could tuck its child into bed tenderly.
Knock me over with a feather.

Heart pounding in her ears, Ingrid summoned a smile.
"Hello, Mrs.
Byrnes.
It's a pleasure to meet you."

The old lady gaped at her, and Ingrid realized that she wasn't that old after all.
Worry had etched those sharp lines around her eyes, and her slack mouth spoke of an oft-broken jaw, not feebleness.

"She won't reply."
Byrnes cracked the book open, finding the passage where he'd been reading and resuming in a soft voice that was almost hypnotic.
"...I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr.
Darcy has no defect...."

"
W
hy don't
you call her 'mother'?"

Byrnes scowled, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his coat as he stepped off the curb and negotiated the busy London traffic.
"Quite frankly, it's none of your business."

Ingrid's lips pressed together, and he realized he'd made a mistake.
Catching her wrist before she could turn to go, he stared down into those bronze eyes.
"I don't like talking about her," he admitted, and even that admission scraped him raw.
"Now come on, let's get this over with."

"Byrnes!"
A hand reached for the edge of his coat.

He kept walking, but it came again, and reluctantly he stopped.
He wasn't entirely certain why he felt so angry.
Perhaps it was the reappearance of Debney into his life, scratching the scabs off old wounds and reminding him of a past best left hidden.
Perhaps it was his mother's inevitable decline.
She hadn't even recognized him this morning.
He was losing her.
Inch by inch, memory by memory.
The nurses all claimed that his mother knew him, but every time he visited, his mother greeted him with a “Hello, dear,” that sounded like a familiar greeting, until one realized she said the same thing to everyone.

Even him.

His mother couldn't remember his name.

Hesitant bronze eyes came into view, framed by wisps of hair that had fallen loose from her ruthless chignon.
Ingrid.
Who threw him into turmoil with just her mere presence.

It was all part of it; this maelstrom of emotion that knotted him up tightly.

"Fancy a walk along the Thames?"
she asked.

"We have to meet with Malloryn."

She hesitated.
"You're right.
But we've got a half hour, and this won't take us too far out of our way.
And I think this is important.
You're not thinking clearly at the moment.
I know how it feels when emotion overpowers you."

"I'm not emotional."

"You're angry."
Those dangerous eyes watched him, but there was no judgment there.

Byrnes swore under his breath, raking a hand through his hair.

"You need to have your wits about you if we're dealing with vampires and who knows what else.
Come."
Her fingers curled through his.
"Come and walk with me."

And God help him, he went.

"
I
come here
when I want to think," Ingrid told him, pausing along the banks of the ruins of Westminster and turning to face the Ivory Tower that ruled the city.

The marble gleamed in the weak morning sunlight, hurting Byrnes's eyes a little with its brightness.
Once upon a time, it had been a symbol of brutish oppression, a sign of the power the prince consort had wielded over the humans, mechs, and rogue blue bloods of London.
Now it was a sign of hope.
Or it was supposed to be.

Byrnes felt nothing as he stared at it, but there was something about Ingrid's hushed confession that drew his gaze back to her.
The light gilded her face too, but he had more interest in staring at the soft curve of her rosy lips and the honeyed slant of her cheekbones than at any stone monolith.
"Why here?"

"It reminds me of them," she replied with a quiet yearning.

"Who?"

"My parents," Ingrid whispered, still staring up at the Tower, as if lost in memories from long ago.

And he was suddenly struck with a sense of uneasy kinship.
Ingrid was verwulfen and of all the species that inhabited Britain, they had been persecuted the most, for they alone had the strength and power to overwhelm a blue blood.
Hundreds of verwulfen had been slaughtered at Culloden by the Echelon's war machines, and they'd been kept as slaves or in cages as curiosities ever since.

He'd never asked where she came from, or what her life had been like.
Ingrid never showed even a hint of vulnerability, but it was there now, and it made him uncomfortable.

"This was where the raiders who stole me from my parents brought me ashore," she told him, wrapping her arms around her middle.
"I don't know how old I was.
Rosa thinks that I was perhaps five, though verwulfen children grow larger than others."
She glanced up at the Tower again, her voice lowering.
"I just remember feeling terrified.
I didn't know where my parents had gone, or why these strangers had taken me.
They'd run me down in the snow near my home, and chained me, taking me aboard their ship and delivering me here.
My father had been out hunting with me that day.
I-I don't know what happened to him."