The Iron Duke (2 page)

“If it has taken Richmond this long, he hasn’t found anything.” Beneath intricately curled blond hair that had made Mina burst into laughter when she had first seen it that evening, Felicity’s gaze searched the crowd for her husband. With a sigh, she turned to regard her friend. “Oh, Mina. You are too amused. I doubt anyone will break into fisticuffs.”

“They should.”

“You think it’s an insult to supply sweet and strong lemonade? To stack cakes like towers?” Felicity rubbed her belly and looked longingly toward the towers. Mina guessed that the cakes were supposed to have been demolished by now, symbolic of England’s victory over the Horde, but they still stood tall. “Surely, they did not realize how strongly we felt about it.”

“Or they realized, but thought we must be shown like children that we can eat imported sugar without being enslaved.”

Two hundred years ago, the Horde had hidden their nanoagents in tea and sugar like invisible bugs, and traded it on the cheap. The Horde had no navy, and even though Europe had fled before the Horde, Britain was protected by water and a strong fleet of ships. And so for years, they’d traded tea and sugar, and England had thought itself safe.

Until the Horde had activated the bugs.

Now, no one born in England trusted sugar unless it came from beets grown in British soil and processed in one of the recently built refineries—and after two hundred years of the Horde’s crippling taxes, no one had enough money to pay for the luxury, anyway. New to England, beet sugar was as precious as gold was to the French, and as Horde technology was to the smugglers in the Indian Ocean and South Seas.

“You judge them too harshly, Mina. This ball itself is goodwill. And it must have been a great expense.” Felicity looked around almost despairingly, as if it pained her to think of how much had been spent.

“Hartington can obviously afford it. Look how many candles.” Mina lifted her chin, gesturing at the chandelier.

“Even your mother uses candles.”

That wasn’t the same. Gas cost almost nothing; candles, especially wax tapers of good quality, rivaled sugar as a luxury. Her mother used candles during her League meetings, but only so the dim light would conceal the worst of the wear. Repeated scouring of the walls removed the smoke that penetrated every home in London, but had worn the paper down to the plaster. Rugs had been walked threadbare at the center. The sofa hadn’t been replaced since the Horde had invaded England. But at Devonshire House, there was no need for candles to forgive what brighter gas lamps revealed.

“My mother will also make certain that each of her guests is comfortable.” Physically comfortable, at any rate. Mina supposed her mother could not help the discomforting effect that they both had on visitors. “Goodwill should not stab at scars, Felicity. Goodwill would have been desserts made with beet sugar or honey.”

“Perhaps,” Felicity said, obviously unwilling to think so little of the bounders, but acknowledging that they could have been done better. She cast another glance at the towers of cake. “Mine would have mousse.”

“Your
what
would have mousse?”

“My table, if I gave a ball. Do not laugh, Mina. I might one day.”

Even if her friend’s purse was full, Mina could not imagine Felicity loosening the strings enough to pay for anything resembling a ball. But her friend’s wistful expression caught Mina off guard. She swallowed her laugh and nodded.

Taking that as an invitation to continue, Felicity said, “I’ve heard that in the Antilles, they have a mousse of Liberé chocolate so light that it floats away like an airship, and éclairs filled with cream. In Lusitania, they bake
massa sovada
so—”

Mina shook away a vision of mousse envelopes floating about with éclairs tethered beneath. “
Massa
what?”

“Portuguese sweet bread.” Felicity’s eyes widened innocently. “
The Lamplighter Gazette
has a new section featuring New World desserts. It follows their adventure serials. Surely you looked to the recipes after reading the last Archimedes Fox story?”

Mina flushed and hoped the candlelight would hide it. Her family managed—barely—to employ two maids
and
a cook. Other families tended to their own homes; if left to Mina or her parents, they’d likely starve while their townhouse fell down around them.

To cover her embarrassment, she said, “And so you would lay your table out like the northern American continent. Islands of mousse for the Antilles, a peninsula of Lusitanian bread topped by . . . ?” What did they eat in the Castilian wilderness? Mina had no idea—and she couldn’t ask a bounder. After losing almost all of their territory and the native trade routes to the Spanish, the bounders spoke as if the Castilians dined on human hearts.

“Flan,” Felicity replied. She rubbed her belly again. “Lemon ices from Manhattan City, and Dutch pastries from Johannesland.”

And blubber from the natives who lived farther north. Mina stared at her friend in astonishment. “I’m beginning to think that you aren’t with child. You’ve simply become fat after reading too many recipes.”

“If one could become fat just from reading them, I would be.” She slanted a narrow look at Mina. “Don’t pretend they don’t tempt you.”

Mina could pretend very well. She had plenty of practice. “At least now I know why bounders all have such horrible teeth. And why I can differentiate a foreigner from a bugger just by opening his mouth.”

Felicity’s hand flew to her lips, and Mina was suddenly thankful that buggers didn’t suffer from pregnancy sickness. Her friend had a weak stomach even when she wasn’t with child.

“Mina, you swore! For one night, we were to have no talk of corpses.”

“I did not say a corpse.” Though she had meant one. But it hardly mattered; there was little difference. “The teeth are rotting out of the heads of the living, too.”

“Shhh.” Felicity smothered her laugh and glanced around to make sure no one had overheard. “You look to find the worst in everyone, Mina.”

“I would not be very good at my job if I didn’t.” The worst in everyone was what led them to murder.

“You
like
to look for the worst in bounders. But they cannot be blamed for their ancestors abandoning us, just as we cannot be blamed for buying the Horde’s sugar and teas. It seems to me, the fault can be laid on both sides of the ocean . . . and laid to rest.”

No, the bounders hadn’t abandoned England—and if that were the only grievance Mina had against them, she
could
have laid her resentment to rest. But neither could she explain her resentment; Felicity thought too well of them, and she was too fascinated by the New World.

The bounders were part of that fascination—and they were part of the New World, no matter that they referred to themselves as Englishmen, and were called Brits by everyone except those born on the British Isles.

Damn them all, they probably didn’t even realize there was a difference between England and Britain.

No matter what the bounders thought they were, they weren’t like Mina’s family or Felicity’s—or like those in the lower classes who’d been altered and enslaved for labor. Bounders hadn’t been born under Horde rule. And Mina resented that when they’d returned, they’d carried with them the assumption that they better knew how to live than the buggers did. This ball, for all that it celebrated victory over the Horde, reflected everything bounders thought society should be: They’d had their Season in Manhattan City and were determined for the tradition to continue in London, though most of the peers born here couldn’t dream of holding their own ball. And although the ball provided a pleasant diversion, buggers had more important things to occupy their minds and their time—such as whether they could afford their next meal, and working to earn it.

The bounders had no such worries. They’d returned, their heads filled only with grand ideas and good intentions, and they meant to force them onto the rest of England.

But their intentions did not mean they’d returned for the benefit of their former countrymen. Not at all. A good situation within Manhattan City was impossible to find, they’d run out of room on the long Prince George Island, and the Dutch would not relinquish any territory in the mainland. So the aristocrats returned to claim their estates and their Parliament seats, the merchants to buy what the aristocrats didn’t own, and all of them to look down their noses at the poor buggers who’d been raised beneath the heel of the Horde.

Or to be horrified by them. Mina’s gaze sought her mother. Even in a crowd, she was easy to locate—a small woman with white-blond hair, wearing crimson satin. Spectacles with smoked lenses dominated her narrow face. Wide brass bracelets shaped like kraken circled her gloved arms, and she was demonstrating the clockwork release mechanism to three other ladies—all bounders. When her mother twisted the kraken’s bulbous head, the tentacles wrapped around her wrist sprang open. The ladies clapped, obviously delighted, and though Mina couldn’t hear what they said, she guessed they were asking her mother where she’d purchased the unique bracelets. Such clockwork devices were prized as both novelties and jewelry—and expensive. Mina doubted her mother told them the bracelets were of her own design and made in their freezing attic workshop.

In any case, the novelty of the bracelets didn’t divert the ladies from their real interest. Even as they spoke, they cast surreptitious glances at her mother’s eyes. One lady leaned forward, as if to gain a better angle to see the bracelets—and gained a better angle to see behind her mother’s spectacles. Her mouth fell open.

Rarely did anyone hide their surprise when they glimpsed the shiny orbs concealed by the lenses. Some stared openly, as if the prosthetic eyes were blind, rather than as keen as a telescope and a microscope combined. This particular lady was no different. She continued to look, her expression a mixture of fascination and revulsion. She’d probably expected modification on a coal miner—not on the Countess of Rockingham.

But if mirrored eyes still horrified the woman, chances were she’d never actually seen a miner. And if she’d heard the story behind her mother’s eyes, the lady’s gaze would soon be seeking Mina.

Felicity must have looked to see what had caught Mina’s attention. She asked, “And what is your mother’s goal tonight? A husband for you, or new recruits for her Ladies Reformation League?”

Mina’s friend underestimated her mother’s efficiency. “Both.”

As efficient as her mother was, however, finding new recruits for her League had greater possibility for success. Finding a husband for Mina was as likely as King Edward writing his own name legibly. Mina was approaching thirty years of age without once attracting the attention of a worthy man. Only bounders searching for a taste of the forbidden, or Englishmen seeking revenge for the horrors of the Mongol occupation—and Mina resembled the people they wanted to exact their vengeance on.

A loud, hacking cough from beside Mina turned her head. A bounder, red in the face, lowered his handkerchief from his mouth. His gaze touched Mina and darted away.

She arched her brows at Felicity, inviting comment.

Felicity watched the man walk away. “I suppose it does not matter, anyway. They will all soon retreat to the countryside or back to the New World.”

Yes, they’d soon run. They’d been made too confident by their success in America. They’d built a new life out of a wild land, taming it to suit their needs. Now, they thought they could return and reshape London—but London reshaped them, instead. The only way to stay alive in the city was to infect themselves with the tiny machines that their ancestors had run from two hundred years before. Without the bugs, the insides of their lungs would become as black as a chimney.

Some bounders eventually relented and took an injection of infected blood. But even with the same nanoagents in their bodies, they still weren’t anything like those buggers born in England. They still thought like bounders, talked like bounders, and had a bounder’s interests. The bugs didn’t change that.

From directly beside Mina came the sound of a throat clearing. She turned. A ginger-haired maid in a black uniform bobbed a curtsy. Though Mina had noted that the servants from the New World usually lowered their gazes, this girl couldn’t seem to help herself. The maid studied Mina’s face, fascinated and wary. The Horde trade routes didn’t cross the Atlantic to the New World, and only a few of the Horde were left in England. Perhaps the maid had never seen a Mongol before—or, as in Mina’s case, a mongrel.

Mina raised her brows.

The maid blushed and bowed her head. “A gentleman asks to see you, my lady.”

“Oh, she is not a lady,” Felicity said airily. “She is a detective
inspector
.”

The mock gravity weighing down the last word seemed to confound the maid. She colored and fidgeted. Perhaps she worried that
inspector
was a bugger’s insult?

Mina said, “What man?”

“A Constable Newberry, my lady. He’s brought with him a message to you.”

Mina frowned and stood, but was brought around by Felicity’s exasperated, “Mina, you didn’t!”

Mina could determine the motives of opium-addled criminals, yet she couldn’t follow every jump of Felicity’s mind. “I didn’t what?”

“Send a gram to your assistant so that you could escape.”

Oh, she
should
have. It would be a simple thing; all of the bounders’ restored houses had wiregram lines installed.

“You mistrustful cow! Of course I didn’t.” She lowered her voice and added, “I will at the next ball, however, now that you’ve given me the idea.” As Felicity smothered a laugh into her hand, Mina continued, “Will you inform my father and mother that I’ve gone?”

“Gone? It is only a message.”

Newberry wouldn’t have come in person if it was only a message. “No.”

“Oh.” Realization swept over her friend’s expression, brushing away her amusement. “Do not keep the poor bastard waiting, then.”