Transmuted (37 page)

The skin cradled beneath my palm jumped, a muscle flexed as my fingers twitched. They did not hurt.

A hard hand locked against the back of my head, fingers thrust into my hair. A masculine murmur rumbled through Hawke’s chest as he drew me tight against him. “You are reckless.” My lips eased into a smile against the hot skin of his chest. Turning my head a fraction, I pressed my mouth against the flesh protecting the strong beat of his heart.

We lay in a bed I only vaguely remembered as belonging to one of the Bakers’ places of safety; a room above some pub or such. The bed was too narrow for us both, but Hawke had made the most of it by ensuring I lay sprawled half-on him.

I could only assume he’d laid me to rest, for I wore nothing, and this seemed rather suitable to Hawke’s preferences.

His fingers edged into my scalp, easing shivers down my spine. The lassitude in my limbs only deepened, making of me a boneless thing.

His large, warm hand spanned over my hip.

Wait, no, this was
too
comfortable. I elbowed myself up, shoving the loose curls of my hair from my face. The length only reached my shoulders. The ends caught in my vision were singed.

The sound I made earned a narrowing of Hawke’s dark lashes. Amusement flitted into his tawny stare.

“What happened to my hair?” I wailed.

His hand flattened on my back, strong and warm; my arm buckled and I had no choice but to be cradled against his naked side once more. “I happen to like it.”

“You are an incorrigible thing.” I slid a leg along his.

“I have,” Hawke said in his typical direct manner, “spent too long braving fire and flame for you.” And worse, the lash, whose scars lingered. I vowed to kiss every one in hopes to soothe any haunt from them, but he was too heavy to move, and did not seem inclined to turn over to allow me the fancy.

Blowing errant curls from my face, I sent him a look framed by an arched eyebrow.

“Does this mean you will cease?”

He caught my chin. “Never.” But before the sculpted shape of his lips could touch mine, one black eyebrow eased up. “When did you learn to mimic me, Miss Black?” Confused, I drew back, brow furrowing. “The last thing I want to do with you, Micajah Hawke, is mimic you.”

Again, that glint of amusement, sharp as blades. “Oh?” To my surprise, he eased a thumb over my eyebrow. “We shall see.” And then, making of my will a limp thing, he drew me to him. My body slid against his, my breath mingled with his own. As his mouth closed over mine, a kiss as gentle as I had never known it from him, my heart swelled.

In a move that nearly sent us both tumbling over the edge of the borrowed bed, he turned me over, trapped me beneath his golden body, and stripped of me any inclination to do aught but savor his attentions.

If I were concerned about his apparent introduction to placidity, he divested it of me with a gratifying savagery that assured me the beast and the man were still the same. He took me with a devastatingly deliberate roughness, with a knowing hand and whispered words that drove me again and again into sweet madness.

There were no words of love between us.

We needed none.

***

Much later, I held a tankard filled with a brew Communion swore would put strength back into my limbs and starch back into my spine. I wondered if it would also put hair on my chest. The stuff was vile.

I sipped it with determination as Ashmore, fresh off his own sickbed, folded his long limbs into the chair across from me. The pub wasn’t so much open for business as it was open for Communion and his friends, and the man who leased it had cheerfully stepped out to give the Baker the run of it.

So it was that we had made of the shabby interior something of a reunion.

It had been three days since the alchemical sorcery that had nearly cost us all our lives.

I had learned that Ashmore had gone unconscious during the events, and that Lord Piers had been quite beside himself with concern for the man—and by extension, for me. After Ashmore’s waking some full day later, the earl had plied him with enough brandy to drown a bantling in.

In truth, I sensed a friendship forged between Lord Piers and my tutor, and this pleased me.

Hawke sat at another table with Communion, both heads bent together as they discussed whatever it was a once ringmaster and London street crew leader might discuss. Both wore faces carved with intensity, but I did not fear the topic at hand. Neither seemed to be overly tense.

Zylphia sat between them, gesturing as she spoke. That neither intimidated her was one of many reasons I so respected her.

Like myself and Hawke, she had been bedridden for some time, and we had all been concerned for the child she carried.

The life force that had been stretched taut between us all, that had bolstered all of us and allowed us to break the alchemical shackles forced upon us, had tapped into our very hearts.

Such things might affect us in ways we had not yet come to understand.

All that said, that I could sit here among those I called friend and feel a sense of peace was something I was not yet used to, and had not yet figured out how to address.

As if he understood, Ashmore reached out with an ungloved hand and covered mine upon the table. “So, you finally mastered the third Trump,” he said, low for the sake of the topic.

At the other table, Hawke’s eyes lifted to us. Held, a razor sharp awareness filling every part of his body.

I was well aware Ashmore knew that too.

His lips twitched.

“Is that praise for the student,” I asked lightly, “or praise for the tutor?”

“Can’t I praise both?” said tutor replied, and I laughed, a little surprised by how easy it came.

I turned my palm under his and clasped both my hands around his fingers. “You gave your strength to me,” I said, humor fading. In its place, love. “When we needed it most, you were selfless. Thank you.”

“Vow or not,” he replied, warm brown eyes a little more hazel than I recalled them prior, “I was honored that you reached out.”

I leaned forward, the ends of my singed curls falling about my chin. I’d managed a plait, but there was just no helping the layered remains. My brow furrowed deeply. “Are your eyes different?”

“Perhaps.” He touched my cheek with gentle fingers. “I believe we’re all a little changed, minx.” His expression turned rueful as a low sound filtered from Hawke’s table. “Perhaps you should refrain from giving Hawke any more reason to doubt me.”

I glanced over my shoulder to find all three at his table watching me, each with varying shades of exasperation.

I grinned most cheekily.

Zylphia nudged Hawke with the heel of her hand. “Just remember that you asked for it.”

“I have never,” Hawke replied flatly, “
asked
for it.”

Ashmore made a sound caught between a laugh and snort, muffling it quick behind his hand.

Ishmael looked up at the ceiling, as though finding an interest in the boards set above.

Again, my eyebrow climbed high.

Hawke mirrored it, his eyes pinned on mine.

I blinked. Then, frowning, I touched my own eyebrow. “How did I learn to do that?”

Zylphia rose, an arm tucked under her belly. Her skirts swished as she crossed the floor. “You,” she said over my head, pausing at my chair. A hand came to rest on the back of it, but she leaned comfortably against me—a thing that she had grown used to.

It seemed not so long ago that she had refrained from casually touching, as though unwilling to cope with what she was forced to pursue as a sweet.

I smiled up at her.

Her gaze focused on Ashmore. “You going to tell her?”

“Tell me what?” I asked.

Communion sighed, carefully leaning back in his chair. It creaked alarmingly. “It’s all over my head.”

Hawke said nothing. I suspect, were I to look, that he delivered Ashmore a glared challenge.

My tutor raised his hands in surrender. “What happened,” he said, looking fully at me, “will leave scars.” I nodded, already aware, but he added quickly, “Not that kind. I mean to say that the bonds forged between us will not fade so easy. As you drew our strength, we each gained something from you. And,” he finished with a wry twist to his lips, “each other.”

This seemed like a matter of balance.

“Hawke’s…” Ashmore hesitated. “Let us call it
discrepancy,
has been softened by us. We steady him, as he emboldens our resolve.”

I glanced at the man in question.

He watched us with an inscrutability that was as part of him as the color of his skin, the river of blue in his left eye.

All he lacked were the accoutrements of his ringmaster finery, and it was as though the intervening months had not occurred.

Only that wasn’t right either.

I stood up, rounded Zylphia. “Is it true?”

Again, his dark eyebrow climbed. “Do you doubt any of us?”

I shook my head hard. “Never.”

Hawke stood with agile grace. “Do you regret it?”

I laughed, then clapped a hand over my mouth.

Behind me, Ashmore said with the same tone he utilized when he exasperatedly rubbed at his face, “And she’s gone.”

I would address him later. Would address Zylphia’s rueful, “Can you blame her?” another time.

Communion left the table as I passed it, and I was dimly aware of his low rumble as he said, “I’ll send a carrier to the house.”

As I approached Hawke on steady feet, all I could think of was him.

Was he cured, then? Was that the secret? All Hawke had needed was the influence of souls as strong as his.

The phoenix, the tiger, and were this a Chinese tale, that would make of Ashmore the wise sage.

Hawke caught my hands. Raised one to his lips. The burn of his kiss upon my knuckles, mercifully free of all the burns I’d thought I’d collected, sent a shiver all the way to my toes. “Is there anything left to say?” he demanded, low and dark against my skin.

Tears filled my eyes. I shook my head.

“Poets,” sighed Ashmore behind us, the weight of his sardonicism rolling off us both. “When you are done mooning,” he added louder, “there are arrangements to make.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

We could not remain in London.

I pressed upon Piers the retrieved Koh-i-Noor, requesting that he return it to Lady Rutledge—and in so doing, I conspired to introduce him to the life of an agent of the Crown. I had no doubt that the lady would make use of his cleverness.

“What will you do in America?” the earl asked me, looking down from his perch upon the waiting gondola.

I smiled. “I have friends there,” I said. “’Tis only been six years. I hope to find them.”

“And then?”

I could only lift my shoulders in wordless uncertainty.

“I will see you off,” he promised, and took his leave.

As for the rest of us, we lingered only long enough to see to the funerary rites of Frances Fortescue, interred in the plot beside her late husband. It had been many years since they had been together. I knew she would want to be nowhere else.

I hoped that my dearest Fanny had found a measure of peace.

As I wept over her grave, it was Hawke who held me. Patient, steady and infinitely kind in his silence.

It did not hurt any more than the loss of her company already required. I had learned something of blame. I would always feel a measure of responsibility, but I knew that Fanny herself would have boxed my ear if she caught me wallowing in guilt.

Though I mourned, I could not help but feel as though she remained with me. Knowing what I had learned of the scars left by
Caeles-Isis
, I felt more gratitude than I truly did feel pain. Whatever ghosts watched over Zylphia through her heritage, I felt an odd disquiet that suggested I had been included in her protection. And with it, Fanny’s eternal love. What Zylphia felt, she did not share. But she often found reason to touch me—upon the arm, the shoulder. The cheek. As though she gained reassurance from it.

Ashmore put his multitude of allies to work, maintaining a level of anonymity as we conspired to draft our plans. Through Ashmore, I learned that Uriah had been murdered by his own so-called court, led by Meriwether. The temptation of immortality had proven to be too great a lure for the cunning jester.

I still didn’t know everything that had caused my tutor to be known to Leopold Uriah, but that Ashmore grieved in his own quiet way for the boisterous man’s loss was apparent. Unfortunately, the remains of Uriah’s followers were a difficult lot, and word came that they blamed Ashmore—and by extension, me—for Uriah’s murder. Underground justice was no less painful than what the Menagerie had engaged in.

I had no desire to continue a life on the run.

Nor did I want to return to Society.

The former was exhausting. The latter meant I could not have Hawke.

As my mother did before me, I would choose a man of lesser station.

Of course, had I any inkling to abandon Hawke now, I had no doubt he would hunt me down to the ends of the earth.

So it was on my twenty-first birthday, a bright spring day, that we gathered, a ragged bunch of unusual ilk, upon the upper platforms at the West India Docks. I wore traveling attire of middle-class wealth, simple cottons and a wide-brim hat, in deep mauve in honor of my lost Fanny.

At my side, Hawke fooled no one in his trousers and jacket, thin necktie and appropriate traveling bowler. He should have looked quite respectable, and for all that, every time I set eyes upon him, I wanted to laugh.

The third time he caught me peeking, he cupped my chin in hand and tilted my face up.

“What is so amusing?” he demanded.

I leaned against him as men hooted and called from the sky ship currently loading. We may be above the drift, but dock workers the world over would never change.

I smiled up into his mismatched eyes. “As fine you look,” I said huskily, “I think I prefer you barefoot and in your shirtsleeves.”

His lips hovered a breath above mine, rubbing them with every word. “We are going to the Americas, are we not? I shall be the savage for you.”

My heart fluttered.