Transmuted (4 page)

Given the events of the year past, it would not surprise me if certain intellectually minded members of Her Majesty’s agencies had come to know more of me than any knew of them.

The smile that raised Lady Rutledge’s fleshy cheeks crinkled her eyes. It told me nothing of her own loyalties. “You waste no time on ridiculous questions. Lovely girl. Don’t tip your head,” she added firmly, and I straightened my posture by rote. “Sometime between eleven of the evening and three o’clock this morning, Wakefield Tower earned the dubious distinction of playing brief host to an uninvited guest.”

“Impossible,” Zylphia said behind me. She did not say so in the tones of one who was skeptical, but as a statement of fact. I had little doubt that she had already taken notice of the various accoutrements in place—not the least of which being soldiers—to make this feat every bit as impossible a she declared.

Of course, I tended to specialize in the impossible. Given the company in which I stood, I couldn’t be the only one to do so.

Lady Rutledge regarded my companion with the same sharpness she regarded me, and this I found to be telling, as well. The lady was well-reasoned. Any I might call friend or ally, she had no doubt discerned, were certainly bound to be more than appearances might claim. “Not impossible,” she corrected. “Difficult, but as you will note, hardly unfeasible.”

’Twasthe details I wanted. “What have you for me, my lady?”

“Certainly,” Lady Rutledge said, and snapped her fingers at the lanky Garrard’s representative.

The papers he’d clung to trembled as he passed them to me. Damp smears remained on the margins. I studied its contents as Lady Rutledge continued her explanations.

“The Jewel House remains open for visits. It closes for the eveningat a reasonable hour,” she said. “Every evening, there are steps taken to ensure all is well. At last call, all items were accounted for, and the whole properly locked.”

“The Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office did not sign anything out,” Mr. Jodfrey volunteered, his voice reedy and strained near to cracking. He shifted foot to foot as though prodded by the angry spirits of monarchs past—them what felt a hot iron might be apt punishment for a careless loss of a treasure. “Only the royal pall is lacking, as it is sent for cleaning upon regular schedule.”

I looked up from my reading, my eyes wide. As my confusion receded, anticipation slipped into its place—and no small amount of interest. “One of Her Majesty’s priceless treasures has gone missing.”

Lady Rutledge nodded most solemnly. “And you, my dear Lady Compton, will be the collector that locates it again.”

Chapter Four

In that moment, I was made aware of two very distinct matters.

One, that the nature of Her Majesty’s agencies certainly tended towards insidious.

Through some means or another, my identity as a collector had spread—at least to certain ears primed to hear that which should not be known.

This explained a great deal about the events of the past few hours.

And two, though certainly not the least of my concerns, whosoever had braved the vast and efficient protection afforded the Jewel House in Wakefield Tower had done so with exceptional efficiency—which spoke volumes as to his or her skill.

This intimated a foe of some worthiness.

I tucked the first of the papers beneath the rest, reading quickly over such matters as routine security walks and a brief—if incomplete, for secrecy’s sake—outline of the mechanisms that protected the Crown’s regalia.

Very deliberately, I refrained from asking the lady what she knew of my habits and past.

My curiosity burned under the strain of so many questions.

Lady Rutledge waved Mr. Jodfrey away with an imperious hand. When he had fled to a satisfactory distance, the lady’s voice lowered—even as it retained an element of smugness. “I imagine you to be surprised.”

“Some. Yet when it comes to you, Lady Rutledge,” I said to the papers, “I have learned surprise is not my ally.”

“A fair assumption.” She paused. “Have you any?”

“Questions?”

“Allies,” she corrected gamely. “Aside from your girl there.”

The allies I counted were as dear as they were incontrovertible, but I thought it best not to give the sharp Lady Rutledge any information she had not gleaned herself. What the Crown might know of Ashmore or Hawke concerned me greatly. Naming them would end terribly, I just knew it.

I thought of all those I had come to rely upon, and of course, I thought of Zylphia, who remained near enough at hand to watch over me.

In the end, I said nothing.

The lady’s smile remained unflappably wide. “Good. Then this shall make matters somewhat more tolerable. How is your memory, Miss S— Ah.” She caught herself, and were I not familiar with the lady, I might have thought it an unavoidable blunder. “Forgive me,” she added. “I am still unused to your new title.”

There was no disdain there. Only the cautious prod of a scar still tender, in the interested manner of a scientist seeking reaction.

I ensured that my features remained carefully blank. “A widowed countess in Society’s poor graces bears little enough say in such matters,” said I, bland as could be. “Call me what you will, my lady, I have naught but respect for you and will answer.”

A direct hit. I watched approval bloom beneath her smile. She smiled rather more than when I’d come across her in the various soirees I’d been forced to attend.

“I did so take note of you early on,” she said in tones of smug satisfaction. I thought it to be meant a compliment.

I paused at a still, a colored photograph as made popular by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel.

While hardly as groundbreaking as Mr. Finch’s aether engine, the art of photography—especially that of color—was an intriguing one.

I studied the large stone arrayed on velvet, puzzled by the blot marring the still. “And so we are at the topic at hand,” Lady Rutledge said. She did not invite me to sit anywhere, nor to locate a place where tea may be served. There was no hint of comfort here.

Only that transaction as forged between employer and, as I suspected I was meant to be, servant to the Crown.

“Is this diamond the stolen piece in question?” I asked.

“It is. You may not recognize it,” she added, “as it was recut to a brilliant by the Prince Consort some years ago.”

As she spoke, a memory surfaced—one of many bits of minutiae rattling about in my skull. I had often spent my mornings reading over the periodicals, and while Fanny insisted I maintain focus upon the gossips and other such drivel, I preferred to be rather more current on modern topics.

I remembered dimly an article written describing the brilliance of a diamond so large that it shone with a light of its own. The diamond had initially been much larger, but after it had been cut, it had lived up to its name. What was it? Some mystical title fraught with hyperbole. I searched my mind for the words.

“Ah, of course.” I tipped my head, caught myself before she could, and righted it once more. “The Mountain of Light.” As I recalled, it had been recorded as a monstrous 793 carats in its storied history. “The Koh-iNoor.”

“Well educated,” Lady Rutledge said, but in the manner of an expectation rather than praise. “Tell me what you know of it.”

This was altogether too similar to the game she had instigated in her own salon in autumn of last year. I had been given the part of the great detective, and the clues had come first at her hand, then later through other means.

Was it because of her role as an agent of the Crown? Or did this interest come naturally to her?

I could not ask. It would be considered cheating. Say what one might of the lady’s eccentricities, her rules were quite simple to grasp. A game was afoot, and she expected me to play.

Now that I’d grasped the topic, the details came quickly. “Although it had been quite large in its history, it never did appear to look like anything more than rough stone. When many visitors remained disappointed in the dull color of the diamond, the Prince Consort had it cut into a brilliant.”

“I said as much already,” Lady Rutledge said. Obvious chastisement.

I turned the photograph around. “This capture does the current gem no justice. It is the larger of two sister stones. However, only the one was acquired from the East India Company.

When he was still a child, and a ward of the Crown, Maharajah Dulīp Singh officially gifted it to Her Majesty. It is,” I added with some primness, “reputed to be cursed.”

“And what say you to that?”

Once upon a time, I might have declared such matters to be little more than bollocks— and had done just that to the lady in the past.

Now, I approached some matters with caution. Ashmore would be proud. “Regardless of the efficacy of such things, it seems to me that it does not matter what I believe as what the thief believes.”

“Delightful,” Lady Rutledge said, a near-boom of approval. “You have grown iron for a spine, girl, and pleased I am to see it.”

That inferred I lacked one to begin with.

She turned, removing from me the opportunity to expound upon my blossoming irritation, and included the entire area in an expansive gesture. “You see as well as I the obstacles to simple thievery. That indicates we are dealing with something greater than a mere robber.”

“My lady,” I said, tucking the information handed me against my breast. “While I am grateful to find myself on the welcoming side of your personage, why do you ask this of me?”

Her skirts swayed about her feet as she stilled her turn. She studied me thoughtfully, hands clasped simply at her wide waist. “Oh, dear. And here I was so pleased with your intellectual progress.”

I frowned.

“Stop that,” she added tartly. “Your eyebrows beetle and you look like your father.” Not as much a slap as it might have been, for I had more or less come to terms with my mad father’s antics. That she thought me similar in look to him instead of my vaunted mother was something of a welcome relief. I had too often been compared to her, Society’s darling in her day, and found lacking.

With care, I smoothed my complexion and asked instead, “Does this request mean that you will be openly welcoming my presence in time?”

“Confident, aren’t you?”

Sometimes. I inclined my head. “Is there anything else I should know?”

“All you need to know is in your hands.” With the air of one forging dismissal, Lady Rutledge turned away from me. “Now be gone before dawn breaks. Your presence is something of a wart at the moment and I can’t be fussed to explain it to prying eyes.”

That earned a pang I thought already softened.

Among those I had lost, few bit as deeply as the loss of the Honorable Theodore Helmsley—the man I’d thought my dearest of friends. As it had come to pass, he, too, presented a different face than that which he’d shown to Society.

As the collector who’d styled himself my rival, meant to challenge me at every turn—as the man who’d claimed to have been made for me, my perfect complement—it was Teddy who had helped my father in his mad schemes, murdered my husband, and in the end, perished by my hand.

He had always claimed me a curious boil on the face of Society.

Unlike the lady, Teddy had done so affectionately.

The reminder caused my chest to ache.

Clutching the items I’d been given, armed with only that minimal knowledge Lady Rutledge had allowed and burdened by demand of the Crown, I retreated from Lady Rutledge’s presence.

Zylphia followed, eerily silent but always watchful.

We were met outside the door, and once more blinded by black cloth. This time, I was certain that they navigated us in deliberate circles, for the reverse journey did not match that what I’d committed to memory.

Once the door had shut behind us and the gondola shivered into motion, I stripped the blindfold from my head. “We’ve work to do, Zylla. Are you game for a chase?”

“And then some,” she promised, peeling away the black cloth that banded her eyes. Her lovely jaw set. “How big’s the prize, then?”

I hadn’t asked, but I wasn’t certain I’d have received an answer.

Collector or not, regardless of the fact that we always demanded pay, the Crown’s orders were inviolable.

I shook my head. “What happens after the closing of the case will remain to be seen. Her Majesty is not known to be miserly with her gratitude, yet I am not convinced she is aware of this matter.”

“What of the lady?”

What of her, indeed? Lady Rutledge was as much a curious ally as an uncertain mystery.

“I trust her not to murder me outright,” I said slowly, “yet this does not guarantee me her goodwill.”

She sighed. “Bloody bint, that one.” Settling back, arranging the folds of her simple dress with care, Zylphia reached up to adjust the sputtering light. “All right, then. What’s all this about a diamond?”

Quietly, I filled her in on the history of the gem. It had come by way of the East India Company, considered spoils of war for a long time. Having the young maharajah
gift
it to Her Majesty was little more than a political move to lend credence to her ownership. Such was the method by which all worldly treasures were bought and sold.

Mention of the diamond’s worth widened her eyes. Subsequent scrutiny of the appraisal papers I handed her—for she, despite expectations most might have of her sort, was quite literate—earned a thoughtful hum. When I leafed through the parchment left to me, she was already running through a small list of them what might have the means to smuggle such priceless treasure out of London.

I wasn’t so certain the diamond would gallivant around by the usual means. An envelope came to my searching fingers.

It was unmarked, but fine in quality. The sort meant for pocketing matters, rather than posting them. Curious, I opened it beneath the hanging lantern light.

The bit of parchment that fell out drifted to my lap, and with it, a bit of old glass, such as that leftover from a smashed bottle.

Time had worn the fragment so its edges were no longer sharp, and the color had muddied, but there was no mistaking the symbol etched into the widest portion. “Zylla?” My tone earned a shift from her side of the seat, and a lean that tucked her dusky cheek close to mine.

The suddenness of her indrawn breath echoed my growing smile. “That’s an Underground chit, isn’t it?”

“That it is.” I held up the worn bit of glass between two gloved fingers. The surface had long since marred to the point of dullness, ensuring it reflected no light. The
V
carved in it had blackened with filth accrued.

“And this?” Zylphia asked, reaching for the bit of parchment.

It looked similar to those notes I’d earned much of my professional reputation on, little more than a scrap with a request and pay written upon it.

As she read it aloud, anticipation surged through me.

“‘A large diamond,’” she recited. “‘Ten thousand pounds per fifty carats.’” The elegant black wings of her eyebrows lifted sharply. “How many carats did you say this Mountain of Light was?”

“One hundred and five.”

“Twenty thousand pounds, then.” She whistled low and greedy. Not that I could blame her.

“No small sum,” I noted. A rather droll underestimation.

She huffed in overt understanding of such. “Whatever bloke’s making the demand, he’s a rich blighter, isn’t he?

“Yet there’s no name,” I pointed out. “Only a chit. Why? What does the Underground have to do with this? Did this collector, if collector he be, make prior arrangement with his patron?” And then, because I could not still the rising eagerness within me, I clucked my tongue in mock dismay. “Now, who would be so foolish as to drop the notice and accompanying chit at the scene of the crime?”

“Couldn’t say.” My companion lifted the note to her nose, then grimaced. “Smells of sewage.”

The Underground often did, at least that part of it closest to the run-offs. I had been there only a small number of times, often chasing a bounty—and never without a guide. Tough as steel and boiled leather we may be, even collectors took care to mind the unspoken rules of the Underground.

There were them what utilized it as a means for criminal activity, and them what lived so far below that they did not exist in the eyes of Her Majesty’s civic services. It was a place similar to a black market, but called instead by other monikers—the ghost market, the forgotten tunnels.

The most poetic of the lot was a whispered
dead man’s haunt.

Them what risked venturing below the lowest of the drift rarely had intentions of returning to the light—and they hated, with great passion, toffs. ’Twas an enmity as natural as fire and water Perhaps, I thought as I studied the dull glass chit that would allow my entry, it was long past time for London’s only female collector to reacquaint herself with such souls as might steal a diamond for twenty thousand pounds.