Transmuted (7 page)

To see her feeling so poorly was a new circumstance.

Fanny cradled her tea in one hand, sipping delicately. Her dignity had always been such that I doubted the frailty of age would dent it. “And did I hear Hawke this morning?”

Oh, bollocks.
My cheeks flamed, for all she asked with such innocuous curiosity.

Little my companion did was so innocent.

I pushed my plate away so that I might pull my teacup and saucer closer. It was unnecessary, but gave me something to look at. “Oh, yes, I think so,” I said, striving for airy and managing little more than guilt.

Fanny saw right through me. When it came to such matters, she often did. “I see.” Her lips pursed. “More of your nighttime antics?”

Were it not for the sole fact that I had already swallowed my tea, I might have choked on it. “What?”

“Your adventures, Cherry,” she clarified patiently.

“Oh.” Heat seared my cheeks. Burned all the way to my hairline. “Of course. No,” I added hastily. “Not mine. Hawke has been accompanying Ashmore on his errands.”

“Oh?” Her wispy white eyebrows rose. “You appear to be rather settled, my dove.”

Why was it that such simple words forced more blush to my already telling skin? The heat saturating my whole being echoed a throb of tightness under my brow. “Whatever do you mean?”

Her smile, when it came, was fond. And accusatory, all at the same time. “You are hardly a miss content to remain at home, Cherry.” An obvious enough truth that it required no support from me. “I am always expecting to see you gone come morning, out on another grand lark.”

If it came across the table as more sad than approving, it certainly found easy purchase in the niche my guilt had carved within me. I did not like feeling as though I left Fanny wondering if I would return to her. Of course I would return.

Hadn’t I done just so?

I reached across the corner and took her hand. Her skin was paper thin beneath my fingers, dry and so fragile.

But her grip was firm as she squeezed my hand in kind. “Oh, pay no attention to this old woman,” she added quick enough. “I am still unused to this new order of things. You are, after all, a widow of some means. What you do is no longer my business.”

“Of some means,” I echoed, but with a self-deprecating ache. “Hardly true, is it?”

This earned me a sniff, a dismissal as far as Fanny cared to take it.

That I was penniless, supported only by Ashmore’s indulgences, meant that for all intents and purposes, I looked rather more like a scandalous woman than anything else. To be certain, the apparent perception was that of Ashmore keeping a mistress.

Were we still mired in the politics and matters of reputation, it might have been more important.

That Fanny continued to ignore the subject of my standing—to the point where she refused to engage upon it—was not cruel. It was, I understood, her method of ensuring that no argument would divide us; a bit of play-acting, really.

That what she did not acknowledge, she would not be forced to pursue—to my unhappiness, surely.

I had not become the proper lady she had hoped for.

This sorrowful thought continued to hound me for much of the day. After the morning’s repast, I helped Mrs. Booth with a bit of cleaning—to her fussing, as if we still retained the demands of Society’s roles—and retired to the parlor to pore over the stolen diamond’s documents.

The heaviness assailing my flesh was no doubt thanks to my interrupted sleep. I could not attempt a brief rest, not if I expected to arrive at my studies on time, so I would persevere and find a bit of sleep after.

A drop of laudanum might ease the worst of this sleepy ague I nursed, but this created an all-new ache inside my skin. I could not allow myself to think of such matters.

The information ceded me by Lady Rutledge remained fairly straightforward. The Koh-iNoor was a beautiful diamond, rough in appearance first, and then glittering and smooth after Garrard & Co. had cut it again. A shame that so much of the diamond had been lost in so doing, but it certainly did much for the stone’s luster.

What baffled me was a simple matter of greed.

If one had the means to break into Wakefield Tower, thereby earning the run of the Jewel House, why stop at this single diamond? Why not take a few other gems?

Certainly none of the regalia—such items would be easily traced no matter the fencing ken that harbored it. One was certain to run into more difficulty attempting to pawn the Jewelled Sword of Offering than random bits of gems and gold.

What did this say of the thief?

A collector seemed the most obvious conclusion, and one that I’d leapt to initially. And if not a collector, then at least a body with access to the notes therein—unless, as it occurred to me, the note was not actually the same as a bounty’s but simply similar in design.

I tucked the parchment under my nose and inhaled deeply. The pong of rotting water similar to that of the Thames assailed me again. But with it, a fragrance different from the acrid stench I associated with the fog that filled the collector station just east.

“Bugger,” I muttered.

“Always charming,” Ashmore replied behind me, earning a startle and sudden flutter of papers.

On the mark, the hall clock chimed twice.

“Well timed, as ever,” I noted. A hand pressed to my chest to still the leap surprise had caused.

My tutor looked much more rested than he had that morning, with a healthy tint of pink to his otherwise stark white features and a warmth to his smile to ease the substantial yoke of his own impression.

Youthful as Ashmore might appear to the nonchalant eye, there was a worldliness about him that belied his apparent years. That came primarily from the fact that his years numbered among four centuries, of course, but also—and I had begun to suspect this of myself, as well— from the weighty burden that unlocking the secrets of the cosmos forced upon one.

Often were the times I wished for a magical key to solve all of the world’s problems, and every time, Ashmore lectured me on the necessity for secrecy, for sense; for, above all things, the need to refrain from such thoughts.

The secrets of the cosmos were not the panacea they seemed. The world needed to find its own answers.

One day, I would master all the Trumps, as far as
Zodiacus
. I would do so, because I refused to leave this path halftrodden. It was the first I’d chosen myself, and the only I’d committed wholeheartedly.

A fine enough goal, assuming I did not meet my end attempting it.

“Fanny sends her regards,” I added as my tutor came around the sofa to share the seating with me.

He plucked the still of the diamond from under his hip, casting it a cursory inspection.

He wore brown again, as he was wont to do; simple duds that did not paint him as the gentleman I knew him to be, but a workman of none-too-apparent value.

Save that only the blind would fail to note the courtesy with which he operated.

“I am sorry to have missed the morning repast,” he replied, then flipped the picture to face me. “The blot here is a common circumstance with the wash used in processing the photograph.”

How he knew that I’d wondered was one of Ashmore’s many gifts. Intuitive, that fellow. I took the picture. “Thank you.”

“Most welcome.” He had not come with books for our lesson, nor with the various tools of the trade. We would retire to the attic for such things, where we were less likely to be overheard or stumbled upon.

The small laboratory Ashmore had installed there provided plenty of opportunity for practice. As long as I did not accidentally set aught on fire, it would suffice.

In my defense, I had only caused a fire once—an inappropriate and woefully damaging use of
Magnitudo
, the twelfth Trump,so far beyond my skill that I still do not know how I’d drawn upon it.

Ashmore had thought my ability to call upon the powerful Trump to be the result of lingering cracks in my spirit, leftover from my mother’s attempted possession. That the backlash had knocked me quite cold was, as he’d put it, deucedly lucky. It might have killed another.

The Trump no doubt killed the man I’d used it on. Ikenna Osoba, the Menagerie’s lion prince claimed to be from far-flung Africa, had vanished in the aftermath, his flesh aflame. The sound of his screams still echoed in my dreams.

There was much I still dreamed of. Nights I woke alone and sweating.

My studies often took the place of sleep when my mind would not calm.

“Before we set to lessons,” Ashmore continued, amicably for the moment. He would not wear that stern mask until we were once more teacher and student; he became quite the severe taskmaster when instructing. “Have you thoughts as to this evening’s excursion?”

Ah, a matter less overtly boring than written papers and philosophical discourse. Not that I minded the latter, only that Ashmore was much more thorough than I had patience for. Each Trump taught was a lesson in tolerance—and penmanship.

“I knew three guides qualified to take us below,” I replied. “Of them, I suspect one’s met his Maker by way of barrel fever.”

Ashmore’s eyebrows climbed his pale forehead. “Bit of a drunkard?”

“A vast understatement,” I assured him. “If the Thames turned to rum and glass, he’d chew through it all and bleed out happily all the while.”

My tutor’s eyelids flinched—a general twitch of amusement laced with distaste. “You have quite the gift, minx.”

I spread my hands, ungloved because I’d simply forgotten where I put them, and drew my most innocent smile. “I’d have to send a bantling to the other two, simply to see if they remain where they always are. ’Tis been a long time since I’ve traversed the border.”

“Aye.” He rubbed his thumb along his barbered sideburns, which were slightly more orange in hue than his hair. “I’m sure much has changed in the ghost market.”

“Have you been?” I asked, leaning forward.

“Not for many years.”

“How many?”

“Since before you came,” he assured me.

I huffed a sound I’d learned from Fanny.

Ashmore studied me with a forthrightness that did not lack Hawke’s intensity so much as channel it different. I enjoyed the company of those who preferred a direct approach.

This explained a great deal of my immediate circle. Even the youngest of my associates, Maddie Ruth Halbard, was a forthright little thing.

Although not so young as I insisted on thinking her, now that I came to consider it. Maddie Ruth turned seventeen soon.

And if she would see a birthday, that meant my own birthday came sooner, near the end of May.

I would be one and twenty.

The year I was to inherit all that was my father’s and become an independent woman of means.

The melancholy this caused in me did not go unnoticed by my sharp-eyed companion. Ashmore’s frown bit deep into the corners of his mouth. “Why so gloomy, of a sudden? Adventure awaits, you know.”

“I know.” So warned of my apparent inability to mask my feelings, I forced a smile as I rose. Shaking out my skirts provided me something to hold my focus. “I’ll send out runners come closer to dusk. If any of my guides linger, we’ll have our plan set for the night.”

“Which entrance,do you think?”

That Ashmore let me direct the conversation so readily was not as much a relief as a thing to be grateful for. I gathered the papers in hand, but only to sort through them for the envelope. “Wapping, I think. Aside from that I’m more familiar with it,” I explained, offering the envelope, “the note smells rather strongly, doesn’t it?”

Ashmore dutifully put nose to the interior,then recoiled with a cringe. “Sewage.”

“And?”

Brow furrowing, my tutor took another tentative sniff. His nostrils flared in his aquiline nose.

When the answer did not immediately occur to him, he took another, deeper breath. Realization dawned swiftly.

“It smells of rotting eggs, doesn’t it?” I asked.

“
Sulpur
,” he said, tone thoughtful. That he used the original Latin word for it was a matter of course.

“Exactly so,” I agreed cheerfully. “Sewage and sulfur. The first can be found anywhere an Undergound passage lies, but the latter is remarkable only in the sense that the largest verifiable market is nearest the Thames Tunnel.”

“The ghost market is a good resource for such reagents,” Ashmore added, reclining in the sofa to drape one arm along the back. He worked the hypothesis through with growing interest. “If we are suggesting that this note came into contact with sulfur, then the market is as likely a place as any.”

“And anyone likely to buy a stolen diamond would be at that market.”

“Perhaps even a vendor himself,” he added for me.

I nodded. “’Tis a guess, but seems a fair enough starting point.”

“I cannot disagree.” He stood, offering a bent arm. “As for now, we’ve more pressing matters to see to. Shall we see to lessons?”

I took his arm, laying my fingertips in the bend of his elbow, and smiled up at him. “Might I hope there will be less writing today?”

“Ah, minx.” He patted my hand over his arm. “You may always hope.”

“Demon.”

He chuckled, entirely unapologetic.

Chapter Seven

When the bells chimed a visitor, shortly before supper was to be laid out, I was caught in my rooms, stepping into an evening dress. I did not have quite so many dresses and gowns as I’d been forced to wear above the drift, but I attempted a modicum of propriety for Fanny’s sake.

Zylphia helped me, for a corset was no small feat to attempt alone.

“Are we expecting a guest for supper?” I asked, holding on to a post of my bed. The question ended on a gasp as Zylphia wrenched tight the lacings.

“Can’t say,” she replied, but with the distracted air of one whose focus remained upon the knee placed in the small of my back rather than the subject at hand.

I subsided, turning my attentions to ensuring that I could breathe through the panels cinched so tightly. “Why so snug?” I managed.

“Is it?” Zylphia tied off the lacings, then slipped the ties for the bustle around my waist. “Almost ready. Mrs. Fanny says we’re having
poulets aux nouilles
.”

One ofMrs. Booth’s newest additions to her menu, this dish was comprised of pasta, chicken, and a variation of vegetables for garnish. Served warm, the flavors of the spices came together with remarkable palatability. The beauty of the dish, however, was that it tasted almost
better
when chilled.

Soon enough, I was dressed, my curls done up in a simple yet effective twist. She’d pinned my hair to within an inch of its bloody life. Although I was not forced to wear black when at home, I settled for a deep indigo gown, a shade away from mourning hues and still somber enough to soothe sensibilities on the subject.

Zylphia’s dark hair had been coiled in a similar vein, but wound into a tighter knot—as befitting one who played at maid. I no longer argued with her, similar to the manner in which Mrs. Booth had given up on fussing when I took rag to furniture.

This time, she laid off the apron marking her as servant. Her charcoal dress was somber enough without it. With a bright-eyed smile, she gestured me down the stairs ahead of her.

Really, I should have known better than to trust such an angelic face.

I strode into the dining room, gloved hand buried in my skirts to ensure I did not tread upon them, and had already opened my mouth in greeting when the tableau before me sharpened.

The words died on my tongue.

Hawke turned away from the fireplace, its embers left in a permanent state of glow in deference of the cooling May evening. The chandelier above, its light caught in a multitude of faceted crystals, shed a scattering of reflected points of light over his dark hair, neatly plaited, and outlined the set of his shoulders.

The dinner jacket he wore was not the same as that expected above the drift, but it was more than I expected of him. The tailored fit of it across those shoulders, snug against his torso and fitted just so at the narrow waist drew my eye with unerring precision.

He had always looked the very personification of tempter in the Menagerie, outfitted in design similar to fashion’s upper echelon but with colors much more vivid than any gentleman’s attire. His role as ringmaster had demanded no less.

The once I’d seen Hawke above the drift, he had sported apparel of a fascinating appearance. He had danced with me at a masquerade—by very nature of the event, the sort of thing one did not wear the usual fashions to.

Yet as he faced me, as the ambient bustle of my household faded around me, I could not help the thought that as ringmaster, Hawke was deviously attractive. As the beast he’d become, there was an instinct that drew me to him.

As a man on the brink of respectability, with his dinner jacket and trousers and thin necktie, he was devastating.

His eyes held mine, such sensation carried on a stare that he could have reached out to capture my face in his palms and I would have barely noted the difference.

He pressed a hand to his chest and sketched for me the most sardonic of bows.

If he did touch me, I would burn—even through the layers forced upon me by fashion’s dictates. I knew this as certainly as I could feel the throbbing pressure of my own hungry thoughts.

He did not speak. Nor did I, for I wasn’t certain what I was meant to say. Were Hawke anyone else, I might have attempted the idle chatter that so punctuated these moments.

Instead, my heart clamored to be released of the vise his presence made of my corseted ribs.

In the faintest acknowledgement of whatever it was he saw within me, a corner of his deeply sculpted mouth turned up. All that he was spoke of menace with every breath; yet this was Hawke, after all, and I expected nothing less.

Even that river of blue in his eye, devilish bright, seemed all the more expressive for his apparent taming.

I forced my feet to carry me across the floor. My throat ached with all the things I could have said—the compliments that sprang to my scattered mind. I did not say them.

I was no fawning miss, to pant for the ringmaster who no longer was.

Instead, as I offered a hand for him to take—a gentlemanly gesture I knew was not beyond him—my lips became a smile, and my voice husky reproach. “You are fooling no one, you know.”

Ah, I was right. As his hand came to rest under mine, his bare fingers grazed my gloved palm and sent a current of electricity through me. “What makes you think I care?”

His lips touched the back of my hand.

It seared. I shuddered. “’Fess up,” I managed, a fair enough attempt at amused bravado. “What wager did you lose to find yourself forced to my company?”

His breath was hot through my glove. His eyes slid up to meet mine from beneath his ever so charming bent head. “Do not flatter yourself.”

“I have no need to subject myself to flattery,” I retorted, withdrawing my hand lest his touch sear it black. I turned my back upon him, a terrible discourtesy, and found Booth waiting at my usual seat.

“Coward.” Hawke’s murmur was not so loud that it might reach any other ears than mine. I hesitated upon my step, wondering what face he would show me if I spun to look.

Amusement?

Reproach?

Or the severe intensity that made me wonder how deeply he hungered, and for what it was he hungered for?

My shoulders squared. “Thank you, Booth,” I said, deliberately cheerful as my butler helped me to sit. Zylphia was so cared for, as well. Hawke remained standing.

I was deucedly aware of his gaze as I engaged Zylphia on the subject of the night’s meal. She had never before tasted it.

Soon enough, Ashmore escorted Fanny into the dining room—unsurprised, I noted, to find Hawke there. With due course, Fanny was seated with similar lack of surprise, and the gentlemen took their places.

So this little gathering had been decided by everyone but me, had it?

Manipulators. The lot of them.

That Fanny was at one end and Ashmore the other was a matter of over-courtesy on my part. I could not bring myself to sit at the head of the table, though my title all but demanded it.

As far as I was concerned, Ashmore was the true guardian of this family, and Fanny the matron who would never cede her role—not if I had anything to say of it.

Unfortunately, that left fairly limited places for guests.

Hawke sat between myself and Fanny. Zylphia occupied the other side, apparently unconcerned with my silent stares—she could have offered Hawke a place beside her, but the woman clearly enjoyed my discomfort. Her amusement all but rippled across the table.

When I was sure none was looking, I stuck my tongue out in childish dismay.

Zylphia’s laughter was as lovely as she was, all melodious bells and husky refrain.

Perhaps it was that, a simple gesture of comfort and joy, that eased some of my tension. Perhaps it helped that Ashmore was a gentleman, and skilled at the art of conversation.

Or perhaps it was, after all, the
rightness
I felt at that table as Booth came round with cold soup for starter and the bustle of the kitchen peppered the evening.

While Hawke’s intensity did not lessen, the care with which he noted Fanny’s presence plucked at something deep within me—a fragile little feeling that Hawke often engendered.

Not because he went out of his way, but because he didn’t.

Without counseling from me, without any apparent ulterior motive to win my affections—such as they were—I watched the tension carved into his face soften as he spoke with my older companion. He engaged her seriously, over such topics as pleased her—he knew rather more of trivial matters than I thought. She, ever the hostess, responded to his conversation with a warmth that surprised me deeply.

There was civility, and there was sincerity, and something about the once ringmaster evoked the latter.

To think that he cared enough to amuse her.

“You are smiling.”

Ashmore’s voice at my right earned me a sudden wash of mortification—I
was
smiling, wasn’t I? Like a bleeding tart caught mooning over a farmboy.

I wiped it from my face and left instead cool disdain. “I was not.”

Ashmore’s smile claimed he knew otherwise. His fork clinked against his plate, half cleared of the main course Booth had brought in. “If you say so.”

“I do.”

“Of course,” he agreed amicably.

I barely resisted the urge to pull another face. “Don’t get overly confident just because you think me stumped on lessons.”

“Never,” Ashmore demurred.

Certainly,
Caeles-Isis
was among the most complicated of the Trumps I’d attempted so far. Ashmore would not allow me the attempt to call upon it until I had demonstrated a thorough understanding of its symbolism.

Lessons had, of course, been fraught with writing.

At least supper provided cramping fingers a break. We ate leisurely, companionably— and if Hawke and I exchanged only the barest of civilities, I did not care enough to risk the effort for more. I was already unbalanced by his presence. It felt…
nice
having him here. Right, in an awkward way. He did not fit as a perfect glove, but he suited the odd gathering of friends and family.

A peculiar feeling, by any stretch.

Our home was not so large that we could comfortably ascribe to the notion that gentlemen and ladies part ways after supper. Nor was I inclined to tolerate such malarkey. There was nothing the men could speak of that I couldn’t match, after all.

Yet there were matters we needed to address that could not include Fanny.

For that reason, those of us in the know maintained the façade—or perhaps simply relished the comfort found during that warm supper—until the hall clock chimed six times and Fanny claimed it was time for her retirement.

Somewhat earlier than usual, but certainly acceptable given our means. If we still lived above, we would both be expected to linger long past midnight, and wake only after noon.

The denizens of the city under those glittering eaves raised so high operated on a completely different schedule.

We bid Fanny goodnight, and I pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Sweetest of dreams.”

She touched my face with a delicate hand. “Are you feeling well, my dove?”

“A bit of an ache about the head,” I said, clasping her hand between mine. “Nothing rest won’t cure.”

“Your cheeks are red.” She squeezed my hand. “Be careful,” she added, firm enough that the inner student she had made of me stiffened in acknowledgement of an order sternly given.

To dissemble would only do us both a disservice. She knew as well as I that there were plans afoot tonight. “I promise,” was all I said.

It seemed enough. Though worry did pinch the corners of her mouth, she smiled. Her faded blue eyes crinkled with it, deep furrows carved by age and care. As she made her way upstairs, Mrs. Booth followed her.

I did not know where Booth was offhand, but I suspected he’d be close enough to be of service. Like good butlers of any distinction, he had a near uncanny ability to pop up when he was needed. Levi had returned home shortly before supper, but he ate in the kitchens. He’d find bed soon, for an apprentice’s life started with the dawn.

I rejoined my companions in the parlor to find Ashmore had broken into his good stock. That he’d shared his libations with Hawke might have been something of an agreement between men. I doubted it was overly friendly. The fact they once more occupied opposite sides of the room made that clear enough.

Zylphia sat in her own chair, hands laced over her belly as though the growing swell was something of a burden. I had no doubt it was. Soon enough, we’d have to alter her dresses.

“If you’d be so kind,” I announced, earning the attention of three sets of eyes. “’Tis time we talk of our plans. Shall we go over what it is we know and expect?”

My tutor’s attentiveness was steady. I could always count on him for common sense.

Zylphia’s gaze was a little more tired than I was acclimated to seeing, but I suspected her energies flagged with the child she carried. She had always been clever, and through her, I’d ascertain Communion’s interests.

I was not inclined to anger the Bakers. Though Ishmael and I were mates, the Bakers and I had only managed a thin understanding. We deemed it best to stay out of Baker matters until they could regroup from the Ferrymen attacks that had thinned their ranks.

She would inform me if I strayed too close to the crew’s concerns.

Hawke, watching me like a feline might a particularly juicy rodent, could not be trusted to mind his tongue—not where I was concerned. Where Ashmore was like to understand a certain amount of risk involved in my affairs, Hawke would argue me blue and still manhandle me into obedience.

I had learned—far too late—that he did so for my own protection. It had cost him in standing and freedom, but the fact of his aggression remained.

He would not know compromise if it came at him in bloomers and danced a bloody jig.

I had no choice but to rely on overbearing confidence to see my plans through. “We believe that whatever thief braved the Jewel House, he will take the Koh-i-Noor to the Underground. The ghost market might be housing the wealthy employer of our collector.”