Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles (23 page)

With that, he pulled open the heavy door and slipped outside.

“Wait!”

He paused, his posture bent at the knees, rounded at the shoulders. I recognized it; it was the demeanor of every urchin who had ever made his home in the dangerous streets of London below.

It was the stance of a clever child who’d learned early that if given a chance, an adult would rather take the opportunity to get the boot in than offer a hand.

My heart twinged. I saw myself in him.

Myself, and something much less tragic. “What’s your name, lad?”

Again, that smile. A flash, an impish line. “Flip, marm,” he offered, doffing that threadbare cap of his, and scampered into the growing dark.

I watched him until he faded, perhaps three seconds. The fog provided excellent cover. Unfortunately, without my protectives, I was as good as blind. Worse, still, than them what lived here every day, for they developed a tolerance to the sting.

I waited for as long as I dared, slipped out of the heavy door, and pulled it shut behind me. Gathering my skirts, I looked first one way, then the other, and saw nothing but empty cobble and the muted shine of struggling lamps.

Make a line for the bobbies
, he’d said.

I could not risk walking through Ferrymen territory while they remained on guard. My choices had just dropped to one.

Berating myself soundly, I stepped onto the street, took a deep, stinging breath and sprinted for the police station.

I
have a terrible habit.

When I am not lying outright, I am sharing too much information. In my guilt, I asked the rather surprised constable on duty to tend to Mr. Pettigrew—he had no kin that I was aware of it, and I could not bear the thought of his body rotting amid his beloved books.

Such a request only garnered interest, and before I knew, I was answering question after question, fired at me from a grizzled detective whose lined features suggested he’d seen as much of the streets as I.

Yet I could not be as truthful with him as I wished.

I maintained my innocence in the subject: I’d gone to fetch books for my collection, found his body, was coming to fetch the police when the Black Fish Ferrymen had intervened. The raw, red mark on my cheek gave credence to my tale.

I said nothing of the killer in the black cloak, or the same discarded bit of fabric tossed in the alley. What would I say? That I, a young lady of Society, chased a fiend into the fog? Only to lose him when he vanished like a ghost.

Implausible, at the least.

Yet the constable—a Mr. Harrington Brisco, Esquire—had instincts that I could only admire. Even as I fended them off with every tool in my arsenal.

Not until I, Cherry St. Croix, broke into exhausted, bitter tears did the constable cease his questioning, and allow me to send word to Fanny for fetching.

For the next half hour, Mr. Brisco was the very model of conciliatory courtesy. He bade me keep the handkerchief he’d awkwardly pressed into my hand, fetched me a cup of coffee from the station stores, which I pretended to sip. I did not like the taste as a rule. And he allowed me to sit in his small office, in relative peace from the prying eyes of the other policemen tromping in and out of the station proper.

Exhausted by my day—by every aspect of my life, if I could be so dramatic to admit—I could barely summon the strength to do more than stare at my small brass pocket watch while the minutes ticked.

Finally, when I could stand the small, cramped interior of the station no longer, the door to Mr. Brisco’s tiny office opened. “Miss St. Croix,” came the man’s gravelly baritone, “your escort is arrived.”

Gods of all things kind and fortunate bless Booth.

I rose, aware of what a frightful mess I looked. My hair had shed over half its pins, now hanging in a tumbled twist of curls to my waist. Dirt and soot smudged my fingers—I’d stripped my gloves and held them in one tight hand—and I could only imagine what my face looked like after crying so bitterly.

Exhausted to the very depths of my bones, I nodded my thanks to the discomfited yet inherently kind Mr. Brisco, squared my shoulders and strode through the station.

Three policemen stopped to stare. At least until Mr. Brisco cleared his throat most tellingly.

“Be more careful, Miss St. Croix,” he warned me as he opened the station door for me.

“I shall,” I lied, and stepped outside.

Only to freeze, every limb rooted as an open carriage bearing the Northampton crest greeted my astonished eyes.

A driver in livery sat at the reins, facing forward in strict propriety. But the man who waited beside the carriage was one my heart thudded to see; even as it plummeted to a gloomy death in the pit of my soul.

“My lord,” I gasped.

The earl offered a gloved hand, his eyes unreadable behind the lenses of his clipped protectives, but his gaze fell on Mr. Brisco beside me. “My thanks, Constable.”

“Of course, m-my lord,” stuttered the man, who was clearly unused to dealing with lords and their sons. He bowed, an awkward thing, and took his leave of what I was sure was his private version of hell.

A wayward Society miss caught in a murder mystery, while the Earl Compton flies down like a guardian angel to pluck his only witness from the constable’s grasp.

I almost smiled, but the hard line I saw between Compton’s eyebrows stilled the urge. I took his hand, wincing when I remembered that mine was still bare. “I suppose my chaperone requested your aid?” I asked, sounding every inch a sulking girl.

The earl helped me aloft, waited until I found my seat before stepping up behind me. The set of his mouth was firm. “You gave Mrs. Fortescue a fright,” he returned, as much a reprimand as an explanation.

My shoulders rounded. As the earl settled to the padded seat across from me, the driver flicked a whip, clicked once and the horse whickered softly and plodded into motion. I was keenly aware of the silence between us, and the eyes staring blatantly at the earl’s open carriage.

Unconsciously, I lifted a hand to my cheek.

Compton caught it, pressed a clean, monogrammed handkerchief into my palm. His fingers were strong, firm enough to brook no argument of verbal or physical design, but it wasn’t that what caught me.

It was, instead, the way his mouth set in an uneven slant. Angry, of course I could see that, but concerned. Relieved, even, as his gloved fingers pressed fervently into my palm. My hand closed over the offering, even as I shivered.

“I apologize for the open carriage,” he said stiffly. “You understand the necessity.”

Of course. Propriety demanded open carriages when the sexes mingled, especially with lack of a chaperone. Yet that very lack might be enough to doom this to the scandal rags, regardless. I could not summon the will to care.

Truthfully, the air was rather cold on my cheeks and nose, but I would rather suffer than complain.

I did not have to do either. The earl lifted a large fur from the floor, and as the carriage plodded along the streets lined with flickering lamps, he pulled it over my shoulders. Unlike me, he’d come dressed for the weather, with his greatcoat pulled up over his ears.

I’d graduated, then, from forgetting small details to even how to take care of myself. Shame bit deeply; my cheeks flushed as his fingers pulled the fur tightly around my throat.

I did not know what to say. Here was an earl, come to rescue me. I sighed, my breath fogging somewhat against the chill damp. “Thank you,” I whispered.

Compton’s hands dropped. The carriage was not so large that we had room to sprawl, and I was aware of the driver’s back behind him, but his gaze remained steady on me through his glass lenses.

“Why,” he finally said, drawing the word out in stiff demand, “were you at the scene of a ghastly crime, Miss St. Croix?”

So the constables had passed details. Of course. I looked away, at my hands, clenched around his handkerchief, and remembered I’d meant to clean my face. I did so now. “I wanted books,” I said. Not quite a lie. Not wholly the truth, either.

“That is all?”

Not in the slightest. I lied with ease. “I truly just wanted books. Mr. Pettigrew has . . .” I paused. “
Had
a fascinating collection.”

He blew out a breath, and I realized how tightly he’d held himself. All that lordly reserve had hidden more than I suspected. His jaw set, and he reached up with two fingers to remove the fog protectives from his nose.

Without the glass in the way, I was suddenly viscerally aware of how sharp his eyes were; how clear and acute.

What did he see?

My throat dried, already near to parched from the fog and my tears and the ailment festering deep in a secret part of me.

“When we are wed,” he said, leaning forward so that I would not mistake his words, “you will have staff.” I blinked. “Anything your heart desires, Miss St. Croix. You will never have to do anything so foolish as this again.”

I would have anything? My smile, I fear, was sad. I couldn’t be sure, but I know that he saw it. “I desire freedom, my lord.”

But whatever he read in my features, it did not dissuade him. As the carriage bumped gently over the cobbled street, he clasped his hands between his knees and said most reasonably, “What greater freedom than a countess?”

I opened my mouth, but no word came.

He was serious.

I licked my lower lip; warmed as his gaze fell to the motion. Followed it with cool appraisal. Yet when those pale eyes met mine again, I realized I was wrong.

He was not so cool that he could hide the flicker of warmth within.

He had kissed me once. I remembered it vividly; it had been my first real kiss. Yet it would take more than a simple meeting of the lips to change my mind. “You presume acceptance when I’ve offered none,” I told him, drawing pride around me like a shroud—what little I could claim, at the moment.

“Is it your inheritance?” he asked, more shrewd than I’d given him credit. “You will lose nothing. It shall be entrusted and invested securely, and over time, it shall double. Perhaps even more.”

“Why?”

“I am a very wealthy man in my own right, and will be the more so upon my own inheritance. I’ve no need of your fortunes, Miss St. Croix. Even without the investments, you will have access to a generous allowance. Spend it on a mountain of books, for all I care.”

“No.” I clutched the fur around me tightly, grateful now as warmth began to trickle back into my flesh. “Surely there are a dozen females far more suited. Perhaps less interesting, as you maintain,” I admitted, referring his previous answer on the subject, “but far less trouble.” Or scandal.

“You are only as much trouble as you take upon yourself,” he told me, as if he had it all figured out. Perhaps he did; he wasn’t wrong. “As my wife, you will have no need for such adventures as you’ve taken here. Anything you require will be provided, and you will be more than busy seeing to your new life.” A pointed pause. “Which will not be even a little boring, I assure you.”

“So all I must do is change?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.

And then I saw it. A tilt at the corners of his mouth, that damned smile that didn’t quite shape his soft lips, but I read it clear as day in his eyes. “We are suited,” he said simply. “All you require is polish.” And, as a faint blush stained his cheeks, he added, “I am fond of you, Miss St. Croix, and I believe that you could grow fond of me.”

Certainly marriages had been built on worse. Yet I could say nothing, staring at his handsome face, chapped by the cold and no less appealing for it. Women across all of London would give their eyeteeth to sit where I now sat.

Offered the world by an earl, soon to be a marquess.

The horse whickered uncertainly. “Whoa,” soothed the driver, and I looked beyond the earl to see the horse’s ears turning this way and that.

What did I want, then? Freedom? From what? As a countess, one day a marchioness, I could be as eccentric as I wanted. Who would say?

Entertain the world by day, and I would be free to pursue whatever intelligent interests I wanted with his support.

All I needed was to fill the role of hostess. Of wife.

Fanny would have a constant home, care for the rest of her life. Booth could remain in the Chelsea home, live out his years with Mrs. Booth at hand. And Zylphia . . .

Zylphia had spent so long beneath men who lived the life I wanted to give her. She would live as my maid in surroundings she had only ever seen from the outside.

This was the logical thing to do. The choice that would make my family, the people who loved me, happiest.

But what about me? What would I give up?

My freedom, for one. Actual freedom, free of the marriage laws, the demands, and the thumb of a husband who would only see me change to suit
him
to be happy.

My fingers tightened on the fur. “Lord Compton, I must— Oh!” The horse shied suddenly, clipping a few paces to the side and jerking the carriage.

In a sudden flash, I acted. I could not even say now what caused me to do so, but blindly obeying my instinct had saved me many times; my fog-sense was keen enough by practice. I sensed trouble. I threw off the fur, seized the earl’s collar in both hands and wrenched hard as I possibly could, just as the horse reared, twisting with a loud, screaming whinny of warning.