Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles (28 page)

Clever snake.

“How do you know?” I demanded when I’d once more found the rhythm. “Was it that I recognized you?”

He did not answer me; he rarely bothered. “I come with a bargain,” he said again, “and you will do well to hear it.”

“What choice have I?” I nearly spat the words from between my teeth. “I am trapped in a waltz that will not end with a man who does not belong here.”

“Any more than you belong below,” he retorted, a markedly accurate taunt that lanced through me like a knife. Though he held my hand as proper in the dance, his other left my waist to cup my chin. Fingers hard, devilishly handsome features implacable as I knew him best. “Listen to me, Miss Black, and then you may sling your insults from a safe distance.”

“As if I require your permission.”

His teeth flashed, an even white gleam. “All my pets require my permission.” His grip tightened, and I winced beneath the sudden pain of it. “Marry your earl, Miss Black.”

I sucked in a breath. “What do you know of it?”

“More than you’d like,” came his oh-so-infuriating reply. “Marry him, and I will forgive all debt to the Veil.”

“But why?” The words escaped me, torn from me in the midst of the cacophony of the dance, the masquerade, my thoughts.

His offer.

“That is not for you to know,” he said, and let my chin go. It ached, even as I wrenched back a step, forced distance between us as was proper.

His smile was lazily lethal. Dark as sin.

The bloody ringmaster always was.

My gaze narrowed. “What is the catch?”

“You give up the life of a collector.”

I had expected prevarication. A tease. Perhaps even a price of gold or jewels.

This . . . this command, this order delivered with precise intent, each word clipped, stole my thoughts.

Hawke’s smile destroyed what little mind I had left.

The light reflected off his golden skin, turned him dark as a Gypsy and even more mysterious for it. I stared into eyes cut by the swath of blue, bottomless and unreadable, and could find no answers.

Only the promise, dangling between us.

“Swear it, Miss Black.” A command, as aristocratic as any I’d heard above. His fingers curled around the upper portion of my arm, crushing the sugar-spun sleeve of my gown. “You will stay in London above, marry your landed earl, become a countess.”

I looked away. “Why?”

“Swear it, or I shall be forced to act against the Northampton family.”

That garnered my attention as little else could. “What? Why?”

“You aren’t the only toff whose luck fails within the Menagerie,” he said, watching me intently. “Many vices come with a price too great for its purchase.”

My eyes narrowed. “Lord Piers.” When he only inclined his head, my fists clenched into pink tulle. “You wouldn’t!”

“I certainly would.” This, I believed.

“Why tie my fortunes to his?” I demanded. “Why lose two debts in the space of one event?”

“Marriage is its own price,” came his cryptic response, and I gritted my teeth as heat filled my cheeks.

I had no choice. To be free of the Veil. Free of the debt the Menagerie held over me.

Free of Hawke.

And to free Piers from a terrible burden.

“Let me think on it,” I said tightly, then snapped when he said nothing, “You ask me to enslave myself to free myself, Hawke. Give me the courtesy of time.”

He studied me for a long moment. Took his fill of me, of what he could see beyond the mask shrouding much of my face from his view. The music rose and fell around us; the dancers flitted by. I did not realize we’d stopped until he let me go.

For a long, aching moment, I held his gaze.

He’d saved my life. Wicked as the devil and just as sly, he’d nevertheless come to me when I needed help the most and done what he needed to see me survive it.

Micajah Hawke had been the closest thing to a lover as I’d ever had. Not in spirit, but in flesh, and it meant something that he’d done so.

Was the angel I did not know better than the devil I intimately did?

I opened my mouth; he shook his head once. A silent, imposing command. His fingertips touched my cheek. My mask.

I closed my eyes as they skated, soft as silk, just under the very edge of it.

“You have this night to consider,” he whispered, his breath hot and spicy fragrance suddenly thick in my nose. “And a champion,” he added wryly, a breath later. “Farewell, Miss St. Croix. Once you capitulate, I will not receive you again.”

I started, turned to find a figure in pale gray and blue bearing down on me. His gaze, shrouded by the pearl gray mask he wore, seemed as near to violence as I’d ever seen it.

Earl Compton could not hide behind a mask. No more than Hawke could.

“Are you well?” he demanded as he came to my side. “Did that man put a hand on you?”

That man?

I looked behind me, but Hawke was gone. “No,” I murmured. “No, he did not.” Not really. “ ’Twas only a dance, albeit the sort one expects in a masquerade such as this,” I added with a smile I didn’t genuinely feel.

“Then if you are feeling gracious,” he said, his mustache shifting with his crooked, even somewhat abashed smile, “I would claim a dance.”

A dance?

I blinked rapidly, my head clearing as if from a fog. Suddenly, the noise splashed down upon me like a terrible, heavy wave. I clutched at his arm as I staggered.

“Miss St. Croix?”

This time, it was no dark angel’s voice in my ear, but that of an alarmed earl. Concern filled it, his fingers tight around my upper arm where moments before another man had held me.

I took a juddering breath. Let it out on a breathless laugh. “I am sorry,” I managed, shaking my head. “All is well, I am quite all right. Everything is just so . . .”

His arm slipped around my back, carefully moderated support, and he led me from the ballroom floor. “Frenzied,” he supplied. His firm mouth slanted in rueful understanding. “Do you require air?”

Air. A breath of fresh air, cold and lanced by rain as it was, would be welcome. I began to nod, and then hesitated as I spied a tall woman in brilliant violet and copper holding court. Lady Rutledge was impossible to miss, even beneath a powdered wig whose towering curls and structure held a birdcage.

With a live bird within. How . . . surreal.

Lord Compton followed my gaze and could not help a chuckle. The sound loosened a certain anxiety in me.

“There is a clock affixed to the base of that cage,” he murmured in my ear. “And a bird that I would swear sings out every three minutes precisely. Did you wish to go see?”

“No, no, there will be time later to . . .” I stared as a figure pushed by us. Garbed all in black and white, with a full-featured mask that glittered.

“Miss St. Croix?” The earl touched my cheek. All but forbidden under normal circumstances.

And shocking enough that I found myself leaning into it. Into him, his taller form and steady figure a comfort against the chaos around us.

His hand, hesitant, crept to my waist.

His eyes met mine through our masks. Yet he said nothing. Neither inquiry nor reassurance.

A prickle of awareness mingled with the heat battering at every inch of my skin. My nose twitched. Faint, but insistent.

I felt too crowded. Too trapped, claustrophobic in the extreme. I needed air.

Yet I didn’t dare step away from this oh-so-cautious embrace.

Was this how it could be?

Lady Rutledge’s laugh suddenly climbed above that of the others, and I realized—remembered—what I should.

“Too short,” I murmured, my eyes widening in rapid realization.

The earl frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

“That guest, in the black and white.” I straightened, pulled away with a surge of manic interest. Turning, I began to push my way through the crowd, the dancers. “He lost stature!”

“Miss St. Croix, wait!”

I didn’t dare. The man who’d pushed by me in that very same costume had been so much taller. I didn’t recall seeing eyes this time.

Mask, gloves, costume.

And a faint, nearly imperceptible trace of lilies.

Chapter Twenty-one

I
t took effort, but I elbowed my way to Lady Rutledge’s side. Ignored her ring of sycophants and friends and caught her arm. “Where is the dean?” I demanded.

Gasps ringed me at my interruption, rude as it was.

“Dean Figgins-Coop?” She did not pretend to not know of whom I spoke. “At the beverage table, I believe. Miss St. Croix, you look quite fetching.”

I had no time for that, and waved it away with an abrupt hand. “When did you see Miss Hensworth last?”

Beneath her diamond-studded mask and truly inspiring birdcage-decorated wig, Lady Rutledge’s mouth pursed. Her beauty mark winked. A diamond inset within it.

Scandalously effective.

I tore my gaze away from the bit of sparkle and met her gaze.

And found it all too serious. “Not since the luncheon some days ago, I’m afraid.”

“I need to find her.” I turned, gathering my frothy skirts in hand, and added, “Before she finds Figgins-Coop!”

“Do you think—”

I did not allow the lady the chance to finish. Did not allow Compton to catch up with me. Using elbows and shoulders, smiles and apologies, I forced my way across the ballroom. The beverage table would be set up away from the dancing, away from the chaos.

Yet as I ringed the ballroom proper, passing one of the strangely large yet silent cannons, I knew I’d come too late.

A cry set up from the far end of the room. A gasp of horror and dismay that slowly worked its way through the crowd, building strength, building momentum as any hue and cry would.

Whoosh!
The sky ferry’s engine lit up overhead, casting a blue sheen across the crowd.

“He’s dead!”

The cry rose like a banner.

“
He’s been stabbed!
”

I was too late, then.

But not too late to catch the culprit red-handed.

I studied the suddenly shifting crowd, searched its rampant tides as color and chaos melded into one. I saw no black and white figure, but I expected nothing of the sort.

Unfortunately, I did not expect the crowd to surge against me, either. A group of men hurried past me, a shoulder clipped mine and I staggered backward. My booted heel slipped on the grass, tumbled me into the cannon that did not give so much an iota as I collided with its polished surface.

The back of my head introduced itself to the barrel.
Gong!

What stars there were tripled in my sight.

Yet as I struggled to right myself, my hand slid into a basket of powder so fine, it was like water.

Gold dust.

Of course.
The answer came to me as the memories of figures in the fog.

When a quarry was on the run, leave them nowhere to hide.

It did not take a genius to figure out the cannon’s purpose, and though my mind had been working as if through wet wool of late, I was still an intelligent being. Within moments, as the guests all but stampeded in the social clash of those who had seen the corpse fall versus those who had no inkling that anything at all had gone amiss, I’d found the mechanism that would trigger the firing array.

I did not bother to aim. The cannon’s barrel already pointed up.

I pulled the string and held my breath.

I should have plugged my ears.

Boom!
The weapon fired, shooting a comet of gold dust out of its mouth like dragon’s fire. The glittering dust ball expanded as it soared, layering a golden fog upon the bemused guests.

Not enough. It wasn’t wide enough a net!

But as I started to scramble down the small hill, another controlled explosion of sound thundered across the ballroom. Then again, and finally, a fourth.

My cannon’s release must have convinced the other minders that it was time for the display. Luck favored me.

Gold dust shimmered in the air, clung to skin and clothes. I squinted, safe behind the cannon yet already regretting the stuff I knew would get in my nose and throat. It drifted, saturated all it touched.

Just like the damned fog.

And also like the fog, it would reveal my quarry.

I did not have to wait long.

It took effort, but I learned to filter the clothed and bulkier frames of guests now darting this way and that from anything else.

And the
anything else
I spotted came in a lithe figure not so much revealed by the dust as indicated by where the dust
moved
. As when she’d tossed her cloak in the fog below, she’d shed her costume here to do the deed.

“There you are,” I whispered, my heart hammering with a fierce joy. Manic anticipation.

I slid down the grassy hill, kicking a clock off its perch in the process, and pushed my way through the crowd. The sylphlike figure had gone for the stair at the back. Fighting the surge of momentum, I caught more than one elbow or shoulder for my troubles.

I would feel these bruises tomorrow.

For now, I was too filled with the chase, the search, the
need
to catch my quarry, and it was to this end that I pulled the most daring maneuver I’d ever committed in full view of Society.

I had to hope they were not watching me. And if they were, that they could not know who waited behind the mask in pink and crystal.

I seized the end of a golden silk ribbon, did not dare check to see if it was occupied at the top. I had to trust that any performer knew to hang on when things went awry. Weighing my options left me with little enough—I grabbed the ribbon hard in both hands, wound it around my wrist and forearm as taught long ago, and ran like the very devil himself was on my heels.

I could not have timed it better. My skirt and bustle, bulky though it was in the back, provided ample freedom to leap to the wall and use the ribbon and my own momentum to keep me in tensile motion. My feet touched the wall, and holding the ribbon tautly in both hands, my weight hanging from the higher, I ran over the masquerade guests’ heads.

When I gauged the angle correctly, I leapt, the elation of it loud and familiar in my veins. Once more, I found myself high above my audience.

In that few seconds, a strange thing happened. As if I was me, yet I was also a child once more; as if the ballroom filled with shocked people looked up at me, and yet I swung over the heads of an audience gasping in horror and delight.

It was not the fragrance of too many bodies I smelled, but that of sweat and spice. Of something that reminded me of . . .

Of incense.

I shuddered.

A golden blot vanished into the balcony at the top of the stair, jerked my attention into sharp relief. I swung to the staircase, bypassing the need to fight through the crowd again, and landed halfway up.

I staggered, caught the railing, wrenched myself forward.

Gold grit stung my eyes, coated my skin, but I could not stop to fish the stuff out of my mouth and eyes.

Miss Hensworth was coated in every inch in the stuff. She would be found.

I darted out of the ballroom, following the corridor at the top of the stair. It branched left and right; golden footsteps told me all I needed to know.

“Hortense!” I called, abandoning propriety in favor of speed. “Stop this instant!”

I wouldn’t be so lucky. I followed traces of dust, aware I left my own behind me. Hurried past paintings of men all very smart-looking with labels declaring them professors or thinkers or geniuses of old, past the open galleries where this corridor looked down into the ballroom.

The raucous sound of it all faded in and out, like a gramophone whose record had been scored too shallowly in places.

“Hortense,” I called again.

“Blast it!” A woman’s curse. Anger and vitriol and bitter,
bitter
disappointment.

It came from the end of the hall, where a set of French doors opened beneath a hand I could not entirely see. Only a shimmer of gold warned me of her presence. Not nearly as thick as I’d hoped.

“Stop!” I called. “Hortense, you must hear me out.”

I followed her outside, gasped as the October cold snapped the air from my lungs.

If I were this cold, I could not imagine how she felt, nude as she had to be.

I scanned the darkness, only the back-lighting of lanterns from beneath offering anything to see by. It was much darker up here, and the rain sluiced to the terrace, making difficult footing that much more treacherous.

More, it would wash away the dust.

I stepped out onto the veranda. “There’s nowhere to hide, Hortense,” I warned, as gently as I could. “I want to help you.” Rain flattened my sleeves almost immediately. Pounded into the fabric and turned it heavy and unwieldy.

I could not take the time to be cold. Even as a shudder of frozen cognizance began in my spine, I stiffened it.

A rustle to my left. Ivy not yet deadened by winter’s grasp sprang into motion. Not rain. A body, a footstep, a hold. I reached out; gold dust turned to liquid and dripped from my fingers.

My eyes strained to see what wasn’t there.

“Miss Hensworth,” I tried again, “I know what it is you’ve concocted. ’Tis dangerous. You must let me help you.”

“You!” The voice came from somewhere farther down the veranda. Shuddering. Cold? Or anger?

Both, I’d imagine.

“How can you choose to help
them
?” she spat.

“Them?” I inched out into the dark. The rain pierced through my gown, set me to shivering violently.

“Them!
Detective St. Croix
.” The moniker all but dripped venom. “Puppet of the same society that keeps women like us on a leash!”

Ah. Rhetoric.

“I’m not here for them,” I replied, soft as I could manage. I reached out; nothing but air filtered through my fingers. I heard a slide of something, footstep on stone, all but muted beneath the patter of the precipitation around us. “Miss Hensworth, you must let me help you.”

“Help? You are no help to me. Betrothed to an earl, meddlesome bint that you’ve been!”

I winced, but swallowed my angry retort. “Hortense, the tincture you’ve been drinking is exceptionally dangerous in large doses. You must believe me.”

Silence.

“Please,” I pleaded, turning away from the place I was sure she no longer was. But where, now? Look for the rain. Where it fell, and did not fall. “I understand that the digestive qualities allow you to remain all but invisible to the naked eye, but it weakens the—”

“Lies!”

I turned, but too late. A body collided with mine, sent me staggering toward the veranda railing. All the breath left me as my lower back struck the stone balustrade, but I was not alone. Limbs I could not see enfolded me, a body free of clothing to grasp pinned me, breath from a mouth invisible to me wafted over my face.

Too bitter. It smelled wrong.

Sick? No.
Different
.

I grunted a wordless refrain as fingers scrabbled at my throat.

Bless Madame Troussard and her worked brass collar.

As Hortense’s grasping fingers failed to find purchase, I found something that seemed like flesh beneath my palms. Grasped whatever it was and wrenched hard.

I received an elbow—a fist?—to my face for my trouble, skewing my mask. Darkness slapped over my eyes; I couldn’t see. I flailed, letting go of whatever portion of unclothed anatomy I’d managed.

Blind, grasping, I did the only thing my instincts allowed me to.

I bent, hip gouging against the stone railing, angled my shoulders and
pushed
with all my might. “
Allez, hop!
” I gasped.

Miss Hensworth went flying.

“
No!
” Her outraged scream came at me from an angle too sharp to be the direction I’d intended. I struggled to right my mask, panting for breath.

Found myself facing the rain-drenched air beyond the veranda.

My heart dropped like a stone.

“Hortense?” I flung myself at the balustrade, but I saw nothing. Desperate, I patted at the wet rock, hanging half off the railing with my rear quarters curled around it for balance. My skirts dragged at me; I struggled to hang on. I found cold stone, but no chilled flesh. “Hortense! I can’t see you, where are you?”

And then I heard it. A low, wild laugh. The kind of laugh I’d heard once before, deep in a tunnel where the sane should not go.

“You will never keep me from it,” came the whisper. “I will walk these halls of learning as a free woman. An equal—
no.
” The whisper became a bitter sound, a laugh. “Better than them! I deserve this!”

I blanched, reached as far as I could for nothing. Nothing at all.