Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles (32 page)

“ ’Course.” My throat felt dry and swollen. My mind numb, sluggish. I patted my pockets, found the empty bit of wax paper and a bit of lint. I frowned at it, certain there’d been tar left over only a few hours prior.

I must have looked utterly pathetic, because for the first time in our acquaintance—possible even in his miserable life—Captain Abercott showed mercy. He took his hands from his rotund hips and sighed a blustery, less-than-gracious sigh. “Get on, then. Guess y’pay well ’nuff fer a spot or two. But no more!” he barked, the effect somewhat ruined by the tufted fringe poking out from around his jaunty sailor’s cap.

I blinked. “I . . . Right. On, then.”

“Barmy,” I heard as I turned my back on the mysterious sky ferry I didn’t remember taking.

Barmy. Crazy, he meant, and perhaps rightfully so. The last I’d known, I’d been studying a postbox. How did I arrive at the
Scarlet Philosopher
?

And what time was it?

Late enough, I realized, that stumbling home on the walkways would net more attention than not. It took a great deal of effort, and my head began to ache fiercely, but I managed to find my way home to Chelsea, and the Cheyne Walk house festooned in the black crepe of mourning.

I walked as if I’d never left the fog below, found my way through the familiar steps by sheer habit more than attention. I was sure I looked a fright: a street boy from below capped by dirt and soot, likely looking as if I’d more than enough of the hair of the dog even this early. Yet as I approached through the hedgerows, I heard no hue and cry, saw no sign of Fanny waiting.

Was it possible that it was still early enough that she had not checked upon me in my mourning bed?

The gray light and chill air wasn’t enough to tell me what time it was, and I’d not thought to bring my pocket watch. A first, for I never left home without.

The ladder I’d left from my window was still in evidence. I darted through the yard, ready to seize the knotted rungs and begin my climb, exhausted though I was.

“This is uncivilized!”

Fanny’s words. Her voice, tight and shrill; icy as I’d ever heard her.

And outside?

I stilled, glancing left to right. There were no bodies in sight, no ghosts even. I could not blame my hearing on opium dreams today.

“Be that as it may,” came a voice I didn’t recognize, “it is all perfectly legitimate.”

“Legitimate,” spat my once-chaperone. “ ’Tis ungodly, that’s what it is! Turning us out without so much as a warning. You have no right!”

Turning us out?

It took me too long, but I realized the voice came from around the house. I should have climbed the ladder, dressed myself in appropriate garb for a morning’s repast interrupted, and gone to see what the fuss was about, but I didn’t. Too much effort. Instead, I trailed across the browning grass, past the windows I marked as the sitting room, the kitchens, and to the corner where I flattened myself against the siding and strained to hear.

“I assure you,” intoned the snooty, educated voice I decided then and there I didn’t like, “all is perfectly legal and proper. This residence belongs now to the Marquess and Marchioness Northampton to dispose of as they see fit. My lady’s orders are quite concise—”

“Orders!” Fanny’s impassioned repetition flew in the face of every propriety she’d ever hammered into me. “This home belongs to Miss St. Croix, and no other.”

“Upon whose marriage to the late earl, God rest him—”

I closed my eyes.

“—ensured that all of her estates now belong to his heirs. To wit, my Lord and Lady Northampton. She may stay in residence, as is expected of a lady in mourning, but you, Mrs. Fortescue, and all staff are hereby dismissed.”

“But what of her well-being?”

Yes. What
of
my well-being? I leaned around the corner, hugged it to study the tableau arrayed in front of the once-fashionable Cheyne Walk residence. Oh, if only society could see us now. The Mad St. Croix’s daughter, spying on her staff and once-chaperone as they faced down a
perfectly legal
magistrate.

The man squaring off against the very indignant Fanny was dressed as every bureaucratic, pompous official I’d ever met. His tailor was topnotch, certainly, but the colors he chose clashed rather garishly in reds and brilliant yellows. Fanny, in black as befitting a house of mourning, stood in front of Booth, who was very stiff in his shared indignation. Tucked behind his shoulder clung Mrs. Booth, already tearfully expecting the worst.

An empty cart waited behind the officious mouthpiece of the marchioness, surrounded by four men wearing the Northampton livery.

“My Lady Northampton will see that Her Ladyship, the countess, receive one servant in her time of mourning,” came the nasal intonation. “She will be well cared for as is expected. Once mourning is adjourned, all living arrangements shall be revisited, with a dower house already set aside in the country for her use.” His beaklike nose lifted into the air. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

I rested my forehead against the siding, squeezed my eyes shut. My throat continued to ache, a vicious burning sinking deeper into my chest with every word. Clever, vicious woman. By all rights, she had the legal authority to do exactly this. With my estate now belonging to the earl’s family, it would be thought nothing at all untoward if I vanished from Society for upward of a year.

And then retired, the mournful widow, to a reclusive country estate somewhere. Packed away, like a meddlesome object, or a dowager long past her prime.

I would not be easily forgiven for my lord husband’s death.

Fair enough. I would not easily forgive myself.

“Mr. Ashmore will require his things,” Fanny snapped. “Not all inside is yours to claim.”

“All of Mr. Oliver Ashmore’s things shall be accounted for.” I could hear the pandering smile in every word, even if I didn’t see it. “Truly, you would not wish the countess to be bothered with such a task in her grief?”

There was a short, charged silence.

“All servants who leave quietly,” wheedled the man whose tone suggested he was in control and knew it, “will receive excellent letters of recommendation from the marchioness.”

“We are not hers to let go,” Booth said, so solemnly that was left of my heart shattered into a thousand pieces at my feet. The ache intensified, until I found myself swallowing often and licking my lips.

I needed something to take the strain off. A bit of laudanum.

A touch more opium.

Fanny sighed. “Then we are only guests, and she is free to turn us out. Step aside, Booth. Mrs. Booth, collect your things.”

“But what of my lady?” demanded Booth, his dear voice now a whisper of pain inside my head.

How easily Lady Northampton had worked this all out. The marchioness’s mercy.

I would have none, myself.

I squeezed my eyes shut tighter as Fanny said softly, “I will wake her and explain. Mr. Ashmore has been summoned, my dear Mrs. Booth, fret not.”

The door opened. I heard the hinges creak ever so slightly, heard Booth’s
step-thunk
as he crossed the threshold.

“Good,” sniffed the mouthpiece of the woman I was coming to loathe almost as much, I was certain, as she loathed me. “Prepare to load the cart. You! Boy!”

I started at the shrill command, raised my head from the siding and stared at the beady eyes pinned to me.

My fists clenched.

“Don’t just stand there,” the magistrate demanded. “Fetch any of your other . . .” His lips twisted. “Staff,” was the best he could garner, “and help load the cart.”

My jaw shifted. “Sir,” I managed through the lump in my throat. I stepped back into the fragile safety of the yard behind the house, looked up as I crossed under my own window.

I saw no motion, no movement. Had Fanny garnered the courage to wake me?

To explain that my home was no longer my own, that I would be deprived of my family and friends? Of my own beloved staff.

My breath caught in my chest. With feet like lead, I turned to the hedges, pushed through them.

My things remained behind. My books, my father’s items, my mother’s journal. My respirator.

As did Fanny, Booth and his wife.

The home I’d known for seven years, the closest I had ever come to something of my own.

Yet I would not be a prisoner.

The pain inside my skin became something very real. Hurting, limping now and hunched around myself, I pushed on.

No matter what it cost me, no matter what I would give up, I
would not
be a prisoner. Not until I’d found the murderer; not until I’d forced him to beg for his life, the way I’d begged for the earl’s.

I had leads to follow. A quarry to chase down. I’d begin with Sweet Tom and assure myself that he had not lied to me, and then I would follow every clue, every path, every last trail until I located the sweet tooth, the murderer.

I had no more choices left. With an ache in my chest and my throat burning as if on fire, with my head throbbing steadily in time with every footstep, I made my way once more to the docks and awaited the return of the
Scarlet Philosopher.

In all of London, above or below, there was but one place that would take me now.

For better or for worse, I would become the Karakash Veil’s collector. Their pet. Miss Black, fallen so far. Desperate for sanctuary, desperate for . . . Simply
desperate
.

Hawke, of all people, would understand. Yet as I stared down, down, ever so far down into the depths of gloomy London below the drift, I wondered: What would be the price of that understanding?

What wouldn’t I pay to exact my retribution?

About the Author

Born from the genetic mash-up of lesser royalty, storytellers, wanderers, and dreamers, K
ARINA
C
OOPER
was destined to be a creative genius. As a child, she moved all over the country like some kind of waifish blond gypsy and thrived in the new cultures her family settled in. When she (finally) grew up, she skipped the whole genius part and fell in love with writing because, really, who doesn’t love making things up for a living?

One part romance fanatic, one part total dork, and all imagination, she writes dark and sexy paranormal romance and historical urban fantasy. When she isn’t writing, Karina is an airship captain’s wife and Steampunk fashionista. She lives in the beautiful and rainy Pacific Northwest with a husband, four cats, two rabbits, the fantasy of a dog, and a passel of adopted gamer geeks.

www.karinacooper.com

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By Karina Cooper

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