Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles (8 page)

Even now, the sky darkened behind the low-hanging bank of wintry clouds.

A wide mirror framed in gilded wood provided guests opportunities to fix hats and overcoats, but I didn’t bother with mine. I untied the ribbons curled under my chin and swept my bonnet off my head with a heedless tug. Pins loosened.

“Fanny?” Swinging the bonnet by its ribbons—and jarring its pale cream feathers, like as not—I sauntered through the hall to the parlor, where I suspected Fanny to be.

She was not.

I’d made it no farther than the staircase with its wider base and lion guardians when a rustle at the top caught my attention. I looked up, smiling. “There you are, I—” My smile vanished. “What have you done, Fanny?”

Chapter Five

“C
herry St. Croix, what manners.” My chaperone came down the stairs, one hand upon the banister, as regal as any queen. But her smile, mirrored by the sparkle in her eyes, spoke of mischief. “Don’t swing your hat like that, you’ll ruin the bindings.”

Something had happened. Something good, I thought, at least for her.

Which meant only one thing. I narrowed my eyes at the hand she held behind her back. “What are you holding?” I demanded, and it was a demand. Neither sweet nor patient.

“A manservant came ’round while you were gone,” she told me, deftly tucking whatever it was she held into the folds of her overskirt as she swept around the boldly staring lion beside me.

Who had come? Whose servant?

Lady Rutledge’s? I wouldn’t put it past the lady to send the next clue straight to my door, but that hardly seemed sporting.

“Come into the parlor.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Stuff and nonsense, Cherry, into the parlor.” She tucked her arm in mine and I had no choice. It was either follow her skillful lead or drag my heels like a stubborn child.

Despite my reticence, curiosity plagued me. Was it a letter? A note from the so-called victim’s betrothed, demanding a detective’s help?

Was it something from Mr. Ashmore? No, unlikely, he’d have used the post, wouldn’t he? “It’s not from my guardian, is it?”

“No, Mr. Ashmore is currently somewhere near India, as I recall.” Fanny’s smile didn’t fade. It didn’t so much as dim as she led me to the settee I favored. “Sit.”

“Fanny, really.” I sighed. But I sat. “If you’ve any soul at all, you’ll at least let me ring for tea.”

She turned, reached for the bellpull and tugged it gently. Somewhere in the kitchen, a faint chime whispered underneath the crackle of charring wood in the fireplace. The room was warm, much warmer than outside, and I was grateful for it. The air retained a sharp bite; warning that winter would be soon upon us.

Within moments, I was perspiring gently, which reminded me that I’d left my coat on. I tugged at the ornate fur collar just as footsteps preceded my housekeeper into the parlor. In her hands, a silver tray.

In her eye, a mirrored sparkle.

Now I knew. “You’ve the same look as she does,” I accused Mrs. Booth, ignoring Fanny’s censuring sigh. “Will neither of you confess?”

Mrs. Esther Booth was as much a mother to me as Fanny, perhaps more of the affectionate aunt. She and her husband minded my house well, and I’d never wanted in their care. Though I’d been a terrible creature at the age of thirteen, the Booths had kept everything running as smooth as could be.

But I had no illusions as to the nature of their loyalty. Where I disliked Mr. Oliver Ashmore—and found his behavior exceedingly suspicious—Mrs. Booth doted on the absent man like a mother lacking her firstborn son. I knew they reported on me.

I did not know if they’d ever written to my devil-guardian to inform him of my antics of September last. I had received no letter of censure, and my stipend had not ceased, so I could only assume they had not.

“Let’s take your coat, miss,” Mrs. Booth told me, not unkindly as she worked it off my shoulders. She took my bonnet as well, though I saw her exchange a querying glance with my chaperone as she did. Ladies commonly wore their hats inside and out.

When Fanny only shook her head, a fraction of dismissal, I rose once more to my feet and pointed an accusatory finger. “Mrs. Frances Fortescue, what devilish mischief have you been up to?”

“Saints above,” she said, reproach in the prayer as she reached for tea. She dropped two sugars into the delicate cup—fine with its pale rose pattern and gilt-trimmed edge, but nowhere near as posh as Lady Rutledge’s—and passed it to me. “You are less than patient.”

“As a rule,” I confirmed, removing my gloves before taking the tea. I enjoyed the robust flavor of tea. I found a cup bracing, especially on days when what I really wanted could not be had.

I had not yet grown accustomed to coffee, though many of my acquaintances above and below the drift favored it. Tea was my choice, when a choice was had.

“Are you quite calm, then?” Fanny asked me. A test.

A carrot dangled from a stick.

I was not a circus pony to bite. “Barely,” I told her. The anticipation ate at me, clawing at my tolerance with every minute wasted on niceties. “You’d think you held an invite from the Prince.” Of course, should His Royal Highness grace my door with an invite, I’d have been rather out of my head, as well.

Her Majesty’s eldest son was a known supporter of the arts and sciences. Bending his ear for even an hour would give me wings. Of course, I’d need my inheritance to make any such dreams come true.

No, given that Fanny was firmly seated and her color was otherwise normal, it was not anyone so fine as that asking for me.

That meant only one thing. My gaze narrowed as my grip tightened around my saucer. “You’ve heard.” I didn’t need to elaborate.

She offered her hand with, had I not known better, what looked like a flourish. Certainly not. Fanny did not flourish. “This was left for you.” Neither confirmation nor denial. Telling in itself.

No wonder she’d hidden it from me. The earl’s family crest had been burnt into the narrow box, unmistakable even from a distance: a fierce lion surrounded on three sides by a knight’s helm. Starched into holding its shape, a simple gold ribbon wrapped around the narrow width.

My palms itched fiercely. A lump gathered in my throat, one part anger that he thought me so simply bought, and two parts curious excitement.

I wanted to know what was in the box.

I set my saucer down upon the Japanese table within reach. It was, unlike much of the rest of the furnishings, one of the few things Mr. Ashmore himself had acquired. I didn’t know how; I wondered, of course, but I would never ask him.

That would involve talking to the man, and I’d sooner slit my throat than invite that demon to my table. Which was his table, for the moment.

I shook my head.

“Open, Cherry.”

“I don’t want to,” I snapped.

Her eyebrow arched, forming lines of age across her forehead. Her smile dimmed. “You don’t want to know what it is?”

I did. Very much. But if I opened it, would I then lose the moral ground I fancied I stood upon?

She rose, the pretty purple sheen of her silk skirt offset beautifully by the velvet-patterned overskirt pulled up into an elegant bustle behind her. Zylphia was getting better at the fashionable draping.

“At least open it,” she told me, pressing the box into my hands. She squeezed my fingers around it, insistent as well as reassuring. “He may have given you something to wipe all your concerns away.”

“Unless it’s a pistol, I don’t want it,” I told her, childishly pleased by her gasped “Cherry!”

I shrugged, and because it cost me nothing, I stripped the ribbon from the box and studied its surface. The wood was perfectly smooth, varnished to a gleaming shine. Where the crest had been branded at the side, the edges only faintly tickled the sensitive pad of my fingertips.

It wasn’t large enough for a pistol—and besides, there was a matching set upon the wall of the study, and a handful of Booth’s hidden through the house already—but the box seemed heavy. Either the wood was solid, or the item was.

Maybe he’d sent me a box full of opium.

I almost laughed at the ridiculous thought. Smothered it just in time. Fanny would not understand the jest, and I hadn’t told anyone about my run-in with the earl outside one of Limehouse’s opium dens.

“Come on, then.”

“All right, all right,” I replied quickly, and slid the very tip of my unfashionably short nails under the hinge. It opened easily, not a creak to be heard. Gold winked in the firelight.

“Oh.” I made the sound before I could halt it, as much a gasp of delight as it was disappointment.

So Lord Compton thought me easily bought after all.

But what taste he offered. As Fanny leaned over my shoulder, I carefully withdrew a pair of delicate fog protectives from a velvet bed. The gold rims winked brightly, reflecting back a warm sheen. They would clip directly to the nose. Delicate barriers etched with scrollwork around each socket would protect my eyes from the encroaching fog, providing respite from the sting. The nose piece where it would grip, the frames, the shining clarity of the glass, all of it bespoke care and craftsmanship. French, unless I was mistaken. Much of the craftsmanship coming out of France bore distinctive etchings.

I owned my own set of fog-prevention goggles, of course, but I could never wear them in polite company. In that instant, my memory returned to that place outside Professor Woolsey’s exhibit. A time before I knew the man inside was my father. That conversation with an earl had flowed as freely as any conversation between two people could.

Forgive me, but have you no fog protectives?

He’d thought me too poor, perhaps. Or too unfashionable. But he had not pressed. And now, I found he remembered.

Fanny withdrew the card left at the bottom of the box. “
A gift for Miss St. Croix
,” she read, excitement in her voice. “
For our next foray into the scientific realm
.”

I dropped the delicate protectives back into the wooden box, snapped it closed. “I don’t want them,” I said, and pushed the box into my chaperone’s hand.

“What?” Her fingers closed around it by rote, yet before she could push it back to me, I let go. “Cherry, be reasonable.”

“Send it back.”

Her eyes widened, brow furrowing deeply as lines of stern disapproval bit into her weathered cheeks. “That would humiliate His Lordship,” she replied, clutching the box to her bosom as if it were a love letter or a favored pet.

She was right. Refusing a gift, especially from a gentleman, was not only rude, it was all but unheard of.

I turned away, leaving my cup on the knee-high table and did not bother to stoop for them when my gloves tumbled to the floor. “Rightfully so. Send it back. Send it all back.”

“We will do no such thing.”

“Then
you
wear them,” I snapped, and strode from the room. I ignored Fanny’s call, knowing that dignity would not allow her to chase me through the house, and fled instead to the dubious sanctuary of my boudoir.

My heart pounded in my chest, an ache echoed in the too-dry texture of my throat. My mouth. I couldn’t breathe. Suddenly, it was as if I’d been squeezed around the middle. I needed to stop. I needed to take a moment, take a breath.

I needed a draught.

But there wasn’t enough to risk it. Taking some of my precious store of laudanum to calm myself now meant lacking it when I truly needed it. I was all right. I shut the door behind me, leaned against it as I closed my eyes and counted slowly to ten.

I made it until four before my lungs constricted. Six brought a shiver from deep inside, and my hands fisted against my corseted waist. The boning dug into my ribs, forced the air from me in a shuddering breath as my heart threatened to explode out of my chest.

“Eight,” I forced through stiff, bloodless lips, “nine . . .”

It took me well past ten, onward to twenty, past simple digits and through all sixty-six of the elements within Mr. Dmitri Mendeleev’s organized periodic table. I was well into the recitation of Mr. Edward Horatio’s aether-to-oxygen ratio—of which I thought most to be incorrect—before the bands around my chest loosened.

My vision cleared.

I stared at my ceiling, unable to recall how I’d made it to my now-rumpled bed. I’d shed layers of my jacket and bodice, leaving them strewn on the floor, but somehow I’d left my skirt, bustle and petticoats intact. Even my ankle boots. My hair tumbled into my eyes, loosened by whatever antics I’d managed. My corset had been undone, but I was alone.

Grateful, anxious, I drew in a deep breath.

Damn Lord Compton. Without even showing his face—and how dare he?—his very presence in London sent me into a fit of the vapors.

This would never do.

My hands shook as I dragged myself upright. Fingers trembling, I redid my corset laces as best I could, once more dressed, and pinned my hair. At a glance, it would appear as if nothing had gone awry.

I knew better. Cherry St. Croix did
not
lapse into fits of hysteria. I had to get a handle on myself, on the situation.

I needed to collect a bounty that actually paid.

When I was done, I withdrew a large diary from its place upon my writing desk, prepared the quill with its brass nib affixed to one end, and set my mind to something more useful than earls and scoundrels.

Lady Rutledge had set before me a challenge.

A mystery. A murder. One man, neither a tradesman nor a laborer. I had no information on the murderer, either, or even the method by which the victim became such. She knew all there was to know, of course, as the game’s mistress, but what kind of detective would I be if I directed all my questions to a single witness?