Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City

Contents

Other Titles by Meljean Brook

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Special Excerpt

Titles by Meljean Brook

DEMON ANGEL

DEMON MOON

DEMON NIGHT

DEMON BOUND

DEMON FORGED

DEMON BLOOD

DEMON MARKED

THE IRON DUKE

HEART OF STEEL

RIVETED

Anthologies

HOT SPELL

(with Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, and Shiloh Walker)

WILD THING

(with Maggie Shayne, Marjorie M. Liu, and Alyssa Day)

FIRST BLOOD

(with Susan Sizemore, Erin McCarthy, and Chris Marie Green)

MUST LOVE HELLHOUNDS

(with Charlaine Harris, Nalini Singh, and Ilona Andrews)

BURNING UP

(with Angela Knight, Nalini Singh, and Virginia Kantra)

ANGEL OF DARKNESS

(with Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, and Sharon Shinn)

M
INA
W
ENTWORTH AND THE
I
NVISIBLE
C
ITY

A
N
OVELLA OF THE
I
RON
S
EAS

MELJEAN BROOK

B
ERKLEY
S
ENSATION,
N
EW
Y
ORK

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

“Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City” previously appeared in
The Iron Duke
, published by Berkley Sensation, a division of The Berkley Publishing Group.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

MINA WENTWORTH AND THE INVISIBLE CITY

A Berkley Sensation Book, published by arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Sensation eSpecial edition / August 2012

Copyright © 2012 by Meljean Brook.

Excerpt from
Riveted
copyright © 2012 by Meljean Brook.

Cover photograph of Girl © Hemera / Thinkstock; Gears © Vitaly Korovin / Shutterstock.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ISBN: 978-1-101-56463-9

BERKLEY SENSATION

Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

BERKLEY SENSATION
is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Chapter 1

Even after eight months
of marriage, Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth couldn’t decide whether it was better to let her husband know that she’d been hurt on the job as soon as she returned home, or to wait until they readied for bed, where he’d see the evidence of her injuries for himself.

She didn’t know if there
was
a better time to tell him, or if
when
didn’t matter at all. Either way, Rhys always worried and regretted not being there to protect her.

Perhaps he worried too much. The latest wasn’t so bad—just a bruise on her back, the result of a foot chase in pursuit of a suspect that morning, followed by the tussle when she’d caught him. Mina barely felt the ache in the muscles below her shoulder anymore, and her bugs would probably finish healing the damage by bedtime. She wanted to believe that if her husband didn’t see the bruise, then it was almost as if nothing had happened. She wanted to believe that if she concealed the evidence—if Rhys never knew—then he wouldn’t have to worry so much . . . but she couldn’t.

When Mina had lived with her parents, she’d always hidden her bruises—those that she
could
hide, at least. Whether the injury had come from her job or had been a personal attack because she resembled the Mongol officials who’d ruled over the Horde-occupied England, she’d taken great pains to avoid the haunted expression that appeared on their faces whenever she’d been hurt. But as one of the most visible people in England, she couldn’t hide her injuries from Rhys, even if the evidence disappeared.

After she’d thrown herself into the path of a bullet to save Rhys Trahaearn’s life—to save the Iron Duke, England’s most beloved hero—hardly a day passed when her name wasn’t mentioned in the newssheets. While she’d been recovering, journalists recounted every step of the murder investigation that had first brought her to the Iron Duke’s door, then had sent Rhys and Mina in pursuit of a deadly weapon that threatened everyone in England. When the Blacksmith had successfully replaced her clockwork heart with a new one made of mechanical flesh, the newssheets had devoted a full column to describing the man’s arrival at her home, the length of time the operation had taken, and the Blacksmith’s expression when he’d left. After she’d returned to work, journalists had dogged her footsteps for almost a month, even following along behind the police cart that Mina and her assistant, Newberry, used to get around London. They’d impeded her investigations and frustrated Mina to the point of fury—until, abruptly, they’d stopped hounding her so closely.

Though she’d never confirmed it, Mina suspected now that Rhys had been the reason the journalists had retreated. Both the police commissioner and Superintendent Hale had warned them away without much effect, and although the Iron Duke couldn’t stop them from reporting, a threat from him would be powerful enough to change the way they gathered information on her.

Three months after Mina had been shot—the day she’d first seen Rhys again, striding toward her across Anglesey Square—she hadn’t noticed any journalists in the area. Yet they must have been there or they’d talked to someone who had been, because the next morning the newssheets had reported that she and the Iron Duke had argued before he’d picked her up and carried her into a nearby building. Someone must have seen and guessed the reason for Mina’s happy tears when they’d returned to the square; the following day, newsboys had been shouting “Will the Iron Duke marry Inspector Wentworth?” on the street corners. When they
had
married a week later, the headline filled half the front page.

Mina had hoped that would be the end of their fascination with her, but she ought to have known that her and Rhys’s combined celebrity and the nature of her job meant the journalists would follow every murder she investigated with glee. Though she often had to drag a single word from witnesses, they were all too happy to speak with journalists paying for details about whom she’d visited and the questions she’d asked—and, if the journalists were lucky, a description of any fights or chases that took place in the course of an investigation.

Mina had quickly discovered that there was no hiding her injuries from Rhys. The first time, she hadn’t even
meant
to hide it. The graze from a murderer’s knife across her cheek had stopped bleeding within minutes, and was healed by the time she’d returned home; she hadn’t even thought to mention the incident to him. The next morning, however, they’d been enjoying their breakfast when Rhys had suddenly grown quiet and dropped the newssheet he’d unfolded. She’d only had a glimpse of the headline—“Inspector Wentworth Ravaged by Knife-Wielding Madman”—before he’d hauled Mina out of her chair and carried her up the stairs. Heart pounding, she’d assured him that the shallow cut hadn’t been anything akin to “ravaged,” but Rhys hadn’t stopped shaking until he’d stripped her down, inspected every inch of her skin. When he’d kissed her, she’d tasted his relief, and she’d matched his need when he’d taken her fast and hard on the bed, desperate to let him know that she was all right.

So hiding the bruises and cuts didn’t save him from worry—and Mina preferred that Rhys heard the mundane truth from her rather than some exaggerated account.

Still, she hated to see the tension and fear that overcame him in those moments before he confirmed that she wasn’t truly hurt. She hated being the cause of it, and would have given anything to hide any injury from him, as she had from her parents for so long.

But Mina didn’t live with her parents anymore.

The last of a brilliant orange sunset faded as the steamcoach approached the gate guarding the entrance to the Iron Duke’s estate. Grizzled and gray, Wills peered through the gatehouse window. Inside the open carriage, Mina lifted her hand in greeting. The gatekeeper waved them on, and the steamcoach rumbled past the tall, wrought-iron fence that surrounded the estate’s park. Wide expanses of lawn stretched out on both sides of the lane, calm and lovely after the chaos of town. In the past week, they’d had a series of those rare days when most of the smoke cleared from the air, a breeze kept the temperature from climbing uncomfortably high, and the sky
almost
appeared blue instead of yellowish-gray. The typically thick, stifling days of summer would return, no doubt, but Mina didn’t mind.

As far as she was concerned, every single day since she’d married Rhys had been perfect. She didn’t expect that to change.