Nero's Fiddle (26 page)

Nate picked her feet up, sat on the sofa next to her and pulled her legs over his lap. One hand reached out to caress her nape with lazy strokes. “You look a million miles away. Worried about Helene again?”

She flicked him a smile. “One of many names running through my mind, I am accumulating quite a list.”

His touch eased some of the tension from her body as he waited for her to continue.

“What do you know about the Curator?”

His hand stilled and his head shot up. A long moment passed and then the slow caress over her skin continued. “I swear Helene would have made a formidable spy mistress, she hears everything without ever leaving Belgravia.”

Thoughts jumbled in her mind, one in particular opened an old wound. “She said the Curator would know who holds Nero’s Fiddle and that he started my father on his path.” She chewed her lip; the mention of her father sent ghosts skittering into the dark corners of her soul. Her demons raised their heads and a warning trembled through her body. Was he her true father? Did it make his betrayal easier to bear if he wasn’t?

A shadow passed behind Nate’s eyes and he ran a hand over his chin. “If your investigation is heading in his direction then we need to tread carefully.”

“Why? Who is he?” She settled on his knee and tucked her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms about her. Even though the child in her wanted to run and hide, the woman needed touch to fight the woken fear. The slow beat passed through both their bodies and lulled her nerves, like the
whoosh
of the ocean against rocks. His presence centred her and gave her a place to shelter from the past.

“He’s an old noble from Eastern Europe with deep pockets and eclectic tastes. He once asked me to acquire something for him and I declined.” He measured his words but didn’t withhold information from her, not any more.

“Did he not offer enough money?” she teased.

“He offered a substantial sum, but my gut told me never to be in his employ. It’s difficult to explain, I think you will understand when you meet him.”

The title of
the Curator
alone sent shivers racing along her skin and pulled at some long dormant memory. “What did Helene mean about my father?”

“I don’t know, but we can find out if that is what you want to do.” His thumb drew patterns against her neck. “We should be prepared though, you need to have something to offer the Curator.”

Cara frowned. “Offer?”

“He won’t part with information, he will expect something in return.” Carefully chosen words again.

“Something that will appeal to a curator?”
What will he expect? Me?
She remembered Helene’s warning to watch he didn’t add her to his collection.

“Exactly.”

She mulled over the available options and what she could sneak away from their growing collection slumbering deep in the earth. What could they risk being set free? The more she knew about the strange artifacts they gathered, the less she wanted any of them to ever see the light of day. Even the most innocent object could be used against others. Like Boudicca’s Cuff, which gave luck in battle to the holder. Its owner was using his charmed luck to financially destroy his opponents. Nate’s legitimate attempts to recapture the item he sold had failed. He now plotted to steal the thing back.

“I’ll send a message to the Curator and ask for an interview,” he said.

She blew out a deep sigh. How did her life come to this point? In the queen’s employ searching out otherworldly items of power with the dark viscount at her side? Once she ran to escape, seeking freedom. Now her world was wrapped in bonds she would never break, or ever want to. The more she learned, the more questions she unearthed.

“I need to go see Nan first. There’s a chunk of my life missing and it’s time to fill in the missing pieces. Is Loki back from France?”

Nate gave a bark of laughter. “We no longer need Loki, plus he muttered something about not being a Hanson cab. We have signed the papers giving him twenty percent of Lyons Cargo and he is busy fussing over his new charge. He is trying to decide on a name for the new long range airship.”

“I wonder what the Maori will make of him.” She had no doubt the pirate would get up to trouble on the other side of the world, she only hoped he didn’t end up as a shrunken head on the end of a spike. She pushed thoughts of Loki aside and concentrated on another pirate as she slid her body over Nate’s.

London, Thursday 6
^th
February, 1862

Cara stood on the rear terrace and eyed the object tethered like an enthusiastic dog, bouncing up and down. Four of the men held ropes trying to pacify the tiny ship and make her steady.

She glanced back to her husband. He possessed the skill of a magician, pulling strange contraptions from thin air. Or metal fish from the depths of the Thames. Somehow Nate had acquired a shrunken baby airship. The main compartment was equivalent in size to the body of a carriage with the air bladder rising above.

“What is it?” she asked. “It looks like a landau got amorous with a child’s balloon.”

The schoolboy grin dominated his face. “Personal airship for short trips. I thought it would be handy for going to see your grandmother and heading to and from Lowestoft.”

He took her hand and drew her closer. His crew strained to keep the frisky balloon under control. Brick opened the door in the side and a set of stairs descended with a hiss.

She peered into the darkened interior. Much like a carriage, the operator sat up front in his own glass bubble, controls arrayed around two dark leather seats. The engine sat under the body and the burnished propeller attached to the rear. A copper mesh harness attached the air bladder to the main unit. As death traps went, it was quite pretty.

Cara raised an eyebrow. “You have got to be jesting. We’ll be shot out of the air by a pea shooter.” Grumbling, she moved closer.

“Where’s your sense of adventure?” His smile never budged as she inspected his floating toy.

“I have discovered from living with you that a sense of adventure usually means someone is going to try and kill us.” She picked up the corner of her skirt and placed a foot on the bottom step. “This better be pea shooter proof.” The little dirigible lurched and shifted under her weight.

Brick took a seat next to the operator and gave Cara a thumb’s up signal as he pulled their dome down and fastened it.

Men. Always enthusiastic to try new ways to kill themselves.

With a sigh, she climbed the steps. The interior was comparable in size to a luxurious lavatory. A built-in bench seat ran down one side with numerous cushions in a rich green and silver. A tiny table with two chairs attached to the floor occupied one corner. The other corner had drawers and cupboards that drew Cara’s eye and hand. Cracking one open, she found a well-stocked larder, another held glasses, plates, and cutlery. A drawer revealed folded cashmere blankets, waiting to warm a knee.

Nate climbed in and closed the door. “You might want to sit down before we take off. She gains height rather quickly.”

Remembering the sudden jerk from the Hellcat, she plonked herself down and grabbed the handle over the window for good measure. Nate took a seat next to her and hooked his hand through another wall-mounted handle.

The driver started the motor and a vibration rose through the floor of the compartment. Nate gave a signal to the ground crew, who released the lines. Cara’s stomach dropped to her ankles as the little ship shot high into the air before equalising. The noise diminished as she got underway and with her nose turned to Leicester, they started their journey northward.

They flew lower than the Hellcat, skimming roads and fields and Cara spent most of the trip with her nose pressed to the window, watching the world pass below. She saw upturned faces, and children raced their shadow as they moved up country. Snow-laden fields gave way to greener pastures as they escaped the wintery angel that had taken up residence over London.

It seemed no time at all before she recognised the village and they flew over her family’s fields to the ancestral home of the Earl of Morton. While the small vessel hovered a few feet from the ground, Nate and Brick jumped. They grabbed a guide line each and with help from a couple of gardeners, anchored the ship to large beams Nan had installed around the lawn.

Cara bounced off the bottom step and ran to her grandmother.

“What a lovely surprise,” Nan said wrapping Cara in a hug. “Nessy will be disappointed your pirate captain isn’t here.”

Cara laughed. Nessy eyed up Loki like he was the last chocolate biscuit on the plate and she was ravenous. For once the pirate met a woman with an appetite larger than his.
What a pair they would have made if Nessy was thirty years younger.

“Speaking of Nessy, where is she?” The two women were seldom apart.

The smile fled from Nan’s face. “Funeral of a dear friend. She will be back tonight.”

They entered the parlour and Nan pushed Nate in the direction of the substantial drinks cabinet. “Be a good boy and pour a few rounds to warm us up.”

“It’s only lunch time,” Cara said as she settled on her favourite orange paisley sofa. Her tomcat was camouflaged amongst the swirling pattern of tangerine and brown. With monumental effort, he heaved himself over to her lap and raised his head to be scratched.

Nan took the opposite sofa. “I was going to suggest tea but you have the look, so I think something stronger is in order.”

Cara buried her hand in the cat’s luxuriant fur. “What do you mean
the look
?”

Nan waved in her general direction. “That one which means you’ve either escaped out a window again or you have unpleasant news to discuss. Since your husband is with you, I assume it’s not the former.”

She resisted the urge to chew her bottom lip. Nan was right, she did have something unpleasant to discuss. The past. Her past.

Nate handed her a glass of wine. “I’ll leave you two to talk before you start lobbing live mortars at your gran.” He brushed his knuckles down her cheek and then left.

Cara sniffed the floral aromas circling in her glass before taking a sip. “You never talk about my parents.”

The older woman froze, her spine turned to steel. “Of course I do, I talk about them all the time.” The words came out clipped. She raised the glass to her face and took a large gulp.

Cara twisted her fingers around the crystal stem. “No, you don’t. You talk about my mother as a girl and if you mention my father at all, it is after she died. You never talk about them together, as a couple. Why not?”

Long moments passed with the tick of the clock, a heartbeat pounding out the seconds. Both women sought fortification in the bottom of their glasses.

A shudder ran through Nan’s frame and when she turned to face Cara, unshed tears shone in her eyes. “Because it’s too hard, to think how they once were.”

Cara’s mouth dried out, her tongue stranded in a desert. “You always refer to him as
that man
. What did she see in him? If he was so terrible, why did you let her marry him? Was it arranged, did he force her?” The words tumbled out, given life by her frantic thoughts. She cast glances at her grandmother’s face, waiting for validation of her hidden fear, that Lucas Devon was not her father, that her mother found escape in another’s arms.

A tremor shook Nan’s hands and the wine sloshed like a rough sea. “Oh, child, it wasn’t like that at all. Never like that.” She took another large drink before placing the delicate goblet on the end table. “God, how he loved Bella. And for her, the world revolved around him.”

Cara drew a deep breath. Her mother loved Lucas, so he was her father and yet sold her like a broken toy.

“I am so sorry that you never knew the man he was, only the man he became.” One deep breath followed another before she began to speak. “The Edington women have always been rather forthright and vocal. I believe the Americans would describe us as smart and sassy. We inspire a passion in our men that steals our breath, but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that.”

Cara directed a thought at her internal bond and felt Nate’s constant caress deep inside.

“Your mother was always too bright for her own good and your father was the only man who could match wits with her. The summer she turned sixteen, a young man arrived on the doorstep. At twenty five, he was the shining light in the foreign office with a brilliant diplomatic career taking off. He came bearing important dispatches for Gideon. Once he laid eyes on your mother, that was that.” She took another large swallow of wine. “He loved her so fiercely it was hard to look at them together. He burned for her.” Her voice trailed away and her eyes lost focus, reminding Cara of when Helene’s mind chased ghosts.

An ache started in Cara’s chest and spread through her limbs.
He burned for her.
Her father had loved her mother. “Did she love him?”

Nan chuckled. “Lucas asked Gideon for her hand and agreed to wait until she turned eighteen and had her debut in London. Bella would have none of it. They eloped the summer she turned seventeen, at her insistence. She loved Lucas with single-minded determination and would brook no objection to them being together.”