Of Silk and Steam (4 page)

Each sensation ignited something dangerous within her: the scrape of his stubble against her chin, the firm pressure on her hair as he held her locked in place and submitting to the mastery of his kiss. It shouldn’t have mattered. She shouldn’t have felt anything, but something inside her kindled to life at the way he pinned her down. A fever burned beneath her skin. It made her aware of just how large he was, how strong, how easily he held her down…

Want kindled in her. A fierce desire, not unlike the rush of need through her veins when her hunger rose. She wanted to drag him into the bath with her, to let him put hands and mouth to her body, to fill this unknown void within her. Dangerous things to think, to feel, for she shouldn’t be feeling anything at all.

Mina broke the kiss with a gasp.

Barrons’s chest rose and fell, his eyes heavy-lidded. His fist in her hair kept her there as they stared at each other, and then those devastating lips curled in a slow, entirely too-pleased smile.

“Was the payment to your satisfaction, my lord?”

“Worth the risk of life and limb?” His gaze dropped to her mouth, dark eyes blistering in their intensity. “Yes.” His voice roughened. “Worth dying for.”

“No kiss is worth dying for.”

“Then you’ve never had the right kind of kiss.”

Her lips tingled, daring her to touch them.
The
right
kind
of
kiss…
The kind that could leave her aching and desperate, feeling almost hollow inside as if he’d touched something she never knew had existed there before, touched it and then pulled away, leaving her reeling in the aftermath.

One kiss to devastate her. And more…

I
want
to
see
your
breasts.

“The note,” she demanded, sliding her hand over his and exerting just enough pressure on the tendon so that his fingers jerked open on her hair.

Barrons tugged the small scroll out of his shirt pocket. “Are you going to tell me what’s in it?”

“No.” She held out her hand and he contemplated her for a moment. “No note, no payment,” she reminded him, and his fingers opened, revealing the source of all this excitement.

Mina took the small, waxed piece of paper, still pristine and perfect despite its swim in the canal. Unfurling it, she shoved it directly into the path of a candle flame. A few seconds of nothing and then fire flared up over its length, leaving naught but ashes in its wake.

Success.
The tension eased from between her shoulders as the blasted thing vanished, leaving her limp and relaxed.

And bound by a debt owed.

Languidly Mina stirred her legs through the cooling water, the shape of her slender calves clearly visible. Bubbles clung to the hints of smooth alabaster skin that glided through the water, warmed by candlelight. His gaze lowered.

Yes.
There were other ways to control a situation. He wanted to see her, did he? Well, she would give him precisely what he wanted. And more.

Bubbles hugged her curves as she moved, prickling slightly where they popped and fizzled against her as the cool air met her skin. Mina slid her knees sinuously beneath her, capturing his hooded eyes as she slowly, slowly unwound herself.

Cool air traced over her bared skin as she stood gloriously nude in front of him, hidden only by the slow, stealthy slide of bubbles. They dripped between her legs and over her sensitive breasts and stomach, a caress that almost made her reach for him. Barrons didn’t look down. Instead he stared into her eyes, as if searching for something she wasn’t willing to give him.

“And so I pay the second part of my debt. You may look your fill. You may touch me—” Her voice roughened a little.
But
you
will
never
own
me. You will never touch me here, inside…

“Do you wish for me to touch you?” he asked in a softer voice than she’d expected.

“What I wish is of little consequence.”

Dark eyes flashed and she knew her words had found their target. So he wanted her willing, did he? Melting into his arms, no doubt. Mina had nothing but contempt for such a thought.

Barrons stared at her for a second longer, then stepped back and reached for the towel. Dragging it off the rail, he moved closer, his larger body enveloping hers. Mina tensed a little, but he only draped the towel around her back and bottom, giving a small jerk. She staggered forward a step, her arms held up between them, water dripping down her legs into the bath. Gently he curled the soft towel around her body, hiding her from view, almost as if he were slowly closing a door between them.

“Then I will touch as I desire,” he murmured, tucking the edge of the towel between her breasts.

Bending over, he drew her up into his arms, water splashing all over the tiled floor as he lifted her out of the bath and set her down. Another towel appeared in his hand and he knelt at her feet, using it to buff her legs dry. Candlelight gleamed on his dark blond hair, gilding sections of it and turning it gold against the blackness of his shirt.

What was he doing? Mina gasped as he nudged her legs apart and worked his way up each leg, the smooth towel buffing her dry. “You’re wasting your opportunity.”

“Am I?” Barrons looked up. “You would not know what pleases me. Having you retreat into yourself while I stare at you so rudely doesn’t satisfy me, Mina. Not at all.” He stood, arm curving around her waist as he directed her into the chair by the mirror. Leaning down behind her, his face shot into shocking review beside hers in the reflection. “I’m interested in someone who wants this as much as I do, and you don’t. Not yet. I’m not quite sure why, but you don’t.” The towel in his hands tumbled over her head, blinding her for a second.

Mina jerked and shoved at it, then his hands curled into the towel, using it to dry her hair. She froze, recognizing his intent as harmless.

“Not ever,” she replied, shoving the towel up out of her eyes. “I won’t be any man’s whore.”

“I see the mistake I made in making this a transaction.” Hard lips thinned and he wrung the water from her hair with the towel. “You are free of your debt, and if you must know, I would have done as commanded if you’d but asked nicely. You are far too fascinating for me to see you die.”

Her eyes narrowed. She’d stood before him practically naked and he’d not batted an eye, and now he was saying she was free of her debt, free of…everything. Mina stiffened. “What the hell kind of game are you playing?”

“Something rather akin to chess, I imagine. Sacrifice a pawn or two, and win the endgame. Oh, and Mina.” He tipped her chin up, lowering his face. “I’m so many moves ahead of you that you’ll never figure it out.”

This time the kiss took her entirely by surprise. A hard, demanding kiss that claimed her as if he owned her. The vanity bit into her back as she stumbled backward, capturing her towel, one hand clenching his collar for balance.
As
if
she’d ever find her balance again.

It ended as suddenly as it had begun, leaving her confused and trembling slightly in her puddle of towels.

“What are you doing? I paid you your kiss!” Mina shoved at his chest, her eyes blazing with heat as she ducked under his arm, away from him. Heart hammering, she clutched the towel close to her, meek defense against the turbulence he wrought. If he touched her again…

Barrons reached out and slid one finger in the crevice between her breasts, tucking her sagging towel back into place. “That one,” he said, with a dangerous smile, “that one I stole.”

Damn him. Lust surged through her veins—pure, unadulterated lust—and with it came the heat of the craving, the world falling into shadows as her vision became nothing more than every shade of black and white. Her eyes had darkened with the hunger, she knew, and so would he. “Shall I name the punishment for theft, my lord?”

“Do you want to take it back? I’ll let you, you know.”

Of all the things he could have said to her… Mina’s lips parted in surprise, her eyes slowly narrowing at his teasing tone.

All too late she realized the danger. For he knew now that he affected her. She would never again be able to dismiss him with hostility or coldness, for he’d seen inside her soul, seen that little spark inside her that yearned for heat, for touch, for passion. Every ounce of control she’d ever wielded in their encounters slipped away like grains of sand through her fingers, leaving her utterly helpless.

Do
you
want
it
back?

Yes.

“Keep it,” she said instead. “And know that the debt between us is doubly paid.”

“Very well.”

Mina frowned. She’d expected an argument—or another attempt at seduction. “I don’t understand.”

“But then you never have understood my motives.” With one last oblique smile, he tilted his head toward her, then stepped away and left her to dress in peace.

Steam leaked through a grate in the road, eerie in the early hours of the morning. In the east, faint hints of silver brightened the sky, but here on the very edges of Whitechapel, shadows seemed to stretch out and linger, each alley lost to pervading darkness.

The message had arrived but an hour earlier, long after Leo had seen the duchess into the hackney she’d insisted upon. A dozen theories sprang to mind about its meaning. He was playing deep and dangerous games these days, and a message from Blade, the infamous Devil of Whitechapel, could only mean one thing.

Revolution. The downfall of the prince consort.

Leo tucked the collar of his coat up around his jaw and started across Butcher Square, ignoring the vagrants flipping jacks in a nearby gutter. Their eyes lit on him, then moved back to the jacks, but he knew he’d been cataloged as surely as he knew his own name. One of the whores there eased back into the shadows and vanished, no doubt to bring word of his passing, or at least the passing of a seemingly rich young lord in this section of the city.

The cut of his coat was stark and unembellished, but the quality of it named him one of the Echelon or a minor blue-blood lord, no doubt. He didn’t bother to disguise himself. There were enough blue bloods who would seek distraction in this part of the city, drawn by the no-rules excitement of the Pits, where men bled on the pale sand as they fought each other for coin, or the easy virtue of toffers, those whores seeking a way out of the East End and into warmer, more sumptuous beds.

Ratcatcher Gate loomed ahead of him. A man met him there, his flat green eyes narrowed and a sleeveless leather jerkin revealing the heavy metal spars of his mechanical arm. Leo was taller than most men, but this one had several inches on him and outweighed him immeasurably. Thank the devil he had permission to be here. In a duel or knife fight he had no match, but here in the rookeries, they didn’t like to fight by what they termed “gentlemen’s rules.” Blade had set Leo on his backside often enough over the years for him to learn a healthy respect for the way they fought here.

Of course, he’d returned the favor.

“Rip.” He nodded. “Got Blade’s message. What’s the matter?”

His brother-in-law wouldn’t have sent for him unless it was urgent. The Devil of Whitechapel preferred to deal with his own problems rather than involve anyone else, and usually he dealt with them with swift, bloodied justice.

Blade was the only rogue blue blood who’d ever stood against the Echelon and survived. Fifty years ago, he’d escaped his execution in the Ivory Tower and made his way to Whitechapel where he’d roused the mob against the metaljackets the Echelon sent after him. It had been a massacre, but it had proven one thing to this part of London and to the Echelon—they were not invincible.

The king at the time had ceded Blade the rookeries and the Echelon pretended the matter was inconsequential, but everybody knew the truth. The human classes had adopted Blade as some kind of hero, and aristocratic children went to bed with their nannies whispering horrific stories about him in their ears. The myth was almost larger than the man himself these days.

“Think you oughta see it yourself,” Rip replied, his deep voice pitched barely loud enough to hear. He uncrossed his massive arms from over his chest and jerked his head. “Charlie, you watch the gate. You make sure nothin’ gets in, you understand?”

A cocky young lad shot them both a smile and a wink, leaning surreptitiously against a barrel under the shadow of the gate’s overhang. Leo stiffened momentarily.

“Charlie.” The boy nodded.

For a moment they stared at each other. The boy’s eyes were blue, but the shock of familiarity he felt when he saw that face… Like looking in the damned mirror.

“Are you certain he’s capable enough?” Leo asked, stalking after Rip.

“Lad’s almost a man now,” Rip replied. “And this ain’t the sort o’ place to pander to the weak. A boy tends to grow up fast.”

Leo bit off his reply, guilt souring his mouth. Who was he to demand what Charlie did or didn’t do? He’d given up his rights to that years ago when his own actions had infected the boy with the craving virus. Charlie might be his younger brother by blood, but Honoria—Blade’s wife and Leo’s half sister—had made it more than clear that he had no say in the boy’s future.

“Startin’ to look more ’n more like you as he ages.” Rip glanced at Leo. “That could be dangerous.”

Only Blade’s most trusted knew the truth: that Leo’s father had
not
been the Duke of Caine, but a gentleman scientist to whom Caine had given patronage years ago. Sir Artemus Todd was dead now, but he’d left his mark on the world in the form of three legitimate children—and Leo.

Not that Leo thought of that bastard as his father. If anyone ever discovered his secret, the prince consort would use it to see him hang.

“That could be dangerous,” Leo replied quietly. “For both me and the boy.”

“Blade’s tryin’ to convince ’im to try a beard and let his hair grow long.”

“And what does Honoria think of this?” he asked dryly.

“It were ’er idea.”

Leo didn’t quite know what to think of that. She’d never truly forgiven him for what had happened to Charlie, though she welcomed him in her home and had even shared the cure for the craving virus with him when his own CV levels had grown high. She called him brother, but Leo had never truly understood why she’d helped him in the past.

It was easier with Lena, his younger sister. Despite the careful distance he tried to maintain, Lena insisted on dashing a kiss against his cheek as a greeting and sent him playful gifts each year for Christmas, despite the fact he didn’t celebrate such a thing. Christmas meant little to any of the Echelon, those who’d been excommunicated from the church as soulless devils, but he had to admit that a part of him looked forward to her gifts each year. Using her skill with clockwork, she’d created a marching toy soldier for him last year. He didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to do with it, but he’d set it out on display in his study—a little proudly.

“’Ere we are,” Rip murmured, shouldering beneath an archway into an alley.

Tight grounds for an ambush. Leo’s gaze flickered over the rooftops and spotted two of Blade’s newly sworn men there in the shadows. The scent of blood washed over him, and he found the cause of it in the middle of a small group of men gathered in the alley.

Blade knelt over a body, torchlight gilding the stark bones of his face. His hair was darker now than it had been when they first met three years ago—thanks to Honoria’s cure for the Fade—but other than that, he’d barely aged.

A trace of scarlet gleamed at his throat: a cravat in bold, embossed silk. His coat was black leather, its split tails separating as he knelt. No doubt beneath it would be a waistcoat in crushed velvet of some lurid color. Leo knew his brother-in-law too well.

“You sent for me?” Leo tugged at each finger of his gloves and slowly removed them.

Blade straightened, his shadow stretching out behind him. “Got meself a little problem,” he said and stepped aside. The body at his feet was dressed in fine silk slacks, a crisp black coat, and—

Hell.
Leo froze as he realized who it was. A pair of bloodied ribs gleamed in the lamplight, the heart missing. “Goethe,” he said, meeting Blade’s green eyes.

“Aye.” Not a hint of warmth gleamed there. “Ain’t nobody know ’ow ’e just up and appeared, ’ere in the ’Chapel. Or who killed ’im.”

Leo took a measured step closer. “I can answer that, at least.”

Blade gestured his lads to step back out of the way. Rip stayed, but then over the years he had earned the right to be here.

“Falcons,” Leo murmured quietly. “At the Venetian Gardens last night. I saw it happen.”

“
Falcons?
” Blade rubbed at his mouth, looking tired. “Christ Jaysus, do you know what you’re suggestin’?”

“Aye. I know exactly what I’m saying.”

“And the body turns up ’ere. ’Ow convenient.”

“He’s setting you up as a scapegoat.” The prince consort had wanted Blade dead for years.

Blade snapped his fingers, gesturing to Rip and one of the new lads. “Get rid o’ the body. Make sure it can’t never be found.”

“We’ll ’ide it in Undertown.” Rip wrapped a cloak around Goethe’s body, hiding the garish signs of murder from view. Henley, Blade’s newest gang member, grabbed the duke’s boots and they hauled him up and vanished with him.

Not even a proper burial. Leo’s gaze lingered on them long after they’d vanished. He’d liked Goethe. The man played his own games on the Council—they all did—but at least he was honorable. For years Goethe had been sunk in grief over the loss of his consort. Only recently had he begun to eschew the dark clothes he preferred and actually attend societal events.

The night before Leo departed for Moscow, Goethe had even gotten top-hammered with him at the opera. All Leo could remember from that night was some ribald jest about the soprano, a rousing game of backgammon that he’d won, and the headache he’d traveled all the way to bloody Russia with.

“The dead don’t care, you know?” Blade clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“I know.” He looked down at the blood splashed on the cobbles. “For all he did, it seems a shame for him to just…disappear like that.”

“Come and break your fast with your sister. We’ll share a few glasses o’ blud-wein to Goethe’s memory. Like as not, we’re the only ones who’d give a proper damn. The bastard and I ’ad our differences when we were younger, but ’e’d earned me respect.”

“I don’t know if that’s wise. I’ve things to do—”

“They’ll wait,” Blade said. “And I’ve the feelin’ there’s more to this than’s been said.”

Leo could have denied it. Devil knew, Blade was aware that he couldn’t force Leo to his will. Not the way he did with the rest of his men. An uneasy truce existed between them, two men both too well aware of their own positions of power.

Keeping that truce, that balance maintained, was an art form, and so Leo nodded. Besides, Blade was an ally that he never underestimated, and in the past few months they’d both signed on to an undertaking they strongly believed in.

Removing the prince consort from power.

Treachery of the worst sort—or heroics, depending upon whether one was a member of the Echelon or not.

Or simply a man who feared the depths the prince consort could sink to, if left unopposed.

* * *

Mina shipped herself into Casavian House inside a trunk full of fine gowns from Madame Chevalier’s, along with a note for her maid. When the maid opened the trunk inside the duchess’s rooms, Mina straightened out of the mess of froth and lace, causing a scream.

“Good…ness gracious, Your Grace. You gave me a fright.” Hannah clapped a hand to her chest.

Mina ushered the maid to an embroidered armchair before she could wilt, then crossed to the window and twitched the curtains aside. Her home was in the middle of Mayfair, and there was not enough traffic this time of the morning to hide the presence of a man reading the broadsheets as he leaned against a wrought iron fence opposite the house.

“It couldn’t be helped.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” The maid wouldn’t mention a hint of this to anyone else. Hannah’s mechanical hand was hidden inside her glove but it more than ensured her loyalty to Mina. No other mech served within the Echelon, but Mina chose to overlook the flaw and Hannah was eternally grateful.

Servants could always be bought, but it was easier to keep their loyalty if they were paid in currencies beyond gold.

A fluffy white cat lifted her head from the bed, her tail lashing. She examined Mina with golden eyes.

“I want you to send for Mr. Gow,” Mina said. Her nerves were entirely stretched. Last night… She couldn’t seem to forget a single thing. What had Barrons meant by any of it? To ask such a price of her and then not take the prize when it was offered.

You
never
did
understand
my
motives…

Devil take him. It was hard to think of him as the son of her enemy when he was so charming. Far too easy to see him as just a man, and that could be dangerous for her.

There was an odd little silence as she picked up the cat, pressing her face into Boadicea’s warm fur, and she realized Hannah was waiting, hands folded. “Mum?”

“Yes?”

“Do you wish to entertain him here or downstairs?” Hannah asked, and it sounded as if she were repeating herself.

“My study.” She never liked having anyone else in her rooms. They were hers. Mina pressed a kiss to Boadicea’s head. The feel of that warm body was comforting. “Then return here to see me dressed.”

Hannah bobbed a curtsy and left. She’d not said a word about the ensemble Mina wore. The dress that Barrons had found for her to wear before he’d handed her up into a hackney was utterly ludicrous, a low-cut yellow walking gown devoid of anything resembling style. Everybody knew the Duchess of Casavian wouldn’t be caught dead in such a thing, which was precisely the point. The image she’d perfected over the years as the very fashionable, untouchable duchess was foolproof. Nobody had even glanced twice at her as she entered the back of Madame Chevalier’s shop.

Only one man had ever seen something else beneath the polished veneer. Mina turned and started tugging at her gloves. Last night had been disastrous in more ways than one. The bath and blud-wein, and the swift sleep she’d managed to snatch in his bed, had provided some distance, allowing her to clear her mind and focus on what
must
be considered more important.

The queen’s note.

This was where her focus must lie, though she had no intention of allowing Barrons to slip her mind. His motives were just opaque enough for her to question them.

Fact: The prince consort had ordered Goethe murdered.

Supposition: He knew something about the notes she’d been delivering for the queen.

Mina frowned. No, he would have confronted her if he had. There’d not been a single hint that he suspected her of delivering such notes. Indeed, he’d tasked her only last week with increasing supervision over the queen’s movements, which meant that he’d somehow discovered the affection his wife held for Goethe through other means.