Cold Stone and Ivy (34 page)

“I keep trying.” His voice was hoarse. “It never takes.”

The doctor grunted and moved to the side, checking the numbers that were now scrolling from the slit in Otto’s mouth like a very long tongue. “Hmm. It appears you are quite fine.”

He raised the brace slightly. “Bertie will be disappointed if I don’t keep this.”

“I can arrange to surgically remove your arm whenever you feel the need.”

“Thank you. I shall think on that.” He moved to sit up, groaned, sank back into the pillows. “Too soon, yes?”

“Your brilliance is a constant amazement,” muttered Frankow as he read the papers, and for the first time since his awakening, Sebastien realized there was someone else in the room.

“Miss Savage . . .”

She slipped out of the shadows toward the bed, the locket radiating softly as it nestled between her breasts.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

He shot a glance up at Frankow, who was ignoring them both.

“I don’t like the infirmary.”

She smiled.

Frankow’s large eyes flicked up from the scroll.

“Well,” he said. “Since you are invariably recovering from this disastrous injury, I shall leave you now. I have other patients to attend. Ones that have not inflicted grievous bodily harm upon themselves.” He nodded. “Sebastien, Miss Savage . . .”

And with that, Arvin Frankow rolled out of the infirmary, leaving the pair with Otto, Mumford, and the green gaslight.

The locket was calling him, but he could barely look. He felt his breathing quicken as she moved over to the bed.

She reached down, picked Mumford up in both hands. “Your mother made this?”

He swallowed. “Before I was born. She wasn’t much of a knitter.”

“He’s charming.” She looked at him, and he realized immediately that he had never felt so exposed. She moved over to lean against the bed, and he saw that not only was she wearing the locket, but the breeches, blouse, and oddly enough, a red leather corset. Her hair was down and loose, rare for women, and he thought he had never seen one look so very good.

“Frankow says he speaks Latin.”

“Yes. But he won’t speak when you’re here. Only to me.”

“I see. He’s a shy woollen.”

He reached out with his good hand and snatched Mumford out of hers, tucking him under his arm.

She smiled at him.

“Why are you still here?” he asked, trying desperately not to look at her.

“I was concerned. I wanted to make sure you were going to be fine.” She shrugged, pushed her hip up onto the bed frame. “Also, I saw my mother and then found this amazing corset in the Wardrobe room upstairs. I’ve never worn a corset like this—look. It cinches at the waist by these little tiny gears. Isn’t it scandalous? Hmm, what else? Oh yes, I saw a man levitating on the lawns, got called the Virgin Mary by an undying Russian. You know, usual fare for a sanitarium, I suppose.”

“Well, I am indeed fine, as is your mother. So you can leave now, your conscience clear.”

“But I don’t wish to leave, Sebastien. After all, you promised to see what you could do for my mother if you lived, and apparently, you did.”

Finally, she noticed his attentions to the pendant around her neck. It was spinning only slightly. She smiled, reaching for it with her fingers.

“Christien said it had been in your family for years.”

“Periculosum est,”
he said aloud and nodded at Mumford. “I know.”

“What is he saying?”

“He is saying you should leave.”

Suddenly, she was touching his face.

“Grey,” she said with a smile. “Today, at least, your eyes are grey.”

He did not know what to say to that.

“And these . . . They’re almost healed,” she said now, running her fingers along the scratches from last week. “Thank you for doing this, whatever it was that you did. You saved his life.”

“And you saved mine last night. I believe that makes us even. So leave.”

She smiled again. Curse her and that damned smile.

“I have no pressing engagements, and you are fascinating company. I’ve never followed in the footsteps of a murderer before.”

And to his complete and utter surprise, she leaned down and kissed him on the cheek.

She rose from the bed and moved away, turning back only once.

“Get up soon, will you? I wish to explore the lands around Wharcombe Bay and can think of no better way than on horseback.”

And she left the room, its double doors swinging outward to let her through.

As for the Mad Lord, he pulled a pillow over his head and waited for the heartbeat of her to leave the room.

“ALEXANDER DUNN,” SAID
Penny. “He is an international jewel thief and rogue. He has stolen the Clockwork Heart, but I suspect he has already left the country.”

“Damnation, Penny,” groaned her father, Charles Dreadful. “This is a disastrous end to the affair. Regina Imperiatrix will not be amused.”

“And what about the key?” asked Claryss, her dearest friend. “How did Alexander steal the key?”

Penny hesitated. “Perhaps this is a mystery that will never be solved.”

And for the first time in all her years as a Girl Criminologist, Penny Dreadful and her boys in blue did not have an arrest on their hands.

Later, days after they had returned to London, Penny slipped into her papered room to retire for the night. She had just attended a swank soiree for the Belgian Ambassador and was happy on the finest champagnes imaginable. A man stepped out of the shadows.

“Thank you,” said Alexander Dunn/Alexandre Gavriel St. Jacques Lord Durand. “For not revealing my identity.”

Penny raised an eyebrow. “Do not think, sir, that my good will extends beyond the Affair of the Clockwork Heart. It was, after all, yours.”

“Indeed.” He stepped closer. “It is difficult to steal a heart.”

She stepped closer. “So I’ve been told.”

“And thank you also, for not incriminating Dr. von Freud.”

Closer.

“He is like a father to you, I suspect,” she said, stepping even closer herself.

“He gave me the key.” Now almost upon her. “I simply returned it when I was done.”

“And that was your mistake.” She could feel the warmth from his body, looked up into his eyes. “It seems perhaps you do have a heart, after all . . .”

He leaned in closer, his lips only a kiss away. “Perhaps I do . . .”

Penny held her breath. Her own heart was pounding like a fist on a door.

“Penny! Penny, are you in there?”

It was Julian Terrence Hull, Penny’s fiancé, a-knocking on her door.

And suddenly, Alexander Dunn/Alexandre Gavriel St. Jacques Lord Durand was gone, along with most of her breath.

And apparently, her pearl necklace as well.

The End of “Penny Dreadful and the Ghost of Lancashire.”

Of Red Ink, Killing of Two Birds,
and a Letter from Jack

THE STEAMCAB PULLED
up in front of the long white row of houses. Christien paid his fare and trudged up the steps to Hollbrook, exhausted, cold, and, after a night spent talking to dead women in the morgue, damnably sad.

“Hallo Remy,” called the voice from next door. “You’re looking tired, my boy! That Ripper fellow giving you more headaches?”

Christien sighed. It was Jekyll, and like before, he was standing in his dressing gown, holding the paper in one hand, a pipe in the other. Christien could barely manage a smile. Civility was, he told himself, a very English mask.

“We haven’t heard from him for a while, sir,” he called. “I’m certain he’s left the city.”

“Right, right. I’m sure you’re right.” And the man put the pipe to his teeth. “Probably gone back to France. That’s what the papers are saying. That he’s a French anarchist, wot?”

The
London Steam News
was folded on his step, and in a deliberate move, Christien turned his back to the doctor and bent to pick it up. From under the paper, a square brown envelope fell out onto the step.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with being French, dear boy. Don’t get me wrong on that account. Nothing wrong at all . . .”

The address was written in red ink.

“Post come early today, did it?” called Jekyll. “I really must talk to the post master. I rarely get letters anymore. Most of them are for some fellow named Hyde . . .”

Slowly, Christien straightened, cursing the fact that the letter was trembling in his hands. He was a surgeon. His hand should never shake. He breathed and breathed again, willing himself to remain calm, to remain detached. Above it all. In control. It was the only way to stay sane in this mad, mad world.

“Remy?” called Jekyll. “Remy, are you quite all right?”

Carefully, he peeled back the seal, read the letter in its entirety, and closed it up again, neat and precise.

“Remy?”

Slowly, he turned to look at his neighbour next door.

“Dr. Jekyll,” he said. “Could you kindly flag me another cab? I’m afraid I must go to Whitechapel.”

And without waiting for a response, he looked back down at the letter and the rather unusual terms of address.

“
Dear Boss”
was how it began.

DEAR CHRISTIEN
,

How are you? I am fine. The weather has been nice if a little blustery . . .

“No.”

Dear Christien,

I am at Lonsdale because your brother got shot whilst murdering someone in Milnethorpe. And by the way, I want you to quit the Ghost Club.

“No, no.”

Dear Christien,

How are you? I am fine. I kissed your brother last night.

Ivy growled, crumpled the paper into a little ball, and dropped her head into her hands.

What had she done?

She sat now, knees up, with her back against a Gothic brick corner of Lonsdale Abbey. It was cold and windy and she could see a bank of dark clouds looming over the Bay. But still, the nurses sat with their patients out on the lawn, blankets drawn, umbrellas at the ready. Her mother sat, staring with unseeing eyes at the grass. Grigori was on the roof high above them, shouting in Russian and threatening to leap to his death, but no one seemed to pay him any mind. Lizzie Borden was apparently chopping wood for fires but the automaton assigned to help her was now in pieces across the lawn. Agnes Tidy had tucked Mr. Home into his chair after he had finished his levitations for the day. He had completed an entire circuit of the Abbey this morning and he was tired.

Madness, thought Ivy. It was all an exercise in madness and she was certain it was catching.

She wrapped her arms around her knees and shuddered. She had kissed the Mad Lord of Lasingstoke last night, and the taste of him lingered on her lips. She had rarely even kissed her fiancé. Kissing was not proper behaviour for respectable folk in London, and Christien, of all things, was a gentleman. She knew the feel of his hand in hers—soft and supple and skilled. She knew the smell of his skin, his clothes, the slightly sharp odour of carbolic soap and astringent. She knew the lean, graceful strength of his body—she would make a point of leaning into him when on a walk or in a crowd of people. And he had kissed her on the cheek, on the forehead, and always with utmost respect. She had never been a romantic girl, but last night, she had stolen a kiss, become the romancer, and she found her mind racing with the implications.

She had finished her story last night as well.
Penny Dreadful and the Ghost of Lancashire
had almost ended with a kiss but she’d stopped short, afraid of what that might mean for Penny and Julian. Julian would certainly never approve of the rogue Alexander Dunn, would never understand how a girl’s heart could be stolen as easily as a necklace or a locket or a ring. No, most certainly, Julian would never understand.

Would Christien? Did she?

There was a rumble of distant thunder but the nurses made no move to take the patients indoors. Ivy shook her head. Lonsdale was a strange place indeed.

The locket around her neck began to hum, and she looked up to see Sebastien walking from the Abbey to the lawn. He had been shot less than two days ago and she was surprised he was up and moving. He was checking a pocket watch, hair and greatcoat whipping in the wind. Behind him, Frankow wheeled on the little contraptions strapped to his feet, the mallard’s-head cane doubling as an umbrella, and she wondered if his legs would rust in the rain.

“No, Sebastien,” she could hear the doctor say over the wind. “This is not a good idea.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the Mad Lord answered. “The
Chevalier
should be here shortly. Carl, Vickers, and Toewes will help with the cables.”