Seleste deLaney - [Badlands 02] (8 page)

Part of her hated being cruel to him, but she was furious—at him and herself. What little peace existed in the Badlands was at risk of being shattered once more by violence and death. And on a personal level, he was beginning to make her question the plan to return to Philadelphia society. The lies and politics... She didn’t want any part of it. All she wanted was to do some good with the life and money she had left.

No, she also wanted to find some purpose in everything that had happened. Punish those responsible. She wanted justice for Zeke and for the queen she’d never met. Along with some sort of balm to soothe the pain in her heart.

With the way she walked blindly, Henri should have stumbled into the campfire, but Ever stepped into their path, placing herself nose-to-nose with Tobias.

“You are the lawyer.” While her tone held no warmth, she kept herself loose, relaxed.

His gaze flickered to the black ink beneath the skin of her cheek. “Tobias St. Clair. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss...”

“You may call me Ever. If you have not been informed yet, I would suggest you not advertise your occupation among my troops. They are not...fond of lawyers.”

Tobias studied the warrior, and Henri tried to see her through his eyes. When the two women had first met, Ever had been half naked and dying. Now, she stood strong, bold even, bedecked in tattoos and with numerous weapons in easy reach.

Suddenly, he sucked in a breath. “You’re the princess...or is it queen now? But what are you doing out here?”

Henri didn’t even see Ever move. Before she could smack Tobias for being stupid herself, Ever stood behind him, a blade pressed to his throat just over his collar. “I am also not fond of lawyers. Out here, titles do not matter and mine shall remain unspoken. Is that understood?”

Tobias nodded, clearly cautious of the metal against his skin.

Spencer turned toward them and shook his head. “I see the two of you have met. Ever, don’t hurt the man. At least not yet. I know he’s about as charming as a snake, but—”

“On the contrary, I am rather fond of snakes.” Ever’s arm dropped, and Tobias breathed an audible sigh of relief. “The blade was turned. He was in no danger unless he gave himself reason to be. The man simply needed to learn a sense of place.”

“And as a man—” Spencer inclined his head toward Tobias, “—your place here begins at the bottom of the social structure. If you want to move up in the estimation of the women, you need to earn it.”

Tobias swiped a hand over his neck and stared at his fingers as if shocked to find no blood on them. If Spencer had filled her in on the danger the lawyer might have drawn after them, Ever might not have been so generous.

The transport Henri had brought last time came into view, tucked in the narrow space between two of the tents. Frowning, Tobias crossed to the vehicle. As he was about to examine her additions to the design, Henrietta rested her hand on his arm. “I wouldn’t advise touching that. You’ve already irritated Ever, and that’s one device she rather likes.”

“I know this machine. Your father designed it, but he told me it was useless. These wheels...this pipe... What did you do to it?” After pointing at the pipe, he held his hands behind his back, not touching anything.

“I adapted the engine for use on rougher terrain than city streets. With the steam channeled through a more structured exhaust system, it can travel farther as well.” She trailed her fingers along the pipe for a second before tugging him back toward the fire.

Interesting to know he hadn’t realized she could build things. Had he thought her dragonfly comb was one of her father’s devices as well? Typical. She opened her mouth to berate him for his assumptions when she noticed him standing stock-still, staring at the horizon. Several of the women were doing the same. Curious, she followed their gazes and frowned as an airship sank toward the ground.

“Henrietta, please tell me they were expecting more guests.”

“What? No, I don’t—” She stopped next to him, clutching at her chest as a terrifying thought occurred to her. “Lupo?”

“I don’t think so. If it was, they’d be shooting at your ship in order to disable it.” He squinted.

Knowing he wouldn’t be able to see anything from here, she pulled out a set of ocular glasses and slid them on, the ship snapping into focus in an instant. “Odd. It’s a U.S. military vessel.” Henrietta glanced toward the women, the shift in her vision making her stagger for a moment until the oculars refocused. “They aren’t going for their weapons, so I doubt it’s anything to be overly concerned about.”

“You’re probably right.”

“And we should probably get back to the sorting while we wait for supper.” She started to lower the oculars, but movement on the airship caught her attention. The side of the gondola slid wide and a small winged shape slipped through the opening. It caught on an air current, swooping toward them. The sight made her heart beat faster, remembering how her father’s men had once attacked the
Dark
Hawk
in gliders.

Of course this was only one.

She turned to set Tobias at ease. His face was ashen as he watched the man soaring toward them. It was one man—hardly much of a threat. What could he possibly be so worried about?

Chapter Eight

From the glider, Carson scanned the crowd below. Considering it was mostly women, St. Clair should have been easy to pick out. Too bad the fashions of the Badlands weren’t that of the Union or the Confederacy. Here, very few women wore dresses, making men somewhat less discernible from this height. In fact, on the ground below him, he only saw one skirt in the bunch. The curls and regal bearing made him smile. Henrietta. He’d found her. And standing directly to her left was a man far overdressed for a meeting in the middle of nowhere.

Finally, the break he’d been praying for. Though he would have preferred the pair of them not looking so friendly.

He pulled the control stick to the right as he worked the wing pedals with his feet, and the glider started to descend in wide circles. A sudden shift in the wind sent him tilting at a dangerous angle toward the grassy plain. He fought to regain control as the currents buffeted the wings, threatening to send him to the ground in a much more violent way than he intended.

The wind whipped at his coat, tugging at the hem until it flapped open. Instinctively, Carson’s hand went to his gun, making certain it was secure. The control stick bucked in his grip, forcing him to take it with both hands in order to bring the craft to rights once more.

His muscles shook under the strain, veins popping out as the glider tilted slowly upright. Carson let out a slow breath. Had he crashed, he might have regretted the seconds checking his gun had taken, but in his line of work, your weapon was the one thing you never went without. All too often, your life depended on it.

With the glider steady once more, he tipped it at a gentler angle toward the ground, his eyes scanning the crowd. The women had clearly thrown themselves into action when he’d lost control. They were scattered around the area, some shooing horses away while others doused their central fire. From all appearances, they would have at least attempted to aid him if he had crashed.

He caught sight of Henrietta amid the warrior women. Dressed in blue, her head tilted skyward as he circled lower and lower. Seeing her face at last—softly rounded cheeks stained a pale shade of pink and those gloriously sensual lips—he wanted to drink her in.

He stopped staring. There would be time to speak with Henrietta later. The others he saw had to be the remainder of the ship’s crew. None of them cowered or stood to the side. All were right in the thick of things. Which meant they’d either stand against him taking their stowaway or band together to aid him—there’d be no room for anything else. He searched the crowd for his prey as he neared the ground.

The man in the suit was no longer by Henrietta’s side.

Carson swept his gaze from one end of the encampment to the other, searching for the figure in the dapper jacket and tie, and let out a string of profanities. Nothing.

Tobias St. Clair had disappeared.

* * *

This was no social call.

Tobias wouldn’t bet his life on it, but he was almost certain the glider carried the same man he’d cut free from the
Dark
Hawk
.

He ducked back inside the airship. There wasn’t much time for a new plan. He could run, but where the hell would he go? The ocular and a couple other scraps weren’t enough to appease Lupo. There was the fortress with the rest of the senator’s things, but he had no way of knowing if what he wanted was there or here.

Setting his jaw, Tobias strode into the cargo hold. Until he had some reason to alter his plan, he was staying the course. It was all too possible everything he needed was under his nose. He had a fragile trust with the crew and saw no need to destroy that—at least not yet. Returning to the crate he and Henrietta had been working on, he started rifling through papers again.

Just the helpful attorney trying to keep the mafia away from the fair doctor and her friends. As long as he could keep everyone else believing it, he had nothing to worry about.

* * *

Henrietta cursed under her breath when she noticed Tobias had gone missing. Considering she’d agreed whole-heartedly with Spencer that he shouldn’t be left unattended, she knew she should go after him. But the man in the glider... She would swear it was Carson.

It made no sense. There was absolutely no logical reason for him to be in the middle of a Badlands field. Yet the circling glider held all her attention.

Rather than desert the slim possibility of seeing him again, she grabbed the nearest of the warrior women, a young one named Isabelle. “The man walking with me earlier. Find him and keep him under guard. Odds are he’s in the cargo hold of the ship.”

“Is he armed?”

The unspoken
should
I
kill
him
? crawled along Henrietta’s spine. Not trusting a man and encouraging his death were two very different things. “He shouldn’t be. Just watch him and pay attention in case he takes anything.”

The woman nodded and jogged toward the ship.

Henri turned back to the sky, her heart thrumming as the glider neared the ground. It wasn’t Carson, couldn’t be Carson, and it was beyond ridiculous how much she wanted it to be. Nothing had changed. She was still going back to Philadelphia to build her new life. Yet, she hadn’t felt herself since walking away from him the way she had. At the very least, she needed to right that wrong.

The women had cleared a path for the contraption to set down, and even now it eased toward the ground. A gust of wind swept Henrietta’s hair forward to block her vision. She tugged the curls free and gasped. The air current caught one of the wings, tipping it just as the wheels touched down. The glider twisted as the other wing snagged in the long grass. Struts cracked and fabric tore as it flipped upside down.

Before the dust had settled, Henri was racing toward the wreck. To the man she now prayed wasn’t Carson Alexander.

* * *

Rivulets of blood ran down Carson’s face and into his eyes as he staggered from the shattered remains of the glider. Swiping strands of blood-soaked hair from his eyes, he frowned. The warrior women had closed ranks in front of him and he’d lost sight of Henrietta. Lips curled into a snarl, he pushed forward. And then they circled around him.

Weapons leveled at him in every direction. He shoved at the barrel of the shotgun in front of him. Another took its place and a spear joined it. Then he felt the cold press of steel against the back of his neck.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? I’m—”

The hammer of the gun against his spine ratcheted back, and his own pistol was freed from its holster.

No one spoke. No one moved. Every woman he could see stared at him with the kind of calm that preceded storms. The instant he shifted or opened his mouth, another weapon flashed into sight. Minutes ticked away with the
drip
,
drip
,
drip
of blood. When the world began to gray at the edges, he ignored the guns and the blades.

“If you’re intent on killing me, just do it already. Letting a man bleed to death for the crime of crashing your little party is a bit much.”

“We’re not going to let you die.” A golden halo came into view as Henrietta shoved her way through the warriors. “At least I’m not.” She frowned at someone standing behind him. “Really, Mahala? Was this necessary?”

“T’ain’t much in life’s necessary ‘sides air, food and water. Seemed wise, though, since none of us knows who the fool is. ‘Sides, I was the one who stopped him from impaling himself on a blade.”

The gun barrel dropped from the back of his neck.

“Thank you for that. Now if you’d be so kind as to get the stretcher from the infirmary, you and Noah can help me get him inside.” All business, with barely a glance his way through any of the conversation.

He had no intention of letting Henrietta off that easily. “We need to talk,
Dr
.
Mason
. So I’ll walk.”

Two shuffling steps forward, and the world started to swim. No one, not even Henrietta, moved to help him when he stumbled over his own feet. On his hands and knees, Carson stared at the grass crushed beneath him, watching as crimson striped its surface.

“Obviously not. I’ll see you in the infirmary.”

She left him there on the plains, his blood soaking into the earth. Damn it to the seven hells, had he imagined the connection between them? Surely if she cared at all, she wouldn’t be acting so distant.

Before he managed to do more than get one leg under him, a young man with a shock of dark hair raced forward, bearing a stretcher. A negro woman with tight braids followed close on his heels. Somehow, even with her shorter legs, she didn’t seem to be running. In seconds, the two of them had rolled him onto the rough stretch of canvas.

The black woman took the poles near his head and nodded at the boy on the other end. As one, they lifted him in the air, his legs dangling and banging against the kid’s shins. Overhead, the woman shook her head. “You’re a blamed fool, that’s what you are.”

Closing his eyes against the harsh sunlight, he started to speak, fell into a fit of coughing and tried again. “Are you talking to me?”

“You see any other idiot man being carried by a couple of slaves around here?”

“Speak for yourself, Mahala,” the boy called from near his feet. “If I’m going to be someone’s slave, it sure ain’t going to be the idiot crash landing in the middle of Spencer and Ever’s reunion.”

The world rolled around Carson as he swayed with their every step. “Who? What?”

“Oh, just shut your yap already. You done pissed off the cap’n and his woman. Nobody done know why you’re here, and ain’t none of us overmuch fond of surprises. Decent chance you’re just boarding the
Hawk
for a quick trip to a shallow grave.”

The woman, Mahala, didn’t respond when he tried to talk to her again, and the attempt made his head ache. He lay in silence once they finally stopped moving, opening his eyes only long enough to spy a pristine room with gleaming wood paneling and gaslamps along the walls. Another damn ship. He let out a low groan.

“Complaining already? I haven’t even touched you yet. Maybe you aren’t as tough as the government believes.” Henrietta knelt next to him with a bucket of water. Her fingers probed the cut on his head. “This isn’t as bad as it looked.”

A needle pierced his skin without warning, making him hiss. “I don’t know, it looked pretty bad from where I was standing. And then kneeling. The other one hurts more though.” His hand moved to the gash in his side. She didn’t respond and, for a moment, he didn’t care about St. Clair or even Lupo. Between two of the stitches, he twisted his face toward her. “Are we going to talk?”

“Yes. Now please hold still.”

Not moving sounded good. At this angle, he could watch her as she worked, see the line form between her brows as she concentrated. And the clockworks in her hair and on her clothes. Delicate sweeping lines like the butterfly he still carried in his pocket. He needed something to focus on beyond the pain. “The clockworks. Did you make them all?”

Her lips twitched into a ghost of the smile he remembered from the gala. “I’m good for more than just party masks.”

After swiping his forehead with a stinging antiseptic, she moved on to his other injuries, easing his shirt off and rolling up his pant legs. The women standing in the corridor glanced appreciatively at him, but Henrietta didn’t even pause in her examination. She started stitching the cut in his side, all hints of the woman from the ball gone.

Fine. He didn’t like it, but he could be all business too. “I assume Tobias St. Clair introduced himself, or the two of you wouldn’t have been quite so close as I flew in.”

He winced as her fingers jerked and she poked the needle too deep near his ribs.

“Mahala might argue that you were flying at all. But yes, I have made Mr. St. Clair’s acquaintance.”

“I’m here to take him in.”

“For what, precisely? He’s been...going through my father’s things.”

How much did she know? “St. Clair is in league with some dangerous people, Henrietta.”

She surveyed his chest and abdomen. Only the fiery spark in her eyes hinted that she was looking at his muscles more than her handiwork. A spark was enough—it meant she hadn’t totally wanted to walk away from him either. “You’ll need to rest and get some food and water into your system, but you’ll live.”

As she turned, he grabbed her wrist. “Henrietta...”

For a handful of breaths, he would have sworn she trembled under his touch. When she spoke, her voice wasn’t quite as sure and strong as it had been a moment earlier.

“Spencer and Ever will be here in a moment. We’ll discuss things when they arrive.”

When he touched her, he hadn’t been thinking about St. Clair. Or Lupo. For a few seconds, all he’d thought about was the feel of her in his arms at the gala and how much he wanted to have her there again. His callused fingers against her soft skin brought a rush of heat that he wanted to cling to, but the way she stared pointedly at his hand told him in no uncertain terms that she didn’t feel the same—or didn’t want to. Though it pained him more than any of his injuries, he let her go.

Mahala eased into the room, her gaze shifting from him to Henrietta. “Something going on here folks should know about, Henri?”

Henrietta clenched her teeth into a feral sort of smile. “Don’t you have somewhere else—anywhere else—to be?”

“Nope. Cap wants me here for the interrogation.” Mahala tipped her head toward them and settled against the wall, arms crossed loosely over her chest.

“Interro—”

Carson opened his mouth to calm Henrietta down, but just then a wiry man with the haunted eyes of one who’d seen too much death strode into the infirmary. Close on his heels followed a Badlands warrior woman with steam coming out her ears. This didn’t look like it would go well at all.

“Let’s get past the pleasantries first. I’m Captain Spencer Pierce and, for the moment, you’re a guest on my boat. This here is Ever, Commander of Queen Laurette’s Border Guard. I want to make it very clear that neither of us is in the mood to be toyed with. And that goes for you too, Henri.” He held up a hand when Henrietta opened her mouth, and she snapped it shut without making a sound. “You might still own this thing on paper, but we had an understanding, and that ain’t about to change today. As for you, who the hell are you and why are you here?”