Tarnished (24 page)

I glared at the screen, for the moment ignoring both men at either side of me.

“She is ours to do with as we please,” the voice said, as if I hadn’t just caused any sort of interruption. “We will sell her, Miss Black, and we will ensure that it is to the lowest possible creature. Are we clear?”

I almost snarled. Fighting the urge with everything I had, I spat out, “Clear.”

“Excellent. You may repay your greater debt by bringing us the
móshù
.”

“Bringing . . . what?”

“The magic, Miss Black,” the Veil sighed, and I heard impatience in the breath. “The drug. We shall expect it directly. Good day.” A string of Chinese syllables peppered the air, and I suddenly recognized the high, sharp tones of the voice I’d heard in the private gardens. The very voice Hawke had argued with.

I didn’t get a chance to say anything else as those hands tightened, and I was literally dragged from the room. I fought their direction, wrenching at their combined grip, but it was as if I were nothing more than a child between them. The door swung open, and on some unspoken communication, they both pitched me out to the hall.

I stumbled, wrenched one foot and staggered to my knees.

“Good Lord!” Zylphia caught my shoulders. “Are you all right?”

It took me a moment to find words in the rage and helpless frustration filling my skull. I bit my tongue until the small pain sawed through my tunneled focus, and I realized I was staring at a small patch of floor between my splayed fingers.

I pushed up to my feet. My friend’s hands fell away. “Collect your things,” was all I trusted myself to say.

She was silent.

I turned, and noticed for the first time that she’d changed. Her jacket, although plain, was almost proper. It buttoned to her chin, hugged her generous curves to her waist—my trained eye picked out the unmistakable cinch of a corset—and narrowed to a
V
at her waist. She even wore a bustle beneath her matching skirt.

My mouth fell open.

Zylphia patted a hand along her dark, kinked hair, coiled up into an elegant chignon. “I received orders,” she said. But her tone was self-conscious. Her eyes remained cast to the floor.

She was worried. Comprehension was slow to dawn, but when it came, I reached out and took her hands in mine. She winced. I held them tighter. “This isn’t your fault,” I told her. “So you’re required to shadow me, that’s all right.” I summoned a smile, ducking my head to look into her clear blue eyes. “I could think of worse shadows for your Veil to slap on me.”

Zylphia’s too-generous mouth curved faintly. “You don’t believe in magic.” She knew me well enough.

Which might explain why she’d never told me of this so-called bloodline of hers. I wouldn’t ask now, not in the Veil’s own halls.

I shrugged loosely. “I don’t believe in magic,” I agreed. And then I gave in. Just a titch. “But you do, it seems, and so does your Veil. And whatever the correct term is,
something
infected me. We shall find what.”

With a sigh, Zylphia picked up her valise. “I don’t like it.”

“Nor I, but we’re to make the best of it.”

And in the interim, maybe I’d find a way to free Zylphia from the Karakash Veil’s garden.

As we left the Menagerie, I saw no sign of Hawke. It was well past midnight and the pleasure gardens were well occupied. The circus tent glowed like a blood-red jewel, but Zylphia led me along the quieter paths, where the Menagerie staff often went unseen. I walked quickly, exhausted and spent.

I didn’t dare take my time. Every step of the way, I felt the prickle of eyes upon my back.

Nothing for nothing
, Hawke had said.

And didn’t I understand now? My time was limited, and the metaphorical collar placed on me all too real for my likings. I needed to get out from under my debtor as soon as humanly possible.

I needed to find that bloody cameo.

S
ome of the ferrymen knew Zylphia. I shouldn’t have been surprised. A great deal was going to change now that I had an unwitting partner in crime.

Fortunately, Captain Abercott was already too deep in his cups to bother with polite conversation. We sat in silence as he devoured the sweet with half-lidded eyes, and I hurried her off and away.

We were nearly to my home before she spoke, her voice hushed and very carefully restrained. “I never took you for gentry.”

And there it was. The moment I’d been dreading.

My fingers flexed as I stopped. She stopped beside me. “I knew you colored your hair,” she added after a moment.

“Listen to me very carefully,” I told her, my voice tight and thin. I wasn’t feeling any better. My head had exploded like an aether engine somewhere between the Menagerie and the ferry, and I still felt as if I wanted to climb inside the nearest basin and lose my insides.

She said nothing as I turned to face her.

But whatever she saw in my eyes forced her a step back, her own gaze widening.

“My name is Cherry St. Croix,” I said. “I am
not
a member of the peerage, but I walk among them as a well-to-do miss of at least semi-decent reputation. I live in Chelsea, I have staff—of which you are now one, might I remind you—and if you so much as breathe a bloody
word
of this to anyone, I’ll feed you to the sweet tooth myself.”

It ended on a note so hard that she flinched. Her gaze banked, mouth tightening, but she nodded once. “I won’t tell a soul.”

“Promise it, Zylla.” I didn’t touch her, but every fiber of my being strained to grab her by the shoulders and shake. “Promise me, on pain of death, that you’ll tell nobody.”

Her shoulders squared beneath her plain brown jacket. “They told me I’m to tell them everything,” she said evenly. “That I’m to share every detail of your life with them.”

I would swear I saw red cracks forming in my sight.

But Zylphia surprised me. She reached out, touching my cheek with two fingers, her expression softening. “You’re my friend,
cherie
. Doesn’t matter to me what side of the drift you’re on. I’ll only tell them the bits we agree on, right? Lies or no.”

My mouth twisted. It was good enough. Given she’d only recently been whipped for keeping secrets, it was better than I could have hoped for. She’d soon learn how unforgiving London proper could be, even among the servants, and she was a fine-enough actress that she’d learn her way among them. I nodded once, fighting back tears of frustration and anxiety and exhaustion, and led the way home.

Every light in every window blazed.

I stepped through the back door, gestured Zylphia in behind me, and made it three steps across before the kitchen door swung wide. A woman screamed.

I clapped a hand over my ears and squeezed my eyes shut as my head threatened to shatter into a thousand bloody pieces of agony.

Mrs. Booth seized my shoulders. “Washington Barrett!” she shouted. I’d never heard her use her husband’s name before, she’d always been the very model of propriety. She shook me, then pulled me to her bosom. “Oh, bless me, she’s home safe!”

I found myself propelled into the dining room, protesting. Only to stop cold. I stared blankly at the array of weapons laid out on the dining table. Rifles, pistols, even two sets of matched fencing rapiers. Booth lowered the dual pistols he held aimed in each hand as soon as he recognized me in his wife’s grip.

The stark, unmitigated relief on his old, weathered face filled me with shame.

“We have been very anxious, miss,” he said, his baritone mildly reproachful.

“Cherry!”

I braced as Fanny’s wail lanced through my ears.

“Betsy, she’s home!” And then she shrieked, loud enough to wake the dead. “Trousers? Lord have mercy, your
hair
.”

And suddenly I was surrounded by every member of my staff, and a hysterical Fanny. Betsy watched me from the side, her features tight and worried, while the others clamored around me. I was pulled this way and that; questions peppered at me from all directions.

“Stop, stop!” I begged, disentangling myself with effort. “Please, I’m so sorry.”

“Miss, you look quite green,” Mrs. Booth said worriedly. “You, girl—” She frowned at Zylphia. “Who are you?”

I forced down a roiling ball of queasiness to say, “Mrs. Booth, this is Zylphia. She’s . . . a new member of my employ. Please set her up as . . . as . . .”

The blood left my face. My skin broke out in a clammy sweat and I swayed.

Betsy whistled sharply. “You, girl, get me a pot of fresh tea. The green bin. Mr. Booth, sir, can you carry her to her bed?”

I struggled against the hands grasping at my arms, my shoulders. All this noise, it would surely wake my demon guardian. “Ashmore,” I muttered, only half aware I’d said anything at all.

“Gone, miss.” Without warning, Booth bent and swept an arm behind my knees. I crumbled like a paper doll. With surprising strength, and shaky dexterity, my butler carried me awkwardly up the stairs. “He left early this evening.”

Fanny fluttered behind us, and as I glimpsed her shockingly pale face over Booth’s shoulder, guilt sliced almost to my soul. I pressed my face against his chest and squeezed my eyes shut. “ ’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Now, there’s no need for that.” Booth’s deep voice floated over my head, gentle as a summer breeze. And just as sweet. To my horror, tears pricked behind my eyelids. “You gave us a fright, but we weren’t all that ready to give up on you. Betsy?” he called back.

“Just behind you, Mr. Booth,” I heard.

I sniffled. “Were you looking to outfit an army?” I asked, my smile tiny.

“Ah, just some souvenirs from the old infantry days,” Booth said, a little more than sheepish as he set me down on my bed. “Rest up, now.” He backed stiffly away. His gaze remained awkwardly on the ceiling, as if setting eyes on me in my own bed might somehow prove impolite.

I closed my eyes, heard Betsy shoo everyone out. Everyone but one. “She was sick all day,” I heard Zylphia tell my maid. I curled into the bedclothes, hugging a pillow to my chest.

Betsy sighed. “It’s something below, isn’t it? You, all this? It’s caught up to her.”

“I wish I could say,” Zylphia said softly.

“Don’t. I don’t care to know. Bring the tea. We’ve got to get her presentable, though Lord only knows why it matters now. They’ve seen the lampblack and trousers and—” My maid’s voice broke. Firmed quickly. “The whole house is in disarray.”

“Is that laudanum?”

Crystal clinked. Cold, edged facets pushed into my fingers, and eager for the oblivion of sleep, I drank the entirety of the draught Betsy poured for me.

“Mrs. Fortescue—that’s her chaperone,” Betsy explained. “She sent the houseboy out to purchase some. We thought the miss might need a bit of help when she returned.”

I knew what Betsy didn’t say. Laudanum was a powerful reprieve from pain; opium direct was better. Lacking in the ability to barter for opium above the drift, Betsy found the next best thing. Dear Fanny had loosened the purse strings to acquire it.

Just in case I came home near enough to dead to warrant it.

Betsy instructed Zylphia quietly, and I let them undress me without argument. The laudanum soothed my stomach in increments, wiping away all trace of illness and hunger and shame and fear until I drifted slowly off to sleep. The whispered voices of my two friends were my lullaby.

But sleep was not my savior.

I dreamed. Feverish, anxious dreams plagued with memories of black, black hair and golden skin. With fangs dripping crimson in the shadows. I heard Micajah Hawke screaming hoarsely in the dark; pleading, I thought, or threatening.

I dreamed of white angel wings and woke gasping, only to find Zylphia’s arm cradled under my shoulders and a glass of laudanum at my lips. “Take it slow,” she whispered. “It’s not as strong as you like it.”

How did she know? “Betsy,” I croaked as soon as my mouth was clear.

“Gone home, love. Sleep. It’ll do your body a world of good.”

Her blue eyes were understanding.

Until they ran down her caramel cheeks like melted wax and I was once more cast adrift in an unrelenting tide.

I gave up hope and all sense of self as I dreamed of everything and nothing at all. Clinging to what little flotsam of identity I had left, I slept.

And in my sleep, I relived it all.

Every. Screaming. Note.

Chapter Fifteen

I
didn’t wake slowly. It was more as if I crossed a threshold, stepped through some formless door and all at once, I was awake.

And I was filled with boundless energy.

I knew this feeling. I threw off my blankets, blinking in the daylight creeping through my drawn curtains. I patted my chest, my stomach, my cheeks, and found myself all there. I suffered no twinges of pain. No twitches of nausea.

Kicking my feet over the mattress edge, I took a deep breath and stretched. I often felt like this after a bout with opium. I attributed it to the laudanum I took at night, or to the rare occasions I was able to get to an opium den for business.

That only cemented it for me. The madman below the drift had used opium in his drug. I still refused to call it magic, no matter what a faceless voice behind a silk screen said.

It came in a dust, a powder, like any other chemical agent. Science would unravel it long before magic could ever be proven.

I stretched the kinks out from my spine. Truth be told, I was a little stiff. I hadn’t slept easily, although only the vaguest shadows of my dreams remained.

Getting to my feet seemed easier than it should, and I spent some time stretching my leg muscles and hips, as well. The key to continued success below the drift would be in keeping limber.

I padded barefoot across my bedroom, foregoing my slippers, and sat on the vanity chair. “Bloody bells,” I muttered. I looked frightful. No matter how much vigor flowed through my limbs, my reflection painted a wholly different picture.

Betsy had worked to get the lampblack from my hair, and had admirably succeeded on that front. My hair was braided tightly in a thick plait down my back, once more restored to its red, if somewhat dulled, hue. I flicked the end over my shoulder, leaning forward to study the shadows beneath my eyes.

Clearly, though I’d slept, I hadn’t slept
well.

My eyes looked somewhat glazed, as if covered over by a sheet of glass. My skin was slightly too sallow. I looked, in a word, exhausted.

But I felt wonderful.

I braced my hands against the vanity mirror and leaned in as close as I could, studying myself with fierce concentration. Tremors vibrated through the soles of my bare feet. Masculine voices slammed through the floorboards, and I straightened so fast that the mirror rocked dangerously.

“I’m terribly sorry, my lord, but Miss St. Croix is still unable to receive visitors.” Booth’s voice, impeccable as ever.

“Still ill, is she?”

The voice snapped hard around me, as brutal, as unforgiving, as any cage. I sucked in a breath.

“My sympathies to the house,” Lord Cornelius Kerrigan Compton said, his rich, educated voice clear as day beneath me. I squeezed my eyes shut, but it wouldn’t help to block out the raw apprehension in his so-polished voice. “Would it help to send my personal physician?”

“Thank you, my lord, you are kind to offer. However, Miss St. Croix’s physician is of the highest caliber.”

“Of course. I will not . . .” He hesitated. “I shall take my leave. Please give my regards to your lady.” The footsteps faded once more as Lord Compton said his farewells.

My forehead hit the vanity with a dull
thunk
of bone on wood. The crystal vials of my various perfumes clinked and clattered. Anger bit deeper than any blade, any
mo-shoe
I could have dredged from the depth of hell itself. Anger, and guilt.

He had kissed me. He had professed to admire me, to tell me how much he enjoyed my company.

And I . . .

I what? What did I want? What could I expect from a member of the peerage, one so fine as the Earl Compton?

Nothing. Of course, nothing. No more or less than anything I expected from the rest of Society. I had already been cut once, though the harpy marchioness had found her machinations undone by her very own son.

If word of the night’s events ever trickled out of the Menagerie?

Images of the night flashed through my mind, suddenly daylight bright and too vivid to be a dream. Micajah’s hands on my breasts. Callused fingertips plucking at the rose-tipped flesh of my nipples. My skin flamed. I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter, until pain pulsed through my eyelids, but he was still there.

Are you with me, Miss Black?

“Devil take it,” I whispered. I was so confused. I stared at my hands and tried to concentrate on the facts. The facts of the situation. Hawke had . . . seen me in the flesh. He’d touched me, but I was . . . I’d needed his help. I’d practically begged him, hadn’t I? This was forgivable.

The blood on the sheets after had been from my own wounds, I remembered making them. I remembered Hawke’s surprise as they’d vanished. There was something truly mysterious about the drug the madman had given me.

Hawke had done what he’d needed to do. At least, that’s what I told myself now.

But then I thought of Compton and it was as if I couldn’t breathe. Why? Why did I let the earl capture my thoughts so thoroughly?

It shouldn’t have mattered. I did not want to marry, and surely there was no call to assume Compton would
ever
ask for my hand. And even if he did, I’d long since resolved to deny every man who would try. I was assuming a great deal about Compton, and I had no reason to assume anything of the sort.

Why, then? Why did I feel as if I’d made a terrible mistake?

The door slid open on silent hinges.

Zylphia stepped inside, so tame in appearance I almost didn’t recognize her. Her tea-stained skin was scrubbed clean of everything even resembling rouge, her eyes lacking in the dark kohl she’d worn so often below the drift. Her hair was tightly coiled once more, and her clothing identical to Betsy’s in every regard. Her dark dress and white apron were clean, her shoes polished and the tea service in her hands remained steady.

But her eyes. They were so blue, startlingly colorful in her dark skin, and so full of sympathy that I was seized with a vicious urge to throw something at
her.

How dare she approach me with so much knowledge in her face?

I dashed an arm across my eyes, though no tears had fallen, and turned resolutely away. “Just leave the tray,” I ordered stiffly.

She complied, though she took a slow, deep breath. “It’s difficult, isn’t it?”

My back went rigid. I sneaked a glance through my lashes, saw her staring at the delicate teapot with such sadness on her face. I bit my lip.

“We all have secrets,” she told me, but she didn’t look at me. “Some of us, it’s worse than others. Them that’s without, they’re always on the out and looking in. You think you’d be better sticking with them like you.”

Them like me. Like Zylphia.

Like . . .

Hawke
.

My fists clenched so tightly, pain speared through my palms. “At least my Lord Compton is concerned,” I said flatly. “At least
he
cares enough to bloody well ask after me.”

“Is that what you think?” She looked at me, then, her eyebrows furrowed. Her hands settled on her aproned hips. “You believe he simply left you?
Cherie
, Cage was—”

I couldn’t stand to hear his name. Embarrassed, my pride damaged deeply, I shot to my feet, my nightgown swirling around my ankles, and flung a hand to the door. “Get out,” I ordered, each word bitten to the quick.

The vanity chair tumbled backward as I strode across the room. Zylphia passed me, her lips tight with disapproval. With anger.

I didn’t care.

The door shut behind me as I poured myself a cup of tea. She must have been listening for my stirring, for the brew steamed as it hit the china cup. Fresh from the kettle. And she’d left only sugar on the tray. No cream.

My hands shook as I brought the cup to my lips.

What kind of awful creature was I becoming?

The kind that could lie with ease. That could blame others for my own shortcomings.

“Damnation,” I seethed, and scalded my tongue on the tea. It was a small pain.

It did nothing to overwhelm the hole in my chest.

I was angry. I was mortified by my own behavior and acutely aware of how petty I was acting. It only worsened my mood. I was frightened, I admit now what I couldn’t then, feeling out of sorts from all of it. Compiled with the restless energy I always felt after a bout of strong opium, and I was beyond help.

The events with Hawke were only a portion of my frustration. The things he’d made me feel seemed somehow . . . unnatural. I was no closeted miss unaware of the ways of the world, but I was virginal in the strictest definition and entirely too embarrassed by the subject matter in regards to myself.

I’d never summoned the nerve to ask Zylphia about such things.

To feel the same whispered urges when I heard Compton’s voice? This was deucedly unfair, and baffling beyond. Micajah Hawke sold his soul to charm the stars from the sky—and more than a few ladies from their stays, I was sure. That he could engender such feelings from a girl like myself was unsurprising.

The earl was no ringmaster. No wicked tempter in the dark. Why, then, did I think of him?

Bah, I was back to this again. I needed a distraction.

I spent as much time as I possibly could in the relative safety of my room. I paced, I curled up beneath the covers. I called for a bath, scrubbed myself until my skin turned pink, then soaked until the water turned cold and my fingertips wrinkled.

I dressed, decided against the pretty rose-colored day gown and found something instead in charcoal gray. Much more somber.

Much more to my mood.

I brushed out my own hair until it shone, dry and vibrantly lustrous. I began to weave it into a plethora of tiny plaits, like I’d seen on the dark-skinned man beneath the drift, then impatiently gave up and twined it all up into a simple coil.

When I couldn’t stand my own company a moment longer, I seized my courage in both hands and left my bedchamber.

The house was quiet. Not empty; not even pared down. I waited at the top of the stair, gloved hand gripping the banister tightly, and strained to hear every sound trickling through the tomblike silence.

There was motion in the kitchen. Betsy and Zylphia, perhaps? Or simply Mrs. Booth with early preparations for the afternoon tea. I stared at the foyer beyond the stairs, willing myself to take the first step.

Just one, and my other foot could continue the motion. Step by step.

Guilt gripped at my throat.

I gritted my teeth, took a deep breath, and forced myself to move. Daintily. Skirts held just so. A proper lady.

What a liar
.

I stumbled on the last step, caught myself with both hands around the lion’s mane newel and shook my head hard. Enough of this. As far as anyone else knew, I was still just me. All right, so I’d tipped my hand to my staff, but they were my staff, weren’t they?

Only Zylphia knew what had happened below.

But she’d never stand for a character witness. I had to be certain that my secrets stayed below. I spoke often of choosing to live as an exile, but if it ever came to that, I preferred it on my terms. If news of this—any of this—ever reached my guardian’s ears before I came of age, I could lose everything.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

I could do this. I was Cherry bloody St. Croix. My father was a notorious madman. I’d been through worse, I was sure. A knife wound I’d sustained years ago surely outweighed embarrassment. A childhood spent in the circus rings certainly mattered more than a week’s worth of inconveniences. In less than a year, I’d have everything I ever wanted.

I straightened, shook out my skirts, and strode into the parlor.

Fanny started, her knitting needles clacking together in surprise. “Cherry!”

I waved a dismissive hand at her as I crossed to my favorite settee. “Don’t get up,” I said quickly. “I feel fine. I was just ill.”

Her eyebrows furrowed, thin lines of deep suspicion. “Ill, then?” Her lips pursed. “How ill?”

“Just ill,” I said, carefully arranging my skirts so I didn’t have to look up at my chaperone’s all-too-sharp scrutiny. “I believe I ate something below that disagreed with my constitution.”

It was as if I’d slapped her with the word
below
. Her indrawn breath hissed. “Yes,” she said after a taut silence. “Below.” She chewed on the word slowly. Cautiously. “Cherry, what on earth—”

I looked up, already shaking my head. “It’s a long story, Fanny. I’m tired. Can’t it wait?”

“You spent all day abed.”

“I was—”

“Ill, yes,” my chaperone finished for me, but her tone was dry. “So you said. My dove, do you have any idea how close your reputation is to lying in tatters?” Her needles clicked, once, twice, before she gave up and set them aside. Standing, Frances Fortescue began to do something I had never in my life seen her do.