The Mysterious Case of Mr. Strangeway (The St. Croix Chronicles) (6 page)

“Debts?”

I nodded. “Owed and demanded repaid,” I told him with a finality that belied my complete ignorance on the subject. “Always pay your debts, isn’t that what you said to me?”

The barest whisper would have echoed as a scream in the silence that followed my taunting echo of his earlier advice.

Hawke stirred, arms unfolding, and he placed one hand upon the map. “Well done,” he said, not to me, but to the man who very gently put down his glass. “You have played the peacock entirely too well.”

“Bloody bells,” was my quarry’s resigned sigh. “I’ve no time for this.”

As if I did. “So, if you’d be so kind to come with me, Mr. Strangeway—”

“Shall I have her removed?” Hawke’s question, so idly spoken, halted me in my tracks. He directed it to his companion, but it was me his gaze pinned, candlelight reflecting in that vivid blue streak.

“For God’s sake, Hawke, the lass has already been injured enough tonight.” Strangeway’s sympathy, ultimately indifferent though it was, earned him a touch of my struggling goodwill. However, it dimmed when he added, “’Tis your Menagerie, mind, do as you like.”

Both men watched me, as if awaiting my next move. When none came—what could I possibly do?—he added, “She’s obviously not Irish and no factory girl. I rather doubt she can harm a leaf, much less anything about my person. I doubt she’s worth the skin she has.”

Any liking I may have been cultivating for the man evaporated.

“Right,” I snapped, and slapped both hands atop the table. It stung, earning an echoed ache in my side. I winced; but I’d been hurt worse under Monsieur Marceaux’s demands and I could not bear to show weakness now. “My place of birth aside—” A rural estate in far-flung Scotland, but he did not need to know that. “—it does not negate my purpose. Mr. Strangeway, if you will not come willingly I will be compelled to acquire your company by force.”

When Hawke came around that table, I realized the error of my impatience. And the invalidity of my power. He moved like a tiger only barely caged, each step a leashed promise of violent intent. That women London over find the man fascinating does not surprise me now, but he certainly baffled and frightened me then.

His tones were polite. And rather very unyielding. “You are just a child,” he assured me, “and so I will afford you a luxury you would not get were you even a day older.”

“I am fifteen years old,” I corrected, with all the confidence of my almost-worldly experience. “I am no child.”

The derision he displayed me could not have been more clear than if he wrote it on a bit of parchment and hand-delivered it. As if I should have taken the excuse he offered me with grace. “Wherever you call home,” he said softly, “you will go there, and you will never darken my door again. Do you understand me?”

Chapter Nine

I backed away, but he did not slow, making his point with every measured pace closed between us.

My heart pounded, dry and hard in my throat. “You cannot lay a finger on me.”

“This is my garden.” Hawke’s eyes filled my gaze as he leaned closer, his even white teeth bared in a smile that I would have sworn contained the fangs of a viper. Opium could be so ambiguous on a body’s senses. “Collectors operate here with my goodwill. Patrons attend because I choose to allow them. I may do exactly as I please, when I please, for as often as I please. Never mistake that again.”

“Hawke.” A hand curved around his arm, and I did not dare look away from Hawke’s measured stare to weigh Mr. Strangeway’s features, a pale blur over my captor’s shoulder. “Leave her, mate, she’s no risk to me.”

“She’s a nuisance.”

I held my tongue, but barely.

“Nuisance, perhaps, but she’s too young for your brand of attention and too British for mine.”

I winced. “Why are you so focused on my place of birth?”

Hawke did not touch me, turning away with an impatience I could all but feel lashing off him in razor-sharp edges.

Strangeway frowned at me. “You are no factory girl, am I right?”

“I told you, and I cannot make it much plainer.” Now I displayed impatience, more than I should have, given my injured status. “I am a collector, working for a Mr. Chattersham, to whom your debts are owed.”

I must have touched a nerve, perhaps made him realize the gravity of his own situation, for Strangeway went still. The skin about his eyes tightened, and he seized my arm in his ungloved hand. So grasped, I had no choice but to stumble in pace as he dragged me to the table, beyond, and all but tossed me into a carved chair. I bit back a yelp of pain as the abrupt settling of my backside against unyielding wood jarred my wound. “Tell me everything you know,” he ordered sternly.

Hugging my side, I met his gaze, a simple dark hazel with none of the devilment he’d displayed only moments ago, and weighed my options.

I had none, naturally. Hawke was right.

I slumped, fighting back tears of frustration as they welled behind my gritty eyes. I was tired, the ache of my injury battered at the fringes of my concentration, and I truly had no conception how to deal with these men. “Very well,” I said, not graciously. “Since you are obviously no more a popinjay than I am a boy, I suppose I’m curious enough to help.”

As if I’d been given a choice. Hawke’s arched eyebrow suggested as much.

Try as I might later, I would never be able to master the art of lifting a single eyebrow in such a derisive fashion. I deliberately ignored him. “What do you care to know?” I asked, as politely as if I were serving tea.

Fanny would have been so very proud.

“Your name?” Hawke asked, only to shrug his shoulders when Strangeway deftly interrupted with, “Unimportant.”

I did not like the feeling of relief that caused me. In defense to the unwelcome softening of my dislike, I volunteered a different bit of information. “Your name was given on the collection wall, Mr. Strangeway, as well as the knowledge that you make your home in Chelsea, as—” I almost added
as I do
, and caught it in time. “As well as,” I amended, “enjoying the company of the stews.”

He did not look pleased. “So the role I’d chosen was fashioned,” Strangeway said.

“Did you not intend to play the reprobate?” Hawke asked. “A job well done.”

“Too well, obviously. I’d meant to be taken in to the fold, not collected by it.” My quarry looked to me with none of the proper deference he should have for his collector. I bit back a sigh. “You say for debts?”

“Enough debt that Mr. Chattersham is willing to accept payment of your skin. The notice claimed you are to be taken dead or alive.” And because I could not bear the skepticism in either man’s face, I added sharply, “I would choose your life.”

“You are too kind,” replied Strangeway, his voice so understated as to be practically dust. “Have you the notice?”

I frowned. “Why would I have it?”

For a moment, Strangeway could only gape. It was a unique sort of expression, one torn between incredulity and dismay. “You did not remove it from the wall?”

“Of course not, ’tis not my wall.”

To both men’s credit, they did not laugh. I would have, which suggests something rather unkind about myself. Instead, Hawke returned to the map, to stare at the lines in silence. If his shoulders moved suspiciously, I could not be sure of it.

Uneasily, I attempted to keep both men in my direct line of sight. Difficult, when Strangeway gave up on looming over me and instead moved to the carved mantel and its pale green figurines arrayed along the top. Whatever it was he sought among them, he did it in like silence.

I wriggled in my chair, uncomfortable. “Was I supposed to take it?” I finally asked, my voice too small in the thickened quiet.

Neither answered. I was left with the distinct impression that I had disappointed them, somehow. Flushing, I tried again. “I would like to know what happened on the train.”

“And I would like an elephant,” Hawke muttered to the table he studied. “Yet I am left with none.” A fact that would not change. Lions, yes. Elephants were never part of the Menagerie.

I pulled a face that I am not proud of. Especially when Hawke glanced up in time to see my tongue protruding from between my lips, my nose wrinkled and one eye larger than the other.

The unholy amusement that filled his gaze must have been a trick of the firelight. I did not hold his stare long enough to know for sure.

“It was an unfortunate act of timing and opportunity,” Strangeway said, unaware—or perhaps deliberately taking no notice—of my childish behavior. “My...brothers are woefully impatient, and too bloodthirsty, besides.”

Brothers? “What brothers?” I demanded.

“It is a complicated measure,” he said slowly.

I narrowed my eyes. “I suspected the collector, but you? You’re an agitator of the Fenian Brotherhood, as well?”

“Not as such. To be honest, I’d expected more of a hand from their London sources. Apparently, brotherhood only carries one so far.” His mouth tightened, a grim edge. “Perhaps if my need had promised mayhem...” Whatever black thoughts had taken him—a quarrel I was sure he would no doubt take to his brothers one day—it cleared on an added, “And you are treading on dangerous ground. Lass, are you at all aware of the shite you’ve strode through?”

I resisted the urge to grin at the language spoken so openly in my company. Thrilling as it was, there was too much at stake to lose the thread. “I understand that you were masquerading as a toff in Chelsea,” I said, proud when his eyebrows rose. I had ears, and a brain. I knew what I’d heard. Obviously, Strangeway had taken on a role that had turned on him, somehow. His intent culminated in a collection notice, rather than whatever it was he’d wanted. “And that though you may or may not be wealthy, you appear to have gathered debt after debt in pursuit of some affected role.”

“Very good. What else?”

“You keep boorish company,” I said flippantly, and pushed on when Hawke straightened, “which includes the very fiends that set a terrible explosion upon a train filled with people.” My flippancy died, tone terribly serious as I levied upon him all of my judgment. “People who had not done anything to you, might I add.”

His features, so often set in lines of indifferent amusement, blackened. “I am well aware and carry that burden, believe you me. That we were too late to find the dynamite is no balm at all.”

I hoped he lived with that forever; a cruel thought from one whose memories were often shrouded and vague. “Why you pulled me from the train, I do not know. Why you keep company with a self-titled captain with a taste for Irish girls, I also don’t know.”

Strangeway tipped his head back, to look at the ceiling instead of me. It bared a swatch of leather at his throat, hidden beneath his shirt collar. “So you conversed with my compatriot, did you?”

I blinked. “In a manner of speaking. He was too busy searching. Ostensibly for your Fenian parcel.”

“And he simply
had
to mention the Irish lasses, did he?” Something in the way he asked the question warned me that it was rhetorical at best, and unhappy at the worst. With me?

“He mentioned that he was looking for some,” I said slowly. “I thought it for tupping.”

“Did he mention American lasses, as well?”

“No, I rather gained the impression he preferred Irish skirts.”

He winced, a full expression of reproachful dismay.

“It would not be the first I’d heard of a man’s particular tastes,” I pointed out—rather reasonably, I was sure. “And not the most peculiar, either.”

“Lass, you frighten me.” Not, unfortunately, in the way I’d hoped. “What else did he say of it?”

“Nothing. Mr. Smoot was rather closemouthed.”

Hawke’s head lifted from his map. “Smoot is here?” A level demand, and it carried a dark menace his deep voice had not borne before.

My mouth closed, fear a sudden shard of ice in my spine.

“Not here,” Strangeway replied, leaving the mantel as if idly. It was a nonchalant wander, but one that placed him between Hawke and myself. Not accidentally, unless I missed my guess. “He knows better, Hawke. As do I.”

“You know his debts are beyond forgiving,” the Menagerie ringmaster replied, and in that warning, I saw the man that he would one day wholly become. Cruel and powerful, and strangely tolerant in ways his current conceit did not allow. How five years have changed us all.

“And that is why he has not stepped foot in the Veil’s sight,” Strangeway replied. “Hawke, you know I would not risk his help but for the need.”

I watched this byplay with my mouth open, sure I resembled more a fish than the girl in boy’s clothes that I was. So Smoot’s debts really were that deep. I wondered what it was he’d spoken of before I’d so weakly succumbed to my wound. Something that could be smuggled in a ship. Opium? Slaves?

Treasure, perhaps?

I could only speculate, for I knew without being told that these men would share nothing with me.

Hawke leaned against the table, as casually poised as a gentleman on walkabout. “Will you take on his debts, then?”

I did not expect Strangeway to laugh, but laugh he did. Outright, and with no expectation of agreement. “Don’t be daft. His debts are his own. Besides, I rather think he enjoys the promise of a chase.”

“So he would.”

I boggled at the two of them, dancing this verbal waltz about debts rather than what I saw as the greater issue. “I beg your pardon,” I interrupted, my tone making it very clear that I begged nothing. “Why aren’t you more concerned about the train?”

Hawke’s gaze flicked to me. Hardened. “Do I look a constable to you?”

I blinked. “But...all those people.”

“They are people,” he replied, utterly without feeling. “They will live and die as everyone else. No one, not even the Fenians, dare to walk on my ground without the Veil’s knowing, and that is all that concerns me. Strangeway, if you won’t sell her, get rid of this stray cat before we continue this.”

“Wait, how can you be so cruel?” I demanded, refusing to be so left out.

Strangeway stirred. “Best not to engage a flesh-peddler on questions of morality,” he said to me, wry in tone and laconic of feature. “And leave when he demands it.”

It took effort, but I ignored the demand to battle Hawke’s pitiless principles, my skin prickling with the exertion. Oh, how I wanted to dress him down right good.

I did not. “Mr. Strangeway.” I turned to him, instead, resolved to plead if I must. “Back to our business, if you please. I am in dire need of this purse. You cannot possibly understand my circumstances. Mr. Chattersham is offering a large bounty for your skin and I need it in order to live.” There, a twitch of Mr. Strangeway’s groomed whiskers, a tic at his jaw. I’d touched a nerve. “Sir, I’d prefer you kept your skin on and paid your debts instead. Therefore, I am willing to bargain.”

Strangeway frowned. “I am sorry, lass,” he said, not unkindly. “I’ve no interest in your troubles, save that your injury be tended. That much is done, and I will take on the responsibility for that debt.”

“Fool,” Hawke muttered.

“But—”

“So ends your involvement in my affairs,” said Mr. Strangeway over me. “And the necessity of your presence here. I apologize that you were caught in the mess, and I regret your injury—”

“To say nothing of the others in that train,” I cut in with no small amount of insolence.

“—but now I am bored with you,” he continued. And to give truth to his mild words, I saw that his eyes had lost their sparkle, and his posture once more eased to listless boredom. “Hawke?”

As if that were his cue, Hawke abandoned his indolent lean, wood table creaking as his weight shifted away, and rounded the heavy piece. His intent was clear.

I shot to my feet. “Bored,” I repeated. “I don’t care if you’re bleeding dead with boredom, sir, you will come with me.” In a move I would come to be woefully familiar with, Hawke seized my arm, grip tight enough to force a small sound of pain from my lips, and dragged me to the far door. “I cannot fail my first collection,” I cried, “I simply can’t!”

“You are no collector,” Hawke said grimly.

“I am so! I will prove it.”

“You will not.” Hawke’s features remained implacable. “You
will
, however, be escorted out.”

“You cannot stop me,” I shouted, now entirely unworried about making a fuss. Let them all stare, those servants who may be about. “I will catch my mark!”

Wordlessly, in part due to my smaller stature, he swept me under his arm, one hand propped against my trousered backside for support. I swore a streak learned at the elbows of the finest abram men outside London, but it earned me no credit. “Cease your foul prattling,” he said, “or I will show you what happens to little black birds who cannot keep their feathers clean.”

I hissed, anger pulsing against my skin in hot waves of embarrassment and fury. “You wouldn’t dare!”

The room rotated briefly as he turned me upright, depositing me outside the door with a suddenness that sent shocks through my ankles and knees. Pain detached my intent from my physical ability, and I pitched. He did not catch me.