Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles

by Karina Cooper

  Mrs. Booth, assured that all was well, eventually returned to her bed; Booth followed, and the arrhythmic step-thunk-step of his footfalls created in me such a viciously wound knot of memory and emotion that I covered my face with the balled-up handkerchief in my fist and sobbed anew.

  So caught up in my own tangled feelings of relief and grief and shock was I that I did not hear the second footstep until Ashmore’s voice murmured, “I hope we did not wake you.”

  “You did,” said a woman in husky tones. “But it’s all well worth waking for.” I stiffened, dropping my handkerchief to turn—only to find myself trapped by two white-clad arms sliding over my shoulders. I smelled something like roses and cinnamon, but I needed no sight beyond the long, dusky fingers to know who it was claimed me.

  Too many emotions assailed me to settle on any one. Doubt that I would be welcomed so warmly, fear that it would be for nothing; shame, so much of it for the way I’d treated her, for I had been terrible to this sweet who had been a friend.

  I jerked, did not disengage so much as turn in Zylphia’s clasp. The eyes I forced myself to meet were steady, blue as the sky above the drift.

  In them, I read only relief.

  I wrapped one hand at the nape of her smooth neck. “Zylla,” I managed in greeting. Then I could do nothing but embrace her as tightly as though a chasm of misapprehensions had not settled between us.

  “There, now, cherie,” she crooned as I hiccupped against the soft fabric of her wrapper. It was fine material, the sort one wore in one’s boudoir, and not in mixed company.

  Yet Zylphia was a sweet—an exotic flower plucked for the taking by the Menagerie that had once held her. A little cavorting in mixed company whilst dressed for the bedroom bothered her no more than showing off her many and truthfully lovely assets in the attire sweets were often seen to wear.

  Like all the flesh the Menagerie had peddled, she was a beauty. A mulatto, she had skin the color of the tea I held in hand, lightened with a dollop of cream. Her dark brown hair was long enough to fall unbound to the small of her back, thick in hand and bearing a distinctive kink through it that was not wholly curl nor a relaxed wave.

  The luminescent eyes that looked down at me from a face comprised of striking cheekbones and a lush, full mouth were legacy of her unknown white father.

  Men—and some women, I had been led to believe by the sweet herself—had paid a pretty penny for her company. They like as not still would, were it not for the fact that Zylphia had led a mutiny against the Menagerie that culminated in the turnover I had noted during my recent visits.

  I’d thought her dead or worse until Maddie Ruth proclaimed Zylphia had escaped, but I’d never imagined she found refuge with the well-heeled remains of my staff.

  Of course, the swell of her belly undisguised beneath her cinched wrapper would lower her market value rather more than mutiny.

  My eyes widened, and the tea I cradled upon its saucer sloshed sharply as I noted it. “What—” My voice cracked. “Zylla, you... Are you—?” Utterly taken aback, what spilled from my mouth was learned from a class what didn’t much bother with delicacy. “You got a Jack in a box?”

  Her eyes flashed in vivid amusement, echoed by Ashmore’s snort.

  “Seems so,” Zylphia replied, but her teeth gleamed white in the firelight as she flashed a wide, warm smile. “Serves you right for leaving these past months.”

  “Not by choice,” I began, but immediately felt a pang of guilt and slanted my erstwhile guardian a wince. “Well, ’tis a long story.”

  “No need for it, Maddie Ruth came telling.”

  Oh, that girl. No wonder she’d been so confident when I asked her where she stayed. I huffed. “Did you arrange this?” I asked of my guardian.

  He had no grace with which to feel abashed. “I had a hand in her safety,” he acknowledged, “although ’twas Mrs. Fortescue who volunteered this home.”

  So he had not only protected my staff, but given a sweet on the run a safe haven, to boot. If I was typically treated as a wart on the face of Society, I couldn’t imagine what these antics would cost him.

  Oh, and that was so much tosh. I’d be made a pariah. Ashmore, as a man, wouldn’t suffer near the same. Like as not, if this situation ever came to light, Ashmore would be lauded an eccentric, and invited to all the latest soirees.

  I patted the sofa beside me, and Zylphia rounded the arm to sit. “You should have told me.”

  “Why?” she demanded lightly. “So that you might come running with all mad ideas?”

  “I’d like as not do that anyway,” I told her, and grinned back when she did first. “No, I at least wouldn’t have worried so.”

  Once, she’d served as a maid of sorts; though at the time, she’d been under orders to spy upon my doings for the Veil. She’d balanced the two—friendship and duty—until it cost her.

  Like Hawke, her back still bore the signs of a whipping, though in her case, they were less obvious. Flesh marked badly enough wouldn’t sell.

  “No need for worry. Thanks to Mr. Ashmore, here,” Zylphia said brightly, arranging the folds of the pale white wrapper over her protruding belly, “I’ve been well taken care of.”

  Ashmore inclined his head.

  “Then nobody has come to claim a collection?” I asked, frowning.

  She did not take the tea I offered, and rested a hand over her carried swell. I desperately wanted to ask who had begotten the child, but a part of me worried that I would offend.

  I was rather more educated than that. A woman, especially below the drift, might be able to claim a specific man the father, and might not.

  I did not want to seem judgmental to the friend I’d already offended more than once in our history.

  “None but Communion know I’m here,” Zylphia assured me. “I’ve been in touch with Maddie Ruth and he visits, now and again, when he can.”

  “Why would—” Ah. I cleared my throat lest I ask something terribly indelicate, but I admit that my heart immediately warmed.

  So Ishmael and Zylphia had found something of a common ground, did they?

  This gave me no small amount of happiness. I dared not ask direct, as Zylphia, for all her boldness as a sweet, had never been one to share such personal matters.

  Of course, she’d not been one for casual touching, either. Yet I no longer sensed such reserve. Was it her love for me that allowed the broach or was it a gentling come from a different love?

  As if sensing the direction of my interest, Ashmore abruptly stood. “Excuse me, ladies,” he said, bending slightly in respect. Booth had divested him of his cap and his overcoat, but in deference to the company, he had not stripped to his shirtsleeves as he was wont. “There’s things to prepare.”

  “Wait,” I said quickly.

  He hesitated.

  “What of the phial?”

  “What phial?” Zylphia asked, and he withdrew it from his pocket to show her.

  “Have you seen this before?” he asked.

  She gave it a cursory inspection, but shook her head. “Is that poison?”

  “It may as well be,” I said, and added at her furrowed confusion, “I believe the Veil is giving it to the Ferrymen.”

  “What for?”

  “To allow them to become very skilled murderers,” Ashmore said, tucking the small glass cylinder back into his breast pocket. His fingers touched my shoulder as he passed us.

  Zylphia watched him depart, then breathed, “Cor. You do like them bold, don’t you, cherie?”

  Relief filled me. As did another sense of guilt mingled with embarrassment. Flustered, I returned to the subject abandoned prior. “So there’s been no collectors?”

  “Just you, now,” she said, returning her steady gaze to mine. She had always been a sharp one, and I had little doubt she saw more than I necessarily wanted to project. “You’ve been to the wall, then?”

  I nodded. “Did Ish tell you of the notices?”

  “Only that he and his cr
ew had put more than one collector through his paces,” she replied, another fierce smile curving her shapely lips. She laced both hands over her belly, shifting some as though she were uncomfortable. I could only imagine. “I’ve been rather more protected, since I started showing.”

  This was the ideal moment to offer my regards, to tell her how happy I was for her, but the emotion throttled in my throat, and I could only turn my gaze away in stifled attempt. I cleared it with a rasping cough. “Zylla, I—Well, I only...”

  A warm hand covered mine where it lay limply between us upon the brocade. “At least I don’t have to fear that you’ll turn us in for the coin,” she said lightly.

  My eyes widened, attention jerked to her with denial hot on my lips.

  Her smile had not faded, nor hardened. Her fingers squeezed mine. “What is in the past remains in the past,” she said. Her voice thrummed in gentle accord. “Despite all the wanting, you never did betray me for the tar. And I,” she added with firm sincerity I could not doubt, “never once shared Cage’s bed.”

  My mouth fell open.

  She reached over, awkward over her own belly, and closed it for me. “We have long been friends, Cage and I.”

  “Friends.” I couldn’t imagine it.

  “Well, as much as he allows. You should get some rest,” she continued, as though she had not simply thrown a knife of truth into a fragile target. “We can talk more tomorrow, and your Fanny will be pleased to see you.”

  What could I do but obey? Mention of rest drew from me the last of my reserves, and I was still yawning as she led me from the parlor and up the stairs.

  Zylphia slept in a room below, as she had when she served as my maid, but she led me to a boudoir upstairs decorated in pretty shades of lavender, cream and sage green. A feminine room, fit for a lady, and kept always ready.

  Like the Cheyne Walk house we’d once occupied, there was a room for Ashmore, one for me, and plenty more for the staff who still lived together. It was no sprawling manor, but it was comfortable and finely appointed; and I knew that it was to Ashmore I owed my gratitude.

  He had protected them.

  I slid between the warm bedclothes, my head nestled into soft pillows, and I thought how easy it might be to forget all but the comfort I found in the bosom of them what had become my family.

  For the first time in quite a while, I slept the sleep of the contented.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I woke refreshed as I had never been, though a dull headache thrummed at the base of my skull and echoed low in my back. It did not seem to impede my ability to move, but I did remember the feeling from those long months wrested from the tar.

  The only curative I knew was more tar, and so I resolved to ignore it and focus on something else.

  To wit, whatever it was that had woken me.

  The chamber remained dark, though a glow beneath the door suggested light had been lit beyond. A masculine murmur seemed little more than a muted purr, but the sound of the door opening and closing once more jarred me upright.

  Was that Communion?

  Surely not. Not only would his voice like as not rattle the girders of any home he entered, but he’d be rude indeed to leave without seeing me.

  Of course, I was asleep.

  Frowning, I plucked a similar wrapper to Zylphia’s from its peg upon the wall by my bed and hastily drew it on. The act set fire to my injured shoulder, and I winced as I cradled my arm.

  It felt rather unusual to be wearing the layered luxury of a fine nightdress again, especially since I’d spent months in borrowed clothing, and that hastily altered. The feel of the soft linen felt rather unfamiliar.

  Leaving the somewhat unwound mess of my plait to hang at my back, I hurried out into the hall.

  Booth’s uneven step halted on the stair nearby. “My apologies for the disturbance, miss,” he said, bushy eyebrows threading together.

  “What is happening, Booth?”

  His mouth, deeply lined, shifted into a downward curve. “With any luck, nothing to be too concerned about. The physician assures us that it will pass.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. “Who is ill?”

  “Mrs. Fortescue is mending,” he said firmly. “Mr. Ashmore is with her now.” He must have read the dismay upon my notably pallid features, because he completed climbing the stair and passed me with a murmured, “If you’d care to see her?”

  “Yes,” I gasped, and gathered the frothy spill of wrapper and nightdress in both hands to follow. My bare feet padded against the carpet aligned in the narrow hall, and I realized as my toes tingled that it was cold. I’d forgotten slippers.

  Booth paused outside the door and tapped gently. It was Ashmore’s voice that murmured, “Come.”

  Booth spread a gloved hand over the panel—always proper, even in the dead of night—and opened it for me.

  The light from the hall did not reach so far, but Booth’s lantern offered some. At least enough for me to cross the threshold and be greeted by the warmth of a small brass stove.

  The room was small but comfortable; Fanny had never taken to overly large sleeping quarters. Her bed was layered with thick blankets, pillows propped up behind her, and though the whole was not all that big, it made her look terribly frail.

  Or perhaps it was her slightness of stature that made the bed look large.

  There was a great deal more white than iron in her braided hair. Blue veins stood out from the pallor of her skin, and dark speckles dusted her marbled hands where they folded over the sheets. She rested against the mound of pillows, framed by the headboard carved of wrought iron behind her, and looked like a skeletally thin version of the stern-faced widow I’d once known.

  Yet as her tired, pale blue eyes fell upon me, all the careworn lines and morass of creases that settled into her face softened into a smile. “There, my dove,” she said, lifting one such thin hand.

  Her voice rasped where it had not before.

  Ashmore stood by as I crossed the room and knelt beside my dearest companion’s side. “Fanny,” I warbled, barely in control of my tears. “What’s this about feeling unwell?” I sniffed mightily as her hand, thin and dry like parchment, caressed my cheek.

  Her eyes nearly vanished beneath a crinkled pinch of lines. “Oh, there’s no call to worry about me,” she said, slowly but with the same matter-of-factness that I expected of the woman who had taught me all I’d needed to survive in a society that did not care for me. She patted my cheek. “I’ll be right as rain before you know it, and you’ll curse the pianoforte scores I’ll have you practicing again.”

  I laughed, but softly so as not to damage the serenity of the chamber. Ashmore watched in silence, for his was a demeanor of deference, and he understood that what I felt.

  If I was to have no mother, I could do no better than Frances Fortescue at my side.

  No longer tired, pains forgotten, I claimed the chair Ashmore placed for me and spoke of nothing in specific with Fanny as she lay in convalescence. Once in a while, she would lift a hand as though to ensure that I truly was there, and I always took it in mine.

  When she winced, an occasional flinch as though something hurt, I lifted worried eyes to Ashmore, who only shook his head in calm reassurance and returned to the leather-bound volume he held in his lap.

  Dawn was not all that far.

  Eventually, Fanny slipped into a steady slumber.

  “I’ll stay for a while,” I whispered.

  Ashmore touched my shoulder once more, tender assurance, and said, “Don’t do anything rash.”

  My smile twisted. “Even if I wanted to,” I said sadly, “I wouldn’t know where to begin.” There was no alchemical compound I knew of that could fight age—save that what Ashmore had utilized in his own long life.

  Fanny was a widow, though she had no children. Even if I could convince her, she had no means to extend her life using progeny she never had.

  Of course, I knew enough about my dear companion to know sh
e never would allow it.

  Ashmore bent to press a kiss upon my head, an oddly paternal gesture for what we had already shared in our past, but I appreciated the intent.

  “I’ll be back in a few hours,” he said. “There’s things I need to acquire in order to create your preventative and unbind the contents of that flask.”

  He spoke of a draught meant to ensure one did not get with child after a night spent in fornication. It was the sort of sensible thing a mind of intellect would consider, and it bemused me that I’d forgotten.

  Worse, that I considered briefly denying it.

  What madness possessed me? Was it that I looked at Zylphia and found her impending motherhood to be something to envy? To want?

  Of course it was only right that I take the draught. I had no true desire for children, and even if I did, now was not the time to conceive one. Not when a war loomed in the streets I occupied, and my life remained claimed by the Veil that wanted to end it.

  What was more, I had no right to bear Hawke’s child without his knowing. Such an act would be akin to a betrayal. I couldn’t do it.

  I scrubbed at my face and managed, “Yes, all right.”

  Ashmore studied me for a long, uncomfortable moment. I fought not to squirm.

  Whatever it was he weighed within himself, it did not culminate into a topic of pursued conversation. “Get some rest, if you can,” he ordered, but gently, and made good his departure.

  I remained at Fanny’s side and watched her sleep.

  * * *

  When dawn had come and gone, slipping faded fingers of faded light under the heavy curtains masking the single window beside the bed, I left my post. Fanny slumbered peacefully, easing the tight knot of worry that had come to settle in my breast.

  We were far enough from the deepest fog that I wondered how close to a rise in the boroughs we might be. Some areas of London low, like the Philosopher’s Square, tended to be less fog-ridden in comparison.

  Wherever we were, it seemed likely that a shift in the air might soften the coal-ridden haze, and that assured me that we were far from the East End I had made my haunt.