by Lisa Maxwell
“So you’ll wait?”
“Yeah,” she said, pasting on an encouraging smile. “Absolutely.”
After he’d disappeared up the steps, she let the smile fall from her face and ran her hands along the smooth glass of the box. It was a good idea, a good effect, she had to admit. It might even be enough to convince Jack Grew that she had something he wanted, but they couldn’t take any chances. The trick needed to be better than good—it needed to be spectacular.
IMPROVISING
Harte had never seen Esta so on edge. After he’d explained how they would run the lost heir on Jack, they’d settled into a steady—if not quite comfortable—rhythm as they prepared for the Friday-night performance. Everything he’d thrown at her—and it had been plenty—she’d given back to him in turn, and with a smirk on her face that told him she was enjoying herself. But standing in the wings, her apple-green silk gown glinting in the lights from the stage, she was going to chew a hole in her lip while she watched the act before him.
“You’ll be fine,” he said, resting his hands on her bare shoulders. He felt her stiffen, but she didn’t pull away, even when he rubbed his thumb gently over the pink scar on her arm. She wouldn’t tell him what it was from, but the angry pucker of skin had drawn his attention and his concern.
“Don’t,” she whispered, turning her head back to look at him with a frown. Her honey-colored eyes were serious, and if he wasn’t mistaken, scared.
“I wasn’t,” he told her. “I wouldn’t.”
She snorted her disbelief at his words, but she didn’t pull away, and he realized that he liked the way her skin felt under his fingertips. Soft, when there had been so little softness in his life for so long. He knew enough not to depend on it, though, because it couldn’t last. Not with so much standing between them. He had to get out of the city, and for that he had to remember that she was just another thing standing in his way.
He dropped his hands from her shoulders.
“Do you think he’s out there?” she asked, peering past the stage into the theater.
“Second box to the right,” he told her. “There’s no need to be nervous. This is going to work.”
“I’m not nervous,” she said, tilting her head to the side. “Just ready.”
“You’ll come on when I give the cue, just as we rehearsed.”
“I know. I know,” she said. “You’ve gone over this a hundred times. Two hundred times.” But her voice didn’t have the usual bite.
“Don’t forget to—” The organ trilled his introduction, and it was too late for any more instructions. “Just like we practiced. You’ll be fine.”
She nodded, but there was something in her eyes that worried him.
“Esta—”
“What are you waiting for?” Shorty hissed. “That was your cue!”
Unable to wait any longer, he gave her what he hoped was a stern but encouraging look, and took the stage.
Word that he was debuting a new effect had gotten out, and the seats were nearly full. The audience went gratifyingly silent when he stepped into the spotlight, and when he lifted his arms to salute the crowd, a rumble of applause rolled over him, settling his nerves and steeling his resolve. He worked through his usual bits, and the audience seemed willing enough to watch, because they knew something bigger, better was coming.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” The words came as easily as the prayers his mother had taught him when he was a boy, but this time, much more was riding on his performance than a good night onstage. “I have a special treat for you this evening. A new demonstration and a new beauty for you to feast your eyes upon.” He held out his hand, as they’d practiced, and Esta glided onto the stage.
If she’d been nervous before, there was no sign of it now. She walked like a debutante, like she’d been born to tread the boards. But then maybe she had. After watching Esta the past few days, he’d come to understand that she was one of the best grifters he’d ever seen. Maybe even better than him.
“May I present to you Miss Esta von Filosik of Rastenburg. I studied under her father, the foremost expert on the transmutation of the elements. He made great breakthroughs in the hermetic sciences before his untimely death, and now Miss Filosik has come to these shores to share her father’s secrets with all of you. Tonight she will demonstrate her mastery over the powers of the Otherworld by cheating death”—he paused dramatically, letting the crowd’s anticipation grow—“in the Glass Casket.”
Excited murmurs rustled through the crowd. As the assistant rolled the box onto the stage, he chanced a glance in the direction of Jack’s box and was relieved to see him leaning forward against the railing of the balcony, watching with clear interest.
“If you would?” he said, offering Esta his hand, as they’d practiced.
She hesitated, though, and didn’t take it as she was supposed to.
“My dear,” he said, offering his hand again.
“Oh, I don’t know.” She shook her head and took a step back.
He offered his hand again and forced the smile to stay put on his face. This can’t be happening. Not again. Not now. “Come, my dear. It’s perfectly safe.”
A slow smile curved her lips, and he had the sudden feeling that he wasn’t going to like what happened next.
“Oh, I bet you say that to all the girls,” Esta told the audience in her throaty accented voice as she crossed the stage, ignoring his outstretched hand and turning all his careful planning on its head.
He could practically feel the audience’s confusion and their amusement. Hushed whispers rustled through the room as they waited to see what the girl would do next, and whether he would be able to regain control.
Harte Darrigan had survived his mother leaving him, a childhood in the streets he’d rather forget, and working for a boss who thought it was easier to kill people than to talk things over. He’d made a life from keeping his cool in sticky situations, but none of that had managed to prepare him for being in the spotlight—his spotlight—with Jack Grew in the audience and himself completely at her mercy.
He was afraid to look in Jack’s direction, afraid to see what his reaction would be. This whole con depended on Jack feeling like Harte was real competition, feeling like he had something to prove and someone to beat.
She could ruin everything.
He’d let himself believe that he’d taken control of the situation, but he’d been as easily conned as any mark, taken in by a pair of honeyed eyes and pink lips and the soft, clean scent of flowers. He had known she was up to something. Worse, he’d let himself forget that anyone working for Dolph Saunders had to be a snake. And he had the sinking feeling he’d just been bitten.
Then something shifted in the audience. The murmuring died a bit, as though they wanted to see what would happen next.
He hadn’t lost them yet. He could still save this.
“Please, if you would simply step into the casket, we can continue our demonstration.” He held out his hand. “As we planned,” he said through clenched teeth.
She let out a dramatic sigh, raising her hand to the curve of her chest—a move he had no doubt was intentional. “Oh, all right, darling,” she said with a wink to the audience. “But there are easier ways to get rid of me.”
Someone in the audience chuckled.
“My father always said a handsome face would be the death of me,” Esta said dramatically. Then she shrugged. “I hate when he’s right.” Finally, she took his hand and climbed the steps to sit in the glass box.
“What are you doing?” he whispered, as he made a show of helping her arrange her skirts.
“I’m improvising,” she told him through her smile.
Improvising? He’d show her improvising.
Her eyes went wide when she understood what he was about to do, but she didn’t have time to stop him before he closed the lid.
It was wrong of him, maybe even a little cruel. He knew she hated to be in there. Through all their practicing,
he’d gathered that there was something about being in that small, confined, airless space that made her jittery like nothing else could. They’d worked it out so he closed the lid at the last possible second.
That was before she went off script. He couldn’t afford any more of her improvising, so he shut the lid tight, latched on the padlock, and tossed the key into the audience with a flourish. Esta made a good show of it, frantically pounding at the glass to get out. At least, he thought with a twinge of guilt, he hoped it was only a show.
He gave the signal for the stagehands to bring out the second part of the trick—a contraption that suspended an iron weight over the glass box by a piece of rope.
“Fire. The most volatile of all the elements,” he told the audience as he set off a flare in his hand and used it to light a candle beneath the rope. “If I am not able to call upon my mastery of the Otherworld’s powers, the flame will burn through this rope and the weight will fall, crushing the casket . . . and Miss Filosik with it.”
The theater was on the edge of their seats, watching the girl struggle against the glass box, watching the candle eat away at the fragile rope. Waiting with violent glee to see whether she’d live or die.
He picked up his scarlet cape and twirled it over his head. One . . .
Over the casket where the girl writhed and slapped at the glass. Two . . .
He closed his eyes and sent up a quick prayer to the god he’d long given up on that he hadn’t overplayed his hand. Then he twirled the cape in front of him, obscuring the audience’s view for less than a second, as the candle ate through the final bit of rope.
Just as the weight fell, shattering the glass.
Three.
A MISSTEP
She took a moment to enjoy Harte’s dazed look of relief before she gave the shocked audience her most dazzling smile.
“I guess Papa was wrong,” she said, and the audience went wild.
She took her time raising one arm, like he’d taught her, to take her bow. The thrill of the crowd’s rolling applause sank into her, warming something deep within her.
In that moment, she understood Harte a little better.
He was staring at her, and for once, he was speechless. Not that she blamed him. She hadn’t exactly warned him about the costume change she’d orchestrated. She’d paid the theater’s seamstress, Cela, to create the scrap of a costume she was now wearing, because she’d been watching in the wings for days now, and all that watching had taught her something—it wasn’t only wonder and awe that sold an act. A little skin didn’t hurt either.
Evelyn and her sisters, if that was what they really were, had about as much talent as a trio of alley cats in heat, but they knew when to show a little leg and to give a little tease. And they got the audience’s attention every single night.
Harte’s face was turning an alarming shade of red as she made one last curtsy and took herself off, stage left. She was barely out of the footlights when he came charging behind her. He ripped the robe from the stagehand’s grasp and wrapped it around her.
“What the hell was that?” he asked. “And what are you wearing?”
“Do you like it?” She opened the robe to give him a better look.
In her own time, the outfit—a corseted top with off-the-shoulder sleeves and a pair of bloomers that came to midthigh—would have been laughably modest. The entire thing was made from a gorgeous midnight-blue silk and was studded with crystals that glittered in the dim light of the wings like a field of stars. Old-fashioned as it might be, she loved it. Not only was it beautifully made, but after the long skirts and layers of fabric she’d been wearing for weeks now, she felt lighter. More like herself.
Harte opened his mouth, but all that came out was a choked sound. He tied the robe back around her again.
She decided to take it as a compliment.
He was still sputtering in anger when Evelyn came up to them and wiped at Harte’s cheek with her fingertip. “You got something on your face, there.” Then she laughed at him and walked off.
He reached up, still wordless, and rubbed where she’d touched. His brows furrowed as he saw the red stain on his fingertips, and when he looked in the small mirror on the wall, he turned an even deeper shade of red.
“You kissed me?”
Esta shrugged. “I thought it would be a nice touch.”
She hadn’t planned it, but when she had pulled the seconds around her and made time go slow, it seemed too easy to simply get herself out of the box and slip the green gown off. He’d been so bossy all afternoon, she couldn’t resist playing with him a little—giving him back some of what he’d given her—so she’d left the bright red imprint of her lips on his cheek before she let go of her hold on time.
To the audience, it all happened at once—the amazing escape, her metamorphosis into the new outfit, and the mark on his cheek. For them, she’d gone from seconds-away-from-death to victory in a blink.
“You should have cleared it with me,” he said, rubbing at the red spot and making it worse as he smeared it.
“Funny. I’ve thought that every time you’ve kissed me. Besides, it worked, didn’t it?”
“It doesn’t matter if it worked,” he told her, turning to her with an expression so angry, she took a step back.
Esta pulled the robe tighter around herself and headed toward Harte’s dressing room. She didn’t bother to check if he was following her. She didn’t need to—she could practically feel him breathing down her neck.
She tossed off the robe as she walked into the room. Before she had time to turn around, he’d slammed the door, closing them into the small space alone and away from the prying eyes of the other performers. She turned, her arms crossed, and propped herself against his dressing table, refusing to be intimidated. “What is your problem? Tonight went well. Better than well. They loved it.”
“This is my act,” he said, stalking toward her. “It’s my call what happens out there. You don’t get to change it without my say-so.”
She’d known he’d be a little annoyed, maybe even upset by her not telling him, but she truly hadn’t predicted that her little addition to the act would make him so furious. Their almost-easy partnership for the last few days had made her forget her position, and she’d miscalculated, forgotten how different things were between men and women in this time. Harte might have acted more enlightened than most, but he was still a product of his time. Of course he’d take any adjustment to his act personally. She should have realized.
Not that she was going to apologize. The risk had worked, and he was going to have to deal with it. She turned her back to him so that she could use the mirror to take off her stage makeup.
His face appeared in the mirror behind her, looming over her shoulder. “I thought after this week—”
“Darrigan!” Shorty poked his head through the door before she could finish. “Good job, kid. That was a helluva trick you two did out there,” he said as he came into the room, a cigar clamped between his teeth. He gave Harte a rough thump on the back that seemed to shut him up and then handed him a slip of paper. “Message for you,” he said with another thump on the shoulder before backing out and closing the door behind him.
“What is it?” Esta tried to peer at the message while Harte used his shoulder and his height to keep its contents away from her.
“It’s from Jack,” Harte said. “He wants to have dinner with us tomorrow night.”
She tried not to gloat—really she did—but she couldn’t help smiling. “You’re welcome.”
“Don’t,” he growled, his expression hard. “This didn’t happen because of what you did out there. It happened in spite of it.” He waved the paper at her. “You could have ruined everything.”
“But . . .” Her smile faltered.
“Did you even consider that your little improvisation might not have worked? We hadn’t rehearsed it. I’ve been working for months to get Jack to believe that I am what I say I am. We had one c
hance for Jack to see you for the first time. One. Any misstep could have ruined all of that.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, suddenly struck by how impulsive she’d been. How thoughtless.
“You’re lucky I don’t call this whole thing off,” he told her. “I could tell Jack everything I know about you and the Met. I could wash my hands of Dolph Saunders and this whole mess of his.”
“No!” She stepped toward him and grabbed his arm. “Please, don’t.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” he said. “Why shouldn’t I wash my hands of the lot of you?”
Shame burned her cheeks, and she might as well have been standing in Professor Lachlan’s office, listening to him tell her the exact same thing. “Because it’s not their fault,” she said softly. “Don’t punish them for what I did.”
He studied her, and she could barely breathe while she waited for his answer. “This is the Order we’re talking about, Esta. If they find out what we are—if Jack finds out what I am—it’s not going to end well. I won’t let your carelessness take me down with you. If we’re going to do this, I have to be able to trust you to do what you say you’re going to do. Otherwise, I’m done. I’m out for good. Damn Dolph and the lot of you.”
“You don’t have to worry,” she promised. “It won’t happen again.” She forced herself to meet his eyes, hoping that he didn’t see the lie there.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” she insisted, praying he would believe her. “You can trust me.” At least until the very end.
A NEW PARTNERSHIP
The Haymarket
Ever since he’d confronted her after their performance, Harte had noticed that Esta was more subdued. Not cowed, by any means, but watchful, like she was waiting for something. But as the hack pulled up to their destination, she looked downright nervous.
“I’m not going in there,” Esta said, when she realized where the carriage had stopped. “You should have warned me. I never would have come.”