Tarnished

by Cooper, Karina

  And to think I thought the Earl of Compton handsome when he danced with me. How he must have laughed to know he charmed me before delivering the knife.

  “Of course,” I said coolly, and stepped once more into the crush to retrieve my things.

  I’d be damned if I let the bloody-faced cow beat me now.

  Chapter Four

  The Midnight Menagerie kept extremely late hours. Fortunately, it was just before midnight when I returned home to change, and not too long later when I arrived below. As I crossed through the open gate, I searched the spot where I’d left Cummings tied and saw no trace of either his or my passing.

  Someone had found him, and the odds were good that it was one of the Menagerie’s people.

  I huddled into my overcoat and breathed out a fog that contrasted with the haze around me. It was cold below the drift, lacking entirely the clarity that made stepping out worth the chill in London proper.

  Fanny thought I was asleep in bed, nursing my hurt and temper. I’d told her I was worn, and retired promptly upon arriving home. Betsy had gone home to her husband, so there was no one to know when I changed into my collector’s uniform and slipped away.

  This time, I included a coat. I didn’t expect to collect anything tonight, and I wanted to be warm.

  The air around the Menagerie was clearer, noticeably different as I stepped across the boundary from street to garden territory. I still wasn’t sure how they managed it, but something kept the worst of the lung-catching fog from infecting the grounds.

  I shoved my goggles up onto my head, eager to be rid of the pressure around my eyes, and surveyed the estate.

  A great deal of money had been put into the pleasure gardens. One part circus, one part park, one bit fair ground and all elaborate, it could provide whatever pleasure a man or woman with coin felt inclined to pursue on any given evening.

  Exotic animals and strange foreign creatures from around the world? They could be seen. Midnight sweets, ripe for the taking and skilled in the art of lovemaking? Available for a price. Masquerades, drinking wells, elaborate dance halls where the corners were dark and the inhibitions few, all of this and more fell under the domain of the Karakash Veil.

  Delicate paths crossed through elaborate fountains and sheltered groves. In the near distance, a large tent played home to the Menagerie’s circus. Lit, tonight, which meant I’d stay away from it.

  As usual.

  I wasn’t comfortable in circus tents. Even looking at it summoned to mind the din of chattering crowds, the cacophony of the music as it played out for every performer; the sticky sweat of fear and the dizzying rush of motion, of tensile strength and supple flexibility.

  I remembered the tricks that had kept me useful. And well away from the bidding rings. I used them still, but never for applause.

  Laughter, screaming and shouts echoed across the grounds, rising and falling so suddenly, I startled. My eyes focused again on the paper lanterns strung across the paths before me. Red and gold, blue and orange and white.

  I knelt in the circle of light from a blue paper lantern, picking up a discarded leaflet in one gloved hand. I squinted in the pale light, studying the print. Tonight’s feature included sideshow freaks from the most exotic locations, aerial ballerinas and—I raised an eyebrow at the dark print.

  His Highness Ikenna Osoba, the bold ink declared. Lion prince and far removed from the savage wilds of Africa.

  A lion tamer, then. Dangerous work, even for the extremely confident. I’d only ever seen one, and this outside Monsieur Marceaux’s rings. For his part, my employer had forbidden the act. Too dangerous. Too much could go wrong.

  Underneath the gaudy announcement, the usual fare of sideshow attractions: bearded ladies, acrobatic midgets, the tallest man in the world and his Thumbelina wife. A tragic love story, I was sure.

  I crumpled the paper in one fist and dropped it. No amount of nostalgia would coax me to enter the circus. Besides the usual whisper of anxiety skimming across my already stretched nerves, I knew my quarry wouldn’t be there at the moment.

  The ringmaster’s role ended when the headline act took the stage. Micajah Hawke would be there again eventually, but I didn’t want to wait.

  And if I knew Hawke, he’d gone somewhere quieter in the interim.

  I aimed for the private gardens, where I didn’t often go. For good reason. Where the rest of the Menagerie could be attained for some coin and eager company, the gardens were reserved for the truly decadent. There wasn’t even a pretense of propriety here, though there was plenty of privacy to be had. And, as I recalled, they were the favorite haunt for many of London’s gentlemen from above the drift.

  Certainly the feeding grounds for more than one mistress.

  Later, I would think back on this moment and consider that I was riding the crest of my anger too well. That I was feeling incautious and daring. For the moment, I only knew that I was tired of waiting. That I wanted my bounty, I wanted to replenish my depleted store of opium, and that I really, truly wanted to expend some of this restless, gnawing energy.

  I approached the gate. Two men waited on either side: Menagerie footmen. Thugs, of course, and well paid. I’d never had to tangle with them.

  Now, they both stiffened as they saw me.

  I frowned as they stepped directly in front of the gilded gate. “Sorry, miss,” one said, his Bow Bell accent lacking the education that softened Betsy’s. “Ye can’t go in.”

  “The devil I can’t,” I replied flatly.

  Both men, taller than me but not too broad, exchanged glances. “Orders,” said the other one, as if this would explain it.

  “From?”

  “Hawke.”

  My eyes narrowed. If the Menagerie was London’s Garden of Eden, then Micajah Hawke was its serpent. A wickedly dark man whose power lay in his persona. Hawke was ringmaster and director; foreman and tempter. He answered only to the Veil, which gave him free reign in the Menagerie he directed.

  The man was sensual as sin. And just as dangerous.

  I set my jaw. “He gave the order, did he?”

  One nodded, his workman’s cap set low over his beetled brow. “Aye, miss.”

  I sighed. “Well.” Bully that for a joke. “I suppose there’s nothing for it.”

  I half turned. Both men relaxed as I did, and one turned to retake his position by the gate post.

  I spun, all the way around, quick as a snake. Before either could do more than draw themselves up, I seized the capped one’s arm, jammed the heel of my hand into his elbow and heard it pop.

  He was suddenly little more than a puppet as he bent over to save his shoulder, which gave me the leverage I needed to slam my foot back into the first guard’s chest and send him clattering into the gate. I twisted the arm in my grip high. Height didn’t matter when one had a man’s elbow bent awry.

  The man fell to his knees, strangling on a scream of pain.

  “Stand—” The first guard didn’t wait for me to finish my warning. He pushed off the gate, teeth bared and scarred fists raised.

  I wrenched the capped man’s arm up higher between his shoulder blades. His fingers nearly touched the nape of his neck, and he screamed, rough and guttural, his other hand flailing wildly as he danced in place.

  The approaching man hesitated.

  I met his eyes over the man’s bent back. “I will,” I said calmly, only breathing a little hard, “break his arm.” I didn’t know if I could, but he didn’t have to know that. “Go get Hawke.”

  The guard met my eyes. Our wills clashed, but I was riding the surge of energy and a powerful triumph. Bracing my other hand on my captive’s shoulder, I flexed my elbow. The guard locked his teeth and growled, “Do it!”

  No contest. The first guard stepped back through the gate, turned and vanished into the dark.

  I kept ahold of my man’s wrist, just in case his friend tried something stupid. Like bringing more guards. Which, I knew, would be the end of me, but the bastar
d behind that fence had my bounty. It was mine. I earned it.

  I needed it.

  In short order, footsteps crunched on the imported polished stones lining the walkway beyond the gate. The guard in my grip had gone white around the edges, but he said nothing, breathing shallowly and silently. As if I would forget I held his working limb in my hands.

  The gate swung open, and I looked up to meet the strangest eyes I had ever known. In any life I remembered.

  Micajah Hawke wore the fashion of the day as if it were designed exclusively for him. His broad shoulders and exquisitely tapered chest set off a black tailcoat to utter perfection, and the scandalously crimson waistcoat only drew my eyes to his narrow waist. His trousers were black and pressed, his shoes without so much as a scuff. He wore no hat, carried no cane and wore red gloves, not white, and a red formal tie.

  But it wasn’t his choice in color that set him apart from the men above the drift.

  The man was a fallen angel in disguise. As he stepped into the light, my stomach clenched as it always did, and my throat dried. His skin was swarthy, not fair, as if he carried Gypsy blood in his veins, and his shoulder-length hair ate up the light in a straight black gleam. Beautiful. The word popped into my head, a mere breath before I remembered that he was as dangerous as he was mouthwateringly devastating.

  That was his skill. His strength. A ringmaster controlled the crowd and the performers, all with inhuman ease. All of my senses had to be on guard when he was near.

  I raised my chin as his unusual dark brown eyes raked over the scene. The blue streak running through the center of his left eye gleamed almost as if the heart of a flame had burned a swath through it, and his full mouth pressed tightly together in annoyance.

  “Let him go, Miss Black.”

  The man whose arm I held grunted as I released him. He scrambled out of my reach, rubbing his elbow with retribution in his scowl, but my gaze leveled on Hawke.

  That smoke-and-velvet voice of his wouldn’t lull me into any sense of complacency. Even if he was the only one to call me that. For my hair, I think, though he’d never said. “They wouldn’t let me in,” I told him.

  “Under my orders.” He towered above me, bracing one hand on his hip, the very picture of barely tamed nobility.

  The knot in my stomach warmed. “Why?”

  He raised one imperious black eyebrow. “Must you cause a scene wherever you go?” he asked, his tone just a shade away from reproach. As if I were an unruly child in need of discipline.

  It took effort to keep my jaw from falling open. What did that mean? Had the gossip already spread—I caught myself as I watched the glint in his mismatched eyes. Hawke was toying with me. As he always did.

  There was no way he could know about the marchioness’s ball, and certainly no way that he knew my identity above the drift. To him, I was simply Miss Black. Just a collector.

  I thrust out my jaw. “You owe me.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  A joke, that was. I couldn’t imagine Hawke begging for anything. And he knew it. “Cummings,” I elaborated. “You owe me his bounty.”

  The other eyebrow joined the first. “There was no delivery made,” he replied, equally as even. “Therefore, there is nothing owed. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  “Hang on a minute!” I took a step toward him as he made to turn away, which proved to be my mistake as Hawke stopped precisely where he was. I was suddenly much closer to him than I meant to be, my head tipped up to glare into his eyes, my balance shaky.

  I sucked in a breath as one large hand curved over my shoulder. Steadying me.

  I smelled something musky. Foreign and spicy.

  My stomach pitched again, and I felt warmer than I should have in the dark and cold. My heartbeat throbbed almost painfully loud in my chest.

  His lips curved faintly. “Yes, Miss Black? Do you have a problem with the terms of the contract? I thought it rather standard. You deliver the man, and we pay you for his delivery.”

  “I’m well aware of the terms,” I snapped waspishly, seizing for some semblance of internal equilibrium.

  His hand fell away. “Then I fail to see—”

  “Did he escape?” His eyes narrowed. “I left him tied to your front gate,” I pressed on, flinging a hand back the way I came. “With my handkerchief in his pocket. You couldn’t have missed it.”

  Hawke stared at me for a long moment. A breeze wafted across the grounds, bringing relief to my too-warm cheeks and stirring the tails of his coat. His hair was pushed back from his forehead tonight, held in place by a gleaming pomade. Under the lantern flame, his square jaw and high, noble cheekbones threw shadows that painted him in demonic light.

  I swallowed as the silence stretched between us, thick with something I didn’t recognize.

  Finally, he stirred. “There was no man at the gate,” he said with barely civil finality, “and no handkerchief.”

  He turned, and I stared at his back as he walked away. In front of me, one of the men sniggered.

  I bared my teeth at him. His grin faded.

  The shadows swallowed Hawke with ease, and I was left staring at both guards, each rubbing whatever part of their anatomy I had assaulted.

  I didn’t care. I rubbed my arms as I recalled the heavy weight of Hawke’s gaze on mine. What had he been thinking as he stared at me?

  What game was Micajah Hawke playing? Had Cummings gotten away? Had some helpful soul freed him?

  Impossible. There were times when it seemed Hawke knew everything that happened on the grounds. There was no way he could have lost Cummings this morning. The man was lying to me.

  The footmen watched me warily.

  Flipping them a tight little smile, I turned and walked away.

  I wasn’t going to wander through the gate. Those men weren’t entirely stupid. They’d dispatch a message to Hawke quick as a lick, and I’d find myself on the defensive instead. As soon as I could, I slipped off the path and into the shadows beyond the lanterns.

  I knew of a half a dozen ways to get into the Menagerie, but I usually used the gates to maintain a certain element of propriety. The same could be said of the private gardens. The hedge walls were usually deterrent for average customers, but I was neither average nor a customer.

  My feet rasped on the cobbles that comprised much of the Menagerie’s walking ground. Although the area was less foggy than it should be, it was difficult to get plants to grow where the sunlight only weakly reached. That the Menagerie retained an entire army of groundskeepers was something, like the fogless air, I’d never managed to explain.

  The place was a carefully guarded mystery, top to bottom.

  I held my breath as I crouched by the bristled hedge wall. This was typical London fare, sturdy greenery that didn’t require much more sunlight than what generally made it through the English winters, anyway. Most of London below didn’t get foliage of any kind.

  Shrugging out of my coat, I folded it neatly and shoved it out of sight beneath the hedgerow. The twigs poked into my back as I leaned into it, carefully counting footsteps as they passed just beyond hearing.

  I counted silently again, and when no other footsteps reached my straining ears, I eased into the foliage. This was one of many reasons I knotted my hair so firmly in place. I could only imagine what would have happened to my ballroom finery had I attempted this earlier.

  The prickly hedge branches poked and prodded, and I had no choice but to move as slowly as possible. There was absolutely no way to do this silently. I was lucky that I could work my way through the foliage at all; a small bonus to being at least somewhat diminutive in stature.

  As soon as my hand speared through the other side, I waited. A twig jabbed into my cheek, and I knew I’d have sap clinging to my hands, but it was a small price to pay. Catching Hawke off guard would be worth every moment.

  Disentangling myself from the hedge took effort, as it attempted to cling to every hair, every fold of my shirt, even m
y trousers. I made more noise than I would have liked, even snapping a few determined branches, but there was no hue and cry around me.

  I doubt, honestly, that anyone thought anything of it. The private gardens had heard much stranger noises than rustling.

  The internal garden was a large courtyard, too big to see with a single lamp. Much like the greater Menagerie grounds, it was carefully maintained, and the hedges here were deliberately set in ways that provided the maximum amount of privacy with an occasional chance of discovery. Whispers and laughter drifted over the dark, cut by the murmuring trill of water fountains. Fires flickered here and there, carefully tended grates with the occasional silhouette beside them.

  Or several silhouettes, I noticed through a sudden wash of embarrassment. The laughter I heard had a dulcet edge, husky and teasing, and I knew what was happening in the darkness around me.

  Decadence. Debauchery.

  A hauntingly sweet violin reached my ears as I hastened along the path, silvery and beckoning. Masterful hands stroked those strings, as sure as a lover.

  The thought slipped into my head and I stumbled, caught myself hurriedly and swallowed down the awareness rising like a physical warmth in my chest.

  The bloody gardens made me nervous. In wholly different ways than the circus tent, to be sure.

  I resolved not to care. But my fists were clenched as I hurried through the vast courtyard. A helpful, wide-eyed young man in dockworker’s garb directed me to the far buildings while a woman grinned indulgently on his arm—mostly clothed, thank God. But not for long, given the way her fingers laced possessively around his arm. And his purse, likely.

  As I rushed through, I searched the boundary for more footmen. There was nothing. Hawke was all too easily lulled, I thought, and found myself vaguely disappointed by this fact.

  Floating on wild energy and high fury, I pushed open the door.

  And found myself in China.

  It was as if someone had bottled up the mystical Orient and painted the interior with it. The walls were dark wood, adorned by silk screens and exotic weaponry. To my right, a fountain bubbled from mysterious sources. The water trickled happily among the unusually lush lilies floating serenely on the surface.