Fanny’s lips moved, but I was quicker than she. I had to be. That’s what I did, after all. “Teddy!” I said brightly. Then, glancing sidelong at my recovering chaperone, I added, “That is, my Lord Helmsley.”
“I prefer Teddy, thank you.” His rejoinder was quick, but not entirely distracted.
Fanny harrumphed softly as she rose to her feet. “I shall see that tea is arranged,” she announced. She sailed past us both with her nose firmly in the air; the very model of a proper Englishwoman.
Too proper, really. I’d have to work on her, I thought.
Teddy’s hands clasped my shoulders, and I half turned in surprise, eyes wide. “Are you all right?” he demanded.
“Yes?” I looked down at myself, at my perfectly boring gray dress, and back up to meet his gaze. “Do I appear not to be?”
He let me go with a sigh, crossing the parlor in three long strides to throw himself into his favorite overlarge armchair. “They said you’d been ill,” he half accused. “You still look worn. I was rather afraid that I’d arrive to find you’d passed of some mysterious plague.”
This made me grin, morbid as it was. “You should only be so lucky.” I once more found comfort on the settee, arranging my skirts neatly. “I’m well. I came down with some touch of the ague, but I’m quite recovered, as you see.”
Lying came ever so easily. A pang of guilt clanged once more in my chest.
I ignored it.
I couldn’t afford to give in now. There was a murderer to be caught, after all. And a cameo to locate. Above all, I was a collector. I’d given my word.
Fanny returned, her eyebrows arched high and a colorful bundle in her hands. I blinked. “Flowers?”
“Your pardon, my lord,” Fanny said, ignoring me for the moment’s courtesy.
Teddy rose to his feet. “Not at all, Fanny, there’s no need to stand on courtesy with me.”
“Charmer,” I muttered, pitched so he could hear.
He flashed me a grin.
Fanny handed me the bouquet. “This was left at the stoop for you.”
“Me?” My gaze flew to Teddy, who shrugged.
“I saw no such thing when I arrived,” he replied. His eyebrows furrowed. “Red roses, eh? Perhaps it’s from that ruddy earl.”
Fanny had the grace to ignore this.
I did not. “He’s not a ruddy anything,” I replied in exasperation. “Teddy, really.”
“Maybe it’s a farewell gift.”
This gave me pause. “Farewell?” I was acutely aware of Fanny’s suddenly sharp stare. “What farewell?”
Teddy leaned back, ankles crossed fashionably. “He didn’t inform you? He and his younger wastrel of a brother have left Town.” His eyes glinted. “Rather suddenly. All the tongues are wagging, at least out of the marchioness’s hearing.”
Compton had left London without so much as a by-your-leave, then? I couldn’t even begin to speculate on this. Such a leave-taking was bound to provoke gossip. And though a small, bruised part of my heart ached at the realization that I did not warrant a proper farewell, or even a polite explanation, I quashed my hurt with a careless gesture of the nosegay. “Regardless, why on earth would he send me roses?”
“You were quite the model of beauty at Lady Rutledge’s ball, you know. Perhaps he’s simply admitting his deep and abiding pas—”
I coughed.
Teddy snapped his mouth shut before he said something entirely too scandalous for Fanny’s ears.
Fanny chuckled as she once more took her seat; a sound that eased some of the anxiety wrapped inside me. It wasn’t as it once was, and I didn’t know that our relationship ever could be, but it was a start. “Cherry hasn’t received many flowers in her time,” Fanny said lightly. “My lord, you may need to translate.”
“Surely you’ve received many a nosegay, madam,” he replied with a wicked grin. “Your translation skills may be equally as important.”
“Not for many years, now.” Fanny’s knitting needles clicked quietly. “And as all things must, the terms have changed with time. Although red roses,” she added with a pointed look at me, “still indicate a deep love, unless I am grossly misinformed. Are you sure it’s not from your earl?”
I eyed the bundle. “It seems . . .” Not his style? I shook my head. “What are these white flowers?”
Fanny frowned. After a moment, she retrieved a pair of spectacles from a chain about her neck and placed them firmly on her nose. “Aside from the roses, it looks like . . .” Her eyebrows knitted. “Foxglove? And white verbena.”
“The pink is sweetbriar,” Teddy pointed out. “Ah, I do love a mystery.”
“I didn’t expect you to know flowers,” I teased my friend.
He didn’t look even a smidge repentant. “I shall teach you one day. There’s much to be said with flowers.”
“Of flowers,” I corrected.
“No, dear,” Fanny said, smiling. “With. In my time, foxglove meant the sender had ambitions only for the recipient. A declaration of intent, if you will.”
Teddy craned his neck to study the bouquet. “Is there a card?”
I carefully separated the boldly crimson roses from the morass of smaller white and pink blooms. It was a lovely nosegay, admittedly.
And lush enough to mask a small, folded piece of card stock beneath the flower heads. I fished it out with only minimal loss of petals. “Found one,” I crowed triumphantly.
“Ah! Of course. Sweetbriar is a flower of sympathy,” Fanny said, then glanced at me over the top of her spectacles. “Why would someone declare love, ambition and sympathy all in one go?”
I opened the card, squinted at the slanted handwriting. The ink was tobacco brown, decently dark, but the lettering too cramped for easy deciphering.
“I’m afraid,” Teddy said slowly, “that foxglove is an entirely different message from what you recall, madam.”
“Oh?”
My dear, I read slowly. Know that you are in my thoughts, and that we look forward to your prompt perception in this matter.
A dull ache began to throb behind my forehead.
“It carries an accusation of insincerity,” Teddy was saying. He leaned closer, peering at the bouquet I still held loosely in one hand. “But what are these?”
A knock resounded from the back of the house.
Fanny once more crossed the small parlor, her mouth pinched in deep thought. She bent to study the tiny white flowers Teddy captured between two fingers. The five-petaled blooms were mostly white, with a hint of darker pink at the center and dusting the stems. Three petals curved down, and two up.
This once, I read, my lips moving, I shall skim the bounds of propriety and direct you to Whitechapel Station. Tick tock, Miss St. Croix.
“Geraniums,” Fanny said after a moment’s thought. “Nutmeg geraniums, unless I miss my guess.” She hesitated. “I don’t recall this one.”
The trains stop for no woman. Yours faithfully.
There was no name. My fingers tightened on the card, bending the edges.
“Cherry?”
I looked up.
“The geraniums,” Teddy said, frowning. “They indicate an expectation of meeting. Have you made plans with some upstart?”
There didn’t have to be a name. There was no one else it could be. The madman must have followed me to the Menagerie. Someone must have let slip about my hair, perhaps followed me and Zylphia home.
I didn’t know how it got out, but it seemed my secrets were destined for revelation.
The bastard had all but demanded I accost him.
I rose. Teddy stood abruptly, alarm written clear as day over his sharp features. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Cherry?” Fanny asked, her own voice reflecting the worry I couldn’t do anything to salve.
Teddy caught my arm. “Cherry, what is going on? You’ve been acting awfully—”
Footsteps scurried down the hall. We all looked over as Zylphia caught herself on the door l
edge, her cheeks flushed. She didn’t bother with formality of any sort. “Come quick!” she demanded.
I picked up my skirts, card and flowers crushed to the fabric, and pursued Zylphia to the kitchen. The man who waited there did so uncomfortably, his cap in his hands and his plain, undecorated coat still on. He was a tall man, given to breadth and uniquely suited to his employ as a blacksmith’s journeyman. Soot stained his hands, had settled into his pores from a lifetime of work, but he loved his wife.
“John,” I greeted, as worry clawed at me. “Is something the matter?”
He bowed awkwardly, that somewhat clumsy bob of one not quite sure of the correct mode to address a lady of any standing. I had met Betsy’s husband only once, and I had no call to be calling him by his Christian name, but damn propriety.
“I’m sorry t’be botherin’ ye fine folks,” he stammered uneasily, his thick Scottish brogue strained.
I waved that away.
His eyes widened, and I realized I’d swiped a mass of flowers in his direction. I tossed them to the table. Petals scattered. “What’s wrong, Mr. Phillips?” I pressed. “Is Betsy all right?”
And then I saw it. The flicker; a wince. “I was hopin’ t’be askin’ ye th’ same, miss.” John clutched his cap tighter, all but folded in his work-chapped hands. “She didna come home last night, like she does. I thought maybe ye’d kept her over . . .” His voice trailed away as his gaze flicked to three sets of suddenly worried faces.
Teddy looked confused.
“She’s na here?” John asked.
A wealth of pain, of heart-stopping fear rested in that single question.
“She left for home last night,” Zylphia said softly.
John’s shoulders sagged. “God help me.”
My hands shaking, I smoothed out the card. The brown ink blurred. We look forward to your prompt perception . . .
My gaze fell on the nosegay. The roses gleamed like blood against the white flowers. Sympathy. Blood on the snow. There was no snow in London, but there were places where the fog was so thick, it was akin to walking through a blizzard.
The trains stop for no woman.
Whitechapel lay in the very heart of such a place.
Dear God in heaven. “I have to go,” I said suddenly.
“Wait just a bloody minute,” Teddy said, but I shook off his hand and sprinted for the door.
“I’m sorry,” I called over my shoulder. “But I must ask you to leave, Teddy. I shall explain everything later!” Lie, more like.
“Cherry, wait!”
I didn’t. I didn’t dare. I had no time to waste changing, none to waste explaining. The warning was clear. It wasn’t sympathies for my debt to the Karakash Veil the rotting bastard was actually sending. It was sympathies for the death of my friend.
He had Betsy.
And it was her blood that I’d mistaken for tobacco ink.
Chapter Sixteen
Zylphia caught up with me halfway to the West India docks. She had enough presence of mind to bring a cloak, which she handed to me wordlessly. The hood draped over my hair, hid enough of my features that I could travel unmolested in London below.
“Go back,” I told her, pulling the cloak closely around me. I didn’t dare stop to converse.
“Not likely,” she replied, and I realized she kept one hand curved around a long shaft hidden beneath her own cloak. “The gent left, and Betsy’s man went home to wait for her, in case she returns.” Her jaw set. “She won’t, though, will she?”
“She bloody will,” I said grimly. “Zylla, go home. This one’s only after me.”
“You don’t even know who it is,” my friend said as she easily matched her longer legs to my brisk pace. “I saw that note you left. He doesn’t leave a name.”
“It’s that man who drugged me.”
“Or it’s the sweet tooth,” she pointed out. “Or it’s another bloke you’ve gone and collected in the past. Or it’s a group of them, cherie. You want to go down there alone?”
“Yes!”
“Well, you can’t.” She turned slightly to show the satchel over her shoulder, the like of which Fanny would take to markets. “I brought you trousers to change into, and Mr. Booth sent me with a little something extra.” She hefted the hidden shaft, distinctly rifle-shaped.
I shook my head. “No time to change.”
“There will be time on the ferry,” Zylpha said, her caramel features as intent as I imagined mine were.
My lips flattened, but I said nothing.
Although it would have been faster to take the most direct route and hire my own gondolier, I instead took the route through the West India docks. Captain Abercott was already accustomed to my comings and goings, and for the right incentive, he didn’t bother with any schedule.
Once the ferry was moving, Zylphia pushed me into the captain’s tiny hold. It smelled of old seawater and beer. I shed my voluminous skirts quickly, stepped into a pair of my own trousers and—God bless her—my collecting corset. My kid boots looked too fancy for the rest, but there was nothing to be done about it now. They’d be ruined in the damp below. I just didn’t care.
I adjusted my hood and stepped out of the cramped little room.
“Better,” Zylphia murmured as I sat beside her.
Abercott’s slitted eyes glared daggers into my back. “What did you tell him?” I asked, frowning.
“He wanted twice the fee,” Zylphia said, her gaze steady over the railing as the fog slipped up to caress the deck. It was like sinking into a stew pot, but without the heat. Thick and viscous.
“And?”
“And I told him I’d curse his bollocks blue if he so much as thought of it.”
I wanted to laugh, but there was something so serious, so steely, in the sweet’s expression that I snapped my mouth closed around it.
She glanced at me. Then away.
That was the first time that something about Zylphia made me nervous.
The captain set us down. “Thank you,” I told him.
“Hmph.”
Once on the street beyond the dock, we worked quickly to secure one of the hackneys still in service below the drift. Though the ride was jarring, it was as fast as I could possibly like.
Every minute was like a knife inching closer to my throat.
My friend’s throat.
I sprang out of the hackney the instant it slowed. Zylphia swore a vulgarity, but I couldn’t dwell on it now. My mysterious opponent wanted a meeting, he’d get his meeting.
The hackney driver cursed behind me as I spooked his horse, but Zylphia had already paid him. My sanity—or lack thereof—was not his concern.
The cloak around my shoulders seemed to get heavier with every step I took, leaching the damp from the air. The lantern hanging from the retreating hackney quickly faded to nothing behind me, leaving me standing in a miasma nearly too thick to breathe, much less see through. I hadn’t brought my fog-prevention goggles, and I cursed myself for my lack of foresight. Zylla didn’t know where I kept them, or else I hadn’t given her enough time to look.
No goggles, no respirator. I was as blind as a babe in the dark. What the devil had I intended?
“Where are we headed?” Zylphia asked behind me.
“This is a large rail yard,” I mused, squinting through my tearing vision.
“Split, then?” she asked, already sounding as if she were prepared to argue.
I glanced at her. “Split,” I agreed. “I’ve got my knives. Keep the rifle.” The Springfield officer’s rifle she carried glinted dully in the fading light as she raised it in acknowledgment.
“I’ll take the right, then,” Zylphia said, and her pale eyes narrowed as they flicked to the fog behind me. “Be careful, cherie. Whitechapel’s already been host to a murderous sort.”
Leather Apron. Maybe the same killer we were after. Maybe not. I nodded once, and set off into the fog, only now and again picking out details as the coal-laden stench roiled and shifted
. Here the corner of a building. There a pocked and pitted sign proclaiming the site as Whitechapel Station.
My toes rammed into the raised metal bars of a railway, and I stumbled.
Whitechapel Station, although not one of my usual haunts, was not wholly unfamiliar to me. I’d been here before on occasion. Usually on the trail of a quarry. Once or twice via the railway lines.
Fortunately, the yard was quiet. I’d spent so much time in my rooms that dark had to be less than an hour away, which meant there was precious little light to spare already. I squinted against the fog, yellow black and shifting so quickly, it was like walking through a filthy blizzard.
The station took up a wide parcel of land, and nothing had been raised above it. It connected many rails to various posts throughout London below. Most of the passengers never set foot into the rail yard, and the trains didn’t run as often by night. One or two per the hour.
Which meant, for all intents and purposes, I would be alone with my opponent.
I picked my way along the rails, pushing my hood off to better see around me. Everything hung still and heavy; there was no whisper of voices, no movement. Now and again, I stepped over a rail that vibrated subtly, as if a train moved over it somewhere down the line. The distant echo of a whistle came back to me, but nothing close enough to matter.
Somewhere else, near enough that I suspected it came from a mechanism for the rail yard, steam hissed. After it spat, I heard a dull clank of metal shifting.
It was all so surreal. A fog-shrouded dreamscape comprising acres of iron-strewn land, and I was alone inside it. Seeking, straining to hear, trapped.
Bugger that for a joke.
“Betsy!” I called. The fog sucked at my voice, all but ripping it from my lungs. “Betsy, where are you?”
A wall loomed suddenly out of the mist, and I reared back. My heel came down on broken rubble, loud as grating rock could be, and I swore under my breath. This was ridiculous.
“Betsy!” I shouted, striding past the building’s grimy façade. An alley mouth yawned open beside me, filled to the brim with the same black miasma. “Elizabeth?”
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