Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles

by Cooper, Karina

  A meeting?

  Whatever it was, it was not done in the same hand as the notes it was scrawled in. The latter seemed much more aggressive in slant, the lettering thick, as if a heavy hand pressed down hard on the nib.

  “Cherry, are you listening to me?”

  “Of course,” I murmured, leafing through the other four pages quickly. Nothing else looked even remotely the same.

  “I shall send word to the earl to expect you, then,” I heard, and I jerked my attention fully to my self-satisfied chaperone, and her angelic smile.

  “No,” I said flatly, and rose. “I am not dancing attendance on any man, Fanny, and that is final!” I flounced from the parlor even as she took a breath to shape a reprimand.

  Yet my emphatic departure fell short as Booth’s crooked footstep drew up just short enough that I did not plow into his broad chest in high dudgeon. He paused, snow white eyebrows beetling in uncertain regard, before offering a small envelope in one gloved hand.

  “This came by boy at the back, miss,” he intoned, all pomp and propriety.

  I snatched it from him, flashed him a wide smile, and turned toward the light streaming through the open drapes. Fanny, forgotten. Marriage, cast aside. An elegant script across the front bore my name, and the card inside was Lady Rutledge’s own; elegant, plain, and smelling faintly of roses. I opened the card stock and skimmed the note. It was simple, lacking in greeting or farewell.

  All things are remarked upon, Miss St. Croix, somewhere. You are a smart girl; the answer is likely a yes. What, then, is your question?

  Tricky. I’d deliberately left no question with the clipping Levi had delivered, so what was she telling me?

  I tapped the card against my hand, my gaze falling through the window and seeing nothing but remembered fog and a dark blot of a broken body.

  “Cherry?”

  I had many questions, certainly she could not know them all. Was Professor MacGillycuddy my challenge to solve? Was Professor Lambkin’s death related?

  What did either have to do with my father, who was also a professor?

  Nothing, I was sure. My father only posed as a professor, he was in truth a doctor.

  As I recall, he’d attended Oxford and Cambridge both, though he’d abandoned the former for the latter. Neither had much to do with King’s College. Yet the initials scribed outside my father’s secret laboratory now appeared in notes taken from University College, with a scrawl leading me on to King’s College.

  Did I imagine this?

  Why my mind insisted on creating paths between my father and the murdered professors, I didn’t know. Only that some part of me despised the mystery my own family had become.

  Even as another part of me feared what I’d learn.

  You have an unhealthy obsession with professors, Miss Black.

  Possibly the wisest observation Hawke had ever made for me.

  “Cherry!”

  I looked up, the card in my hand bent in a fist. “What? I beg your pardon?”

  Fanny’s frown promised dire consequences. “Go get your riding habit on, Cherry. You will be— For the love of the Almighty,” she said on the same breath as I rushed past her.

  “I’m going out,” I called over my shoulder.

  “No, you are not.”

  I ignored my chaperone’s threatening repudiation behind me, but could not ignore Zylphia, who waited at the foot of the stair, one hand upon a lion’s carved head.

  Her eyebrow nearly reached her hairline, but it was my winter coat she held. “I’ll attend her,” Zylphia told Fanny; all the words she could convey before I was stepping through my front door.

  “Is this more of your collector tomfoolery?” Fanny demanded behind me, but not to me.

  I left Zylphia to make excuses, vaguely aware she promised to chaperone me in Fanny’s absence, and heard my maid call for Booth.

  “No need,” I countered over my shoulder. I would take a hired gondola, instead.

  The cold slap of October air did nothing to dampen my high spirits. Even the ache I’d thought nestled in my bones seemed now only a memory as I faced the late afternoon sky.

  Gray, of course, with low-slung clouds and the promise of icy rain.

  Just the perfect day to go searching for clues. And I would start at King’s College.

  The dean of King’s College had neared an age where a once-athletic figure had turned to a certain portliness about the middle. His hair was a nutmeg shade of brown, only dashes of stark salt and pepper at his temples. His eyes were also brown, small in his otherwise distinguished face, and his graying mustache neatly trimmed and well formed. Age left lines at his eyes and mouth, and carved a faint pattern of chronic ailments across his cheeks; a red-patterned web that pointed to a life of chronic excess.

  Like much of the college grounds around us, his fashion choices tended toward stark and none-too-subtly prosperous. His brown trousers and matching jacket did not clash so much as provide relief against a waistcoat in muted green. A watch fob glinted, and I wondered briefly what kind of pocket watch the man owned.

  Perhaps a Fussey, retrieved from the corpse of a comrade in higher education?

  I could only be so lucky.

  Dark woods and primarily masculine influences dominated his offices, cornered on all sides by masterworks in marble. Each piece showed to perfection that strength and dignity of the male species.

  Without exchanging more than simple pleasantries, I understood my worth in the world of Mr. Wilford Figgins-Coop.

  Nevertheless, he gestured me to a perfectly lovely chair in the sitting room of his vast suite of offices. “I have called for refreshments.”

  “No need,” I demurred, raising a gloved hand. “I hope to avoid taking up too much of your valuable time, sir.”

  I noticed he neither invited my companion to sit, nor offered her introduction. A terrible faux pas, to be sure.

  While ignoring staff would be perfectly acceptable, Zylphia did not give the appearance of maid. Though her dress was the simple gray she always wore, she’d removed her pinafore and replaced her cap with a plain yet jaunty hat pinned to her dark hair. Her coat, like mine, was warm wool, and lined with fur.

  It was one of my own, to be sure; I did not mind its borrowing. She was no richly plumed songbird, but certainly respectable enough for propriety to demand an introduction.

  I glanced at her over my shoulder, met her gaze briefly and read the same understanding in hers.

  A slight? Or a lapse?

  It wasn’t so long ago that slavery had been abolished entirely by Her Majesty. Dean Figgins-Coop struck me as a traditionalist.

  “My companion would enjoy a cup, perhaps,” I offered, a sweet test of uncertain waters.

  Distaste crossed his features. “Your Negro may beg a cup from the kitchens, if you insist.”

  It took effort to keep my eyes from widening, and my fist from curling. I was aware of Zylphia standing still as marble behind me, yet no words came to my lips.

  I was right, then.

  Indignant was not strong enough to define the utter fury that gripped me.

  Motion behind me kept my teeth together as Zylphia sank into an elaborate curtsy. “Massah’s too kin’,” she said, her husky voice twisted into a parody of an accent I’d never heard before. “Dis guhl na’ be wand’rin’ ’way from de misseh, neva you min’ ’bout ol’ Zyl.”

  If possible, the dean’s disgust only heightened at being addressed.

  I reached back and clamped a hand around Zylphia’s wrist; a sharp warning. “I imagine you’re a very busy man, sir. I shan’t keep you.”

  The fine bones of Zylphia’s wrist moved under my fingers, and though she’d taken a breath to continue whatever farce she played at, my maid said nothing.

  She did not have to. The sting of her pride was my own.

  This was not the place to address it, however. Assured that Zylphia would mind herself, I focused intently on the dean.

  “Of course,”
he was already saying. Thoughtfully, he claimed for himself a seat across from mine. His brown tailored coat bulged somewhat with the excesses of his waistline; a fact he did not manage to hide by draping one hand over his belly in what I think he assumed was studied nonchalance. One leg crossed over his knee. “If I may be blunt, what exactly brings Mad St. Croix’s daughter to my door? You can’t possibly want to apply to my college.”

  Ah. That would certainly explain why he bothered to meet with me, given his apparent views of women in his domain. “You knew my father, then?”

  “Passingly,” he replied. His smile was securely in place, but his light brown eyes remained untouched. “We studied briefly together at Oxford. Your father lacked a certain . . .”

  I could not help myself. “Religious perseverance?”

  I would swear that it was something like pity in his gaze now as he studied me, from the jewel-bright color of my hair to the ruffled hem of my plaid dress. “Quite,” was all he said on the subject, and I did not pursue.

  Men of science, as my father had clearly been, do not take quite as well to the concept of a higher power that cannot be explained. Faith is lack of proof; but lack of proof defies scientific theory.

  The unresolved debate. I did not care for it now. “Dean Figgins-Coop, I am here regarding the murder of Professor MacGillycuddy.”

  Chapter Nine

  Had I slapped him with a soaking cat, I would not have achieved the same expression of shock and dismay. The dean straightened, both feet planted upon the ground. Very real distress colored his tone as he said sharply, “I will have you know, Miss St. Croix, that there is no evidence of murder. Whoever is espousing such rumor is a perjurer, and frankly, I find it utterly beyond the pale.”

  I tipped my head. “My apologies, sir, but as I am investigating all of my options as an intelligent woman—” There. I did not imagine it; his eyelids flinched with each repetition of the descriptor. “—you may understand why such gossip certainly unnerved me. As King’s College does not allow me to apply to its hallowed halls, I must pay close attention to the vagaries of university below.”

  “There is nothing to be concerned about,” he said, with a note of finality that suggested my interview, impromptu as it was, rapidly approached an end. “The entire ordeal is beyond distasteful, and certainly no fit conversation for a lady’s sensibilities.”

  Of course not. A lady could sew a wound shut with needle and thread, but far be it from her to handle a proper discourse on the mysterious death of a stranger.

  Zylphia shifted behind me, but she was remarkably skilled at silence and stillness. That she did so now I read as a signal; one I would be wise to take.

  I rose, then. “Well, I certainly see that the college is in apt hands,” I said briskly.

  He rose, as well; a courtesy that likely meant nothing more than propriety’s demand. “Does your chaperone know that you are out without proper escort, Miss St. Croix?”

  My temple throbbed, yet somehow I managed to sound as if my teeth were not locked together. “Miss—” What? A name. I did not know Zylphia’s surname, if ever she had been granted one. “—Communion,” I lied, pulling the name from a friend below the drift and ignoring her sharp inhale, “is as proper a companion as necessary.”

  He did not look convinced. “As you say,” he said slowly. Nevertheless, he offered me a leaflet. “You will find the requisite material here, as well as instruction for finalizing your sponsor. You will, of course need a sponsor to facilitate your application. Perhaps your guardian, should he have a mind to indulge you.”

  “Certainly.” I took the offering, passed it to Zylphia without looking at her, and took the opportunity to study my unwilling host. “I’ve a question,” I finally asked, “a curiosity, if you would be willing to indulge me?”

  He made no secret of checking the watch on his fob. Not, as I’d briefly wondered, the same that once belonged to Lambkin. “If you must.”

  “I simply need a quill.” I said, and brushed past him to his office door.

  “Now, see here—”

  “Shan’t be but a moment!” The door was unlocked, and I swept inside to seize the gilt-feathered quill standing upright upon his fastidiously neat desk. Like the sitting room, there was no sense of femininity here. Only an overwrought sense of entitlement.

  I skimmed it quickly, searching for anything out of the ordinary. I found nothing offhand. Tidy, austere yet affluent; everything except rampant with clues.

  “Miss St. Croix, I must demand you step outside of the study at once,” the dean said stiffly, hovering at the door. As if unwilling to brave the sanctity of his male room while a woman stood within it.

  I picked up a paper at random, flipped it over and said cheerily, “Won’t be but a lark.”

  I wondered if Zylphia were laughing at this. She did not follow me; likely, she’d stayed put in case we needed to make a hurried exit. As I recalled, only the dean’s assistant hovered within shouting distance.

  “You certainly cannot go about behaving this way,” the dean said to my back, bluster without barb. Until he added grimly, “Certainly, the Ladies of Admirable Mores and Behavior have the right of it.”

  My hand jerked.

  So he read the Society columns, did he?

  Deliberately smoothing my features, I scrawled my memorized Ey, included the DG and underlined ppt, and left the quill dripping upon his desk. I returned to the sitting room and thrust the drawing at him. “Do you know what this is, sir?”

  Barely concealed rancor completely stripped any thought of distinguished handsomeness from him as he took the paper from me and scowled at it. His lip curled, cheeks redder. “Gibberish, Miss St. Croix. Exactly the sort of foolishness I expect from a weak mind.” He tossed it to the floor.

  Well, those gloves had come off, hadn’t they? I forced my lips into a smile, as saccharine as I could make it. “Thank you ever so much for indulging me, Dean. I shall waste no time in applying to your college.”

  “Not my college,” he replied, stalking to the door in a pace slightly too hasty for respectful company. “King’s College will never allow senseless women within its hallowed lecture halls. If you are quite lucky, you may be allowed below. Good day, Miss St. Croix.”

  And good riddance.

  With little other warning, the door to the dean’s offices almost slammed behind me. Only to open a moment later to allow my maid her rigid-faced retreat.

  Only once the door had once more closed, this time much quieter, did she raise a hand to her mouth and muffle her laughter. “You should have seen his face when he turned again,” she whispered.

  “Hush,” I hissed, but not without my own amusement. I could just imagine the indignity of it all. Poor Dean Figgins-Coop. Assaulted on all sides by vapid women with no thinking senses.

  “Come, we should depart.”

  “What did you learn?” she asked me, and I shook my head in silent reply. The assistant, a thin youth perhaps a few years my junior, passed us, his gaze wary, his nod respectful.

  Perhaps in deference to the fact that his master had actually deigned to see us. Well, me.

  Once out of the wide, airy halls of the main building, I took a deep breath. “Zylla, I’m so sorry about—”

  “Nonsense.” She did not wait for me to finish the thought, or to articulate the anger I still felt at the cut. “Men like him aren’t so different from them what come below. I’d wager I could name a sweet or two who knows what he’s been up to.”

  I smiled crookedly. “All right, then.” A beat. “What in God’s name was that language coming from your lips?”

  “Just something picked up along the way,” she said with a returned smile. “Now, stay here and out of the wind, I’ll get a gondola home.”

  We had stopped at the end of the college’s walkway, and as she moved off along the road, I turned back to study the grounds.

  London was cut by a series of canals, it was true, and many of the districts were connecte
d by ornate walking bridges. King’s College retained its own spit of stilted foundation, adjoined by open acres of carefully maintained grounds. I huddled into my coat, my breath fogging in the cold air, and wondered what it must be like to undock from a gondola near every day, disembark into this district unto itself, and take the jaunt into a wide, vast world of education.

  What days of thinking and postulation. Of practice and theory. The lectures alone might have been worth the dean’s contempt.

  Gibberish. I wonder if it meant that he’d recognized the symbols. Or if he did not, and hid that ignorance beneath scorn.

  I turned away, strolled to the edge of the walkway and gripped the scrollwork railing in both hands. The fog churned at my feet, as if some great disorder caused waves somewhere in the black. Beneath, London below was likely preparing for supper.

  Up here, where the sky was just easing to a darker shade and much of Society had only just finished tea, dinner would be only a blink away.

  A footstep crunched behind me, as if caught on a bit of grit, a sound I knew better from my hours below than above. I let go of the railing; a mistake. As a hand closed around my arm, I knew all it would take was a solid push to send me tumbling into the black, my scream forgotten on a bloody smear.

  I jumped in surprise, spun, and the hand let go. “Forgive me, miss!” I heard, my vision jerking from the surge of blood to my heart and limbs.

  It took me a second’s breath to recognize the young assistant. “You startled me,” I gasped.

  The man, a youth with ginger hair and freckled disposition, pressed his hands together, bowing as if to beg his pardon. “Please, I’m sorry, I was only trying to catch you before you departed.”

  I let out a solid breath, hand to my still-thudding heart. “What is it, then?”

  “Your note, miss.”

  I studied his earnest features in confusion. “My note?” In answer, he handed a folded white square to me, and I recognized the copy I’d shown the dean. “Oh. Thank you.”