Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles

by Cooper, Karina

  I winced. “You won’t find that here.”

  “You lie,” he assured me, “if I may be so bold as to accuse a lady of such.”

  “Why, sir,” I replied lightly, for all his words caused an unhealthy knot in my chest, “you dare accuse me of falsehoods? Shall I fetch my second?”

  He said nothing for a moment, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. Again. Then, quietly, he said, “Miss St. Croix, if ever there was a woman to duel a man, I would wager on you.”

  And with that, the knot in my chest turned into a weight. And from the weight sprang a sudden inability to speak—guilt, uncertainty, and, yes, even curiosity—as the earl matched my shorter stride in a way that suggested he did so deliberately.

  Propriety colored his every move; so why, then, did he defy it by undoing the cut direct of his mother? Why did he continue to hound me?

  It would not stand.

  I shook my head, at last. “You should not say such things,” I whispered. “Mrs. Douglas assures me that all conversation between a lady and a gentleman should be distant.” We passed molding after molding, each panel in the music room framed by the ornate stuff and glittering faintly gold.

  More draperies filled the walls—it kept the sound of the room ideal for music, I knew—and the occasional statue on a pedestal broke the isolated lines. Greek in nature, various Muses. It surprised me.

  “Perhaps.” Compton raised his eyebrows, a shade darker than his hair. “And what of the weather, Miss St. Croix?” he continued. “Rather chilly for an October.”

  The clever man. He’d timed this just so; such an innocuous conversation as we once more passed the guests.

  Or was it coincidence? A natural progression of my chastisement.

  “Certainly, although I understand it’s not as wet as some years past.” I glimpsed Lord Trefawney’s unadulterated amusement as he bent to say something I couldn’t hear to his fiancée.

  The marchioness did not look nearly so pleased.

  “You don’t truly wish to speak of the weather,” the earl continued as we passed the group entirely.

  I looked up at him in surprise. “No?”

  “No. You wish to discuss other things, such as aether engines and”—a flicker of distaste crossed his features—“the correlation of electricity and the human body.”

  My surprise turned over into something much less clear. Slightly more warming. “You remembered.”

  “There are many things I remember of that outing, Miss St. Croix.” The silken note in those simple words completed what the topic had started, and I shivered despite the warmth of the room.

  I looked away from the earl’s searching gaze. “A kiss does not cement compatibility,” I said flatly. “You require a proper wife.”

  “A proper wife is a woman blessed by the sanction of marriage,” replied the earl, whose unending font of rejoinders and semantics was rapidly leaving me with no room in my shrinking corner.

  “A proper wife is one who smiles and sews and makes delightful conversation. She does not spill her tea, or stumble in the ballroom.” Or take opium for her nightmares.

  I had so many more secrets than he would ever know.

  Though I made as if to remove my hand from his arm, his flattened over my fingers. Trapped me against the warmth at the bend of his elbow.

  My gaze lifted to his.

  A single corner of his mouth tilted up; a near-smile I found so much more evocative than his others. His eyes all but glowed as he looked down on me. A shared warmth caused my lips to tingle in memory.

  He’d looked just like this when he’d kissed me.

  He would not dare here. No matter how pleasant a kiss had passed between us, it was not enough.

  “A proper wife,” he murmured, low and more than a shade too intimately, “is a woman who may converse with Society on all the topics required of her. She may charm the gentlemen into agreeing with her husband’s politics, or engage the ladies in shared dialogue of fashion and social requests.”

  My jaw tightened. I did not make the conscious decision, but suddenly stopped, withdrawing my hand forcefully.

  He was quicker than I, stopped at the same time and faced me as if we only shared a conversation that did not leave anger pulsing through my veins.

  He did not know me at all.

  I opened my mouth.

  His gaze twinkled. “A proper wife, Miss St. Croix, will then discourse with her husband on whatever topics capture her fancy, from whatever periodicals she has delivered to his door. She will engage in intellectual debate with him at her leisure, debate the merits of aether or electricity, ponder the weight of Her Majesty’s flagship, and perform in the marriage bed while she does so.”

  The bottom dropped out from under my stomach. Whatever words I’d intended—brilliant, scalding things designed to strip the skin from his aristocratically self-entitled bones—came instead on a squeak. Surprise. Shock, more like.

  “Think on it,” he said, once more offering his arm.

  I stared at it. That perfect arm clad in spotless gray, gloved hand held just so.

  “I offer you more than just a name, Miss St. Croix,” he said gently. “I offer you shelter, kindness, and support. All I ask is that you fit the demands expected of a future marchioness.”

  I swallowed, hard enough that his eyes tracked the motion at my throat. And then they skimmed lower. Tracing the stain at my lace décolletage, burning a path along my skin.

  This time, I recognized the slow uncurling of heat low in my belly. I found him quite attractive, certainly. I could not argue that. I was a daughter of science and a creature of experience, or at least knowledge. I understood that I found him attractive, just as a part of me felt drawn to handsome men with character.

  His eyes lifted once more to mine. The stern angles of his face set in earnest lines. “I offer you a place, Miss St. Croix.”

  Yes. But the price was far too high.

  I did not sleep that night.

  My skin seemed made of parchment as I lay in my bed, staring blankly into the dark recesses of my bedroom. Everything pressed upon me, until I was sure my chest would cave and my skin would tear and whatever it was trapped inside my flesh would escape. Free, finally free.

  The canopy over my head became a tomb, and sometime in the darkest hours, I fled the dubious sanctuary of my boudoir.

  Mrs. Booth found me first. I paced Mr. Ashmore’s study, my dressing gown swirling in a froth of linen and ribbon about my ankles. I don’t know how many times I traversed that single path—from the heavy, polished wood desk in strong masculine lines to the window set into the far wall, masked by heavy drapes of striped slate and blue; back to the desk, my feet dragging on the vivid Oriental carpet, and then to the bookshelves that lined the opposite wall.

  Back and forth, around and again, my stride short and harried. I must have walked it for hours as my mind turned and turned within the confines of my aching skull.

  So much need in one small form.

  Had I any laudanum in the house, I’d have taken it all, but there had been no injuries or ailments of late—and my stipend was all spent on my last batch. Fanny did not keep it near, for the very same reason that I wanted it.

  I needed to sleep, blast it. I needed time to dream, to work through these manic thoughts swirling in my wild and unshackled brain.

  If my housekeeper said anything to me, I did not realize. She was gone almost before I even recognized her presence.

  What was I missing?

  Answers. I needed answers.

  The mystery of the murdered professors. What a terrible crime; and yet as thrilling a chase as I could expect, short of literally chasing the murderer through London below.

  That would come. Once I knew what and who I searched for.

  Jack the Ripper?

  No, decidedly not. I turned at the window, the faintest seam of light gathering beneath the drapes. My hair swayed at my waist, a tangled plait whose curls had wildly escaped in my tos
sing and turning.

  The Ripper didn’t care for common murder. One had been poisoned, the other fallen from a great height.

  Were they both murders?

  My thoughts flashed to the narrow closet, and the stolen book.

  Yes. I would wager both were killed in the name of this mystery. Killed, or persuaded to die. It became the same thing, after a point.

  Why?

  Back to the desk, my feet carrying me without command.

  Alchemy. “Bloody stuff,” I muttered, striding past the desk and to the shelves. My eyes raked over the books—polished, dusted, gleaming like teeth in neat rows—but I saw another book in the surging place that was my memory.

  Why?

  That was the question, was it not? “Why,” I repeated, muttering the word. And again. Over and over, with every footstep. “Why? Why? Why?”

  “Cherry St. Croix.”

  I spun, snapping my fingers as my nightgown hem flared gently. “Wrong question!” I crowed, and hurried for the desk. Fanny’s presence only dimly registered—her shocked dismay, Mrs. Booth’s silent concern behind her. Ignoring them both, I snatched up the quill I’d used to doodle nothing at all on several of Ashmore’s finer parchments and scribbled out the symbols I remembered from the papers I’d left with Mr. Pettigrew.

  “I am asking the wrong questions,” I said from between my clenched teeth. My heart hammered; too hard, too fast. I bent over the parchment, forgoing the chair to stoop over the desk like a vulture eyeing a carcass. “It’s not about why alchemy is involved, it’s what. What the formula is purported to do.”

  “Cherry, my dove,” Fanny said gently; the tone of one approaching a madman, hands extended. One touched my shoulder. I shrugged her away and drew like a thing possessed. A triangle, three circles, DG and the newly recognized Fu. Not an E, not a y. Fusion. “Cherry, it’s time to come away for a bit.”

  I looked up, my eyes wild. I’m sure I looked like the devil himself had possessed me, my hair a ruby corona about my face, smudges of exhaustion beneath my reddened eyes. “Why?” I demanded.

  My chaperone, clad already for the day in subdued violet and cream, raised her eyebrows as if she intended to answer.

  I sliced a hand through the air, braced the other with the dripping quill against Ashmore’s desk. My desk. “Why would you kill a professor?”

  “Madam, I’ve her tea ready.”

  I glowered at Zylphia, fresh as a daisy in spring and regarding me with the same outward concern as the rest of my staff. Traitor.

  I was not mad. I was not!

  I pushed up from the desk, flinging my hands in wild impatience. “Why would you murder a professor?” I demanded again. “The answer is there. The truth is so close, I can feel it.”

  I watched Fanny and Mrs. Booth exchange a glance. It was a careful thing, a worried and determined thing.

  Snorting my contempt, nearly a growl in my parched throat, I threw the steel-nibbed quill to the desk—splattering ink in indigo drops guaranteed to stain the dark wood if I did not wipe it away.

  I didn’t bother. “One kills for obvious reasons,” I continued flatly, circling through fact after fact in my head. “But a body does not change how he kills.” A beat; a snap of my fingers. “Unless opportunity provides the motive. But no, that is too random, not suited for two men of the same profession.”

  Why kill professors?

  “To retain knowledge,” I said aloud, turning for the window without conscious awareness I’d done so. I shook a handful of parchment as if for emphasis. “To keep one’s secrets at bay. For money, or prestige, or power. Bloody bells and damn, there’s too many reasons to kill a man,” I added, an indignant afterthought.

  It was as if I remained trapped inside the walking shell of my body. Watching it turn and pace and frenetically dart from one perch to the next like a manic butterfly.

  I had never until that moment looked so much like my father; I would not recognize this until much, much later. Maybe if I had seen it then, I would have frightened myself into decorum.

  Instead, as I crossed the study on my bare, aching feet, Fanny caught my arm. “Stop,” she said firmly.

  I almost didn’t. Indeed, Fanny stumbled once as I careened on my reckless trajectory. But I did stop when her grip tightened; stopped and turned and studied her with very real surprise to find her there, holding on to me, her gaze fierce and mouth in a thin, worried line.

  “Yes?” I prompted.

  Her features softened to something very like fatigue. “Oh, Cherry.” Such a sad, soft note I’d never heard from her before. Her grip eased, she cupped my cheek in one long, thin hand. “Take a moment, my dear.”

  I shook my head, although the part of me exhausted and trembling allowed her to lead me to the overstuffed armchair by the fireplace. There was no fire stocked in it. I hadn’t realized until I sat how cold the study was. “I have no time to breathe, I must solve a mystery.”

  Another exchange of glances. Zylphia handed my chaperone the steaming cup of tea she held, but her gaze met mine and narrowed. Censure? Or a warning?

  My shoulders slumped.

  “Take this, there’s a love,” Fanny crooned softly, like a mother easing the fears of a lost child. She smoothed back my hair from my face. “What can we do to help?”

  Help? I blinked. Help! As if I needed it; as if I were floundering in the dark like one of the Ripper’s own . . . One of . . .

  The papers. Of course. Lady Rutledge was not a woman who thrived on what-ifs and pretending. It would be in the papers. Didn’t she herself ask me if I read them?

  A clue.

  Was it so simple?

  “Brilliant,” I breathed. I reached up, caught Fanny by the hand. “We will make a collector of you yet,” I continued in fervent regard. “Zylla, the newspapers.”

  “Today’s?” she asked, bless her soul, not arguing.

  “For the past fortnight. All of them! Levi will take you.” I tried to stand, wavered, flinched when the hot tea rimmed the cup I held and splashed to my fingers.

  Fanny rescued the cup and my fingers. “All right, Cherry,” she continued in the same gentle tones. As fine a mother as I’d ever known. “Rest for a spell, and then we’ll get you dressed.” I sat, more because I’d lost all the steam I’d built by night than because I was listening.

  As Mrs. Booth, tsking loud enough to hear her clucking from two rooms down, made her way to the kitchens, I looked up at Fanny and frowned. “You look tired,” I told her.

  Her smile did not quite reach her pale eyes. She tucked stray curls behind one of my ears and said simply, “Don’t you worry your pretty head for me, my dove. It’s time you allowed others to care for you, instead.”

  Was it?

  Well . . . perhaps . . . For a little while.

  I reclaimed the teacup she placed in my trembling palms and inhaled gratefully the fragrant brew.

  Just this once.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I slept for a few hours, although I don’t recall drifting off. When I awoke in the chair with my neck stiff, the house was very quiet.

  Zylphia dressed me in my bronzed chocolate poplin, but she did not speak much when it became clear I was distracted.

  I felt drained. As if I’d spent days soaring on the crest of an energy so vibrant—the kind of golden wave I often attributed to my forays into an opium den—and now paid the cost.

  But I had not had so much as a drop for two days, now.

  It weighed on me.

  It . . . gnawed at me.

  “I’ll be helping Mrs. Booth today in the kitchens,” Zylphia said lightly, tucking the last pin into my hair. “You don’t go getting yourself into any trouble, you hear? You gave us all quite a scare.”

  “I seem to be developing that habit,” I admitted wryly. “I’m sorry, Zylla. I’m just so close.”

  “Close or not, won’t do any of us a lick of good if you run yourself into a fit.” Her hand flattened over the top of my head, very da
rk against my auburn locks. She met my gaze in the mirror, terribly serious for all her levity. “I won’t be telling Cage it was a mystery what done you in.”

  Point well taken. The last thing I wanted was Micajah Hawke in my business, above or below the drift. “I’ll stay cozy and warm,” I promised. “There’s too much to study to allow me time to gallivant about.”

  She grinned, most cheeky. “As if that would ever stop you, cherie.”

  I left my bedroom feeling somewhat more the thing; properly dressed and with a bit of tea in me. I hadn’t eaten. I wasn’t hungry. The mere thought of food sent a tremor from the very depths of my stomach to the back of my throat.

  It wasn’t food I wanted.

  I found Fanny in the parlor, a stack of periodicals and papers beside her. Booth had wheeled in a tea cart, and my insides roiled uncomfortably at the array of treats Mrs. Booth had put together to tempt my appetite.

  I had no appetite. I was busy, after all, there were other things than food on my mind.

  This reasoning would serve me well for a small amount of time.

  “I’ve been searching through these papers for a clue,” Fanny announced, surprising me to the point of openmouthed regard. The paper in her hands—the Leeds Mercury, I noted—rustled as she raised her eyes above the print and narrowed them. “Close your mouth, Cherry.”

  I did.

  “Pour a cup, and enlighten me as to what exactly I should be looking for,” she continued, artlessly commanding as I sank to the settee and blindly obeyed.

  It wasn’t until I dropped two sugars into my tea and had the saucer in hand did I manage to put two thoughts together. “If you can take the gossip columns,” I said slowly, “I will read the news that fall under the headlines.”

  “For what?”

  A good question. But I was sure that Lady Rutledge would not issue this challenge if there were no clues to be had. All things are remarked upon, Miss St. Croix, somewhere.