Ashes To Ashes: A Ministry of Curiosities Novella (The Ministry of Curiosities Book 5)

by C. J. Archer

He winced and his one eye widened, but he didn't let me go.

  The gentleman laughed softly. "Good shot."

  The giant grunted. "Not bad for a little thing."

  I ought to have been frightened witless, but their light-hearted banter quelled my fear. Not that I felt safe and confident, but I no longer felt like the giant or his master wanted to hurt me.

  "Sir, if you please," Eddie said in a sickeningly sycophantic tone. "We'll finalize our business inside."

  "I need to ask you some questions first," the gentleman, Mr. Glass, said.

  "Questions? About the watch? Of course."

  "Sir," I said over my shoulder. I had only moments in which to ruin this for Eddie, as he'd ruined so much more for me. "Mason And Sons have a finer hunter minute repeater than the one you were admiring in…there." I couldn't bring myself to call it Hardacre Watchmakers. It was still Steele Watchmakers to me and always would be. "If you want my advice, you ought to spend your money at that establishment. Not only will you get excellent service, but you'll be supporting an upstanding family."

  "India!" Eddie shouted. "If you don't calm down, I'll send for a constable." He clicked his fingers at Jimmy, the boy who occasionally ran errands for the shopkeepers in the street. He was the only one who'd not retreated indoors, but that would be because Jimmy wasn't allowed in the shops. None of the shopkeepers trusted him not to steal from them. None since Father had died and Eddie had evicted me, that is. He strolled over, hands thrust deep into his pockets, but hung back, clearly not willing to take Eddie's side but unable to do anything to help me.

  "I've already been to Mason And Sons," Mr. Glass said to me, ignoring Eddie. "There was nothing to interest me there. I wish to look at this watch."

  "Come, sir," Eddie said, grasping Mr. Glass's arm. Mr. Glass narrowed his gaze at him and Eddie let go with a loud swallow. "I'll give you a good price on the watch."

  "You cannot have been to Mason And Sons," I said to the gentleman. "Mr. Mason truly does have a finer example of the same timepiece. I saw it late yesterday, and I doubt he has sold it already."

  Mr. Glass turned a curious expression toward me. Where before he'd looked tired, he was now alert. It was as if he'd just realized something of monumental importance to him—and it involved me. His gaze focused on mine with fierce, driving intensity. It was an unnerving experience to be the object of it, more so than the physical presence of his coachman. If I weren't restrained, I would have left and been glad to have escaped—from what, I didn't know.

  "You're familiar with Mr. Mason and his work?" he asked me.

  "I am. He was both a friend and rival of my father's." Their relationship had been a complicated one. While they respected and liked one another, they had to compete for customers among London's elite. Fortunately there were enough wealthy in the city to keep them, and several other watch and clockmakers, in business. Mr. Mason had been the first person I'd gone to after Eddie had ended our engagement, but he'd not been able to employ me with three sons and a daughter of his own.

  Mr. Glass closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead as if trying to remove an ache. It was so odd, coming after his intense glare, that I checked with his servant to see if he thought it out of character.

  The coachman frowned at his master. "Matt?" He called his master by his first name? What a peculiar arrangement. "Er, sir? You need to…?"

  "I'm fine," Mr. Glass snapped.

  "Don't bloody look fine," the coachman muttered, sounding a little hurt.

  "Your father is a watchmaker?" Mr. Glass asked me, lowering his hand. He patted his coat, as if feeling for something in the pocket. Perhaps it was snuff or a pipe that he wished to smoke to return the color to his cheeks. He looked quite peaky.

  "Was." I spread my hands to indicate the shop windows with the watches set out on the lower shelf and the higher shelves filled with clocks of all shapes and sizes. "He owned this establishment under the name Steele until his death, two weeks ago." I swallowed the lump rising up my throat, but the tears welled nevertheless.

  "He left it to me in his will," Eddie cut in quickly.

  "Because you assured him that you would keep your promise to marry me, and my fool of a father believed you. I believed you," I choked out. I no longer cared what the gentleman or his servant thought of my behavior. Two weeks ago I'd been too sad and shocked to tell Eddie what I thought of him, but not anymore. I was still sad, but those two weeks had given me time to think. I wasn't shocked now, I was mad.

  "I wasn't to know then that you were such a strong-willed creature," Eddie said. "If I had, I wouldn't have asked for your hand. Take this display, for example. One doesn't need further evidence of your willfulness."

  Rage surged through my body. I felt like I was burning with it, from the inside out. "What I am is the daughter and assistant of Elliot Steele, watchmaker."

  "No, that is what you were. Now you're just…pathetic. Go away, India. Nobody wants you here."

  I gritted my teeth and pulled myself free from the man holding me. To my surprise, he let go. I barged up to Eddie and slapped him across the cheek before he saw my hand coming.

  Eddie reeled back, clutching the side of his face. He stared open-mouthed at me, his expression caught between fear and shock, as if I were a ghastly and strange creature. I suppose, in some ways, I was. I certainly didn't feel like myself at that moment. I felt…lighter, liberated, and yes, very strange indeed.

  Mr. Glass cleared his throat. "Miss Steele?"

  I smiled at him and his one-eyed servant. The coachman grinned back. "Yes, Mr. Glass?" I said.

  "Would you mind joining me this afternoon in the tea room at Brown's Hotel?"

  "Me?" My smile slipped off. I stared at him. "But…why?"

  "Yes," Eddie muttered. "Why her?"

  Mr. Glass ignored him. "To discuss your father."

  I was trying to decide if it was unseemly to drink tea alone with a strange gentleman in a salubrious hotel, and if I cared about that sort of thing anymore, when Eddie took advantage of my silence. "I can tell you everything you wish to know about Elliot Steele. I knew him well."

  "Oh, do shut up, Eddie." It seemed I'd thought of something to say after all. "I will join you for tea, Mr. Glass. Thank you."

  The brown eyes briefly flared and a small smile touched his lips. It quickly vanished, however, and his jaw went rigid. The muscle bunched and did not release. It was as if he were bearing down against a pain. Unease ate at my gut. I didn't know this man, and he had a rather frightening looking servant, yet I'd agreed to drink tea with him. It would seem today was a day to do things that were out of character for me. I pushed my unease aside.

  "We can discuss watches," I said to Mr. Glass, simply to see Eddie's face turn red with anger again. "If it's a hunter minute repeater you're after then there are many fine examples in the city. Much finer than here."

  "They were your father's timepieces!" Eddie cried. "That watch is exquisite."

  "The regulator pins stick and it loses five seconds every twelve hours. I was never able to fix it."

  "You mean your father couldn't," Eddie said smugly.

  "No, I mean I couldn't. I've been doing all the repair work for three years, ever since Father's sight deteriorated."

  "Well then, now it's my turn to repair them. Elliot left me all his notes."

  "They're three years out of date. My notes were not part of the inheritance." I spun on my heel, gave a nod to Mr. Glass and another to his servant, and said, "Shall we say three o'clock?"

  "Perfect," Mr. Glass said with a smile that momentarily banished the tiredness from his eyes. "See you then."

  I walked up the street, feeling as if the entire city watched me. I turned the corner and doubled back, just in time to see Mr. Glass being driven away. He removed his gloves and studied something in his hand. He closed his fingers around it, tipped his head back, and breathed deeply, as if he were finally getting the rest he craved.

  It wasn't this behavior that set my pulse ra
cing, however. It was the object in his fisted hand, and the bright purplish glow it emitted. A glow that infused his skin and disappeared up his sleeve.

  CHAPTER 2

  "You told me yesterday that you would pay me," Mrs. Bray, my landlady, said as she stood in the doorway to my room. "And the day before, and the day before that." She folded her arms beneath her large bosom, pushing them up so that they were in danger of choking her, and peered down the length of her narrow nose at me. "I'm not a charity, Miss Steele."

  She certainly wasn't. She wanted the rent for the tiny attic room in advance and reminded me every day, when I failed to pay her, that I would have to vacate if I didn't come up with the money. I'd managed to keep the room through a combination of charm and pleading, but I didn't think that tactic would work much longer. Going by the unsympathetic scowl on her pinched face, her patience had worn out.

  The truth was, I hadn't anticipated staying in her lodging house long after Eddie threw me out of my home above the shop the day my father was buried—the very day. I thought I would have secured myself employment as a shop assistant with either a watch or clockmaker by now. But I'd applied in person to every single one in the vicinity, and none had any positions available, although some expressed their sympathies for my plight. Unfortunately I couldn't eat sympathy or sleep on it. I needed to work. Hence my applications to other shopkeepers. So far, three haberdashers, two drapers, four greengrocers, and a chemist refused to employ me without references. I was utterly weary of hearing the word no.

  "I understand, Mrs. Bray," I said, mustering some sweetness from God knew where, "but I just need one more day. I'm going to apply to be a governess."

  She snorted. "That's a laugh."

  "Pardon?"

  She hiked up her bosom with her folded arms. "Toffs employ other toffs as governesses. You're only a shopkeeper's assistant."

  I had been a watchmaker and repairer, actually, but I didn't correct her. No one ever believed me when I claimed my father taught me everything he knew. Not even my friend, Catherine Mason, whose father and three brothers owned Mason And Sons. She'd told me that no honorable father would allow his daughter to get her hands dirty in the workshop. I liked Catherine so I didn't argue the point with her.

  "I must try something different," I told Mrs. Bray. "I need employment."

  "There's always the workhouse for destitute women."

  I shuddered. The workhouse was for those with no roof over their head, no education, and no other possible means of supporting themselves. Employment there meant a bed to sleep on and food twice a day, albeit a lice-ridden bed and unpalatable gruel. It also meant long hours on the factory floor, risking life and limb with the dangerous machinery, and contending with depraved men who thought the poor women were no better than whores. A perfectly healthy woman I'd been acquainted with had wound up in one after her husband died. When I'd seen her again, a year later, she'd been at death's door, ravaged by syphilis and coughing up blood. The workhouse was a wretched place. It made Mrs. Bray's cold attic room, with the low roof and persistent odor of cat urine, seem like a palace.

  If I couldn't find employment elsewhere, the workhouse was my only choice.

  I collected my gloves and reticule from the bed, but she didn't let me pass. Her sizeable hips filled the doorway. "I have to go out for now," I told her, "but I'll be stopping by the Governesses' Benevolent Institution on my way back to see if there's any work for an educated woman like myself."

  She rolled her tongue over her top teeth then made a sucking sound. "I told you, you won't find anything. You're not the right sort to be a governess."

  "I must try."

  "You're persistent, I'll give you that." She sucked the air between her teeth again. "But you have to pack your things and take them with you."

  I gasped. "Are you evicting me?"

  "I've had inquiries from a gentleman wishing to lease this room." She backed out of the doorway and headed to the stairs in her awkward, rolling gait. "You have fifteen minutes."

  "But I have nowhere else to go!"

  "You've got friends. Ask that pretty girl who called on you last week to help."

  I stood at the top of the stairs and stared at her retreating back. The Masons couldn't afford to support me, not with so many of their own mouths to feed. I would have to sleep on Catherine's floor. They would try to help me if they knew my plight, but I couldn't bring myself to beg. Pride was all I had left.

  "Please, Mrs. Bray. I'll have the money by the end of today."

  She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and shook her head. "How?" she called up. "You've got no job and nothing more to sell. Even if you find employment today, you won't be paid for weeks. I need that money now, Miss Steele. I've got to eat too." She walked off. "You've got fifteen minutes or I fetch the constable and have you arrested for trespass."

  Arrested! From the look on her face, she was serious.

  I headed back into my room and numbly packed my bag. Having sold as many personal items as I could to pay for food and rent for the last two weeks, my few remaining belongings amounted to very little. I possessed two changes of unmentionables, a nightgown, one other dress, a coat, and a hairbrush, hand mirror and combs that had belonged to my mother. My bag was so light that I had no trouble getting it down the stairs.

  Mrs. Bray saw me out and shut the door the moment I crossed the threshold, almost hitting me in the back. I walked as erectly as possible down the steps to the pavement, my battered leather valise in hand. It had been a gloomy, damp house anyway. I would find somewhere better to live, just as soon as I secured myself employment. In the meantime, Catherine Mason's floor would have to do.

  I wouldn't rely on the Masons' charity for long, however. I wouldn't need to. I was eminently employable, if only someone would give me the opportunity to prove it without references. After meeting with Mr. Glass, I would apply at the Governesses' Benevolent Institution. I could even ask him if anyone in his circle was in need of the services of an educated woman. Indeed, this meeting with Mr. Glass could prove quite fruitful. I had a good feeling about it.

  I walked from the lodging house near King's Cross Road to Mayfair. It took almost an hour, but the air was reasonably clear, allowing some spring sunshine to leak through the gray pall. I knew the way well enough, having delivered timepieces to wealthy customers who lived there. I'd even delivered an exquisite watch to a foreign prince when he'd stayed at Brown's Hotel. Nevertheless, the colonnaded façades of the grand buildings never ceased to amaze me and make me feel small.

  My valise no longer felt light by the time I reached Albermarle Street, and my shoulders and arms ached. The liveried porter of Brown's Hotel opened the front door for me. I ignored the questioning arch of his brows and his pointed glance at my simple dress and valise, and strolled inside with what I hoped was an air of confidence. I wanted to at least look like I knew where I was going, even if my stomach had tied itself into knots. The porter stowed my valise away in a back room and directed me to the tearoom.

  I received more curious stares as I scanned the faces for Mr. Glass. Plain shop girls didn't usually mingle in the tearoom at Brown's with ladies and gentlemen of good breeding. I felt like a drab piece of sackcloth amid colorful silks and delicate laces.

  I spotted Mr. Glass at a table near the window. He rose and greeted me with a dashing smile that I couldn't help but return, despite my knotted stomach. He must have had a good rest since we last met, because there was no sign of tiredness in his eyes. They were as clear and warm as his smile. There was also no sign of the purplish glow on the skin of his bare hand. It appeared quite as it should—tanned, strong, and entirely normal.

  "Thank you for coming, Miss Steele," he said, pulling out a chair for me.

  "Thank you for the invitation, Mr. Glass, although I'm still unsure what it is you want to ask me."

  "I have questions about your father."

  "So you said, but what do you want to know about him?"

  We
were interrupted by the waiter, and my awkwardness returned. Not only was I unsure if I was expected to pay for my afternoon tea, but everyone at the surrounding tables still stared. Was I the oddity or was Mr. Glass, with his good looks and somewhat lazy way of sitting? Or was it the both of us together? None knew me, but it was quite possible that Mr. Glass's acquaintances were among the other patrons and his meeting a woman like this was about to become the gossip of the week.

  "Your finest tea, please," Mr. Glass asked the waiter, "and your best cakes and…things," he added with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I don't care what. Do you, Miss Steele?"

  "Er, no." As long as I wasn't expected to pay for them. Despite the strangeness of Mr. Glass and his relaxed manner, I did peg him as a gentleman, and no gentleman would invite a lady to tea and then ask her to pay her share.

  The waiter retreated and Mr. Glass sat forward. He picked up the small silver fork and twisted it between his fingers. "You must think my request to meet with you odd," he said.

  "No odder than my acceptance of it. I'm not in the habit of taking tea with strange men."

  He held up the fork in surrender. "Of course not. I can see that you're a respectable lady."

  "You saw that in our brief encounter this morning? The encounter in which I berated my former fiancé, attempted to ruin his business, and stomped on your servant's toe?"

  "To be fair, Cyclops deserved it. I didn't think he would grip you that hard." He let the fork go and placed a hand to his heart. "I deserved it more. Please allow me to apologize most sincerely for my treatment of you. I was…not myself. I'm not ordinarily so rough with women. It was uncalled for, and I can only apologize for it again and again."

  "Apology accepted. I admit to being somewhat shocked at the time, but I wasn't harmed. I do suggest that you refrain from hauling women around like a caveman next time you are not feeling like yourself. Others may not be as forgiving."

  He grinned, which I hoped he would. I did so like his smile with his perfect white teeth against his smooth brown skin. It made his eyes twinkle too. "I will try to restrain myself, although I do have a temper and I'm unused to the delicate sensibilities of English women."