The Heartreader's Secret

by Kate McinTyre

  “I refuse to have that man digging about in my things,” Spencer said. “Are you aware that my disgusting uncle attempted to give my inheritance away to him?”

  “Oh,” Olivia sang, “you may have mentioned it once before, perhaps.”

  “It’s not right. Someone who would consider stealing another man’s right like that wouldn’t hesitate to take something else!” Spencer whined. “I can’t even imagine what tendencies he has raised by my uncle! That man was a disgrace to my family!”

  Chris stiffened.

  Olivia hummed quietly to herself as she rattled around in an old box of trinkets. Chris pulled out yet another blanket. Mothballs rolled across the floor.

  “He was the best man I ever knew,” he said quietly. He shook his head. “I can’t imagine—I don’t understand why you didn’t see that.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he was,” Spencer said, with a harsh, cruel laugh. “Tell me, Mister Buckley, when did the old deviant first begin—”

  Chris didn’t even have any memory of moving. Just that one moment, he was peering into the dark corners in the bottom of the old chest, and then, the next, he was grabbing Spencer by his collar, shoving him back against the headboard. Their faces were so close Chris could feel Spencer’s hot, foul morning breath on his face.

  “I suspect it’s not the first time you’ve been in this position,” Spencer said, infuriatingly calm and dripping disdain.

  Chris thought about the night before all of this had begun when he had gone to Will’s. He jerked back from Spencer as if he’d been burned.

  Fernand’s awful nephew smirked. “Ah. I see I’m not wrong.”

  “He never touched me,” Chris spat. “He never would have. Whatever he was, whatever–whatever I—” He ducked his head, swallowed hard, forged on. “He was a good man. He treated me like a son, always. Always.”

  Spencer just looked at him with such utter contempt that Chris felt it creeping into him as if Spencer were heartwriting him. He straightened and turned away.

  Olivia upended the contents of the vanity drawer nosily. Chris flinched and turned toward her. “I don’t think it’s in here,” he said, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. Honestly, he just wanted to be as far from Spencer as possible.

  His employer hmmed, combing through the pile of upended odds and ends. “Perhaps not,” she said. “But I do find Mister Spencer an especially compelling suspect for the theft.”

  “I—why?” Spencer sputtered. “I’m a well-regarded member of society! I’m acquainted with members of Assembly! I have properties in Darrington, Vernella, and Penbury! What reason would I possibly have to steal an old woman’s jewellery?”

  “Old woman? Very rude,” Olivia chastised mildly. “She’s only fifty-nine, Mister Spencer.”

  “Why not turn your eyes onto this pauper?” Spencer jerked his head in Chris’s direction. “If there’s anyone who can be relied upon to steal family heirlooms, I assure you, it’s him.”

  “Fernand offered us the estate!” Chris snapped, fists clenching. “We never asked. We never would have! Frankly, after knowing you for no more than a day, I can see why he was eager to disinherit you!”

  Spencer gave a stiff half-smile. “Charming,” he said.

  Chris sneered. “This is a new experience for me. A bag of wind lecturing me in his bedclothes.”

  Spencer yanked the covers back up. “Are you almost finished?” he demanded of Olivia, snapping his sharp gaze to hers. “This is all entirely untoward!”

  “Perhaps,” Olivia said, holding up what appeared to be an old faucet up to the light, as though checking to ensure that it was not a diamond ring in disguise.

  “If you want a real suspect,” Fernand’s nephew said, “you ought to be looking at the bastard who bloodied my nose. Arthur Norwood.”

  Olivia gently set the faucet down. She turned to look at the gentleman, buried in his bedcovers. “You seem very convinced he’s capable of criminal activity.”

  “He has connections.”

  “Blood connections.”

  Spencer shook his head, jaw bulging. “Not just blood. I’d be the last man to hold someone accountable for the sins of their relatives, believe me. Norwood is on all of Sir Combs’s lists.”

  “Please, explain it to those of us who don’t have a clue what that means.” Olivia folded her arms. Beneath the red lace of her hem, one booted foot tapped impatiently.

  Spencer sat up a bit more. “Hector and Avery keep close track of anyone who’s associated with… fringe elements.” His lips twisted. “Or, should I say, at this point, entirely mainstream elements. Norwood is a close associate of Garrett Albany, from before he became the face of the movement. From before, even, he cleaned up his image and made himself into a public figure.”

  “And what, exactly, was Mister Albany, before all of that?”

  Spencer levelled his head and met her eyes. “Dangerous.”

  “Not exactly helpful.”

  “I’m not privy to all the details. I’m acquainted with the Combses. Part of the movement. Hardly… inner circle! They don’t give me all the lurid details! Besides, if there was any proof of Albany’s violent past, don’t you think Sir Combs would have discredited the upstart pup, by now? It’s all rumours. Whispers that before he turned himself into Livingstone’s lapdog and then bit the hand, he was a different kind of animal altogether.”

  Something prickled at the back of Chris’s head.

  “And how, exactly, did Livingstone’s favourite nephew fall in with some young blunt’s coffee shop revolutionaries, if he hadn’t met the good doctor, yet?”

  Chris shook his head. “No, I—”

  They both turned to look at him, each as surprised as the other. Chris swallowed a bitter smile. It was a talent of his, disappearing into a scene, it would seem. He pushed up his eyeglasses. “It’s… Livingstone knew Mister Albany. When he was young.” He frowned. “Livingstone even told me last night that Norwood’s been enamoured with Albany’s tactics before. It might not be nothing, Olivia.”

  She tapped her foot and looked back at Spencer. “You really think that Norwood has it in him?”

  Spencer touched a finger to his crooked nose, formerly so patrician. There was a faint line of red down his philtrum. “I don’t think anyone can deny he was rather quick to jump me when I even raised the possibility.”

  A moment of silence passed. Olivia turned back to Spencer. “Don’t move.” She jabbed a finger at him like a dagger. “If I see you—if I hear of you—having left your bed, I swear. Don’t speak to anyone. Don’t get up to empty your chamber pot. Don’t breathe. Do I make myself clear?”

  “You can’t hold me here,” Spencer protested. “My mother is waiting back at the Spencer estate! I have business to attend to! And I really ought to see a physician!”

  Olivia waved him off. “Gracious, you’ll be bloody fine. The broken nose might actually give your looks some character; women are fond of such things.” She paused and gave him a devious smile. “Men, too. Or so I hear.”

  “How dare—” Spencer protested shrilly.

  “If I see you up and about, I’m ordering you under arrest. Do I make myself clear?”

  “You can’t do that.”

  Olivia grinned. “You’ll find,” she said, “that I more or less do what I want, Mister Spencer. I’m sure that no one could hold you… but your poor reputation! Being photographed at a precinct, tsk, tsk.”

  While Spencer sputtered, Olivia whirled from the dishevelled room and started towards the door. “Come along, Christopher,” she said breezily. With one final look at Spencer and a hard swallowing of the ugly anger in his belly, Chris did as he was told and trotted at her heels.

  “She doesn’t talk about her past,” he said, the moment that the door closed behind them. He knew exactly what was coming.

  “I don’t care,” Olivia pronounced, entirely without pity. “You know that I’m deeply respectful of the right to privacy, but at this point, either she’s
guilty, or she has the information to understand who is. Perhaps you’re right about her. Perhaps she’s entirely trustworthy. After all, Jones didn’t react to her photograph. But even in that case, no one can say she’s uninvolved. She’s the farthest thing from that.”

  Chris ran a hand through his hair. He thought of her, her body warm against his, her lips soft and her tongue dancing. Her eyes shining and then burning on the dance floor beneath spiritcell powered lights. He should have waltzed. Gods, his life was just a parade of poor choices, wasn’t it?

  “At least let me ask most of the questions,” he pleaded. “You can be…” He trailed off, staring at her helplessly.

  She snorted.

  He shook his head. “I’m the one who’s dragged her into all of this. Gods, she’s done everything she can to put distance between herself and whatever past is behind her, and I’ve managed to drag her back into all of it just by posting an ad in the paper so I could go to that interview with you.”

  Olivia tilted her head. She hummed. “Doesn’t that all seem terribly coincidental, Chris?” she asked, soft and uncharacteristically gentle. “Your advertisement happened to be answered by the sister of a man poised to take over a movement that had been stalking your sister for years?”

  “No!” Chris exclaimed. “No one had been—no one knew, Olivia. Fernand and I hid it, we spent every single day hiding it! Until the observation wheel at White Clover… no one knew. Even those who my father had boasted to of a wizard daughter were convinced that she was just a small talent. Six years, and no one ever knocked at our door.” He shook his head. “Certainly, it all… seems convenient, but there was nothing for her to answer the advertisement for! Rosie and I were just the impoverished children of a dead, disgraced member of the old guard.”

  Olivia breathed out hard through her nose like Hobby did when Chris tightened the girth of his saddle. “I don’t like coincidences. And I don’t like that woman,” she said. “They both make my brain itch.”

  “It wouldn’t make any sense, Olivia. And we already searched her room!” An experience which had largely involved Chris looking nowhere near where Rachel sat in her dressing gown at her small table, watching them tear her bed apart. Chris tried very hard not to think about the bed. The soft sheets. What it would be like, stretched out with her between them?

  Olivia sighed. “We’ll just see about that, now won’t we.” She reached out to pat her hair and then gave him an arch look. “But you’ve made your point about her being the sort who would react better to a… friend, let’s say. So. Go and get her for me. Bring her to the kitchen.”

  Rachel would feel betrayed. She’d feel prodded, poked. Possibly even violated. But Chris did what Olivia commanded. He went to her room.

  Rachel opened on the second knock.

  Her hair was still loose around her shoulders, but she had gotten into a cream coloured day dress with lace on the cuffs and around the collar. She saw him standing there and swallowed. “Has the situation been resolved?”

  Chris rubbed the back of his neck. “Not… not exactly,” he said. He sounded so pained even he winced.

  “Then…” She scanned his face, and then lowered her eyes. “Ah.”

  “It’s not—”

  “No, I know what it is.” She shook her head. “This isn’t about some stolen jewellery, is it?”

  He didn’t know what to say. What he was allowed to say. So he said nothing, just looked down at her and fidgeted until she looked back up at him.

  “You’re upset. And embarrassed.”

  He gave her the best smile he could. It felt tight. “That sounds about right.”

  “Something happened.”

  Chris nodded.

  Rachel closed her eyes. She breathed deep. “A murder?” she asked, her voice hushed and almost without inflection, as if she was just waiting for the axe to fall.

  “That’s really only the beginning,” Chris said.

  Rachel closed her eyes tightly shut.

  “I don’t want to involve you in this,” Chris said softly. “I really don’t, Rachel.”

  “And yet, here you are.”

  “I like to think that I’ve always respected–ah. Occasionally, I put my foot in it, but I like that you have your secrets. I like that you keep them close.”

  She smiled faintly up at him. “Do you find me mysterious, Mister Buckley?” she said. It sounded like flirting, but there was something about her voice… something tired and sad and empty.

  He swallowed. He stepped closer and reached out, resting his hands on the swell of her hips. “You know that I do. And so much else.”

  She sighed. She rolled onto her toes, leaned up, and pressed a sweet, chaste kiss on his lips. When she pulled away, they tingled, and he barely dared open his eyes. He hadn’t even realized he’d closed them.

  “I hope dispelling my mystery doesn’t ruin it all for you,” she said. She brushed hair back behind her ears. “Will you still be so interested, when I’m no longer so fascinating?”

  “You’ll always fascinate me,” he promised and meant it. “You’re kind, giving, intelligent, and beautiful.”

  She flinched. Just minutely, just a slight clenching around her eyes and her lips, but he saw it. “I really do wish you’d stop saying that,” she said. There was something dark in her voice. Something pleading.

  “I mean it,” he said. “I do.”

  She shook her head. “Please. Please, Christopher, just… take me to Olivia. Let’s get this all over it, shan’t we?”

  He obliged.

  The kitchen was empty of its usual throngs of workers. The stoves were cold, the fire banked. No smells of soup and squash, and freshly baked bread filled the air. Olivia and Miss Banks sat together, both of their hands folded on the table, in the small alcove corner where Chris had sat and had breakfast with Olivia, with Rachel, and with the kitchen girls.

  It was quite cold. The stone floor felt almost like ice through their thin indoor shoes. Rachel curled her arms around her middle and shivered, and Chris fought down the urge to wrap an arm around her to keep her warm.

  “Good morning, Miss Albany,” Olivia said pleasantly.

  Rachel nodded. “Good morning, Miss Faraday.”

  “Weather’s clearing. The sun’s breaking through the clouds. It should start drying things up quickly enough.”

  “Yes, I saw that through my window.”

  “Blasted cold, though. Tell me, Miss Albany, were you actually acquainted with Mister Norwood before he came to Miller to help his uncle?”

  Rachel shook her head and chuckled hollowly. “You don’t waste much time on pleasantries, do you, Miss Faraday?”

  Olivia feigned offence, pouting and fluttering a hand theatrically. “Now, is that what I get for actually making an effort at it? Next time, I’ll save my forced observations about the weather and launch right in!” She focused her gaze on Rachel shrewdly. “Are you dodging a question, Miss Albany?”

  Rachel ducked her head. “Not much escapes you, does it?”

  “That is my job.”

  “The answer is yes. I’ve known Arthur for a long time, in fact.”

  “As the nephew of Doctor Livingstone, or as a friend of your elder brother’s?”

  “Both,” Rachel admitted.

  Olivia put her hands face down on the table. “Why don’t you come and sit Miss Albany?” she asked, surprisingly gentle. “It’s quite a bit warmer in here, with all of us pressed tightly together.”

  Rachel’s eyes flickered to Miss Banks. “Is there a reason for the additional company?”

  “That depends. Do you know very much about her?”

  Rachel opened her mouth, and then shut it again. She shrugged one shoulder. “Miss Emilia Banks,” she said. “Daughter of Henry Banks, of Penbury, and Imari Banks, ne Kalu, originally from Khari. Henry was a successful trader in his youth. Spiritbound gadgets for coffee and silk. He and Imari combined their vast fortunes in marriage, had a daughter, and it was all quite well
until Henry was killed in one of the first major ‘binding accidents. A fluke, back then. Imari took her daughter to her homeland to be raised away from the dangers of Tarlish life. Khari is on the rise. Tarland is in decline. It seemed logical. Of course, she didn’t expect her daughter to be so passionate, and to return to the nation where she was born after becoming independently wealthy to become a strong advocate for alternative technologies.” She eyed Miss Banks. “You’re also… involved… with one Officer Maris Dawson of the Queen’s Police. Supervisory Officer. Miss Faraday’s direct superior.”

  Miss Banks gave a breathless laugh and pushed up her specs. “Well,” she said. “That…certainly is my life story in a nutshell, isn’t it?”

  “My brother keeps close tabs on anyone he thinks can be flipped to his cause.”

  Chris took a step away. “But you never talk to your brother.”

  Rachel flinched, but ignored him, focusing on Miss Banks. “You’re something of a white whale for Garrett. If it brings you any comfort, he’s spent years trying to learn your categorization, Miss Banks. He’s had no luck with it. You’ve truly gone to lengths to bury it.”

  Emilia’s chin came up. “One needs to be categorized to do so much as buy a cup of tea in this country,” she said. “But I’ll be damned if I’ll contribute to this system.”

  “No, I admire it.” Rachel said. She finally approached the table and slid in, all the way to the wall, so that she was across from Olivia. Her attention never left Miss Banks. “Having convictions is easy. Standing for them, fighting for them… that’s something else entirely.”

  “And what about your brother, Miss Albany?” Olivia prodded. “What about his convictions?”

  Rachel’s gaze went dark. Her hands fisted on the table. “My brother is the worst kind of man,” she said, firmly. “I’m not—I’d never say otherwise! There’s a difference between standing firm on one’s convictions, and what he does. What he is. I’ve said that Garrett and I are estranged. That’s not a lie. If I had my way, I’d never exchange a word with him ever again!”

  “But,” Olivia said, with a voice like a needle popping a balloon, “we don’t always have our way, do we?”