He’d let Finch go, alone, on a public airship, back to London, thinking it a great lark to see the dismayed expression on her face.
He cursed and started for the exit to the courtyard.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Franco demanded, signaling for his guards to cut Sasha off. They raised their weapons, blocking the exit.
A snarling Fyodor stepped between him and the guards, ready to defend his master. Sasha was tempted to join Fyodor in brawling his way through the annoying flock of Italians, but he was already in enough trouble. Sasha touched Fyodor’s arm, staying him, and whipped around to face Franco.
“I must return to London,” he said, as calmly as he could. “I swear to God, Franco, you’d better let me leave now. You have no right to hold me here, which gives me every right to toss all of these guards on their ears on my way out. And I will do it.”
Franco reached into his vest and extracted a familiar, antiquated scroll, sealed with a dab of blood-red wax. Sasha’s heart sank – or it would have if it weren’t made of metal alchemy.
“I have every right to hold you, as the Council has granted me an edict for your arrest,” Franco spat. “And if you value your life and the life of the abomination at your side, you will obey Council law.”
“Insult my valet one more time, Franco, and I don’t care if you have a thousand edicts, I will rip your head off, consequences be damned. You have my word on that,” he said softly, and with such deadly intent even the restless gendarmerie surrounding him went still.
Franco wisely held his tongue as he repocketed the edict, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Then he dared to extend his hand again. “I will have your wireless, Romanov. Council rules.”
Sasha glowered at the Italian before he reluctantly gave over the device. He turned his attention to Rowan. “You knew this would happen, didn’t you?”
Now Rowan was the one to look uncomfortable. “It is out of my hands, Sasha. I did all I could to persuade the Council to reserve its judgment. I even went to His Grace.”
Rowan referred to the Duke of Brightlingsea, the de facto leader of the High Council, which did nothing to reassure Sasha. The rest of the Council thought the Duke a hero for the way he had defeated Ehrengard’s misguided metal army at Sevastopol.
Personally, Sasha thought the Duke a mass murderer along the lines of his own father.
“But the good news is the edict is only for your detainment while we corroborate your alibi. It should take a few weeks, nothing more,” Rowan finished.
“I don’t have a few weeks. Rowan, I must return to London immediately,” he growled impatiently.
“The Council will not be gainsaid, Sasha, you know that. If you don’t play along, you’ll only dig yourself an even deeper hole.”
“Does this edict include Fyodor? Is he being detained as well?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Rowan said. “I’m sorry, Sasha.”
Sasha groaned in frustration – and panic. He needed to return to London post-haste, if only to assure himself all was well with Finch. To assure himself this was all just an overreaction. But he was not going to voice his suspicions in front of Franco, who would just twist his words against him. He swallowed his pride, which had been severely wounded by Rowan’s betrayal, and faced his former comrade.
“I don’t want your sympathy, my Lord,” he returned, unable to keep the ice from his voice. “I want to know if you’ll stand as my counsel.”
Rowan looked surprised, then puzzled. “I hardly think you require one at this point, Sasha…”
“But I am granted one, under Council law, am I not?”
Rowan glanced at Franco, who reluctantly nodded. He sighed. “I am not the best choice to serve you in such a capacity…”
“No doubt, but you are the most expedient. Will you or not?”
“Of course …”
“Then I invoke my right to counsel.”
“Here? Now?”
“Yes, damn you. Now.” He stepped to the side, and one of the guards attempted to block his way. Sasha just stared the man down until he lowered his weapon and allowed him to pass. After assuring Franco he was not aiding in Sasha’s escape, Rowan followed him until they were far enough away from the others not to be overheard.
Sasha cut straight to the point. “I want you to return to London, as fast as you can.”
“I had planned to stay here, and make sure Franco follows the rules. Despite what you think, I am on your side.”
“Damn you and damn the rules. You were right to point out the singularity of this crime. Our victim was a woman with spectacles. A petite, unenhanced blonde-haired woman with spectacles.”
He allowed a few moments for Rowan to grasp the significance of this, but when the Earl continued to look puzzled, Sasha sighed with impatience. “Finch, you idiot! The victim is just like Finch.”
Rowan was dumbfounded. “Your … secretary? Miss Finch? But does she have blonde hair? I confess I hadn’t noticed.”
“Blonde enough. And those spectacles are identical to Finch’s, down to the maker, I would wager. More importantly the woman was unenhanced and gently bred, just like Finch.”
“How can you tell she was gently bred?” Rowan demanded.
“The hands. Only a gently bred woman would have hands that smooth.”
“You notice those sorts of … details … on corpses?”
“God damn it, it’s my job. Of course I notice.”
Rowan shook his head as he took it all in. “But why? Why target her, I mean, Miss Finch, of all people?”
“If I knew the why of anything this bastard does, we’d have caught him by now.”
“I will return to London as soon as I can to assure myself of her safety, of course.” Rowan hesitated. “Shall I explain things to her more fully? Is she more … intimately acquainted with your activities?”
Sasha barely refrained from punching his friend in the jaw. He didn’t know why the insinuation bothered him so much, but it did. “I don’t know what you’re implying, exactly. I don’t think I want to know. Finch is my secretary. She thinks I am nothing more than a slightly annoying ‘professor of psychopaths,’ as she so eloquently calls my current occupation. And I would like to keep it that way. She has a rather overactive imagination, and I would not want to stir the pot, if you please.”
“You know, I think you may be right about her overactive imagination,” Rowan said thoughtfully. “My sister told me the most incredible tale, that Miss Finch is actually the author of that horrid penny-dreadful everyone reads in the Post-Dispatch.”
Sasha glared at Rowan. “Are you really discussing a penny-dreadful at a moment like this?”
Rowan sighed. “Quite sorry. I will be discreet when making my inquiries.”
“And tell Inspector Drexler to have Matthews resume following her.”
Rowan began to nod, then hesitated, his expression darkening. “Resume? You mean you often have your secretary followed? Don’t tell me you’ve known about this … interest the murderer has in Miss Finch!”
“No,” he growled. “I have my secretary followed because of her habit of frequenting St. Giles on her day off to wager away her salary at the Automaton Races.”
Rowan looked suitably shocked. “Miss Finch? A gambler?”
“Inveterate. And with no idea of the danger she courts, the little fool. You don’t want to know how many bookmakers she has indebted herself to, or how many arms Matthews has had to break this past month after her last visit.”
He couldn’t keep the exasperated fondness from creeping into his voice, despite the urgency of the moment. As foolish as Finch was to visit the stews, he couldn’t help but admire her audacity.
Rowan shook his head. “I would have never suspected it of Miss Finch. She looks so … wholesome.”
“Never play her in cards, if you value your fortune. She cheats like a sharp in a St. Giles hell,” Sasha said, feeling a sudden pang of longing for his quixotic little secretary.
“I wonder if my sister knows this. She plays whist with your secretary every week. I’ll have to warn her,” Rowan said, interrupting Sasha’s strange thoughts.
Franco, his patience expired, began sending the guard in their direction once more. Sasha turned to Rowan. “Give me your word you’ll protect her, that I have nothing to worry about while I am detained,” he demanded.
“You have my word.”
“And your word that, as my counsel, you’ll not reveal this conversation to Franco. He’d use this information against me.”
“You have my word, as counsel and as a friend, Sasha. How can you doubt it?”
“As easily as you doubt me,” Sasha said bitterly, turning back to his fate.
Chapter 3
The turmoil within the House of Lords reached new heights of the ridiculous yesterday afternoon when members of the radical Luddite Party stripped down to their Unmentionables when challenged to prove their Persons are as Anti-Welding as their Rhetoric. Opposing parties in various states of dishabille hurled vitriol at each other for an hour before the assembly disbanded. Only Lord Ll— of the Steam Party managed to say anything sensible at all when he begged the notoriously gouty Lord R— to put his shirt back on…
-from The London Post-Dispatch, October 1890
London, 1896
ALINE’S first moments on terra firma once more had begun auspiciously. The hellhounds, as if for once taking pity on her, had been relatively docile during the return crossing, though she’d been just as sick, and with no one to hold back her hair. But she’d refused to surrender her dignity altogether, despite the vomit in her hair, or to allow the hellhounds to have the upper hand.
Perhaps they’d sensed her desperation … or understood her threat to sell them to the Automaton Races for parts if they didn’t behave. Battered and dizzy, exhausted to the bone, she’d let the hellhounds nudge and prod her down the disembarkation ramp and onto the air docks when they’d arrived in the London port.
She could have sworn they were trying to keep her on her feet in their own unique and bullying way, and she’d almost decided to give them a reward when they arrived home.
But their good intentions did not last.
The moment they spotted Charlie with their mechanically superior eyes, their fur bristled and the growling began. They began to nudge and prod her away from her fiancé, who waited for her in the crowd on the air dock. She yanked them back in line, but they in turn yanked her off course again. She was forced to stop altogether and scold them, while Charlie had to come to her.
Ilya and Ikaterina had never taken to Charlie, who often met with her in Hyde Park when she was cajoled into walking them. After the second time the hellhounds had tried to snap one of Charlie’s hands off, Charlie had wisely foregone strolling with her when she had them in tow – or rather, when they had her in tow.
Needless to say, Charlie had never taken to them either. He eyed the dogs with distaste, and turned his attention to her. His expression did not change, and he made no move to embrace her. “My dear, air travel does not suit you at all.”
Her fragile spirits plummeted. Of course she looked – and most likely smelled – dreadful. But he didn’t have to point it out like the Professor would.
“I don’t know what we shall do for the honeymoon. How will you ever make it to Cairo?” he asked, shaking his head in dismay. “You know, I have already told my investor you shall be accompanying me. But I fear our plans may require some adjustment.”
Charlie was an archaeologist, and he’d agreed to take her on his next expedition to Egypt for their honeymoon. In theory, it sounded like a wonderful adventure. But now that she’d experienced first hand the effects of the airship on her constitution, she was a little concerned.
Charlie didn’t seem the type to hold a lady’s hair back while she cast up her accounts. He probably didn’t even realize ladies were capable of something so impolite as vomiting.
And she was worried about the air when she got there. Charlie had an Iron Necklace that protected him from the giant sandstorms that had recently plagued the Sahara, but she didn’t. Charlie had dismissed her concerns, explaining that if the natives there didn’t need a breathing device, then neither did she.
But she remained a bit skeptical. He never said how many of the natives actually survived the suffocating winds of a giant sandstorm. Nor had he likely noticed.
Charlie had many good qualities, but sometimes he could be oblivious to the details, especially if those details weren’t British.
But she was determined to go, determined to marry him. She’d not let him see her doubts. She patted his hand, which made Ilya growl. “I shall manage. The Professor suggested I take medicine before I travel. I just hadn’t the time to purchase any. I’m sure it will sort me out when the time comes.”
Charlie reached for Ikaterina’s lead, but thought better of it when she snarled at him. Instead, he picked up the valises the porters had left just beyond the reach of the hellhounds and started to escort them from the docks.
“So did you tell the Professor our news, my dear?”
She sighed. “Not yet. He left so abruptly I hadn’t the chance. You should have seen it, Charlie. He had a dirigible pick him up in the middle of the countryside! I think it was a pirate ship.”
Charlie looked at her as if she’d sprouted a second head. “You have a vivid imagination, my dear. A pirate ship indeed.”
Charlie also lacked imagination. She shrugged. “Well, I think it was.”
“You’ve been reading too much rubbish. Why, that sounds exactly like something that would happen in that dreadful serial the Post-Dispatch runs.”
She gritted her teeth, trying to tamp down her temper. Had Charlie always been so condescending? Or was she just overly sensitive from her exhaustion? Yet to insult her precious Chronicles was to insult her person.
Of course, Charlie didn’t know she was the author, but still. It wasn’t dreadful.
“Are you saying you don’t believe me, Charlie?” she asked quietly, pausing.
Miraculously, the dogs paused with her, but only because they probably knew she was quite close to arguing with their nemesis and wanted to savor it.
Charlie stopped and gave her a surprised look. “Of course I’m not saying that, my dear. If you say the Professor took a dirigible to Italy, then that is precisely what he did. I just wonder whether it was piloted by pirates.”
He made her sound like a child. “Well, there are pirate dirigibles, Charlie. If you read the newspapers, you’d know. They are becoming quite the nuisance over the Atlantic these days. And the man had a red handkerchief…” She stopped, hearing how ridiculous that last statement was going to sound. “Anyway,” she said, resuming their brisk pace out of the station, “I never said the Professor was going to Italy. Where would you get such a notion?”
It seemed Charlie paused for a few seconds behind her before rushing to catch up with her.
“I haven’t the foggiest, my dear. Perhaps it was because of the mention of the dirigible. Genoa is a notorious port for pirate dirigibles.”
She threw him a scolding look. “You see, you have been reading the newspapers! Though I hadn’t read that about Genoa. I don’t know why you would doubt my assessment of the Professor’s conveyance.”
“Perhaps I was just teasing you, my dear.”
Now the look that she sent him was one of incredulity. Charlie never teased her. She didn’t think he knew how.
She still didn’t think so.
“Well, if that was your attempt at teasing me, it was most unsuccessful.”
Charlie looked contrite. “So sorry, my dear. But we were speaking of the Professor. I proposed a month ago. It is difficult to understand why you’ve not told him yet.”
For some reason, Aline felt guilty. “I have tried.” Well, she’d tried ye
sterday.
“We need to begin to make plans for the wedding. Did he say when he’d be back?”
“Two weeks. After that, I’ll be free, Charlie. I’d marry you today, but I could hardly let poor Madame Kristeva handle these two mongrels all alone.”
“Two weeks, you say?” Charlie said, brightening a little. “Shall we go ahead and have the Banns read? That takes around two weeks, doesn’t it? We can be married right when the Professor returns.”
Aline smiled a little uneasily at Charlie’s enthusiasm, though she knew she had no reason to be apprehensive. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? “Perhaps we might wait,” she said. “I … want to do this properly, Charlie. And I can’t do that until I’m completely free of the Professor.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Charlie said with clear disappointment.
She patted his arm. “It’s just a fortnight, Charlie. I promise.”
THREE weeks later, Romanov's latest choice in bed partner was proving to be an exceptionally tenacious case. Aline had been putting off the task Romanov had set for her in regards to The Luclair for as long as possible, but the odious opera singer had stormed Romanov's townhouse, and Aline had no choice but to deal with her.
Aline could imagine why the Professor had chosen Luciana. The Luclair was breathtakingly beautiful. Her lustrous ebony curls were artfully arranged around a visage of alabaster skin and large, luminous sapphire eyes.
Even the Welded mantle that enhanced her voice, covering The Luclair from her neck to décolletage, had been done by a master. Its iron shell had been gilded in gold and set with jewels.
In short, Luciana made Aline feel like a dowdy girl in pinafores.
Luciana's beauty was tempered, however, by her inability to leave her characters behind when she was not on stage. To Aline's immense annoyance, the soprano was currently playing Desdemona in Otello, so when she read the letter from Romanov that Aline handed her at the beginning of the interview, she used the bad news therein as an excuse to practice for the night's performance.
Aline tried her best not to roll her eyes as the soprano dabbed invisible tears away with the edge of a lace handkerchief, playing the scorned lover to perfection. Aline half-expected a pit orchestra to rise up from the floor and Madame to break into an aria. She dearly hoped not.
Prince of Hearts (Elders and Welders Chronicles) Page 4