“Not mine,” she hastened to assure him. “None of ours. It’s . . . it was Daniel Pinkerton. He saved Sophie. Saved all of us, I suppose.” But he was, very obviously, no longer among their numbers.
Murcheson turned white and swayed on his feet, grasping for the banister post to help support himself. His wife rushed to his other side, though whether to offer or receive comfort it wasn’t clear.
“His mother. What will I say, how can I . . . I only wanted to keep you safe, Freddie. And keep the damn station open, though now that seems so unimportant.”
“It’s strangely beautiful,” her mother said. “I had wondered all these years what the appeal could be. I’m glad I saw at last, even once.”
“I sent for your mother as soon as I realized you were gone from your room. She’d just made it through the tunnel and up the lift on this side when the quake hit. In the nick of time.”
“It’s an uneasy place to be during an earthquake,” Freddie agreed.
“How would you—never mind, it’s better if I don’t know. The station is gone, at any rate. Oh, it’s still there, but we’ll never get the funding to repair the damage it took during this big quake. And for all we knew it had to be coming, for all our scheming and secrecy, we weren’t able to do much to prevent the damage. That failing will only increase the pressure to scrap Atlantis and the Glass Octopus.”
“Even if the station and the submersible fleet had been instrumental in breaking up one of the largest illegal opium operations in the world?” Phineas stepped forward, nodding pleasantly at Mrs. Murcheson, then more soberly at her husband.
“Good God! Is that—but it can’t be! You should have died from opium abuse long ago.”
She thought that disingenuous at best and started to protest, but Phineas ignored her father’s unconvincing interjection and continued.
“I can tell you everything, or rather Barnabas and I can. All the details you need to make the Agency out as the hero in all this. The two of us, along with the ladies. You’ll get the credit, and we’ll even return your submersible unharmed. Well, we’d have done that anyway. But the information won’t be free, sir. I suspect you can guess what our various prices might be.”
Freddie’s heart thumped uncomfortably in her chest as her father looked from one of them to the other, assessing their collective and individual determination. They would never be sterner of heart than they were at this moment, though, with Dan’s blood still staining their clothes and hands and his dying breath still fresh in their memories.
As if he sensed Murcheson might need convincing, Phineas began unwrapping the dark, dripping package he had carried with him from the warehouse. He let the contents roll from the cloth as it unfurled. The unsavory object landed with a wet smack on the polished marble floor, where it lay exuding the curiously enticing smell of very fresh salt fish.
“This was what killed your smuggler and his men. It’s a fascinating story, and if any of these things survived, the story may be far from over. Do you want to hear the first part?”
Her father nudged the tentacle with his toe. Though the section was only the yard or so that had been wrapped around Furneval’s body, then snagged against the water cage and been stuck there as the small squid attacked him, it was horrifying enough and hinted at the scale of the creature it had come from. Freddie’s mother eyed it with a different kind of speculation. She adored seafood.
“Yes, Lieutenant Smith-Grenville. You have my attention.”
• • •
FREDDIE HAD COUNTED her bath upon her last return home as the best in her life, despite the aftermath. This one was better, however. She didn’t know if she could ever soak long enough to wash the feel of Dan’s blood from herself, but she could enjoy the effort. She felt she’d more than earned a nice, hot, rose-scented bout of indulgence in one of Sophie’s large, comfortable tubs with the hot water piped in.
She had declined to stay at her family home once the long debriefing ended, and returned with Sophie and the Smith-Grenvilles to Wallingford House to spend the night, propriety be damned. Her father had explained, he had cajoled and wheedled and nearly returned to threats before he remembered how ineffective that tactic had proven to be. What he hadn’t done was the one thing that might have persuaded her to stay. He hadn’t apologized.
Her mother knew, but to her credit, she didn’t tip him off. When Freddie went to her room to gather a few things, her mother went with her.
“He won’t say it, you know. He never does. And in this case I believe he doesn’t regret what he did, only that you escaped. Stupid, to imagine you were still too frightened to attempt the drainpipe. He should have known. He thinks of you as a child yet, because you’ve never been away from him.”
“How do you stand him?” She wasn’t really attending to the answer, focused as she was on finding her hairbrush and fresh drawers and the like. Her mother took her time answering, though, giving the question more thought than Freddie had put into asking it.
“I still love him,” she said at last. “I don’t particularly want to, but I do. And he loves me, which I am vain enough to find endearing. He pursues what he does with passion and conviction, and if he too often believes the ends justify the means, well, at least it doesn’t often affect me directly. But I always know. Sometimes I know more than I like, and then I choose to leave him for a time until I feel less involved with his other passions. It also gives him time to miss me.”
“That’s why you stayed in France?”
“I really do despise England,” her mother reminded her. “You’ve grown very English yourself. And your young man, he’s the image of the young British gentleman. But he is beautiful enough, I suppose. The grandchildren will be attractive.”
She didn’t feel especially English at the moment. In fact, she felt that the entire Commonwealth could go straight to the Devil, beginning with all of Whitehall and the entire senior command staff of the Royal Navy. Perhaps her father too, since he had left off his attempts to convince her and gone straight back to Whitehall to try to convince those same damnable people that he deserved to get his precious station back. She wondered if anything would change if he succeeded, if he would study and learn to work with the squid, or destroy them as an inconvenience? Either way, she was done trying to intervene there.
“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself, Maman. Lord Smith-Grenville is a dear friend and I confess I’m fond of him. But he’ll be returning to the Dominions with his brother soon, I expect. I have things to do here. There can’t be any future in it.”
Her mother just smiled and helped her pack, but Freddie had cause to recall her words later, when Sophie came knocking on the bathroom door.
“Freddie? It’s me. May I come in for a moment?”
“Of course. It isn’t locked.”
Her friend entered the room looking fresh and dewy, clearly fresh from her own bath, wrapped in layers of frilled white linen. Her dark hair fell over her shoulder in a long plait, giving an impression of youthful innocence that Freddie hadn’t seen in many years.
“I wouldn’t have interrupted, but I’m too tired to stay up much longer and I wanted to talk before we went to bed.”
“Talk away. I’m nearly done anyway. I’m knackered too.”
Sophie frowned ever so slightly at the common turn of phrase, then shrugged it off. “I meant it when I invited you to stay. I wanted you to know that. And I suppose you still may for a time. I can keep a staff here in London, and I’ve no plans to sell the house.”
“But?” Freddie urged with a sinking feeling. Not more change. Anything but more change.
“But . . . when the Smith-Grenvilles leave for New York, I’m going with them. I’ve decided. There’s nothing for me here anymore, your own dear self excepted, and listening to them talk about the Dominions has made me long to see for myself. And to really do something useful. They’ve s
poken of returning to California to help the remaining workers from Orm’s ranch find their families or perhaps find new homes. I could help, I could . . . start again. In a new place, as a new person.”
Freddie rather liked the person Sophie was already, but she knew what her friend meant.
“That does sound like heaven.”
“Do you really think so? Oh, I hoped you would. Because Freddie—oh, I know I should let Barnabas be the one to say it, because I know he wants to, but I can’t help it. I’m selfish and I’m asking you for myself, because I worry you’ll say no to him just to be contrary. Will you come with us? Please say you will!”
• • •
BARNABAS FOUND HER the next day in Sophie’s coach yard, packing her tools from the pony trap carefully into a small trunk. She was wearing a blue and white striped morning gown to do this, and the juxtaposition of the dainty dress and the heavy tools gladdened his heart for reasons he was at a loss to name.
“I missed you at breakfast.” He tried not to pout as he said it but thought he was probably not too successful.
“I was still asleep.”
“Sophie said she told you.”
“I was glad she did. Glad it wasn’t you who asked, I mean.” She fitted a set of long pliers next to a spool of copper wire, jiggling the trunk’s contents to settle them.
Barnabas’s world shifted under his feet, for a moment more terrifying than any earthquake. “Well, I . . . don’t know what to say, then.”
Freddie looked up over her shoulder at him, then chuckled as she rose from where she’d been kneeling over the tools. “Silly.”
“Am I?” He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or insulted, but a wind of hope blew over his heated, frazzled mind.
“Suppose you had asked me. It would have been tantamount to a proposal, wouldn’t it? I would have been following you to your home, or off to California. Going for you as much as for myself.”
“That would have been bad?”
“No. But it wouldn’t have been the same decision to make. This way is better. I’m going on an adventure with a friend. With friends. It could lead to anything, but at least I would start off on the right foot.”
He gazed at the trunk, pretending an interest in the tools so he wouldn’t have to meet her eyes. “You . . . you are going, though? You told her yes?”
Freddie laid a hand on his arm, probably smudging his coat with tool grease. He didn’t care.
“Silly,” she said again, squeezing gently. “Of course I’m going. Don’t they need tinkers in the Dominions as well as they do here?”
“The guild has too much power there. At least in New York. You’d have to become a makesmith to work as one there. I don’t know about California.”
“Barnabas, are you sulking?”
He wasn’t. Well, maybe a little. “If I had asked, would you have said yes?”
“Had you planned to ask?”
“Yes.” As soon as he’d mustered sufficient nerve.
“Then I probably would have said yes.”
She sounded cagey, and that emboldened him to slip his arm around her waist and pull her closer. “Probably?”
After a moment of musing, she replied, “Most likely.”
He caught her saucy mouth under his, savoring her taste and the freedom of kissing her where anyone might see them.
When he finally let her go, her eyes were closed, and a dreamy smile curved her kiss-reddened lips. “All right. I almost certainly would have said yes. Especially if you’d phrased the offer that eloquently.” Opening her eyes, she lifted on her toes and awarded him another brief kiss before returning to her task. “But I’m still glad Sophie asked first.”
“Do your parents know? Are they willing to fund your adventure?” He wasn’t above offering to pay her way, though he knew without a doubt she would refuse that. Even Freddie had that much conventionality left in her.
“I’ve told them I’m going with Sophie. Another reason I’m glad she was the one who asked. For some reason they still think she’s a respectable chaperone. Or perhaps it’s just Father’s guilt about Dan. In any case it’s time I stopped looking for their permission or accepting their financial support. I’m an adult, and I have money of my own. I did sleep through breakfast, but after that I paid a visit to the jeweler who reset my diamonds. He knew their provenance, so he was surprised I wanted to sell them but was confident they were mine to sell. He gave me a decent price. I think he was too startled to haggle well. That, and he also took a very nice silver-backed hairbrush, though he was less generous about that. And then there’s the money I’d saved from tinkering, of course. I’ve enough to pay for my passage and other expenses for quite some time, as long as I’m not too extravagant.” She selected a claw hammer from the remaining tools she’d laid out and found a place for it in the nearly full trunk. “And there’s always the chance I’ll find some work to help pay my way. Small jobs, in and out. I’m good at avoiding guild attention.”
Barnabas crouched beside her and anticipated her next selection, passing her the monkey wrench he’d fallen asleep with on that first mad midnight ride. It seemed a lifetime ago, looking back on all that had happened since. How amazing it was that they still had a lifetime before them.
“There’s also the possibility you might . . . join forces with somebody from the Dominions. Do something official to pool your resources, something like that. Somebody you could have adventures with, if you didn’t mind him being a little clumsy at times.”
“Someone who would eventually become an earl and have to be tied down to an estate?”
He shrugged. “My father’s healthy enough for now. And anyway, I’ve been rethinking what all that means. Considering how the Hardisons manage their estate and business together, I’m starting to realize one is only as bound by expectations and conventions as one chooses to be. I’ll be an earl. That means responsibility, yes, but also the means to do what I damn well please. Including having a makesmith countess if I so choose.”
“Supposing you met such a woman.”
“Yes, just supposing.” He nodded as somberly as he could manage.
Freddie giggled, breaking the pretense, and leaned over to press a quick kiss to his cheek, a moment of soft sweetness and the mingled fragrances of floral eau de cologne and engine grease. “We’ll have plenty of time on the ship to decide on the particulars. As long as we begin with the adventures. Who knows, perhaps I’ll tire of that after a time and be happy to settle down to something more conventional.”
Barnabas laughed aloud, and she joined him.
“Phin assumed he and I could share a cabin on the trip, to save expenses,” he mentioned, as if in passing, once they could speak again. “I told him I’d rather bunk alone, though.”
She blushed a charming shade of pink, which Barnabas found all the more charming because he knew she was very far from a being a maiden or feeling shame. No, it was a flush of remembered heat, inappropriate to a sunlit coach yard where servants might saunter by at any moment. A pink that said she was thinking of all the things they might find to occupy their time in a ship’s cabin together. He wondered if ship captains charged for their wedding-officiant services, and wished he’d thought to ask his friend Matthew, who’d had cause to resort to that service on his recent voyage.
“That was probably a wise decision,” Freddie said softly, curling her hand around the wrench handle in a manner Barnabas found almost painfully suggestive. He wanted to kiss her again, to do a million lascivious things to her and have her do the same to him. But he could be patient, now that he knew they had a lifetime.
“Probably?”
She giggled again, a bright sound for a sunny day. “Likely.”
“It’s certainly, or nothing. I have my pride, Miss Murcheson.”
When she turned the full force of her smile on him, it was almost t
oo much to bear. “You can keep your pride, Lord Smith-Grenville. I know I already have your heart.”
“And I have yours.”
“Most certainly.”
Her heart, and the rest of their lives. He couldn’t imagine a better future than that.
Gilded Lily Page 27