An ache began low in her belly, a fire instantly stoked to life. She leaned into him, suddenly needing the pressure of his body like she needed air, and rested her head against his strong shoulder.
The lamp on her desk spilled light into the room, pulling the yellows and gold from the Turkish carpet, but it could not dispel the emptiness of the space. The dresser was bare, the wardrobe door standing open, the bookcase cleared of all her volumes. She had already left. This was just the denouement.
Tears coursed down her face freely now. “Tobias.”
His hand pressed against her back, holding her to him. “I love you.”
Evelina felt her body go limp. She didn’t move a muscle, but felt like an automaton whose engine had just died. Then a wave of heat surged up from her feet, as if life suddenly returned in a glorious, delirious rush. He loves me! It was real. She’d heard it in his voice.
She raised her head to look at him. His eyes, too, were bright with tears, but he blinked them away. He no longer looked like an angel, just a weary, fallen man. She liked this version of him better. She could love him this way, not just adore him as a golden idol.
His mouth worked a moment before he spoke. “Look, things are at sixes and sevens. You might have to leave for a while, and I have to put things to rights. Keating has to be appeased somehow if we’re going to keep going. I have to try, especially for Imogen and Poppy.”
As always, she dove for the difficult question. “How?”
“I’ll put my talents at the beck and call of Jasper Keating. I know it’s dealing with the devil, but it’s up to me to help make this thing blow over. If I do a good job, we need never worry about money.”
About my pitiful dowry, you mean. “What about your own work? Whatever Magnus wanted to show you? Is there something there you could make your own?”
“He had some sort of a master plan he wanted me and some friends of mine to work on. He said he needed makers and that there was a part he was trying to get.”
The airship. Magnus would need talented makers to put it together, but he had also needed Athena’s Casket. She couldn’t imagine the mayhem the doctor would have caused if he had possessed such a powerful weapon.
Tobias closed his eyes. “But in the meantime, he had built an automaton. He meant to test us with it. Incredibly beautiful, but it was—enchanted somehow. Maybe that was the test, to see if we would balk at the magic. I did.” He visibly shuddered, wiping his face with one hand. “I never understood all the prattle about herbwives and sorcerers, but I understand it now. Evil stuff. Vile. No wonder the steam barons do everything they can to repress it. The Gold King is right about that much.”
Evelina caught her breath, unable to speak, and her joy fluttered to earth, a moth with one wing. He is afraid of magic. Not only that, but she heard the subtle shift behind the words. Magnus had been his savior before. Now it was the Gold King. He doesn’t know how to save himself. For all his talk about independence, he needs a stronger man to follow and they’re all monsters.
She took a step back, but Tobias caught her hands, keeping her close. “Magnus is done. He’s not a problem anymore.” He gazed down at their clasped hands. “All the mysteries are solved.”
But they weren’t, not by a long shot. Evelina’s brain suddenly skittered sideways, her fingers twitching in his. He released her hands. “What is it?” he asked.
“I understand now.” She took a step back, folding her arms. She had figured out the murders. She thought of Grace standing in the cloakroom with her candle and her petticoat, unaware that she was minutes from her doom. “Grace was waiting for your father to meet her and collect the gold she was carrying. The killer probably came on her by accident that night.”
Tobias looked sick and confused. “The killer? You mean my father?”
“No, it wasn’t your father.” Pieces of evidence clicked into place. “Bigelow found Lord Bancroft in the library when he went to raise the alarm. Your father had fallen asleep after drinking too much. He didn’t murder the grooms, either. It was Magnus looking for the automatons, first in the house, then on the road. He’d somehow slipped into the house. That had to be him who passed me in the hall.” And as a sorcerer, it would be no trouble to cloak his presence from sight. Excited, she went on. “The only reason his plan failed is that your father realized he was in London and moved the trunks before he got there. Magnus probably came in the side door, but when he tried to leave, Grace was there.”
Tobias’s mouth drifted open, horror mounting on his face. He snapped it shut.
Realization shocked her. “You thought your father killed Grace, didn’t you?” Memory surged. She could see him putting the pieces together during the dinner when her uncle was shot, just before he left the room.
Her face went cold, a painful ache growing in her chest. Her feet backed away from him, almost by themselves. Tobias was known as a crack shot. He had been the first to leave the dinner table. Their eyes met, each reading the other perfectly. In that moment, she saw something in him change. The man who had just confessed his love vanished in a storm of fear. He was terrified of what she might know.
Evelina’s mouth went dry. You tried to kill my uncle. You thought he had figured out your father was guilty, so you tried to kill him before he could say anything—and now you know that I’ve guessed as much.
But if she said it out loud, was he going to let her go? The unspoken dialogue between them stretched on, the fear on his face hardening to something else. There were moments when she was certain Tobias loved her, but there were also many when she was glad she hadn’t poured out every ounce of her soul. He fears magic. He feared my uncle. He would rather lash out than face the consequences of the truth. Not a comforting train of thought.
That was the difference between them, and there was no chance for either of them to grow and change now. This affair cuts love’s throat as surely as it did poor Grace’s.
And this man—Tobias—had tried to kill Uncle Sherlock. She looked away, trying to hide the mounting horror she felt. I wouldn’t have believed it of him.
Tobias watched her reaction, seeming to catalogue every nuance. His mouth twisted with bitterness. “My father isn’t a murderer? I’m so relieved.”
Yes, he knew he had made a mistake.
She felt a flash of pity, but it was mixed with fear. “Your father made a terrible mistake and things are going to change for your family. You can’t preserve things the way they are. If you do that, you let Keating pin you like a specimen in a shadow box.”
Tobias curled his fingers into fists. “I will protect the people I love.”
You’ll pick up a gun and start shooting. “At what cost to you? To them?”
He gave her a weary look. “I don’t know, Evelina. My mother has already collapsed. I’ll do whatever is required of me.”
“How far will you go?” They both knew she meant with her.
He gave her a dark look. “If I think there is a threat, I will take care of it.” Then he wavered, a little of the hardness falling from his expression. “I can’t be the man either of us wants anymore. And there’s too much between us now.”
“You said you loved me a moment ago.” But the words were pointless. He was right. You shot my uncle. That was bad enough. What was worse was that until she’d figured out the truth, he’d been willing to live with that secret every time he kissed her.
Tobias Roth was a coward and a liar. I was right. I can’t afford him.
She wet her lips, at a loss for anything else to say. There was one more mystery solved, for whatever good it did her. “I need to leave. My uncle is waiting for me.”
There was a tense moment. She had his secret. What was he going to do now?
“Then you had better go,” he said at last. There was no warmth in his voice now, as if he had made some final decision to put his fate in her hands.
Evelina didn’t want anything from him, least of all that.
She had finished packing. She
picked up her bag. One foot shakily before the other, she made for the door.
“Evelina.”
“Your secrets are safe,” she said in a small voice.
“One thing you should know.”
She turned, already sure it would be a mistake. “What?”
His eyes were hollow with dread and sadness, but there was ice there, too. “My father asked me to seduce you.”
She flinched, as if his words were slender, deadly blades. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Everything I said.” He sucked in a breath, his lips pressed together so hard they turned white. “Utterly false. Always.”
Pain sliced her, bringing a flush of shame to her cheeks. She knew he was lying, lashing out through his hurt. Or maybe he was doing what he believed he had to, freeing both of them so he could save the family fortune.
He still wounded the most tender part of her soul.
“If that’s how you want it,” she whispered.
“It’s better to make a clean end, don’t you think?” His voice was as expressionless as lead.
Without a word, Evelina turned on her heel and walked away. She meant to stop and say good-bye to Imogen, but her feet wouldn’t slow as she marched down the stairs. She couldn’t face anyone right then.
Tears ached behind her eyes, waiting for the least excuse to fall, but she held them in. She was a lady. She had been presented to the queen. She was made of finer steel than Tobias Roth could shatter.
But defiance soured to uneasiness in the time it took to reach the door of Hilliard House. Tobias was willing to kill. She knew his secrets.
It didn’t take a Holmes to add up that equation. There was no question of belonging here now.
Chapter Forty-four
Evelina was eager to be gone, and Lord Bancroft was eager for her to go. His own carriage took her to Baker Street, where she would stop for the night before returning to her grandmother in the morning.
She found her uncle was waiting up for her, browsing his books of chemistry. Dr. Watson wasn’t there, apparently returned at last to the long-suffering Mrs. W.
“Uncle? I thought you would have retired for the night.”
He raised a hand. “Please, I have had enough coddling from Mrs. Hudson and the good doctor. No more.”
She didn’t care. He looked awful. “Why are you still up?”
He settled against the cushions of the chair, his expression defensive. “I was merely reviewing the case in my mind. There is only one outstanding question.”
She sat down wearily. “What is that?”
“The voices you heard at eleven o’clock the night of the murder.”
“It could have been anyone,” Evelina replied. “Does it matter?”
“Not necessarily.” He snapped the book shut. “It’s merely a species of maggot that will not leave my mind. I have expected all along to discover a witness who saw Dr. Magnus the night of the murder. The police sought reports of a lone man and found nothing. But there were many reports of a tall, dark man in company with a woman. Perhaps he had an accomplice? Did you not find a female footprint by Grace Child’s body?”
“I did,” she said sitting up straight. She remembered the night Magnus returned Bird, when she was talking to Inspector Lestrade. What was it Bird had told her? The hedge deva said the man and his shadow came here more than once.
Tobias and Grace weren’t the first couple outside the side door that night. She had utterly forgotten. “I’m an idiot. There was a witness—no one of importance,” she said quickly in response to her uncle’s questioning look. “There was another couple outside the door. I suppose it was their voices I heard.”
“Then who were they?” Holmes asked. “Was Magnus working with someone?”
“Every time I saw the doctor, he was alone.”
“No wife or lover? No one to play the accomplice in skirts?”
“No. None. Nick said he lived alone, without even servants. And the witness who saw the couple described them as a man and his shadow. Apparently they’d been there more than once.”
“If they were the culprits who murdered Grace and stole the automatons, they were no doubt getting the lay of the land. But a shadow? Are we dealing with doppelgangers now? Crazed shadow-men with blades?” Her uncle grimaced.
“I feel like I’ve been chasing shadows.” Evelina wrinkled her brow, speaking mostly in jest. “Is that our second murderer? A ghost with a blade?”
“How utterly distasteful. Not to mention preposterous. If maniacal spirits are the order of the day, I am retiring. I would rather believe Magnus wielded the knife himself.”
Evelina wanted to say something clever to that, but weariness left nothing but a blank in her brain. “He did, didn’t he?”
“It seems the likeliest answer, but the evidence is all circumstantial. There is nothing that would hold up before a judge.”
That left a queasy feeling in her stomach. She wanted certainty, but Holmes wouldn’t give it to her just for the sake of comfort. “Before you were shot, you said there were two unknowns. One was Harriman. Was the other this mysterious woman?”
“Perhaps. Recall also our two grooms. There was plenty of time for our killer to leave Hilliard House and catch up with them, but would one person have the strength to subdue two burly men?”
“There has to have been an accomplice,” she said softly.
“Yes. And we may never know who that was, beyond the suggestion that it might have been a woman. I have, of course, apprised Lestrade of the facts. If there is a hint of new information, I will follow it up.”
She shuddered, remembering Grace’s slashed throat. At least Magnus was gone. “I assumed somehow this would all be resolved.”
“You mean, when I arrived I would wave the stem of my pipe and all would become clear?” Holmes looked uncharacteristically sympathetic and rather amused. “You flatter me.”
“But how will Grace get justice?”
“That is the sad truth of crime. She may not—but I will do my best to see to it that she does. Not all cases are solved overnight.”
Evelina bowed her head. “I had no idea detecting took such stamina.”
Her uncle snorted. “When Watson writes his stories he skips over the dull bits. Crime solving takes mind-numbing patience and rather a lot of hard work.”
“So I discovered.” She shifted wearily in her chair. “I finally have a true appreciation for what you do.” And right now, she hoped to never need investigate another case. Detection sounded romantic and interesting on paper, but the real thing involved death and broken hearts.
Another thought inserted itself, seemingly at random. She spoke before thinking. “None of this would have any connection to this Baskerville business, would it?”
“No,” Holmes said flatly, making her wish she’d held her tongue. “Various players in this piece have connections to the rebels and others I think wish they had, but the murder of the serving girl was an entirely different tragedy.”
Evelina digested that and wondered why the topic made him so prickly. “Then you know who has rebel sympathies?”
“I’m speculating. Politics is Mycroft’s area of expertise, not mine. I prefer pursuits based on some form of logic. Do you perceive any other loose ends in the case?” Holmes asked, clearly changing the subject.
Annoyed by his abruptness, Evelina couldn’t help being blunt. “Tobias shot you.”
“I know.”
Of course he did, the wretch. “You might have mentioned it.”
“I thought it best if you figured that out for yourself. You bore the young man some affection.”
Evelina lifted her hands, then dropped them to her sides in a gesture of sheer exasperation. “I did. Both him and Nick. I wanted them to be innocent.”
“Neither of them killed the maid.”
“Tobias turned killer and Nick turned thief,” her voice rose with fury. “Are all young men so hopelessly thick?”
Sherlock rais
ed his eyebrows. “They are both in love with you and both are pushed into impossible corners. Tobias is desperately struggling to keep his family from ruin. An admirable goal, although I question his methods.”
“By killing you?”
“He isn’t the first who tried.” Her uncle gave a wry smile. “And your Niccolo is a bright young man with absolutely no legal method for betterment open to him. How is he ever to win your hand?”
All the dammed-up tears inside her started to fall. “I love them both. I ruined their lives.”
“That is rather a dramatic assertion, and a rather egotistical one. I will grant you love is rarely convenient. I’m told that’s part of its charm.” With a vaguely disgusted look, Holmes produced a pocket handkerchief and passed it over.
Evelina sniffed, and there was nothing dainty about it. “I thought for a moment, right when I was being presented, that somehow my future would be guaranteed. That wasn’t true.”
“That’s why I never approved of the presentation scheme. It wasn’t my idea, you know.”
She blinked at him. “It wasn’t?”
“It was Keating’s, and a waste of time. Empty ceremony was never going to contribute one iota to your ultimate happiness. You and I are sadly alike.”
She had nothing to say to that.
Holmes waved a dismissive hand. “Perhaps by the time you graduate from your women’s college, Tobias will be a steam baron in his own right and Niccolo will rule the criminal underworld. Then we can reassess your future plans.”
“You aren’t going to turn them over to Inspector Lestrade?”
“Heavens, no. This is far too interesting. Now go to bed.”
Evelina obeyed, moving toward the stairs slowly. Mrs. Hudson stopped her on the stairs, handing her an envelope.
A Study in Silks tba-1 Page 54