by C. L. Polk
Avia sucked in a breath. “That’s not right.”
“What isn’t?” I asked.
“The door wasn’t locked. I locked it. I always lock it.” She pushed the door lever and opened the door, her left hand twisting the gaslight to light up a hallway framed by hanging photographs.
The hem of my cloak brushed a tidy line of shoes that stubbed their toes on the green-painted baseboards. I slipped the fur from my shoulders, twisting to hang it on the one bare hook sunk into the wall. Coats draped shoulder to shoulder just above the shoes; a high shelf carried water-stained hatboxes. Two doors stood closed in the middle of the hall, and Avia passed them on the way to the room at the open end.
I followed her into a space that was a little smaller than my bedroom. A narrow iron bed crowded into one corner. A desk with a tall, heavy typewriter sat shoved into the other, squeezed by wardrobes standing in a row. A scarred wooden table with mismatched chairs took up the middle, standing on a carpet with worn patches.
Avia pulled out a wooden chair for me. I sat, but Avia turned in a slow circle, looking over her domain with a troubled crease between her brows.
“Something’s not right.”
“I don’t understand.”
She held up her hand, and I quieted. She opened all her wardrobes and pulled out a satin-covered box from under the hems of skirts and frocks. She set it on the table and opened it.
A gold-and-topaz parure sparkled in the gaslight. The work was exquisite, delicate filigree and brilliant-cut gems, carefully matched to progress from pale golden brown to a rich sienna. Avia touched each piece, but if anything, her frown deepened.
“All there.” She closed the box and put it back. She turned to a filing cabinet next, picking up cameras of various sizes and complexity. “All fine.”
“What are you doing?”
“Someone was in here while I was at the ball,” Avia said. “But my jewels are still there, my cameras are fine, and they’re the most valuable things I own.”
“Are you sure someone was here?” I asked. “If they didn’t take your valuables, what could they have wanted?”
“I locked the door. I know I did.” She took out her keys, but stopped, shoulders rising as she regarded a filing cabinet. She reached out, and the scrape of the opening drawer made her shake. “I locked that, too.”
And now it was unlocked. I fought a shudder and waited for her to sort through her files. She closed the drawer. “It’s empty. Blast it to pieces.”
“What’s gone?”
“Everything. My research. Nick’s manuscript,” she said. The drawer slammed shut; another one opened. She hunched over a drawer that leaked the gassy smell of barrel-printing ink and the celluloid smell of film negatives. “My files are gone.”
“What was in the files?”
“The research I was going to show you,” Avia said. “It’s all gone.” She bumped the drawer with her hip and opened her desk drawers, searching. “My case notebook is gone too. My notepad—it’s all missing.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Someone came in here and nicked everything. They took all my research, every photo I had on file … my expense reports, my bank quarterlies, everything. Including the article file I was going to hand in come morning—good news for you, I suppose.”
I kept silent as she lifted the cover off her typewriter and froze. She sucked in a trembling gasp. I rose from my chair and went to her side, peering down at the silvery curve of the typewriter’s key-arms. Shiny posts where the typewriter bobbins should have been were glazed with ink.
“They even took your typewriter ribbon?”
She dropped the cover and shook. “It’s just like Nick. They took everything after they killed him—every scrap of paper, all his notebooks, and his typewriter ribbon.”
I pulled her away. “We have to report it.”
Avia laughed. “As if the police would do anything.”
“I think they can be gently reminded of their duty by the Chancellor of Aeland, don’t you?”
She shrugged and hugged herself. “Who did this, Grace? Your father is locked in the Tower of Sighs.”
“I know. But he did this.” How, though?
“I have ink on my hands.” Avia turned away, disappearing down the hall. She pushed open a door, and a clean, lemony smell wafted out—the smell of scrupulously clean lavatories wiped down with Mrs. Sparkle’s Cleaning Elixir. Under that, the scent of swimming pools, their water treated to kill germs.
Avia slammed the door shut and returned to me, her face white with terror. I stepped forward, ready to catch her, she was so pale. “What is it?”
She heaved in a strangled breath. “We have to leave. Now.”
She pulled my cloak off the hook and thrust it at me. I swept it around my shoulders, but she didn’t spare a moment. She grabbed my hand and pulled me out of her apartment, clattering down the stairs.
“Why are we running?”
Avia used her grip on the handrail to haul herself around the landing. “Booby trap,” she said, leaping over the last three steps to thump down to the next curve. “They trapped my toilet.”
“What?”
“Hurry,” Avia said. “We need the police. Everyone in the building is in danger.”
* * *
We shivered in my sled while emergency crews took care of the trap. Avia explained it between chattering teeth. Bleach in the tank, Mrs. Sparkles in the bowl. The gradual trickle would fill the bathing chamber with deadly toxic gas, and when the victim opened the door—
I rubbed her back as she broke into racking coughs. “We should take you to a doctor.”
Avia shook her head. “It’s purely psychological. The firefighters said there hadn’t been much mixing. We probably missed my murderer by minutes.”
Minutes. I shuddered to think of it. If I hadn’t chased after Avia, if I hadn’t delayed her progress home, she could have opened the door to a burglar who did murder on the side. I clamped my teeth together and resisted ordering the carriage back to the palace and climbing the hundred and eighty steps to my father’s cell so I could—
What? What could I do? Accuse him of committing theft and attempted murder when he was locked in the highest cell in Aeland? How did he give the order? And to whom?
An image of the Prince sneering as he spoke of Avia Jessup crowded my mind. Would he have done such a thing?
He was already in my view as a suspect in Sevitii’s murder. His motive to kill Avia and suppress her discoveries was clear as masterwork glass. Father read every page of both papers, taking his scrupulous notes. He could have decided that Avia’s articles meant trouble. He could have told Severin, and Severin could have given the order when he saw Avia at the ball.
I tried to shake the thought away. The building was now completely evacuated. Tenants milled outside in the cold, their coats buttoned over sleep clothes. Yellow ribbons hung from plenty of sleeves, and the Hensley sled got plenty of sidelong looks. Masked firefighters and police opened the tenement windows wide, freshening the tainted air. I caught a breeze and directed it into the windows, hoping to speed the cleansing so these people could get back into their beds. The curtains billowed as clean air blew into their homes, but I couldn’t banish the notion of the Prince as my father’s instrument.
It put a new cast on Sevitii’s murder—instead of looking for a reason why the Prince would want Sevitii dead, I had to look at the reasons why Father would desire that end. And keep Avia safe from further attempts on her life.
Would he be satisfied with stealing her research? I didn’t think so. Research could be duplicated.
“He took your story,” I said. “What will you do?”
“I can get in early, recollect my research on APL. That’s what you want me to tell first, right?”
“I think so. I need people to understand the motivation before everything else.”
Avia coughed again. “I’ll do my best to spare you.”
&nbs
p; “No,” I said. “Father and Grandpa Miles were front and center in that scheme. The shares have come down to me.”
“At least give me a statement saying you regret it.” Avia fished a notebook and pen out of her jacket. “I can do that much.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Say, ‘The incorporation of Aeland Power and Lights and its subsequent portrayal, designed to fool the people into assuming it was a Crown corporation, is one of the greatest deceptions—no, frauds—played on Aelander’s citizens. I shall ask that an investigative committee take on the task of detailing this shameful deception and make recommendations to end this monopoly with haste.’”
“That’s going to singe the page.” Avia put the notepad away and watched her neighbors shivering in the street. “You think he was willing to hurt all these people, just to get to me?”
“Maybe you should hide,” I said, and Avia laughed softly.
“I mean to do exactly that. As soon as I figure out where to go.”
“You’ll come with me to Hensley House,” I said. “It’s not exactly a fortress, but—”
A woman in a rubberized fire suit pulled an insectoid-looking gas mask off her face and approached the sled. “We’re clearing everyone to go inside. The police want a statement, but I disposed of the tainted water myself. Your apartment is safe.”
“Thank you,” Avia said. “I don’t know how I’ll make it up to the neighbors.”
“If you had waited an hour before opening the lav door you would have died—and not painlessly, either. The children on your floor would have had breathing problems for the rest of their lives. You and they were lucky,” the firefighter said. The wind tossed tendrils of her nut-brown hair about, and she looked back at the tenement. “This isn’t what you want to hear, but we found multiple fire safety violations. We have to report them.”
Avia groaned. “So I just got everyone evicted, too. That’s grand, just grand.”
“Landlord might pay,” the firefighter said. “If fixing the code violations is cheaper than the fines. And with the violations on record, he can’t collect insurance if it burns. That’s the law.”
“Simpson!” someone shouted, and our firefighter turned her head.
“We’re on our way out. You were lucky,” she said, already moving off.
“He’ll raise the rent to absorb the cost,” Avia said, looking glum. “I don’t have any friends in this building right now.”
“It’s not your fault someone tried to kill you, but I understand,” I said. “Let’s take William upstairs to collect some things for your stay.”
Avia shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You can pick your own guest room, or stay in the dower house—”
“You think your father was behind this,” Avia said. “Your staff served him for a long time. How certain is it that all their loyalties have transferred to you?”
My heart sank. “They might not even believe loyalty to him and to me are separate things. But it’s the middle of the night. Where can you go?”
Avia shrugged. “Princess Mary’s Refuge for Women might have a bed.”
“That’s an itinerant shelter.”
“Yes. But it’s just on the next block.”
“No. I won’t let you sleep on a pallet on the floor. There has to be something we can do.”
I knew of a perfectly good townhouse in Halston Circle. Tristan would help, but I couldn’t ask him until morning. “I have an idea. But I can’t arrange it until tomorrow. You can come to Hensley House with me tonight. You’ll stay in my bedchamber. No one will try to harm you if we’re together every moment.”
Avia pressed her lips together, her gaze darting away. “You want me to spend the night with you in your bed?”
Oh. Heat flooded my cheeks. “I don’t mean to imply that we would—”
She raised her kid-gloved finger and laid it on my lips. I hushed. “I would be pleased to share your bed.” She grinned at my widening eyes. “Innocently, of course.”
She lifted her finger from my mouth. “Of course. There was never any question of—”
“Wasn’t there?” Avia asked, then slid across the sled’s bench seat, nodding to William as he followed her inside.
SIXTEEN
A Better Bargain Than Marriage
Edith’s warm fingertips feathered over the back of my neck, and the clasp of my diamond necklace came free, the skin-warm settings sliding along my collarbone. Behind me came the soft thump of a patent-leather dancing pump landing on the carpet, then silence as Jane undressed Avia, our backs turned for the sake of privacy.
Cool air touched my spine as Edith slipped satin-covered buttons out of their loops and the back of the gown opened. One strap slid off my shoulder, tickling my pebbled skin. I set my gaze on the fire dancing in the grate, its crackling burning crowding out anything I might have heard—the whisper of Avia’s coat as she pulled her arms free, the clink of her silver cuff links landing in a wooden tray, a sigh as the stiff boiled shirt front and tall collar came away.
Edith slid the gown to the floor. I stepped out of it and moved into the glow of the fire, my skin heating from its radiance.
“Are you cold?” Jane asked Avia. “You’re shivering.”
A pause. “It’s bearable.”
“There are plenty of pans between the covers,” Edith said. “My lady likes a warm bed and cool air.”
She pinched the clasps holding my brassiere and it fell away. Next she popped the silk-cashmere gown that had been warming next to the fire over my head. I caught the hem and held it up by my hips as Edith unclipped my stockings. I sat on the edge of the bed to let her peel the delicate things off my legs and wiggled my bare toes while she rolled them up and slid them inside a protective pouch.
Behind me, the bed shifted as Avia sat on the opposite edge, and my heart pounded.
Jane spoke again. “Please be careful with the hem, Miss Jessup.”
“I will,” Avia promised. “Thank you, Jane. I think we can both turn around now, can’t we?”
Her weight eased off the mattress. I stood and let the nightgown fall to my ankles. “Yes.”
But I turned only as far as the small table where a pot and two handleless cups waited, filled with a sleeping tisane. I picked up mine, cradling the fragile vessel in my hand.
Avia had a handful of her borrowed nightgown rucked up so she could move without stepping on the hem. “You’re a giant,” Avia said. “Look at this.”
She paused next to the foot of the bed and let go. The hem of the gown landed on the carpet, piling in little folds over her scarlet-painted toenails. Her face without cosmetics was pink in the cheeks and around her eyelids, her mouth rosy instead of red.
She picked up the hem again and came closer. “It’s like a sleepover party, from when we were young.”
I’d never had one of those. I summoned the will to smile. “It is rather like that, isn’t it?”
Behind us, Edith and Jane slid warming pans out from between the mattress and the bedding. I gave Avia the other teacup, and she drank the tisane like medicine, getting it over with as quickly as possible. She poured herself another, and it disappeared just as quickly.
“Jessup Good Night Blend,” she said.
“It is.” I drained my cup and poured another. “A good night’s sleep—”
“That’s restful and deep,” Avia finished. “I wrote that jingle. I was ten. I was a fiend for things that rhymed.”
Edith carried a stack of warming pans as she bobbed her knee to me. “Will you need anything else, my lady?”
“That is everything. Thank you, Edith. I’ll need a wake-up at five.”
“Very good, my lady. Sleep well and dream sweetly.”
Avia echoed my thanks to Jane, and they opened the door to my chamber. One of the footmen stood outside my door, guarding Avia from the rest of my household.
I stole a glance at Avia, but she was looking at the painting on the wall depicting our formal ga
rdens in high bloom. She noticed my attention and gave me a smile and a shrug. “Should we retire?”
I nodded and swallowed the last of my tisane. Avia gathered up the front of her gown and circled to the side of the bed farthest from the door. We spent some moments sliding under the warm covers and twisting about, getting into a comfortable posture for sleeping. When the mattress stilled, I lay on my side facing the center of the bed, and so did Avia, her hands tucked under her chin.
“Just like a sleepover,” she said. Her smile caught the starlight on her cheek. “I think the tradition is to talk about the boys we like.”
“I’m already failing tradition,” I said.
“Are there no boys you like? Poor boys.” Avia tugged her pillow down and relaxed into it. “Girls?”
I swallowed. “There’s one,” I said. “What about you?”
Avia grinned into her pillow. “One.”
I lifted my head. “Did you tell her?”
“I think she knows,” Avia said. “Don’t you?”
It stole my breath. I tried to find something to say, something appropriate. “Yes,” I said. “I think she knows.”
She reached out and caressed my hand with light fingers. “It’s not as simple as that, is it?”
“Is it ever?” I asked. “Sometimes I wish … It’s foolish.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“When I found Miles, I was a horrible snob about his home. He lived in a boardinghouse in Birdland with a dozen laborers, and I wouldn’t hear of it. So I looked for a better flat for him. Something more appropriate. I even went on viewings walking through empty flats, deciding what was and wasn’t good enough for my brother. But I never chose one. I kept going to viewings so I could imagine I was looking for myself.”
“But you live in a—”
“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” I said. “But sometimes I wonder who I would have been, if I wasn’t Sir Christopher Hensley’s daughter. What would I do? How would I live?”