by Lynn Viehl
There had been some tense moments when the widowed Madam Duluc and her daughters sailed over from France to meet Charles’s commoner Torian bride (even the French themselves admitted to being terrible snobs). Charles’s love for Bridget, however, had been absolute and unshakable. Since his father’s death had given him full control over the family fortunes, the ladies of the family had had to accept the marriage. (The fact that Charles and Bridget intended to remain in Toriana also weighed heavily in their favor.)
Charles hadn’t wanted his wife to work another moment in her life, but after giving him two sons and a daughter, Bridget had grown bored with the life of a titled lady and asked her husband if she might open a shop of her own. Weaving since childhood had given Bridget an extensive understanding of fine cloth, and growing up in the shadow of the Hill had taught her that gowning the wives of the rich was the most lucrative way to use that knowledge.
I knew all this because I’d been the other lass sitting on the bench that day, and I’d gone with them to the magistrate to stand witness to their marriage. Charles and Bridget were the reason I didn’t trifle with men: if I couldn’t have what they’d found in each other, I’d go without.
Bridget filled me in on how the children were getting on with their tutors and how Charles had taken an undignified dunking at the beach trying to rescue their youngest’s new bonnet when the wind had snatched it away. I listened and laughed, but my thoughts kept straying to Lady Diana.
“That’s what he got for not tying her ribbons before setting off from the house, I told him,” Bridget said, and then she abruptly changed the subject. “Now, what’s this business with you and the Walshes? Come on, out with it. You look like you did when you were renting that closet at the boardinghouse.”
“My good intentions got the better of me,” I admitted. “This time I might have to pay dearly for them.”
“Oh, Kit.” Bridget’s smile faded. “If you need Charlie to step in, you’ve only to say—”
“No, Bridge. This is something not even Charles could make vanish.” Next to Rina, Bridget was my oldest mate, and I wanted to confide in her, but something held me back. I didn’t have that many friends that I could risk losing one. Bridget would keep my secrets, but she’d never abandoned her working-class ideals. Knowing I was the granddaughter of an agent to the Crown would forever change her opinion of me. “I’ll conclude my business with the lady, and then hopefully it’ll be done with.”
Bridget glanced up at a soft knock on the door. “Do come in,” she said in her beautifully fake French accent.
Sarah stepped in and bobbed. “If you please, Madam, Lady Walsh has arrived.”
“Show her to the Rose Room, if you would, Sarah.” When the gel left, Bridget turned to me. “I can start her fitting while you talk with her. They always treat me like I’m invisible when they’re standing in their drawers.”
I shook my head. “She won’t talk if you’re there.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Do you know what you’re taking on with this one, Kit?”
“Absolutely.” After today I intended to steer clear of all the Walshes.
“Well, then I’ll let you get on with it.” Bridget stood and brushed some crumbs from the emerald satin. “Rose Room’s at the end of the hall on the left. Take as long as you like, but Kit”—she caught my arm as I went past her, and tugged me close for a careful hug so neither of us would be stuck by the pinned bodice—“whatever this personal business is between you and the lady, finish it now. You don’t want the Hill coming down on your heels or your head. That deathmage, either.”
I walked down to the Rose Room, where Betsy stood on guard outside the door. She ignored me entirely, so I did the same and stepped inside, where I found Lady Walsh pacing back and forth, her gait rapid and jerky.
“Milady,” I said, closing the door but not moving too far from it. “You asked to meet with me?”
She came to an abrupt halt, moved toward me, and stopped again to take a deep breath. I could almost hear her governess talking inside her head: A lady does not rush. A lady does not lunge. A lady does not throttle.
“Miss Kittredge, your advice to me has resulted in the unhappiest of situations.” She spoke as if she couldn’t unclench her teeth. “I followed your suggestion to entice my husband to discover the panel under my bed.”
“You dropped your ring, and he found it.”
She nodded tightly. “When Nolan discovered the panel, he became quite furious. In truth, I have never seen my husband so angry.”
She had called me here to tell me that it had worked? “I’m sure he’ll see to your protection, Lady Walsh.”
“Indeed he will not.” Her stiff expression began to waver. “He accused me of being disloyal to him.”
“Disloyal?” I echoed. “For getting cut up in your sleep by some intruder? Has he gone off, then?”
“Nolan believes I am responsible for the passage,” she snapped. “That I am using it to commit adultery. He even accused me of drugging him each night to prevent him from discovering my infidelity.” She straightened her spine and looked down her nose. “Because I took your advice, he is now threatening to divorce me.”
“But when you showed him the cuts on your hands, didn’t he . . .” As she shook her head, I groaned. “For the love of Jesu, milady, you have to show him your wounds.”
“I can’t.”
I wanted to shake her until her pearly teeth rattled. “They’re the only proof you’ve got of what’s being done to you.”
“There is no more proof.” She stripped off her gloves and thrust both hands at me.
Lady Diana didn’t have a mark on her. The ugly words had vanished, as if they’d never been cut into her skin. I took hold of her hands, checking them to see if she’d somehow disguised them with face paint, but all I felt was smooth skin. She didn’t even have scars. “This is not possible.”
“But it is, as you see.” She sniffed. “Now do you believe it’s a curse, Miss Kittredge?”
“No.” I held on to one hand as she tried to pull away. “Be still.” I took my magnifying glass out of my reticule and held it just above the skin. Examining one hand turned up nothing, but on the other I discovered a tiny fragment of dark red clinging to one of the fine hairs of her skin. When I gently nudged the fragment with my fingernail, she made a pained sound. When I plucked it off, the hair came with it.
“What are you doing?” Lady Diana demanded.
I carefully transferred the fragment to a bit of paper and folded it up. “Collecting evidence.” I pointed to one of the padded benches. “I have to go and consult with someone on this. If you want to know the truth, you’ll wait here for me.”
Bridget generously provided me with her carri, which I drove back to my office building. I left it parked at the curb and dashed down to the Dungeon, making my way through clouds of steam as I shouted for Docket.
“Hold on to your hatpins, gel.” The old man emerged from the steam, wearing but a towel wrapped around his skinny hips. “Come back later, Kit. I’m having a soak.”
I glanced at the contraption behind him, which resembled a giant teakettle. “A soak, or a boil?”
“That’s just the collection chamber.” He pointed to some hastily rigged pipes hanging over it. “Steam comes down from there, and the gap between me and the pipes cools it enough to make it tolerable. It’s a heathen practice. I’m calling it the Waterless Bathe.” He grimaced. “Haven’t worked out what to do about soap, though.”
I shook my head. “Get some clothes on, mate. I need you to look at something under the scope.”
Once he was decent, Doc brought me over to one of his workbenches fitted with a large vertical tube standing in an adjusted bracket. “Let’s have it.” When I gave him the folded paper containing the fragment I’d removed from Lady Diana’s hand, he opened it and gently placed it under the tube.
As he looked through the gogs he’d fitted to the magnifying tube, I explained where I’d found t
he fragment, and what had been done to Lady Diana. “She claimed the cuts didn’t hurt, and she never found any blood on her nightdresses or linens.”
Doc grunted. “I’ll wager all the wounds vanished within a day of her finding them as well.”
“How did you know?”
“She wasn’t cut, love.” He moved away from the scope, searched through some jars on a nearby shelf, and then handed me a jar of thick, dark-red liquid. “Wound paste. They made it out of animal blood mixed with a strong resin. My guess is someone used this to paint the words on her and scored the lines as they dried to make them appear like real cuts. You need a solvent to remove it or it acts like a new scab. If she tried to pull it off herself, she’d bleed.”
I’d never heard of such a thing. “Who uses this stuff?”
“Anyone with the know-how, I suppose,” he admitted. “It’s an old soldier’s trick. Cowards resort to it to prevent being sent into battle.”
“And you?”
“Sometimes I need an extra week or two to pull together the rent.” He ducked his head. “Me showing the landlord a wound that’s temporarily laid me up usually does the trick.”
And here all this time I’d been bartering with him. “Can I borrow this?” When he nodded, I took the jar and gave his shoulder a squeeze. “The next time you need help with the rent, mate, you come to me.”
By the time I got back to Bridget’s, Lady Diana had worked herself into a frazzle.
“Where have you been?” she snapped as soon as she saw me. “How could you leave like that? Nolan expected me home an hour ago. He’ll be furious.”
“Hang Nolan,” I said, and held up the jar of wound paste. “This is what was used on you.”
I repeated everything Doc had told me, and with every word Lady Diana’s face grew pinker. Once I’d detailed how the paste simulated wounds, I told her the rest of what I’d worked out.
“Your assailant assumed you would hide the wounds from your family and deliberately placed them on portions of your body that could be easily covered. By removing them the next night, he could make you think you were under the influence of a malignant spell. Or perhaps . . .” I wasn’t sure I wanted to complete my other thought.
“Tell me,” she urged.
I chose my words carefully. “Perhaps to tamper with your wits.”
“No one could be that evil.” She pulled on her gloves. “I am a devoted wife and stepmother. I treat our servants well. I have never inflicted harm on another person in my life. Why would anyone take such horrible vengeance against me? I’ve done nothing.”
I thought of the words that had been written on her skin. “You and your family profited by your marriage to Lord Walsh, which was arranged so that he might obtain another heir. To someone in your household, that makes you a greedy slut.”
Her head snapped up. “You will not speak those words to me,” she said through white lips.
Oh, now she was putting on airs. “Would you rather your husband say them in open court?”
“He will not, if you would come to dinner on Friday and tell my husband how you discovered the panel.”
I stepped back. “You’d do better to take the wound paste with you, milady. That will explain—”
“Nolan will think only that I used it on myself. You, on the other hand, can attest to my true motives, and how you were the one to discover the panel under the bed.” Tears sparkled in her eyes. “You are my only hope now.”
She really had no idea of how much trouble she was in. “I’m a commoner, milady. As such he’ll believe I was paid by you to lie to him.”
“Have you no one to vouch for your personal integrity?” Before I could answer, her expression brightened. “You are acquainted with Lucien Dredmore, are you not? He has much influence.”
I could imagine what Dredmore would demand in return for such a favor. My body and spirit on a silver platter, at the very least. “The gentleman and I are not the best of friends.”
“If Nolan is granted a divorce on grounds of adultery, do you know what will happen to me?” Her voice was rising to a shriek. “To my family?”
“How would I, milady? I’m just a gel who works for her living,” I reminded her. “One your butler reported to the police as a blackmailer.”
“Mother of mercy.” She closed her eyes and then pulled out her skirts.
Watching her drop to her knees turned my stomach. “Lady Walsh, please, don’t do that.”
“If this is what I am reduced to, so be it.” She bowed her head. “I humbly beg you to take pity on me, Miss Kittredge. I beseech you to come to speak to my husband and save me from the ruin of my life.”
As I looked down at her, I thought of the day I’d left Middleway. I’d never begged anything from the men who had stolen my life. I’d known what they would have done to me if I had.
I took Lady Diana by the arms and pulled her up from her knees. “Betsy.”
The chambermaid darted inside. “Yes, miss?”
“Take your lady home.” I looked into hopeless eyes and managed a smile. “I have much to do if I am to dine with her and Lord Walsh on Friday.”
Lady Walsh threw her arms around me and held me like a beloved sister. “You are the kindest creature in all of Rumsen.”
The kindest, or the daftest. “He’s likely having you watched, so I’ll go out the back. Have Betsy sleep in your chamber until Friday, and then we’ll sort all this out at dinner.”
Betsy cloaked her lady before whisking her away, while I went to the workroom to bid my friend farewell.
“Lady Walsh will be unable to have her fitting today,” I told Bridget, who was undressing behind a screen. “What does one wear to dinner on the Hill?”
“Nothing in your wardrobe.” She handed the emerald ballgown off to Nance and pulled on a simpler dress styled to resemble the gray uniforms her ladies wore, but made of pure silver silk. (Charles had vowed she would never wear anything else.) “Or what you’d find in the collection of a professional lady’s, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Can one rent a dress for two and six?” I wondered out loud.
“From the rag pile at the tin shop, perhaps.” Bridget muttered something rude as she came out from behind the screen. “Louise, has Lady Richmond settled her account with us?”
“No, Madam,” a gel hemming purple taffeta skirts said through a mouthful of pins. “She offered a bracelet in trade, but it proved to be paste.”
Bridget gave me a critical look. “Set aside the blue evening for mademoiselle. She will be back on Friday in time for us to dress her for her dinner with Lord and Lady Walsh.” Before I could protest, she tapped my cheek. “It’s a gift.”
“My birthday isn’t until January, Madam.”
“Christmas, then.” She gave me a steely look, leaned close, and whispered, “Or I can sew your stubborn ass into that emerald satin, if you like.”
I gave in gracefully. “Madam is most generous. Now, can someone direct me to the back door?”
Bridget personally escorted me to the trade entrance, but she didn’t lecture me along the way. She only stopped me at the door. “Charlie’s mother told me that she’d had a mage enchant all his suits to ward off women before he left France. She was afraid of him picking up something nasty from a strumpet.”
I sighed. “You can’t make suits female-proof.”
“Can’t you? He never looked at another woman, that whole trip, until he sat down next to us in the park. No, truly, I asked him. Said he never felt a spot of interest.” She took my hand. “I know how you feel about magic, Kit, but there is something about you. I don’t know what, but I feel it. Everyone does. If you hadn’t been with me that day . . .” She shook her head. “Don’t let the Walshes take advantage. You’re too good for them.” She kissed my cheek. “Now be off with you. I’ll see you here Friday noon, not a minute later.”
As I left the Silken Dream, I thought of Dredmore, and how I might convince him to accompany me to the Wals
hes. I’d definitely have to lie. Or perhaps hire some muscle to kidnap and drug him.
Suddenly, something flew past my face and burst against a nearby stack of crates. I smothered a shriek as I flattened myself against the brick wall and looked from one end of the alley to the other. “What the bloody hell?”
Two men appeared, both wearing hooded capes, shirts, and trousers of dark red. They marched toward me in unison, one hefting a sparkling glass globe filled with swirling darkness.
My heart wanted to depart my chest, and my knees shook, but I had no time for hysteria. The all-red garments identified the pair to me as a particularly illegal class of magic-wielding scum; they were unlicensed hired killers, known as snuffmages.
I ducked as one threw the second globe at me, covering my head with my arms as I was showered with glass and filth. What they were throwing had to be snuffballs, another magical farce. The globes, I’d heard, were filled with some sort of black dust bespelled to kill anything it touched.
Naturally I was still breathing, and once I shook off the debris, I found the courage to smile at them. “I think your balls are on the blink today, boys,” I said breathlessly. “Got anything else?”
Both men drew long, sharp-edged daggers with rune-carved blades.
“That might work.” I turned, hoisted up my skirts, and ran.
I almost made it to the end of the alley before a clawing hand latched onto my collar. He tried to haul my back against him so he could cut my throat, but I dropped out from under his encircling arm and rammed the top of my head into his groin. That doubled him over in time to protect me from most of the slash of the second one’s blade.
I rolled onto my hands, tucked my head under, and flipped over, which freed my legs from my skirts. One of my slippers went flying as I drove the heel of my foot into the second assassin’s elbow, knocking the blade from his grasp. Then the first one recovered enough to hurl himself on top of me and we both collapsed.