Transmuted Page 5

  “Couldn’t say.” My companion lifted the note to her nose, then grimaced. “Smells of sewage.”

  The Underground often did, at least that part of it closest to the run-offs. I had been there only a small number of times, often chasing a bounty—and never without a guide. Tough as steel and boiled leather we may be, even collectors took care to mind the unspoken rules of the Underground.

  There were them what utilized it as a means for criminal activity, and them what lived so far below that they did not exist in the eyes of Her Majesty’s civic services. It was a place similar to a black market, but called instead by other monikers—the ghost market, the forgotten tunnels.

  The most poetic of the lot was a whispered dead man’s haunt.

  Them what risked venturing below the lowest of the drift rarely had intentions of returning to the light—and they hated, with great passion, toffs. ’Twas an enmity as natural as fire and water Perhaps, I thought as I studied the dull glass chit that would allow my entry, it was long past time for London’s only female collector to reacquaint herself with such souls as might steal a diamond for twenty thousand pounds.

  Chapter Five

  By the time we made it back to Little Chelsea, dawn had long since danced fragile fingers over the devil-black fog. It was to be a fairly poor day, given the stench already choking the street outside.

  Creeping yellow fingers, dull hue of a morning swallowed by the drifting smoke, and stinging throat all turned out to be little more than harbingers for the real challenge ahead.

  To wit, convincing my overprotective companions that a jaunt to the Underground would be just the thing for an evening’s excursion.

  Mr. Darlington helped us alight, thanked us most civilly for our services, then escaped as the front door of Fanny’s home opened.

  Booth held the door for us, an expected courtesy.“Welcome home, misses.”

  I smiled warmly. “Thank you.”

  Zylphia sighed. “Thought that’d be a sight more difficult.”

  Booth leaned in, lowering his whitecapped head to murmur, “I am afraid the difficulties have only begun. Mr. Ashmore is in residence, miss.”

  Bloody hell. “Did you summon him?”

  “No, miss. He arrived with the dawn.” His gaze slipped down the hall, and a murmured voice of masculine depth vibrated through the small corridor—and through my suddenly pounding heart. “And he came with a guest.”

  Booth did not have to name the owner of that voice aloud. I already knew who awaited in my parlor.

  Micajah Hawke had finallyseen fit to gift me with his presence, had he? The first he’d bothered to do so in near a fortnight, and he chose this moment.

  He had the Devil’s own luck—or simply the serpent’s unearthly sense of trouble.

  “Lord help us now,” Zylphia murmured.

  Seizing my skirts in hand, I hiked them high enough that I might stride without obstruction. The sudden snap of my temper might seem out of sorts to most anyone else, but all in my household had been made aware of the uncoordinated waltz I danced with the once ringmaster. Even Fanny had quietly come to suspect what role Hawke played in the tableau of my life.

  That it continued to be one lacking in significant words no doubt weighed heavily upon all caught up in our wake.

  I was as guilty of this tension, as I was saddled by the same burden.

  Ashmore cut my grand entrance off at the parlor door.

  “Were you even five minutes later,” he said from his favored armchair, a steaming cup that smelled of bitter Turkish coffee in hand, “there would have been a reckoning.”

  Like me, my tutor was not given to hyperbole. The deadly seriousness of his tone suggested that I had narrowly missed exactly that what he’d said.

  I froze in the doorway, one gloved hand seizing the frame.

  Ashmore was a handsome man, there was no doubt of it. While my hair retained the deeply garnet hues of my mother’s, Ashmore’s was more of a polished copper in color. It swept back from his face in a corona longer than fashion deemed acceptable, and contrasted the milkwhite shade of his skin.

  With aristocratic features of an often stern disposition—especially, as now, when irritated or when he saw fit to make of a circumstance an object lesson—and a slim build given to subtle athleticism, he was likely to be listed an eligible bachelor on every matron’s marriageable list.

  The unfashionable hue of a man’s hair may be forgiven, if his prospects were strong enough. A man’s wealth was of far more paramount interest.

  It was no secret that Fanny had once entertained hopes of such a match between him and I, regardless that he had been my guardian first. It certainly would not have been the first marriage match formed between a well-heeled guardian and his ward.

  Unfortunately for Fanny’s unspoken aspirations, that match was not possible. For one, Ashmore was not the youthful gentleman he appeared to be, but a master of alchemy who had— through judicious exploitation of his own familial line—extended his life to unnatural spans. Born Nicholin Folsham in the time of Leonardo da Vinci, Ashmore was by all accounts the first progenitor of my mother’s line.

  While there had been far too many generations between us to fear for too similar of blood, such a match stumbled over other obstacles.

  The years did not weigh heavily in my estimation of the man, save that such a feat was awe-inspiring in any light. Nor did the fact that he was forced to draw my blood at regular intervals in order to maintain his vitality tread upon my conscience. My affection for Ashmore was a deep one, and the breadth of it forgave many foibles.

  Were we not already shaped by our pasts, that affection might be different. For while we might have made a fine pair, both of us had been too badly damaged by the loves of others—him besotted with my mother, who had tried to destroy us both, and I already hardened by the consequences love had forced upon me and mine.

  I was not ready, I would never be ready, to bear the burden of such an emotion.

  Of course, for all that, the truth was something far more complex. At least part of what made a union between my tutor and I impossible stood by the window on the opposite end of the room, as though occupying a space too close to Ashmore might result in catastrophic consequence.

  Knowing the rather weighty auras of both men, their respective potency and associated capabilities, I preferred an overabundance of caution. They did not, to put it mildly, get on.

  Hawke occupied my parlor with all the grace and authority of the ringmaster he’d been, lacking so much as an iota of humility despite the loss of his position. Rumor had him filially a bastard, begotten of a swarthy-skinned people that some labeled Gypsy. He had never said one way or another, but I had long understood the allure of this mystery—his skin was golden-hued, his hair black as pitch and kept long. The sculpted perfection of his features had never been given to softness, but harsh planes and exotic angles.

  Those who visited the Menagerie did not expect soft—unless soft was the sweet they paid for.

  While in his role, Hawke had often left his hair loose to hang about his shoulders, or tied off in a simple tail. The queue gave him the appearance of refinement, a barely civilized varnish that made of him forbidden fruit for those of inclination to admire.

  It was not so difficult to understand how he had maintained his role for so long. Strength all but surrounded him, a palpable pressure one must be fatally unaware by nature to ignore.

  Without the trappings of the Menagerie or the savagery of the base collar the Veil had once clasped about his throat, Hawke was no less a force to contend with. He wore his hair in a braid thick as my wrist, similar to the first timeI’d met him. It was almost as long now as it had been then, pulled back from the harsh beauty of his face. His apparel was no better than that of any cove off the street, his hands ungloved and no trappings of finery upon him; it was a fool who looked him in the mismatched eyes and thought him powerless.

  If nothing else, the river of brilliant blue cutti
ng down the center of his left eye gave his tawny stare a nefarious gleam. He was every bit the tiger the Veil had styled him, for all he walked on two legs instead of four.

  Hawke and Ashmore were two exceptionally powerful men with wildly diverse natures— and with each, an extraordinary will. The two together always seemed to me a thin thread from snapping. If it ever came to blows, I could not be sure which would win out—the tiger’s sorcery, or my tutor’s centuries-old alchemical knowhow.

  And for all their difference—for all the consequences that stemmed from relations held with Ashmore at a time when I’d needed comforting and wounds caused by Hawke when he was not in his right mind—the two were deucedly similar in thought when it came to me.

  In a word: overprotective.

  “Where did you go?” Hawke demanded.

  I lifted my chin. “I don’t think it any of your business.” A false enough claim. I had spent years taunting him when I was but a collector. I had spent months working to free him when his Karakash masters had imprisoned him.

  I had given myself to him in every way but that what demanded words.

  All that I was would never be anything else but his.

  This was a truth I could not say.

  A muscle jumped in Hawke’s jaw—as it did when I irritated him, and I made it something of my purpose to do just that. He let go of the heavy blue curtain he’d held from the glass pane behind it.

  The clink of china against a saucer warned me Ashmore had taken exception to my retort.

  “You gave us all a fright,” Ashmore said, as calm in demeanor as Hawke was barely contained storm and thunder. My conscience, no longer shaped by the laudanum that made living so easy, kicked. “Booth tells me you were taken by agents of the Crown.”

  I stepped into the parlor that did not feel like mine with both men within it. It was not that I was overwhelmed by them, but rather as though I exhausted myself keeping up with each.

  When I flopped into the sofa with little concern for care or courtesy, Ashmore’s mouth twitched. His eyes, a brown tinged by green in catlike hue, swept over me from toe to crown. His gaze hitched on the papers I held.

  Hawke folded his arms over his chest. The motion drew my attention to the taut cords in his throat.

  He had worried, of this I had little doubt.

  Primary among my concerns was the uncertainty of Hawke’s stability. Something in his blood, some legacy of a people he claimed long since gone, made of him a thing of indeterminate nature. A beast, of sorts. He had said once that something within him hungered, and that it only worsened with time.

  That I brought out this something had been made apparent.

  The Veil had kept him under rigorous control for many years, until my antics forced them to make of him an example. Whatever it was they did—or did not do—it turned Hawke from ringmaster to cruel showman, and then to slavering beast when the fickle delights of the showman no longer appeased.

  Noxa—the alchemical Trump which governed such portfolios as life, death and resurrection—and a wellplaced bullet had been applied to Hawke’s recovery. Such a fatal cure shouldn’t have worked, not according to the laws of nature, but alchemy was something bigger than nature as man knew it. More fundamental. It could, under the right conditions, cheat death.

  Death followed the lot of us entirely too closely. Sometimes metaphorically, sometimes rather more literally.

  I had tasted both, survived both, and still, for all my experience with the subject, I had been most afraid that Hawke would not rise again.

  That he had was a relief that brought with it many more concerns. While Ashmore had ensured his sorcerous rival could not simply fall apart as he had before, Hawke’s vacillating condition remained a matter of trepidation.

  Among Ashmore’s goals, a curative for the man was priority.

  That it might soften the burdens of the feelings Hawke and I danced around was something I knew Ashmore had taken into account, and hoped to assist. Although my tutor did not approve of my obsession with Micajah Hawke, his affection trumped his disapproval.

  That Ashmore and I remained close was a point of conflict with Hawke.

  I was not blind to the possessiveness with which either man viewed me—one for care of my well-being, and the other for all that I was. More to say that I was simply not prepared, or willing, or even able to take any steps to affirm such bonds.

  I had enough self-awareness to understand this about myself.

  So I baited Hawke to no end, as I always had, and watched the thin bonds of his control grow taut.

  When they snapped, he and I came together in pleasures both wicked and all-consuming. It was no declaration of voice or intent, but it was enough.

  What this made of me, there was an unpleasant word for.

  “To answer your unspoken questions,” I announced, “I have been hired by the Crown to retrieve a stolen diamond.”

  It was Ashmore who understood the farreaching ripples of such a declaration. “Hired?” His orangered eyebrows came together in stark concern. “Hired in what capacity?”

  “Not as any alchemist,” I hastened to assure him. While Lady Rutledge followed the scientific precepts of alchemy—those matters that could be simmered down to formulae, ingredients, experimentation and associated chemical research—she had never displayed any knowledge of true alchemy. That which Ashmore had taught me, those precepts that utilized the fifth element of aether, the twenty-two Trumps and the near-magical capability of each, was a pact kept among those what knew it.

  Hawke was aware, but he came with his own brand of sorcery. Zylphia’s heritage was rumored to be something of a mysterious nature, and so she, too,knew of Ashmore’s skill. Those of us mired in such secrets tended to view each other with a certain amount of understanding.

  My staff did not know much more than what they could glean and Communion knew less, so I addressed such esoteric matters with care.

  If Lady Rutledge had ever been inducted into the esoteric order of what some might call magic, I would be most interested to find out.

  Eventually.

  “For now,” I said, lifting the papers, “we may assume that certain members of Her Majesty’s retinue are aware that I have doubled in this life as a collector. I suspect,” I added when Hawke made a sound like tch, “that I was chosen for this specifically because of my current status among the wellheeled.”

  “Which is to say,” Ashmore pointed out, “blackened.”

  “As tar,” I replied cheerfully. “This affords them a certain amount of relief, I have no doubt. I understand how such matters work, and my inability to gaily flit among the Season’s finery ensures I will not be believed even should I attempt to gossip. In short, I am trustworthy.”

  “To a point.” Hawke stared at me with an intensity that defied my obvious bravado. I suspected he already carried an inkling as to the direction of my thoughts.

  He did, after all, know me. “Any loyalty I bear for Society is hardly enough to die for,” I assured him—or rather, assured them all. That Hawke held my gaze was a matter of circumstance.“Contrary to popular opinion, I rarely wander about my affairs with such intentions.” The hand Hawke braced upon the back of a chair tightened, earning my attention. The upholstery dented, padding crushed beneath his strong fingers. He did not have a gentleman’s hands.

  I quite liked that fact.

  His hands told a truer tale than any showman’s words. Given the force of his grasp, knuckles made sallow from it, I suspected he was not inclined to support any situation likely to result in my demise.

  Unfortunately for his wants, even the great tiger of the ruined Menagerie must bow to Her Majesty.

  Ashmore cleared his throat. “The goal?”

  I filled both men in on the matter at hand. Mention of the diamond itself—both its heft and its name—earned no small amount of interest.

  It was Ashmore what pointed out the obvious. “Twenty thousand pounds is beyond most, but there are those in Soc
iety who could easily manage it. I, myself, would have little trouble.”

  “You have never struck me as a man who prefers diamonds,” I said, smiling in crooked fashion.

  The low growl bottled in Hawke’s throat was as much my reward as a warning.

  Ashmore raised a hand, delicate cup held in the other with ease. “Enough, tiger.” A wry enough warning in kind.

  One could all but see Hawke’s hackles bristle. His shoulders moved, as though forcing whatever rode his skin to settle again. Forcing his attention from the source of his rancor, his gaze came again to settle on me.

  That it felt as a hand upon my skin was a thing I made every effort to conceal. A shiver gripped my spine, and I jerked my chin upright. “The Underground is not short of coin,” he said to me, a flat observation. If he saw through me, if he knew what it was his attentions did to me, he gave me no sign.“You intend to visit.”

  “Naturally,” I said, most haughty.

  Ashmore sighed. “Of course you do.” He tipped his cup a bit, studying the interior as though searching within for old memories. “Some years ago, the quarter nearest Wapping served as a market of sorts.”

  Surprise earned him my steady appraisal.“As far as I know, that holds. Have you visited often?”

  “Not for many years,” he replied, with a grim note. He took to drinking of his coffee again, rather than explain.

  Fair enough for my interest. My tutor had many such memories, and all fraught with secrecy.

  Ashmore’s pause gave Hawke the opportunity to make his demands known. “I will go with you.”

  “’Tis best if I go alone,” I began, but he—as per usual—did not care to let me finish.

  “I will go with you, and hewill come with,” he continued with utter confidence of obedience, “and you will do as you are told.”

  I laughed outright, even though the demand made of my innards a knot. It was not all uncomfortable.

  I enjoyed that tone of his voice, the undercurrent of lethal menace that ensured all he spoke to would obey. What that enjoyment said of me was something tarnished beyond polish.