The horse took a corner a little too fast and the gig lurched to one side. Hannah slid into the viscount and he shot out a hand to steady her.
Not for the first time, Hannah found herself pondering how caring a gentleman he could be. Despite their differences, he listened to her opinions and treated her as an equal. The tiny, practical voice in the back of her mind whispered, Would it be such a terrible thing to accept his offer?
She didn’t want to even contemplate the possibility, but like Pandora’s box, once she peered within, she couldn’t quite clap the lid back on again. Thoughts escaped against her will. He knew her painful secret and promised loyalty that would extend beyond death. He vowed to care for her family always. And that was no insignificant thing to her. Certainly she had no other prospects on the horizon.
She might even discover his tragic secret. Though hoping for a full confession on their wedding night might be too fanciful.
Hannah gripped the side of the gig more tightly and tried to concentrate on their present mission. She directed the viscount down a series of roads and lanes to the street that contained the dress shop. The modiste lived above her shop, and a narrow set of stairs wound up the side to her apartment.
Wycliff tied the reins to the front of the gig and jumped to the ground before offering a hand to Hannah. The shop was closed and she led the way up the steep stairs and knocked on the red painted door at the top.
The door opened and the seamstress beamed upon seeing Hannah. “Miss Miles, we do not have an appointment I have forgotten, have we?”
Hannah flashed a reassuring smile as the other woman’s smile was replaced by worry. “No. Forgive me, Madame Fontaine, but I am here on a matter concerning your son. I need to know if he was under the care of a doctor before he died?”
Grief washed over the modiste’s face at mention of her son and she clasped her hands together. “Oh, oui. Sir Hugh Miles—”
Hannah nearly cried out loud in despair. Her brain refused to accept the evidence that mounted against the father she loved.
The older woman continued, unaware of Hannah’s distress. “—recommended he see Lord Dunkeith. He brewed a potion to help with the heart of mon cher François. He is ever such a gentleman, that one. When the potion did not work, he insisted on paying for my son’s funeral and made all the arrangements.” She dabbed at her eyes. “All his friends came. They called him Frank, as you Anglais do.”
“Lord Dunkeith?” Hannah was not interested in the deceased’s friends. She turned to Wycliff, seeking verification that she had heard the correct name. Had her father not been involved at all except as a reference?
“Oui, c’est ça.” The seamstress nodded and looked from Hannah to the viscount.
“Thank you, madame, you have been most helpful,” Wycliff said. He took Hannah’s arm and urged her back down the stairs.
“Lord Dunkeith brewed a potion and took care of the funeral arrangements.” Hannah repeated the words, waiting for them to filter through her mind. It couldn’t possibly be true. He was a gentleman. But then, so was her father, and he languished in gaol. Perhaps she wasn’t such a good judge of character after all.
Wycliff helped Hannah back into the gig. “Dunkeith was last known to be treating her son, but we do not have any evidence that he was responsible for his death.”
Now that Hannah had grasped the idea, her mind leapt into action, piecing together the bits she knew. “Lord Dunkeith paid for the funeral and made all the arrangements. Shall we locate his grave and see if Frank occupies the coffin within? I’ll wager he does not. I am certain that it is Madame Fontaine’s son who roams the fields.”
“We still have nothing to connect Lord Dunkeith to the mutilation and reanimation of these people.” Wycliff turned the horse in the narrow street and then navigated the growing traffic on the road.
Once Hannah overcame her reluctance to see Lord Dunkeith as the responsible party, the ideas flowed from her mind. “My father recommended that Frank see Lord Dunkeith for a potion for his heart. What if he likewise suggested that Beth see him for a potion for her cough?”
Wycliff swore under his breath. “Of course. It makes sense now.”
“You know something, my lord?” Hannah gripped the side of the gig as the horse dodged around a larger carriage.
He stared straight ahead for a long moment before saying, “Beth was given a potion for her cough that made her sleepy.”
Hannah didn’t remember seeing anything to that effect pinned to his study wall. “How do you know that?”
“The source is not important, but I believe it to be accurate. That would make two individuals who were sick but not fatally so, until they took one of Lord Dunkeith’s potions. To extrapolate further, Nell might have seen him for a lotion for her itch and Tabitha might have sought relief from her stomach pains with a draught.”
“All the pieces of the patchwork Beth may have been to see Lord Dunkeith.” Hannah said the words, but her mind struggled to believe them. Why would the handsome peer do such an awful thing?
“If Beth was murdered for her parts, what if she were pointing to Dunkeith’s house? It is across the road from the Physic Garden. I knew something smelt wrong there.” He flapped the reins against the horse’s flank and it broke into a canter.
Events of the day drifted through Hannah’s mind. As she thought of love and marriage, she remembered a devoted lover who sent his dead fiancée a bouquet every week. “Lord Dunkeith loves Lady Diana Morgan. They were to be married, but she was struck down two years ago and became one of the Afflicted. I believe he searches for a way to restart her heart so they might yet wed.”
Hannah wanted a man who would love beyond death, but how could such a beautiful thing become so twisted, and result in the death and mutilation of so many others? The gig bounced into every pothole as they sped along the road. Hannah clung to the side to keep from tumbling out as Wycliff urged the horse onward.
“How many other people are involved, do you think—all those whose limbs we found, but not the remainder of their bodies? Did they all visit Lord Dunkeith for a remedy to soothe an ailment, only to be given eternal sleep?” Hannah voiced the ideas in her head, mainly to distract herself from the image of bouncing out of the gig and being smashed upon the road.
“We might never know. But if we can prove he killed Beth Warren and Frank Fontaine, at least charges for those crimes can be brought against him.” Lord Wycliff slowed the horse to a trot as he steered it into the drive before Lord Dunkeith’s house. He jumped down, ran to the door, and rapped hard upon it.
Hannah scrambled from the gig without assistance, her knees knocking together after the harrowing ride, but grateful that her feet were on firm ground.
The butler opened the door and narrowed his eyes at them. “His lordship is not at home, my lord.”
“Can you sense if he is here and using his magic?” Wycliff asked Hannah as she joined him on the front step.
“I—I don’t know. I’ve never tried that before.” Hannah could distinguish between her mother’s magic and that of others by the feel of it. She never went searching for magic in use; usually she simply walked into it.
Wycliff pushed the butler out of the way and gestured for Hannah to enter the house. She stood in the tiled foyer and turned in a slow circle. If his lordship were here, surely he would be in the conservatory? She peered in that direction, but felt nothing.
She closed her eyes so she did not rely upon them, and let her body tell her whether magic was being used nearby. As she was about to open her eyes and say no, a faint tingle ran over her scalp.
“Upstairs,” she said, and pointed to the ceiling.
Wycliff bolted like a hound after a rabbit and took the stairs two at a time.
“You cannot go up there, my lord,” the butler called after the retreating form.
“I’m ever so sorry for the intrusion,” Hannah said to the butler as she picked up her skirts and hurried after the viscount.
At each floor, Wycliff stopped and waited for Hannah. “Which way?”
It took her a moment or two to catch her breath and wait for the tingle. With each flight of stairs, the tingle turned into a prickle, but it still ran over her scalp, indicating they should proceed upward.
At last they reached the top storey of the house. Still the sensation ran through her hair. Hannah turned in a slow full circle, willing the reaction to indicate a door coming off the hallway. Instead she ran a hand over her itchy head. “I’m sorry, I must be wrong…”
“The attic. The stairs will be hidden from view.” He peered at the panelling and Hannah was certain he…sniffed.
“There’s a seam here.” He gripped a piece of moulding with his fingertips and pulled. The wall split apart to reveal a narrow staircase leading higher.
The prickle in Hannah’s scalp ran over her body, as a low moan tumbled down the stairs and washed over them.
Lord Wycliff disappeared into the narrow opening and Hannah followed him. The walls closed in on them and she almost couldn’t see around him in the dim stairwell.
At the top was another door. Lord Wycliff grabbed the handle, but the door held fast. He grunted, and then put his shoulder to the door and burst through it into the attic room. Hannah spilled through behind him.
She took in all she could at a glance. In the middle of the floor was a large slate table such as her father and other surgeons used for surgery and autopsies. The hard surface was cut on a slope to drain away fluids. Buckets sat at each bottom corner to catch what ran off the table. On the cold surface rested a woman’s naked body. Long, dark hair draped over the end of the table. Two arms waited on a trolley at its side. Legs had been laid in place, but were not attached to the body.
The Chelsea monster huddled on the floor, rocking with its knees to its chest as it moaned. The low, keening noise made a ghastly musical accompaniment to the mad surgery about to be performed.
Next to the autopsy table was what appeared to be a large, claw-footed bath containing a yellow liquid. Draped in the water were copper wires that ran upward to the ceiling, where they twisted into a solid cable before disappearing through the roof.
“He has tried to copy Doctor Husom’s galvanism equipment,” Hannah whispered.
As she surveyed the scene in an instant, a single word leapt to her mind to describe it—chaotic.
Every surface was covered with books, papers, and bottles. Vials of varying shapes and sizes stood everywhere. Some were plain clear glass, others made of cut glass in beautiful hues. They had been tossed aside with no regard to their value or contents. Some were upright, others listed against their neighbours, and a few had tipped over, their contents oozing onto the floor below. Some bottles had wax seals, others were open and emitted a variety of clouds. One even seemed to have a fine drizzle falling upward from its open top.
Quite frankly, surveying the laboratory made Hannah’s skin itch with the overwhelming desire to start cleaning and tidying up. How on earth could any serious scientific research be conducted in the midst of such a mess?
Lord Dunkeith wore an apron over his fashionable clothes, and clutched a needle in one hand from which dangled a length of catgut. He was frozen in time as he took seconds to grasp the meaning of their intrusion, and they stared at each other. His eyes widened and his mouth made an O shape.
Then Lord Dunkeith dropped the needle on a tray and snatched up a vial. “Stop them!” he yelled as he hurled the vial to the ground at Wycliff’s feet.
The viscount jumped backward as glass shattered and a green haze exploded.
Hannah coughed and held her sleeve over her face as the details of the room, along with their quarry, disappeared. The trickle of sensation over her scalp became an enraged ocean that crashed down her throat. She gasped as her lungs caught fire. Her entire body hurt as the magical gas enveloped them.
Gritting her teeth, she wrapped her fingers around the ring on her smallest finger and rubbed the mage silver. She whispered a few words passed on by her mother, and the familiar maternal touch flowed up her hand, along her arm, and through her body. Her mother’s warding spell repelled the magic trying to incapacitate her.
Hannah wondered how Lord Wycliff would be able to function, when she had her mother’s spell to counteract the green haze. A coughed racked her lungs—she burped a cloud of green smoke—and it was gone, expelled from her body.
Through the dense fog came a roar. A yellow burst of smoke erupted from where Wycliff stood and collided with the green fog. The colours swirled and then dissolved in a puff of sulphur.
The monster charged at Wycliff, who growled and ran at the stitched-together man. He drew back his right arm and threw a punch to the creature’s middle.
Hannah cast around, looking for some way to help, when she spotted the hidden door in the wainscoting.
It stood open a few inches. “He’s getting away!”
“I am somewhat preoccupied, Miss Miles.” Wycliff threw punches that the creature batted away as though a mosquito annoyed him.
“Oh, this is pointless,” Hannah muttered under her breath. There was no use in her running after Lord Dunkeith—she could do nothing to apprehend him unless she threw herself at his ankles. And wealthy lords were long accustomed to escaping the clutches of desperate maidens.
The modiste had said that despite his large size, her son had a gentle soul. That called to mind how he had picked a flower for her when the men had shot at him. Watching Wycliff battle the seven-foot-tall man, she observed how one-sided the fight seemed. The reanimated corpse never aimed a blow at the viscount, when it would have been a simple thing for him to thump the smaller man on the head.
That gave Hannah an idea. She only needed to determine how to implement it.
The monster blocked the door where his master had fled while Wycliff pounded at his middle. It appeared neither would listen to her entreaties to cease.
Taking a deep breath, Hannah threw herself between the combatants just as the viscount drew back for another punch. She watched his fist descend and threw her hands up in front of her face, braced for the blow.
24
Wycliff threw the punch with all his might, aiming for the monster’s chin and hoping it would be a weak spot on the behemoth. Miss Miles darted between him and the monster and in a second, he realised he couldn’t stop himself from hitting her. As he pondered what the furious mage would do to him for striking her daughter, he discovered his fist had failed to connect with her slender form. An enormous hand wrapped around his and absorbed the blow, halting his fist a mere inch or two from Miss Miles’ face.
She peered at him from between her fingers and pressed herself into the creature.
“Miss Miles! Get out of the way before you are hurt,” he commanded. Shock at what he had almost done collided with concern for her safety, and the urgent need to pursue his quarry.
With a seven-foot protective monster at her back, the woman was bolder than usual. “No, not until you stop. He is not fighting you, my lord, merely deflecting your blows and preventing us from following his master.”
He wanted to snatch her away from it, but he had to admit that the thing sheltered the woman better than any gentleman could. “How can you be so sure?”
She smiled up at the ugly thing as though it were a lost puppy. “Because he has a tender heart. Do not judge him by his outward appearance, but by his actions. He has not made a single aggressive move toward you.”
Wycliff lowered his fists and gestured to the obscured doorway. “Very well, but Lord Dunkeith is getting away. Ask your creature to move, please.”
Miss Miles turned and placed both hands on the monster’s chest. She looked up into his eyes, where even the irises seemed comprised of patchwork. “Please move. We need to stop Lord Dunkeith so he cannot do this to anyone else.”
“You. Stay?” the creature rasped.
Miss Miles patted his chest and then turned back to Wycliff. “I will stay here for n
ow, but you must go and stop Lord Dunkeith. I’ll follow as soon as I can.”
He didn’t have time to worry about her, but must trust instead to her sensible nature and the protections she carried from her mage mother. As soon as the creature shuffled to one side, he dove through the narrow door.
He chased a rabbit through a warren, he thought as he hurtled down another dark and twisty passage, the air close and stale. There were a bevy of passages concealed between the walls of the house, no doubt how Dunkeith managed to carry his victims to and from his laboratory. As Wycliff wondered if he would ever draw fresh air or see the sky again, he burst out through another section of panelling.
He paused in the unfamiliar hall for a moment, his head cocked to listen. A faint shuffle caught his attention and he swung in the direction. He ran toward a door that hung open and allowed a breeze to come through from outside.
Wycliff ran through the door and out of the house. He paused and drew a breath into his lungs, glad of its cool touch after the hot stairway.
“He can’t have got far,” Wycliff muttered.
He found himself in a cobbled courtyard. Across from the house stood a double height barn. To the other side was a lush garden with mature trees that would create welcome shade in summer. Which way would he have gone? Through the garden, perhaps—a more familiar environment for him?
A horse’s neigh pulled his attention toward the stables. Why flee on foot when one had faster horses available?
He took off at a run across the cobbles. Anger surged through his body, turning his blood to molten steel. His quarry had committed murder while safe behind the expensive façade of his house. They might never know how many lives had been taken as Dunkeith sought to pry one Afflicted woman from the grasp of death.
The rage took over as he dropped to all fours, heedless of curious servants running to see the cause of the commotion. As he sprang through the open doors, he welcomed the change. Let the monster in the barn deal with the beast.
Galvanism and Ghouls Page 22
