“I nearly lost you. I did lose you,” Adam whimpered as the taller man wrapped his arms around his back and kissed the side of his head. “I cannot believe I fought with you. The last thing— the last thing we would have talked about—”
“Don’t think of it.” Immanuel wiped his own eyes as Adam straightened and wiped his face between sniffs. “You need to get home before your sister begins to worry about you.”
With a nod, Adam raised his gaze to Immanuel’s reddened eyes and brought his face closer until they touched. Emmeline’s hands shook as Mr. Fenice cupped his companion’s cheek while their lips lingered. After a second, they parted, locking eyes again. Even from twelve feet away, Emmeline could hear the wordless phrases flowing between them, the unspoken endearments and promises of tomorrow. If only someone loved me like that, she thought as she backed away from the door and waited for Mr. Fenice to slip past her. It wasn’t her place to interrupt them.
***
The gentle glow of the hearth warmed Hadley Fenice’s hands as she read her fiancée’s latest book on mechano-archaeology. Pride bloomed in her chest with each passage on the automated mechanisms found in Etruscan and Greek temples. Eilian Sorrell was more intelligent and eloquent than she ever thought possible in a member of the nobility. Down the darkened hall, the grandfather clock struck one. By the end of the chime, the front door squealed opened with a rush of icy air that made her shudder beneath her blanket. With a smile, she remembered how Adam had waited for her to come home after she visited Eilian.
“You’re home late. Did you have a good time?”
Adam’s footfalls stopped at the parlor’s threshold, but her question was met with a sharp intake of breath and a thunk. Glancing at her twin brother, Hadley did a double-take before kicking off her blanket and dropping the book to rush to his side. His top hat lay at his feet as he stared at her with pained, misty eyes. Drawing closer, she realized the back of his glove was spattered with blood and the black fabric of his jacket was darker and stiffer over his breast. His boutonnière had been flattened and dyed red with the pink only peeking out where the pedals had fallen away. Before he could say a word, his sister patted his hair for wounds before unbuttoning his collar and shoving her hand beneath his shirt to find the source of the blood.
“Good lord, what happened to you? Were you robbed?”
Pushing her hands away, he shook his head and took a deep breath. “Immanuel was attacked on the way home.”
“Is he all right?”
“Yes, he— he was bleeding a lot,” Adam’s voice cracked against his will, “but Eliza stitched the cut on his neck closed. That creature from the paper, Spring-heeled Jack, attacked him.”
Hadley gasped. “How can that be? How can Spring-heeled Jack be real?”
Adam slipped off his jacket with shaking arms and let it drop before unbuttoning his vest. “I don’t know, but I saw him. He is as real as you or me.” Biting his cheek, he stared down at the bloodstain on his shirt. A vision of Immanuel’s body contorting and snapping passed across his eyes. “I think he is the same man who tortured him. He grabbed Immanuel by the neck and electrocuted him. I— I watched the light go out in his eyes.”
Her brother's face flushed and his eyes reddened until his blue irises glowed. No sound broke from his lips as he clenched his eyes against the foreign wetness and dug his thumb into his wrist. As he met Hadley's sympathetic gaze, a slow tear slid from the corner of his eye. It had been nearly ten years since Adam came running out of the studio with tears streaming down his cheeks after speaking with George.
“Are you crying?”
“I don't know what's wrong with me, Had,” he croaked, his voice faltering.
Ten years was far too long for anyone to repress their emotions. Wrapping her arms around him, her brother tensed beneath her grasp, but when she didn't let go, he closed his eyes and hung his head. His body rocked against hers with each stifled cry.
Keeping him close, Hadley whispered, “Don't fight it. Sometimes you need to feel things, and crying isn't something shameful. It's a way to show how much he means to you without saying it.”
Adam nodded. He tightened his lips against the words that urged to break free. Never had he thought a relationship, a real relationship, was possible, but he found that in their few short weeks together, he cared for Immanuel Winter. He cared for him more deeply than tears could suggest.
***
Even with his head down, Immanuel could feel Emmeline Jardine’s owl-eyes boring into him. Looking up from the tray of cold odds and ends of food, he met her gaze as she sat in the chair across from his bed. Once Adam headed home, he changed his bloodied clothes, but when he opened the door, there she was with the tray. Now, she wouldn’t leave.
“If you are staying for the tray, Miss Jardine, I can bring it down later.”
She smoothed her red velvet gown. “I do not care about the tray.”
“Then why are you still here? I thought you could not stand the sight of me.”
Opening her mouth to speak, Emmeline faltered as she paused on his blotted eye. “I— I am here because I want to ask you a question.”
Immanuel looked at her expectantly, mimicking the expression she had used so many times on him.
“How are we related? I mean, before we ended up in… that place.”
“Why do you believe there is some deeper tie between us?” he asked as he watched her face, hoping to discover how the seed had been planted in her mind. Could she have really come up with the idea on her own or had Lord Rose sent her to fish for information?
“Something strange happens to me when you die. If you die, I feel as if all the air is being squeezed out of me, and for a moment, I fear I will die too. Then, you come back to life, and I'm fine. That does not happen to normal people. You are a scientist, aren’t you? You must know what is wrong with me. Maybe that is why they held us together. They knew there was a connection.”
Emmeline stared into his face, searching for the answer, but his brows were knit in annoyance while his shoulders sagged with fatigue. Usually the answers to her questions were written across his features, yet tonight his guard was up. He had to know what the tie was, otherwise he would have answered.
Her father had died before she was old enough to remember him, but from his portraits and pictures, she knew he was a plain, average Englishman she could have easily lost in a crowd. Even his looks had been lost in her when mixed with her mother’s. She swallowed hard. Immanuel Winter was only a few years older than her. There were countless stories of noblemen with illegitimate children.
“Are we related by blood?”
Immanuel flinched but kept his gaze hard. “No.”
“But you know how we are.” She balled her fists, her voice sharpening. “What are you hiding from me? Tell me. I am not a child.”
Putting the tray aside, Immanuel met her gaze as it softened with fear. “You died, too. That is how we are connected.”
“I— I didn’t— I never— When did I die?”
“Last August. You drowned in the Thames, don’t you remember?”
Emmeline’s eyes fell as she slipped back to that summer day with the balmy breeze blowing through her hair and the grass crunching beneath her feet. There were flowers in a pile that she planned on giving to her mother later as a pressed bouquet. A pale purple ball of pedals poked from the edge of the bank, but when she reached out to grab it, the marshy ground gave way under her feet. Colliding with the water, her body sunk down, sending out puffs of silt from the edge of the bank as her heavy skirts were engulfed by the River Isis. She desperately tried to paw toward the surface, but something held her foot. Her chest tightened in protest, and suddenly her mouth opened against her will and cold, muddy water flooded her lungs. Wrenching and kicking, she struggled against her binds until her vision tunneled and the world darkened into nothingness.
“I thought I only fainted. How do you know I died?”
Immanuel stared into her wide,
brown eyes. She really didn’t remember. “Because I pulled you out.”
No, it couldn’t possibly be him. There was no way the handsome boy whose face she stared into was the same as the creature that crawled around the basement dungeon in his own filth. Immanuel picked up his empty plate and covered the cracked side of his face. A gasp broke from Emmeline’s lips. It was true. His angular features and bright blue eyes had always been there, but she had never been able to look past his disfigurement and the ugliness of his imperfections.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was you?”
“Until recently,” his voice never rose above a whisper, “I thought you knew but were ignoring me.”
“I had no idea. You do not look the same as you did then.” She swallowed hard. “Immanuel, if I was dead, how did I… come back?”
“When I came to England, my mother sent me with a family heirloom, a pendent that had been in our family since the Dark Ages. She told me to use it if I was ever in danger, but after I realized you were dead, I knew you needed it more than I did. To make the solution work, I had to add blood, and I used my own. That is what tied us together.” A weak, bitter smile crossed his colorless lips. “You were right, we are bound by blood.”
Immanuel and Emmeline paused as the boards of the stairs a floor below creaked under Eliza Hawthorne’s light tread. For an instant their gazes met, and the young woman jumped to her feet and pulled the dish from his hand. As she reached the doorway, she turned. How could she have been so cruel to him? She had dragged him through snow, cursing him the entire way, when he had sacrificed so much to save her.
“Thank you for saving me.” I didn’t deserve it. “I am sorry for how I have treated you.”
Before he could respond, the young woman slipped out in the hall and dashed down the stairs with the dull clap of her slippers echoing in the still house. Had he done the right thing by telling her? Now that Emmeline knew their connection, they were in more danger than ever before. She still had no idea who kidnapped them or that she saw him each week at the Spiritualist society.
A heron-grey steamer chugged down Wimpole Street, illuminating the icy pavement. He sighed. There was only one person who could know what Lord Rose was after, and he had just arrived home.
Chapter Twenty-Four:
His Father’s Burden
With a tired sigh, James Hawthorne stepped over the shards of glass scattered in front of his porch and across the steps. He glanced over his shoulder as two bobbies conversed on the other side of the street while nodding toward number thirty-six. Pausing with his hand on the doorknob, he looked back at the glass, but with fatigue weighing heavily on his mind, he shrugged off the odd behavior of the policemen and stepped inside.
“Thank goodness you are home!” Eliza called as she darted out of the parlor and came toward him. She drew near as if to embrace him but let her arms drop before they could touch.
When she met his gaze, her usually steady eyes glinted with fear. “What is the matter?”
“Spring-heeled Jack attacked again.”
“Where? Is Emmeline all right?”
“She is fine.” She dropped her voice as her husband hung up his coat and pulled off his hat and gloves, but it cracked against her will. “He attacked Immanuel.”
“Immanuel?” James’s eyes widened as he remembered Katherine Waters’ lifeless form strewn across her coverlet. “Is he—”
“He is upstairs, weak but very much alive.”
The doctor stroked his jaw before taking his glasses off to clean them with his handkerchief. His theory was gone. He had imagined Miss Waters was murdered by someone she knew and the Spring-heeled Jack sighting was simply hysteria, but Eliza Hawthorne was not some overwrought lady’s maid. If she saw Jack, then he existed. Swallowing hard, James strained to find some tie between the noblewoman and his father-in-law’s protégé, but neither seemed to have enemies. The young man had only been in London a few months, most of which were spent in torture, and his only contacts were their family members. James grimaced at the prospect of a less discerning Ripper.
“Was the attack the same as with Miss Waters?” he asked as they mounted the stairs.
“Exactly the same. A three-pronged wound on the left side of the neck accompanied by burns. He was electrocuted like she was, but he lost a significant amount of blood during the scuffle.” Eliza sighed as they passed the study and stood only a few feet from their bedroom door. “You can speak to him in the morning. I sent him to bed after suturing the wound and giving him a plate of food to hopefully counteract the anemia.”
“Good.”
Dr. Hawthorne was about to follow his wife to bed when his eyes fell on the gap between the molding and the door of the study. Something shifted in the darkness, and as it turned, a blue eye locked onto him.
“Are you coming?”
“Yes, I just need to check something.”
With a huff, Eliza closed their bedroom door, and he slipped into his office. Normally, he would have been weary of someone lurking in his study under the cover of night, but when he flipped on the lamps, he found an ashen Immanuel Winter sitting before him.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in bed, Mr. Winter?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be with Lord Rose and the queen?” Immanuel blurted but stifled his anger until it dissipated down his arms and out his fingertips. “You are home early. Am I to assume Lord Rose never showed?”
He shook his head as he settled behind his desk and let his eyes fall on the lump of gauze on the young man’s neck. “Eliza told me what happened. Are you all right?”
“No, I was stabbed and electrocuted by a madman.”
Raising his eyes, James met Immanuel’s hardened gaze and shaking form as he struggled to stay composed. For a moment, he thought he might cry, but instead he knit his brows and stared the doctor down with an intensity he had never witnessed in him before.
“Mr. Winter, what is the matter? I have never seen you in such a state.”
“What sort of project are you and Lord Rose working on?”
James leaned back in his chair and sighed. “I am not at liberty to discuss it. It does not involve you anyway.”
“It does when your partner tries to murder me.” Immanuel’s jaw clenched as a lingering bolt coursed from his neck to his toes. “That is why he was not at your meeting. He left the party to come after me.”
Staring at the other man, the doctor tried to speak but the words escaped him. “Why? You have nothing to do with the project.”
“I called his bluff. In front of you and Mrs. Hawthorne, I said I knew him, and that was enough. I want to know why you are associated with the man who— who,” his voice broke as tears rose to his lids, “tortured me!”
The doctor’s chest tightened at the image of his helper covered in sore-laden offal and blindfolded with the filthy cloth cutting into his swollen orbit. How could this be? Lord Rose was a notoriously volatile man whom he never trusted, but would he go so far as to starve, burn, and beat a young man to get what he wanted?
“Is this some sick game to get me to divulge what I know? He tries to kill me and you nurse me back to health, so he can do it again. I still don’t know what was in it, and no amount of torture will get you the answer!”
As strong as he wanted to be, his façade faltered. Too many emotions were surging through him, and in his fragile state, he couldn’t fight the tugging at his ribs or the wetness in his blotted eye. Dr. Hawthorne paled, but his eyes were soft with compassion and confusion rather than steeled with anger. A quavering sob broke from Immanuel’s lips as he covered his mouth just in time to stifle it. It was too much. If the doctor was in on it, then he was finished. Why couldn’t he have asked Adam to stay? He would have told him everything would be all right, and he would have believed him.
“My boy, I most certainly was not involved in your abduction. This is all a horrible coincidence.” James watched as the German turned away to pull himself together but revealed the
sticky, bloodied wad affixed to his neck. When he quieted and grew still with his eyes cast to the rug, the doctor softly prodded, “Immanuel, why did Lord Rose hurt you? What did he hope to gain?”
“You will not believe me,” he croaked. “You are a man of science, and this cannot be explained by anything I know.”
He leaned across the desk until Immanuel’s eyes drifted back to his face. “You would be surprised as to what I have seen. Magic and superstition are only natural laws we cannot yet explain. Please, tell me, Immanuel, so I can get to the bottom of this.”
Immanuel studied the doctor’s face, but James’s eyes never wavered or hardened with suspicion. The only reason he snuck into the study was to confront him, but now he was the one confessing. Maybe— maybe one divulgence would lead him to their greater tie. There was no way it could all be a coincidence. His potion and the doctor’s project had to be connected if Lord Rose wanted both so adamantly. Could the elixir have gotten the nobleman what he wanted without needing the doctor anymore?
The tale of what happened that August day and September night poured out, irrevocably linking Immanuel Winter and Emmeline Jardine. With a silent sigh, his body sagged into the wooden chair. He had finally purged the poison Alastair Rose had infected him with, and the doctor had not once interrupted or scoffed at his claims. James Hawthorne stroked his jaw as he scowled in contemplation, letting his eyes fall upon the innocent victim of his father and Lord Rose’s ambition.
“I was foolish to think I could stall and have a man like Lord Rose give up his pursuit of fortune,” Dr. Hawthorne uttered as the house groaned against the winter wind whipping just beyond the panes and bricks. “I owe you an apology, Mr. Winter. This is all my fault.”
The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Box Set Page 44
