I pulled Tom’s hand from my mouth and whispered, “I won’t c-call out.”
“It’s Mimic I fear will holler,” he replied. He smelled of cedar and woodsmoke and clean cotton. And something else—I recognized the warm, male scent of Tom Rampling’s own skin from the times we’d shared a carriage, from sitting close to him that day in his grandmother’s room. I straightened my shoulders, grasping for some of the dignity I’d tossed aside moments earlier, but the movement only brought my side more snugly against his. I heard the sharp intake of Tom’s breath and felt perversely gratified that our closeness affected him, too.
“There,” said Mr. Thornfax. The desk chair scraped the floor. “Two o’clock Thursday, to the station master’s own hand. I won’t learn you’ve passed it off to a clerk. You’ll do the job for which I’m paying you.”
“Why forewarn ’em like this every time? I mean, if you’ll tolerate my askin’—”
“I won’t tolerate it, in fact,” Mr. Thornfax cut in. “Mind you don’t leave a fingerprint on the envelope, either. They say each man’s is unique unto him, like a signature.” I heard the tidy snap of his pocket watch, then: “Rampling?” Footsteps came striding our way. “That little bastard had better not have scarpered off without locking the door.”
“I’m here, Lord Rosbury.” Tom sprang out from our hiding place just as the men rounded the doorway. I could see, through the seam of the cabinet door, that Mr. Thornfax’s man Watts was sunburnt, with a crushed nose and a twisted, sneering mouth. With a shock I recognized him from the alley, from the day I’d been tailing poor young Will. Mr. Watts had been the man at the table inside Mrs. Clampitt’s hovel. The man who, when I was attacked, had merely stood there in the doorway smiling at my “fuss.” If he was Mr. Thornfax’s employee, it would explain how my suitor had known about my being attacked.
“What happened here?” Mr. Thornfax said, frowning at the disarray on the counter.
“Nothing, milord,” Tom hastened to assure him. “A dropped syringe.”
Mr. Thornfax picked up the round flask and lifted it, as Tom had done, to the window. “Amazing, isn’t it? Add one chemical, boil another chemical away, and morphine quintuples its potency and value.”
“That simple, is it?” said Watts.
Mr. Thornfax laughed. “Well, no. If it were that simple, I’d do it myself.” He replaced the flask and turned to Tom. “Tell us about this dreadful whore of yours. Daisy, is it? Does she have enough sense left in her head to follow our instructions?”
“Daisy is ill, milord.”
“Morphomania. They all suffer that, of course. How else should they keep coming back to us?”
“’Tis worse than the normal craving for morphine, milord. Undosed she is feverish and faint. Dosed she sleeps or talks nonsense.” Tom’s voice shook a little. “I think she may mistake the direction, or collapse in transit.”
Mr. Thornfax leaned forward and cuffed him hard across the mouth. Swiftly he smoothed back the curls that had fallen into Tom’s eyes at the blow. He pinched Tom’s chin to pull him closer, and when Tom tried to pull away Mr. Thornfax clapped his other hand to the base of his skull and gripped harder, holding him caught there, so that Tom’s jaw and cheek whitened under the bruising fingertips. At the same time Mr. Thornfax thrust his lips next to Tom’s ear and said, “There now,” and “Shh-shh,” in mock-soothing tones that spurred Watts into nasty laughter.
I wanted to avert my eyes but found I could not—I couldn’t even breathe. The change in Mr. Thornfax’s bearing and demeanour rendered him nearly unrecognizable. It was as if a mask had suddenly been torn away. The relaxed, good-natured gaze to which I was accustomed was flashing with hateful resentment, and his voice was a hiss. His easy gait and open, confident stance had become coiled and predatory as a striking snake.
He eased his grip on Tom now, and stood back to regard him scornfully, fists on hips. “Well, what do you suggest, Master Rampling, as Daisy’s champion? Shall you go along with her and lay your coat over the street for her to tread upon?”
Tom’s hand came up to his face and dropped again. He squared his stance, breathed deep. “I’ll go in her stead, milord. Gladly I will.”
Another sharp, open-handed blow, and more laughter. I cringed and pressed my palm to my own mouth as blood sprang to Tom’s lips.
Still Tom stood quiet, holding himself tightly in check, looking at the floor. I watched his fist clench at his side and then deliberately relax.
Mr. Thornfax’s voice was cold: “You would go in her stead. And risk damage to that pretty face of yours, my boy? I should say you’ve a better future in Daisy’s profession than she has.” He touched a finger to Tom’s injured mouth and smeared the blood like rouge across Tom’s lips. Then he showed off his handiwork to Watts, who sniggered in approval of Tom’s prettiness.
“Only mind you don’t start sampling Dr. Dewhurst’s medicine,” Mr. Thornfax advised Tom. “It seems to do dreadful things to one’s appearance.” He wiped his bloodied finger on Tom’s shirt, took out his riding gloves, and smoothed them over his hands. Then the two men withdrew and, as their steps retreated, I heard Mr. Thornfax say, “The desperate and perishing classes, Watts. Now there’s a romance to weep over!”
Tom wiped the blood from his face. His ears were scarlet with insult and humiliation, and I inched back from my peephole, hoping he wouldn’t know I’d watched him being beaten.
Or perhaps I hoped he wouldn’t see what I was feeling. The practiced nonchalance with which Mr. Thornfax had hurt Tom shook me in a way that no impassioned display of temper might have done. The new Lord Rosbury was indeed perfect. A perfect monster.
And underneath my shock at witnessing Mr. Thornfax’s true face there was another feeling, something much more secret and shameful to me. I had first sensed it two days ago in the surgery with Daisy, like a needle burrowing under my skin, and now I had to admit that it had fanned my anger at Tom, too.
The shameful thing had stabbed at me again as Mr. Thornfax taunted Tom about Daisy, twisting deeper still when Tom offered to go in her place. Now it was lodged like a knife in my chest. I took a ragged breath, swallowing the tears that rose in my throat.
Tom Rampling loved Daisy, else he would not have offered to die for her. And I—here was the secret I could no longer conceal from myself—I loved Tom Rampling, else I would not mind how he felt about another girl.
SIXTEEN
Icrawled from my hiding spot and stood up, smoothing the dust off my skirts. I punched Mrs. Fayerweather’s hat where I’d crushed its crown. “We had b-better go home,” I said.
Tom avoided my eyes as studiously as I avoided his. “Let me be certain they’ve gone, first.” He swept the broken glass and wire into a basin. He buttoned his collar where the reddened bands across his white throat still accused me like a martyr’s wounds. He took his coat and cap from the hook and ducked ahead of me through the office and into the warehouse. “All right,” he called, and after he’d secured the secret door I followed him through the dark space and into the street.
Tom led me at a near-run round the back of the building, weaving around scattered timber ends and soggy mounds of sawdust. On the boardwalk he reached for my hand. From the careful way he peered along each wharf before crossing the sunlit passageways, I knew that he hadn’t had to exit the laboratory in this way before. It was my presence making him furtive, I realized. I was the criminal who must be hid. I was the one who had ventured where she should not go.
A gull perched atop a mast, gilded by the sinking sun. It raised its wings and crouched but did not fly. Laughter bubbled in my chest at the sight, and I suppressed it so that Tom would not worry I was becoming hysterical.
I had leapt. Like the riverboys, I’d leapt from one deck and landed on another: a surface that heaved and rolled but, to my great surprise and relief, had not pitched me off. Where I balanced now, though, was a world askew. Oh, it was still peopled by beer-sellers and fishwives and scavenging children, but
all these poor souls went about their business in perfect ignorance. They did not know what I knew. How could they? They had not leapt as I had. They couldn’t possibly see how disordered the world had become, how its most basic elements had been shuffled and scattered and turned on end.
Who was trustworthy and noble, who was a grasping, cold-blooded liar—the categories of human character spun and exploded within me like a Catherine wheel. They flashed behind my eyes, glittering and indistinct, as Tom and I emerged from a long alley into the strong sunlight of Adelaide Place. They brushed my skin like cats’ tongues and made me shiver, even though I was warm and winded from the walk.
No one else saw what I saw. Not the baker in his flour-covered smock emptying crumbs for the pigeons from a sack, not the tall woman walking a pair of bulldogs on braided leather leashes. Even Tom—who dropped my hand now and kept a proper distance but tilted his chin to peer sidelong at me through his curls—even he might not see, exactly, how good and evil had swapped places and upended the world.
I should not ride in a cab unchaperoned with Tom Rampling. But then, I thought, I should not be walking with him unchaperoned, either. I knew one thing only: my beliefs about Tom had been flung from orbit along with everything else, and I needed to know where they—where he—might land. So I raised my arm to the first approaching brougham driver, opened the door, and pushed Tom up the step, scrambling in beside him before he could make protest.
Inside the cab, though, the padded seats, the shuttered dimness, and the air furred with the many smells of its passengers conspired to rob me of all inspiration. What could I possibly say to him? I felt suddenly weak, as dazed as Alice grown too big for the rabbit hole. And the enclosed space was alive, too, with Tom’s presence next to me and the recent memory of our physical struggle. I sat with my hands pressed between my knees, struggling to gain governance of myself. I searched in vain for words to break the awkwardness, aware of a powerful yearning to touch and not to talk.
In the end it was Tom who broke the silence. “You must despise me.”
I half-turned to him, taken off my guard by the dull misery in his voice. His hands lay like fallen birds in his lap.
“Cowering like a dog before your lord. Letting him use me so wretchedly.”
“You are mistaken. It is not you I d-despise.”
He glanced at me and away again, frowning, waiting.
He cannot see how the world is new, I thought. I remembered how I’d let Mr. Thornfax caress my neck and whisper to me at the opera, and my stomach lurched. “Flattered. B-blinded. How could I be so s-stupid? I could not s-see him for what he is.”
“Thornfax took great pains not to be seen by you.” Tom rubbed at a smear on the window.
“We must tell the p-police,” I said.
“Tell them what?” Tom said. “That the Lord Rosbury slapped an assistant? No, I do know what you mean”—he waved a hand in apology for his sharpness—“I’ve puzzled over it from every angle, believe me. But there’s no case against the man. Not yet. The police would never touch a man like Thornfax without real proof.
“I’ve needed to let him use me like this.” Tom shot me a quick glance, shame mantling his face again. “I’ve let him believe in my eagerness to do anything he asks. I need his belief in my loyalty, you see, in order to know his plans.”
Now it was my turn to frown and wait.
Tom took a heavy gold watch from his pocket. “Do you recognize this?”
I read the engraving. “Mr. Thornfax’s! H-how—?”
“A man beating his dog doesn’t mind his pocket,” he said, a touch ruefully. He opened the case and, digging a fingernail into the seam, removed the watch face to expose the works. “I will build this into the detonation mechanism for the explosive Daisy must ignite.”
“The lightning cap,” I said, remembering Daisy’s boasting in the surgery.
“Yes. If it operates the way I am hoping, it will delay the blast long enough for her to come away safely—long enough for an alarm to be raised, for an evacuation to occur.
“I’m not proud of the thievery, milady. But only the most expensive timepieces contain the necessary components for my device.” This time the look he cast me revealed a glint of mischief. “I confess there will be a certain satisfaction in sabotaging Thornfax with his own timepiece.”
He pointed out various gears and springs in an attempt to explain how the watch could be modified into a timer, but I was inattentive to the science, being overwhelmed with the relief of confirming what I’d already hoped beyond hope, what I’d known for certain, I think, the moment Mr. Thornfax had struck him in the lab: Tom Rampling was working at cross-purposes to his employers.
Tom’s enthusiasm for his invention faded, however, when he recalled what had gone wrong for poor young Will at the opera house: “I hadn’t got Watts to trust me enough yet to tell me the exact timing of the planned attack, or even the location. And then Daisy had taken a heavier dose than usual and was too sleepy to obey orders, so Watts grabbed Will and forced him to do it in her place. He … I must make the device simpler to manage. Will must have panicked and forgotten how to set the delay.”
I recalled the argument between Tom and Mr. Thornfax at the carriage on the night of the opera blast, and Tom’s devastation at the news that Will had died.
Gently he shook off the consoling hand I placed over his. “No, milady, I know what you will say. But the boy’s death is my responsibility. As will be Daisy’s, if I fail again.
“I introduced many of these poor souls to Dr. Dewhurst. I recruited patients for him everywhere before I knew how dangerous his cure is, how powerful are the morbid cravings it induces.” He scrubbed a hand savagely across his eyes. “‘Nervous disturbances,’ he treats! As if every orphan in this city doesn’t suffer from nervous disturbance!”
“W-why does he do it?” I said. My brother-in-law did not strike me as capable of deliberate inhumanity or murder for its own sake.
Tom shrugged. “There’s a fortune to be made in the patent, he says, and the application for such a patent requires clinical trials.”
“But if the d-drug is so addictive—”
“It will sell all the faster.”
I considered this. Daniel Dewhurst was master of Hastings House but not in possession of the funds needed to maintain it. The Dewhursts were almost entirely dependent upon my aunt Emma. It was shocking but not wholly surprising to hear that Daniel might be pursuing this lucrative patent even at the cost of human lives. Perhaps he’d first initiated the friendship with Mr. Thornfax as a way of funding his researches, and only recently had the two been conspiring to smuggle the opium if it became illegal in England.
Tom anticipated my next question. “I do not understand exactly how Thornfax’s violent schemes are enmeshed with the doctor’s work. The Lord Rosbury has all the money a man could want, but he craves power. I’ve heard him boast that he’ll have Parliament performing his tricks like trained monkeys.”
I shuddered at such arrogance, and at the thought that I might not have become aware of it until it was too late. Did Mr. Thornfax command the Black Glove, then? Was there a Black Glove aside from Mr. Thornfax, his man Watts, and the poor urchins they coerced into doing their bidding?
Tom cleared his throat. “I am sorry, milady. I should not speak so to you of your—of him.”
“No. I am n-not—I am …” I fell silent. Absurd as it seemed, I was grateful for the events of the past few hours. Not just to Tom, for telling me the truth and for proving himself to be as kind and conscientious as I’d first believed him. I was grateful simply for having acted, for having striven and succeeded in some small way. And above all I was grateful because I realized that at some point, hiding in that laboratory, I had stopped being afraid.
Near to choking with my inability to express any of this to Tom, I plucked Mr. Thornfax’s watch from his hand, snapped it shut, and held it in my fist. “Do you love Daisy?” I blurted.
Tom blinked. H
is brow creased. His mouth opened, closed again, and quirked with some private irony. He reached to retrieve the watch from me and withdrew his hand when I wouldn’t release it. Then he reached again to let his fingers close over mine. “How could I love Daisy?” he said, soft as a sigh. “Miss Luck. With you in the world, how could I?”
I opened my palm to relinquish the watch. Instead of taking it he pinched my glove by the cuff and deftly peeled it from my hand, turning it inside out and trapping the watch within it. I laughed and made a lunge for the glove, but he pulled it away and stuffed it into his pocket.
I was breathless and off balance, my face suddenly poised very close to Tom’s. He smoothed my hair to one side, the same fleeting, unthinking gesture as the first time he’d touched me, in the parlour so many weeks ago. I felt his warm breath against my lips and closed my eyes against a corresponding rush of heat in my belly. “P-please,” I said, and Tom misunderstood and leaned away, removing his hand from my hair.
So I kissed him. It was nothing but a fumbling brush of my lips against his, but it drew from him a rough gasp of pleasure. He gathered me into his arms. His lips came down on mine and parted them, and I tasted the salt of his blood and the sweetness of his tongue. Our kisses after that were heedless of his bruises, heedless of anything except the sensations flaring between us like a match to a fuse.
There are things I simply cannot say. I heard myself moan, a low, sensual sound that was my own, not Mimic’s— and yet it sounded wholly foreign to me. I tore my other glove from my hand and let my fingers revel in the silky luxury of Tom’s hair, the rasp of skin at his jaw. Trails of fire followed his lips along my throat.
Tom buried his face against my neck, his hands encircling my ribs as if he were taking the measure of my heart. “Oh, Miss Luck,” he breathed between kisses. “Oh, love. Oh, my love.”
Losing ourselves in this way we were fortunate that the cab chanced to cross a stretch of broken road that jolted us nearly from our seats. I laughed aloud at our disarray, but then I glanced out and saw that we had already crossed Orchard Street and were nearing Portman. I shouted for the driver to stop and hastened to reassemble Mrs. Fayerweather’s hat and my scarf-veil.
Mad Miss Mimic Page 13
