My Lady Quicksilver ls-3

by Bec McMaster

  His blue eye rolled to Ingrid and he swallowed.

  “Firstly, I want to know if you’ve seen Jeremy. Or gotten word from him at all.”

  Harry’s shoulders relaxed, as if realizing he wouldn’t be asked to betray his fellow mechs. “Ain’t seen ’im since the tower,” he admitted. “Thought ’e were dead—or taken by the Nighthawks.”

  Her eyelashes lowered as she fought to control her emotions. Her last hopes were drying up. If none of the mechs had seen him… “Why would you think the Nighthawks took him?”

  Harry shrugged. “I were kinda ’opin’, you know? They were all over the tower after the bomb went off.”

  He knew nothing then. Rosalind sat back on her heels, her throat dry and tight. Jack’s hand slid over her shoulder and she clutched it, squeezing his gloves gently as the world dissolved around her. The last hope she had lay with Lynch, and she wasn’t sure if he would recover from his bloodlust.

  Ingrid sighed. “Be off with you then—”

  “Wait.” Rosalind looked up. “Wait,” she added softly, forcing her thoughts to focus. “Tell me about the clockwork balls. The ones you use to drive a blue blood mad.”

  Harry’s face paled under his mop of dark hair. “I don’t know nothin’.”

  “Ingrid,” she said. “Cut his thumb off.”

  “No!” Harry squealed, scrambling back on the cobbles—directly into Ingrid’s legs.

  Ingrid grabbed his hand and dragged an enormous knife from her belt. “Which one?” she asked Rosalind. They’d played this game many times.

  Rosalind shrugged. “It doesn’t particularly matter. Your choice.”

  “This one then,” Ingrid said, yanking the lad’s hand back.

  “No!” he screamed. “No, stop! I’ll tell! I’ll tell you anythin’ you wanna know about the Doeppler Orbs!”

  Rosalind gestured Ingrid away and leaned closer. “Then tell me,” she said. “What is in the orbs that drives a blue blood mad? Is there a cure?”

  “There’s a Dr. Henrik Doeppler in the East End,” he blurted, staring at Ingrid’s knife. “Some kind of nutter but ’e was tryin’ to come up with a cure for the cravin’, and found this formula instead. Don’t know if there’s a cure. We don’t let ’em live long enough after…”

  “After the tests,” she encouraged.

  He looked at her.

  “Yes,” she smiled. “Be careful that you tell the truth, Harry. You don’t know how much I know.”

  “We done tests,” he said quickly. “Just a few down below. It were ’ard to get our ’ands on a blue blood, you see?”

  She nodded.

  “So Mordecai thought we oughta try it on the Echelon. Get ’em runnin’ scared and see ’ow well it works before we attack.”

  Her instincts had been right. This was bigger than it had seemed. “And where’s the final attack going to happen?”

  Harry stared at her helplessly. “I don’t rightly know.” He jerked his hands up in front of him as she frowned. “I don’t! I swear it! Mordecai only tells me what I need to know.”

  Rosalind frowned. “I saw crates filled with the orbs. There were enough there to drive half the Echelon into a frenzy. He has to be planning an attack on something big, somewhere a lot of the Echelon will be trapped together.”

  “Only thing I know is its ’appenin’ in two days’ time,” Harry added helpfully. “Started shipping the crates out to the gangs tonight.”

  Two days time. None of her spies in the Echelon had mentioned anything important.

  “Let him go,” Rosalind murmured, then narrowed her eyes on Harry. “If I were you, I wouldn’t breathe a word of this meeting to Mordecai.”

  “Believe me”—he gave a shaky laugh—“I won’t.”

  * * *

  The next morning found Rosalind on the guild steps after slipping out without waking Jack or Ingrid. Yesterday morning they hadn’t let her in. “Please,” she whispered under her breath. “Please let him be himself again.” Whether the plea was to a God she’d never prayed to before, she didn’t know.

  Rapping sharply at the main door, she waited with bated breath. The minutes dragged by and she was just about to rap again when Doyle jerked it open.

  His glare faded when he saw her, a soft sigh in his throat. “Ain’t no change, Mrs. Marberry. Garrett dosed ’im with ’emlock again. You’d best be on your way, its may’em round ’ere.”

  She shoved a hand against the door as he sought to close it. “Do we know what the long-term effects of hemlock will do to him?”

  “Mrs. Marberry, we don’t even know if ’e’ll be ’imself again. ’E’s been wild this mornin’.” Again he moved to shut the door.

  “Can I sit with him?” she blurted, shoving herself between the narrowing crack. “Just for a half hour. Please?”

  “I don’t ’old as that’s such a good idea.”

  At the top of the stairs a dark figure distinguished itself from the shadows and Garrett leaned on the railing. “Let her through.”

  Doyle scowled. “You know what’s ’e’s been like. Ain’t the done thing to let a lady in there with ’im like that.”

  “Isn’t it? Nothing we’ve done has made one ounce of difference. He doesn’t recognize any of us; indeed, he sees us only as threats.” Garrett’s expression softened as he looked at her. “But he’s called for you, many times. Maybe she can do what we can’t.”

  Rosalind pushed past before Doyle could say another word, feeling breathless. “Is he dangerous?”

  Garrett’s lashes brushed his cheek as he looked down. “We have him restrained. He only becomes violent when we enter the room.”

  She swallowed the hard lump in her throat. That moment in Undertown where he’d pinned her to the wall had frightened her. She shouldn’t even be here; both Jack and Ingrid had argued against it until she’d agreed not to go, if only to placate the pair of them.

  But she couldn’t leave it alone. She needed to see him, needed him to be all right.

  She missed him.

  Gathering her skirts in her hand, she swept up the stairs, falling into step beside Garrett.

  “I remembered something,” she said, “about the attack. They mentioned a Dr. Doeppler—the man who created the drug that…that did this to him. Perhaps he has an antidote?”

  Garret shot her a sharp look. “Dr. Doeppler?”

  “In the East End,” she replied, her gaze narrowing on the door to her own study. She felt light-headed, each step deliberately laid.

  “I see. I’ll send someone to see to the doctor.” His gaze dipped to her clasped hands. “Don’t be scared. I don’t think he’d hurt you or else I wouldn’t allow this.”

  Garrett opened the door and ushered her inside with a cool hand in the small of her back.

  “What if he doesn’t want to see me?” she whispered suddenly. The silence in the rooms was almost deafening. “What if it sends him over the edge again?”

  “There is that risk,” Garrett admitted. “That’s why he’s bound. He can’t get to you, Rosa.” A hesitation. “But I fear you might have to do this alone. If he sees me—He doesn’t react well to the sight of any of us, and I fear if he sees me by your side…he’ll perceive a threat.”

  “He’s afraid of you?”

  Another odd hesitation. “Not quite.”

  “Garrett, please.” She actually laid her hand on his arm. “Tell me what you’re not saying.”

  “The darkness inside him—his demons, whatever you wish to call them… They’re focused on you, Rosa.”

  A frisson of fear—and something else—traveled over her skin.

  “Sometimes it happens with a blue blood,” he added quietly, “when he desires a woman beyond all else. It’s a possessive, driving force within him. To protect you, to have you with him, to—” He actually colored. “A need to claim you as his own. I believe it’s the only thing that saved your life in Undertown. His bloodlust was stirred, but with it roused the darker side of his nature, the part tha
t recognizes you as his.” Something bleak traveled through those pretty blue eyes. “We all have the capacity for it, Rosa.”

  A disaster. She could never escape him if this was the truth. And Lynch would demand more of herself than she could give. “What would happen if I don’t go to him?”

  “If we can’t find a way to bring him back, then we—I—will have to kill him.”

  Pain filled his eyes and with it came the realization that Garrett was a better man than she’d ever suspected. To do such an act would hurt him beyond reparation. But he would do it if he needed to—that ingrained sense of duty that she suspected Lynch had had a hand in instilling.

  “I’ll try.” The part of her that had been trained by Balfour was screaming at her, forcing her to look at this strategically.

  Heat burned behind her eyes and she gathered herself and stepped to the door of his study. Her careful strategies be damned. No matter how much she’d tried to deny this, she felt something for Lynch. Something strong. Something that almost made her feel human again.

  She couldn’t leave him behind if she was the only chance he had of recovering.

  Eighteen

  Rosalind knew as soon as she touched the door handle that Lynch was awake. She could almost hear him listening and sweat touched a damp hand to her spine.

  Courage.

  Resolutely, she turned the handle.

  The sight of him stole her breath. Spatters of dull, drying blood flecked his chest and the bed sheets, his arms yanked high above his body and bound with enormous iron manacles that someone had driven into the wall with what looked like railway spikes. The sheet covered his hips, but they’d bound his feet in much the same way and from the vial and pair of needles on the bedside table, they were dosing him regularly with hemlock.

  She slowly closed the door behind her. Lynch watched her, those black eyes gleaming in the flickering dance of candlelight. A predator’s eyes. Not the man that she longed for. Not her clever adversary, her dearest enemy.

  “Hello,” Rosalind whispered, trying to still her racing heart. “I’ve missed you, my lord.” Her voice sounded loud in the room, silence broken only by the slight shifting of sheets as his head turned to track her.

  This was what she had hated and feared for so long. Balfour’s eyes had been like that, black and emotionless, when he’d cut Nathaniel’s throat in front of her. You are the devil, she’d screamed at him then, and she’d believed it.

  Rubbing at her chest, Rosalind crossed to the window and jerked the curtains back, unable to stand the dark anymore. What did she believe now?

  Behind her, the low exhale of his breath caught her ears. When she turned, Lynch twisted his face away, hiding from the almost-blinding light. Of course. Blue bloods tolerated sunlight, but they preferred darkness, with their overly sensitive eyes and pale skins. The higher their CV count, the harsher they felt it and right now, with the bloodlust ruling him, he’d be even more sensitive.

  Rosalind tugged the curtains half-shut. “I’m sorry. But I can hardly see.” Her nose wrinkled up. The room smelled like blood. She opened the window and a cool breeze stirred the curtains.

  “Have you eaten?” she asked, her voice strengthening. She eyed the rusty stains on his shirt. “Have they bathed you at all?”

  The answer of course was no.

  Crossing briskly to the door, she reached for the handle. It was only then that she realized how relaxed his body had been, for he jerked to attention, the manacles cutting into his flesh.

  “No!”

  Rosalind paused. Their eyes met. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I’m only going to send Garrett for some fresh sheets and water.”

  Breath heaved in his chest, his eyes glittering dangerously. Rosalind slowly turned the handle. “I won’t leave the room,” she promised.

  Garrett waited in Lynch’s study, leaping to his feet with a desperately longing expression as soon as he saw her.

  She shook her head, not daring to step over the threshold. “I need warm water and soap,” she told him. “Fresh sheets for his bed too, and some blud-wein.”

  Garrett nodded, his shoulders slumping in relief as he sprang toward the door. Rosalind didn’t have the heart to tell him there had been no change.

  Closing the door, she turned back to Lynch. His lip curled and he glared through the wall, an angry purr sounding in his throat.

  “That’s enough,” she said, stepping between him and the door. His gaze lit on her and she shivered. Dangerous.

  The corded muscles in his throat clenched and he strained against the manacles that bound him. Rosalind hurried to the bed. “Stop it,” she said, laying her hands on his chest. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

  The reaction had been instinctive. Hard flesh flexed beneath her gloves and her lips parted as she looked down. Those eyes watched her again, but the look was no longer dangerous. Stark primal need crossed his expression, desire burning in the black heat of his eyes.

  It lit within her, her body reacting as if he’d put flame to oil. Rosalind lifted her iron hand tentatively, stroking her other hand over his bare chest. The buttons on his shirt were torn, gaping over hard flanks and the rippled muscle of his abdomen. Instantly she was transported back to that night in the bathing room, not so long ago. The feel of his teeth on the back of her neck and his hands cupping her breasts and sliding lower, into the vee of her thighs. His hips thrusting against her, warm lips tracing the curve of her shoulder…

  A little shiver ran over her skin, her nipples hardening behind the thin lawn of her chemise. Fear died a short death in her breast.

  He didn’t want to hurt her. He never had. To claim her as his own yes, to sink his teeth into the smooth skin of throat and drink her blood. Whether he could have stopped himself, she didn’t know, but he had no intentions of hurting her.

  Just of claiming her.

  Pain she could deal with—the idea of belonging to him, to anyone, so completely, sent a nervous thrill through her. Not entirely unpleasant, almost the same play of nerves that she enjoyed in dangerous situations—and yet so much more terrifying. Her feelings for Nate had been the warm joy of friendship and shared respect, a love that didn’t challenge her yet left her feeling safe and protected. Whatever this was—whatever she felt for Lynch—was a maelstrom in comparison, and she wasn’t sure if she could hold herself together through it.

  She didn’t know what to do, but she did know that she had to try and help him through this. The idea of losing him to the bloodlust almost choked her.

  “My lord,” Rosalind murmured, kneeling on the bed and leaning over him. “I know you’re in there.”

  Her whispered breath traced his ear. Lynch turned his head with a snarl, breathing hard as he drew her scent into his lungs.

  Her heart thundered in her veins. Slowly, Rosalind brushed her silky glove over his lips, leaning closer. Lynch stilled beneath her like some enormous jungle cat, violence bunching in each muscle. But she wasn’t frightened anymore. He was bound and chained and she had the upper hand.

  The thought was almost titillating.

  Leaning down, she traced her gloved finger over his lip, dipping wetly into his mouth. Then lower, down the cleft in his chin and then the smooth hollow of his throat. The muscles beneath her hardened like marble, but he held still, a fine tremor in his arms. Reined in by her touch, the look in his eyes darkly curious. As if warning her that he was by no means tamed, he turned his face into her hand, his teeth sinking into the fleshy pad of her palm.

  A gasp wet Rosalind’s lips, the sensation seeming to tug all the way through her, right to the heart of her sex, until she throbbed with liquid fire. The pleasure of his bite was almost painful, almost a little too harsh. She rocked onto her knees, biting her lip, her fingers curling helplessly around the side of his face.

  “Please,” she moaned. Begged.

  His teeth released her skin and feeling flooded into the flesh, making her eyes clench shut and a shudder run through her.


  A knock on the door tore her head up, a hot flush of heat burning through her cheeks. Had Garrett heard her? Tension rode through the hard body on the bed and she stroked his face, turning it toward her.

  “I’ll be back,” she whispered, leaning down to brush her lips against his cheek. The rasp of his stubble roughened her sensitive mouth. “Then we will finish this.”

  Dark lashes hooded his eyes. He liked that.

  Rosalind hurried to the door. Jerking it open just wide enough for her body, she saw Garrett’s gaze lift over her shoulder. Some protective urge almost made her straighten, as if to block Lynch from his sight.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, accepting the bundle in his arms. A pair of sheets, with a bowl of water balanced on top and a butter-yellow bar of soap to the side.

  “Is he—”

  “Go,” she told him, pushing the door shut with the toe of her slipper. “He’s not going to hurt me.”

  The door shut in his face.

  “Mrs. Marberry,” Garrett called through the door.

  Rosalind glanced over her shoulder as Lynch stirred, staring malevolently at the door. “You’re making him worse. Leave us alone. I’ll send for you when I need to.”

  “There’s blud-wein in the liquor cabinet in the corner.” Then Garrett’s footsteps echoed on the other side of the door as he walked away, the sound vanishing as he shut the other door between them.

  Steeling herself, Rosalind turned around, her arms aching from the strain of the sheets and the water basin. She put them down, then swiftly tore the shirt from his arms. There was no point in retaining it; it was quite ruined.

  “Come closer,” Lynch commanded, his voice a harsh whisper as his gaze locked on her throat.

  “No,” she replied, dragging the sheet out from under him. Her expression softened when she saw the helpless fury cross his face. “Please. Let me take care of you.” Her lashes lowered. “Perhaps you’ll even enjoy it, sir?”