Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles

by Cooper, Karina

  Instead, shuddering, it was as if I could smell the pungent damp, feel the choking fog as it slipped through my nose and mouth. I heard the bubbling noise of what I now knew to be a throat cut in the dark.

  That was his first stroke; the point where the nub of his disturbed conscience began his signature. The mutilations, the ghastly acts performed upon each body, became his flourish.

  Each act an art, each stroke a laugh.

  Taunting us?

  No. There was a difference between this man and the collector I chased. The latter truly fancied himself an artist; perhaps he even was, and his canvas was the world as he saw it. Brilliant or simply mad; the two so often came hand in hand.

  This murderer was nothing so elegant.

  Elegant? I shook myself free of the fanciful turn my thoughts had gone, inhaling gratefully the fragrance of the wood in the fire and the aromatic, dark tea Booth continued to bring me.

  Whatever this creature was, he was a man, and he would bleed like one.

  As he boasted like one.

  A rustle of fabric behind me warned me of company. Too harsh a sound for Fanny’s silk and velvet day dress, and accompanied by neither the clatter of a tray nor Mrs. Booth’s near-constant murmur.

  Zylphia, then. “He sent out a letter,” I said aloud, glancing up. Clad in a demure day dress, gray relieved by a stark white apron and her head covered by a white cap, Zylphia looked nothing like the sweet she’d once exclusively been.

  Or like the assistant she had become.

  Her head tilted, cleaning cloths in hand. “The sweet tooth?” Her name for the collector, given he’d been offing sweets at the time.

  I shook my head. “Leather Apron. Tend your duties, I’ll read it to you.”

  She wasn’t as efficient as her predecessor had been, but even in severe gray and white, she retained a certain grace impossible to ignore.

  The Karakash Veil—the mouthpiece, anyway, by which I’d received my orders—had suggested she came not just from mixed stock, but from a useful heritage. I didn’t know what it meant.

  I wondered, sometimes, if the Veil had only upsold her value to ensure my agreement. He needn’t have bothered.

  “Dear Boss,” I read, returning my attention to the paper, “I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won’t fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits.”

  “Charming bloke, isn’t he?”

  “I’d say he knows his letters, but there’s errors,” I said slowly, scanning the rest of the text. Grisly, to be sure. “A dictation, perhaps?”

  “Or some minor schooling.” Zylphia bent to her task, polishing the grate in front of the fire. “There’s some what say this murderer’s a lord in disguise.”

  I smiled briefly, suddenly amused by the dichotomy we presented. Each with a second life, one in Society, one below.

  But it faded. “Doubtful. If ’tis true, then he writes very poorly.”

  “Unless it’s a trick.”

  A fair point. “He goes on. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with, but it went thick like glue and I can’t use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope. He considers himself charming, anyway.” He’d written ha, ha after the joke, but I wasn’t laughing.

  The collector, may his soul rot once I caught up to him, had used blood when he’d written me a note. The same letter that warned me he’d kidnapped Betsy Phillips, my last maid and as dear a friend as I’d ever had.

  Eager for attention, the collector had sneered. So it seemed. Of them both.

  “So who wrote it?” Zylphia demanded, her hands busy polishing but no less intent on me than she was on the chores that kept her busy by day.

  I studied the transcribed text, my eyebrows rising. I’d never mastered the art of lifting just one. “Jack,” I read.

  “What?” My maid scoffed loudly, snapping her polishing cloth into the air in easy dismissal. “Spring-Heeled Jack’s nothing more than a legend.”

  I lowered the paper, mouth twisting into a grim slant. “Not Spring-Heeled Jack,” I said softly. “Nothing so fanciful.”

  “What, then?”

  “Jack the Ripper.”

  My maid fell silent.

  The name—false, though it may be—rang like a death knell in my parlor. It was a name that would grip London with fear, I was sure of it.

  Jack the Ripper.

  Perhaps I’d two murderers to hunt this time.

  Suddenly filled with a sense of urgency, I set aside the papers I’d perused and rose to my feet. “I’m off to change,” I declared, and left her to tidy behind me.

  All I wanted at that very moment was to travel below and begin to retrace the steps I’d taken through Dutfield’s Yard. To ask questions of the witnesses, to visit the Menagerie and make inquiries among the sweets.

  Unfortunate though they may be, the sweets knew things that most would never let on. Clients talked. I needed to know if they’d heard any word of this Ripper.

  If Hawke would even allow me the chance.

  Blast. I had no choice in the matter. It was all moot speculation. As I seized my poplin skirts in one hand and hurried up the stairs, passing the large wooden lions carved at the foot, I knew I’d have to wait.

  Much as I dreaded social events, I could not pass up an invite from Lady Rutledge. Not if I intended to survive Society’s demands long enough to enjoy my own forthcoming independence.

  The widow was my only ally of any standing.

  Chapter Four

  Lady Rutledge was a woman of massive stature. Even with her impressive bosom safely hidden behind a fitted jacket of a particularly eye-watering shade of verdigris—a color that put me in mind of the strange blue-green patina copper could take on—she did not give any impression of delicacy.

  Especially since her voice, neither gentle nor demure by any stretch of the word, tended to dominate one’s attention. And when one’s attention was well and truly acquired, one could not help but notice that her hair was perhaps a shade too dark for a lady of her age, and that her lips a titch too pink. When they twisted into a particularly sardonic slant, one might also notice the beauty mark affixed to the side of her mouth.

  I wasn’t convinced it entirely natural.

  What I did know was that the lady held court in a parlor at least five times as large as mine, with a rug underfoot in the wildly floral pattern that remained all the rage among the posh and polished. The colors—vibrant reds and purples, accented in gold and brown and green—clashed brilliantly with the bold stripes in verdant emerald and gilt upon the walls. Overstuffed sofas scattered over the space played host to mostly gentlemen, with the occasional lady among them.

  As I sipped at my tea, my grip ever so careful on a china cup so thin as to put me in mind of spun sugar, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between this, a Society function, and the Midnight Menagerie below the drift.

  Both tended to favor gentlemen. Both put much emphasis on the appearance of a lady.

  Of course, unlike a proper well-heeled young miss, a clever woman in the Menagerie might just find her way to a certain kind of freedom.

  Or so I hoped.

  “I relish the end of Season,” Lady Rutledge was saying, perched upon a large, ornate chair as a queen upon her throne. Her skirts, two-toned in a matching verdigris with a ruffled hem of deep purple, were arrayed perfectly. For all her girth, the lady knew exactly how to present.

  Around her neck, a gold chain held the matching frames of a pair of delicate spectacles. Once in a while, she lifted them to her face, and more often than not, I found them pointed at me.

  I smiled into them, now. Obediently. “As do I, my lady.”

  “Why?”

  A sharp question, and one that left me with the unsettling feeling that I was being tested. I set my cup carefully down upon its matching saucer, the tiny clink it made clear as a bell, and
barely kept from tilting my head as I did when I thought.

  The first time I’d made Lady Rutledge’s acquaintance, she called me a rotund bird for the gesture.

  Instead, I straightened my shoulders. “I find the endless parade of unmarried girls tedious,” I told her, erring on the side of truth rather than prevarication. “I mislike the emphasis on fashion and gossip.”

  Beside me, a gentleman in a tweed coat blotted at his bristling black mustache with a cloth napkin. “I find the lack of lectures most disheartening.”

  “I’m sure you do, Mr. Englebrooks.” Lady Rutledge’s smile was not as apparent at her mouth as it was in her eyes, an intriguing shade of blue most similar to that color the sky turned to as twilight settled in. The fleshy pads of her cheeks turned upward. “Yet did you not meet your very wife during the Season?”

  The sound he made, something between a snort and a clearing of the throat, earned raised eyebrows from me, but this was not the sort of thing a lady such as I should comment on.

  Nevertheless, I found it amusing.

  “And you, Miss Hensworth.” Without pausing in her effortless conduction of the orchestra that were her guests, Lady Rutledge turned her attentions to a woman I vaguely recall being introduced as Miss Hortense Hensworth.

  I recognized the name. The woman was not one of the peerage’s many daughters. Middle-class, perhaps, though I wondered if I were being too kind in the assessment. She spent her time, as I recalled, penning open letters to the universities and the public regarding the rights of women in science and education.

  I did not mind the rallying cry of a fellow scientific female, but I took some umbrage at the concept that women posed better intellectualists than men. I had met brilliant men. Some I would hold in higher regard than most women of my association. I wasn’t positive Miss Hensworth would make friends with her chosen rhetoric.

  The name I knew, certainly, though I would be hard-pressed to remember the face.

  There was absolutely nothing memorable of the woman at all. Of an average height—which placed her taller than I, at least—and a round, not unpleasant face, she seemed more at ease as a wallflower than the center of social speculation. Her simple dress of blue linen, while perfectly respectable, hovered on the verge of genteel. I detected traces where the hem had been mended more than once, and the shoulders seemed slightly ill-fitting.

  Her mousy brown hair, piled upon her head in an artless bun, seemed a victim of circumstance, as it escaped its pins with startling ease. Fringes fell around her cheeks and forehead, which may have been flattering were it not for the simple lifelessness of it. I had never seen a woman as desperately in need of curling paper and tongs as Miss Hensworth.

  But then, she had no need of such things. She was, like many of the guests gathered here at Lady Rutledge’s behest, of a scientific bent. Some more than others, I suspected, but telling enough in the topics of conversation that drifted across the parlor.

  Miss Hensworth’s eyes had gone wide, rather pretty in a muted green, and framed by wire spectacles perched crookedly upon her nose. “My lady?”

  “The Season, Miss Hensworth, have you been paying attention at all?”

  Impatience lashed at the woman, perhaps some years older than I, and I winced on her behalf. “I— Oh. No, my lady, I pay no attention to the Season,” she replied, apologetic enough though the words seemed forced from her pale lips.

  Mr. Murdstone Englebrooks leaned over the sofa to offer, “Miss St. Croix, do you read the periodicals?”

  “I do,” I murmured, though one ear fixed upon Lady Rutledge as she accused the shy lady of lacking spine in social endeavors.

  “Penmanship and rhetoric will only get you so far, my dear,” she barked, as demanding as a general on the battlefield.

  I didn’t disagree. I only wondered if Miss Hensworth shone in other pursuits, as well. I resolved to find out. A wallflower had always been my ideal designation among the peerage.

  “What of Angelicus Finch’s Gazette?”

  I shook my head, cradling my saucer in my lap. “Not since the late doctor passed on editorial responsibilities. I find it now mostly gossip.”

  “Do you dislike even scientific gossip, then?” Mr. Englebrooks required, and I studied the inquiring set of his dark eyes with a sudden surge of concern.

  Had he inched closer on the brocade sofa?

  “I find gossip as a rule tends to muddy the waters,” I explained, but cautiously. The rather mixed effect of sharp cologne and aged cigar smoke assaulted my senses. Across the parlor, Lady Rutledge pulled her girth out of her chair, skirts falling in a ripple of color. “It has its uses, but only if one is capable of separating the heart from the . . .” I hesitated.

  “From the waste,” the lady interjected, with a finality that declared most was simply waste. “Mr. Englebrooks, kindly go bother Lady Tavish with your questions.”

  And like the emphasis placed on the first portion of her statement, the word questions held a wealth of meaning I wasn’t sure I understood.

  But he only laughed, an indelicate sound, and rose. “The pleasure was mine, I assure you.” He offered me a short bow.

  I inclined my head, and wondered if I’d missed something important.

  At least below, I thought with some irritation, flirtation was something much more obvious. Even if it often involved an exchange of money.

  The sofa creaked as Lady Rutledge sank to its cushion beside me. Her skirts brushed mine, pooling in a flattering overlap of blue-green and bronze. “So you continue to read the periodicals, then,” she said, not so much a question as affirmation.

  I nodded. “Yes, my lady.”

  The first time I’d met the woman, I’d claimed “bollocks” to one of her scientific questions. This was the reason I used the word with Teddy in my letter. He remembered, and laughed still when the subject came up between us.

  I thought it a terrible blunder, but in some way, it must have earned the lady’s attention. This was my second luncheon among her social set.

  I met new faces each time. Miss Hensworth, for example. And another girl whose father was a respectable professor at King’s College above the drift. What was her name? Dorring. Miss Delphina Dorring. Beautiful girl, all the fashionable rage, but cool as a winter sky.

  Miss Dorring now argued with two gentlemen whose names I’d forgotten, but whose manner of dress suggested they walked in highly reputable circles indeed.

  “I do,” I said, aware that the lady studied me through her spectacles once more. “I read the papers, as well.”

  Lady Rutledge’s mouth pinched. “All of them?”

  “Many.”

  “Waste,” she told me, and without thinking, I retorted, “Only if one stops with the Society columns.”

  There, another glimmer. Laughter. I amused her, perhaps. Her eyes glinted as she asked me, “And what did you read today?”

  “I read of Jack the Ripper, my lady.”

  As I expected, the words sent a chill through the room. Conversation halted, but did not stop, and I could not help my head from tilting.

  “More waste,” she repeated, and flicked the Whitechapel murderer away with a simple wave of her hand. “Did you read anything not promoted by sensationalist rumor?”

  My eyes widened as I mulled this over, and I realized she was right. I had not. I’d gone from the gossip columns direct to the Ripper headlines.

  Embarrassed, I could offer no rebuttal.

  “I see,” she intoned, in a way that suggested she did. All too well. “I am interested in your mind, Miss St. Croix. Let us speak on that.”

  “My mind?” Perhaps not the most intelligent response such a compliment deserved. I shifted on the sofa, aware of closeted scrutiny from the other guests around me. My palms itched. My throat itched, for that matter, and I knew that for what it was.

  I could have navigated this social maze so much easier if I’d only a few spare grains of opium. Instead, clutching for dear life at my common sens
e, I focused upon keeping myself from social blunder.

  I wanted to befriend Lady Rutledge, certainly, but not at the cost of my secrets.

  “Yes, yes, your mind.” She sighed, dropping the spectacles. “Your mother was a brilliant woman. You’ve inherited her looks, what of her senses?”

  “Her senses?” I set my saucer down upon the tea cart beside the sofa and added, “I don’t understand what you mean. I have my father’s mind, not my mother’s.”

  Lady Rutledge’s darkened eyebrows knitted. Disappointment, perhaps. “Shame.” And then, as a movement in blue from the corner of my eye seized my attention, the lady said simply, “I believe you to be mistaken. Play a game with me, Miss St. Croix.”

  I jerked my head around, Miss Hensworth’s position by the mantel forgotten. “What sort of game?”

  “A game of deliberation,” she replied, and smiled. “Your mother was particularly good at them.”

  My mother, according to everyone else, was particularly good at everything I was not. The comparison had long since grown wearisome. Especially as my father’s intent to kill me went hand in hand with his intent to replace me with his late wife.

  “Unless,” she added thoughtfully, “you’d rather not.” But as kind as the offer was, I recognized it. Refusal would mean social consequence. One of the most brilliant women in the scientific field was extending a challenge.

  I could not refuse.

  I stiffened, ever so slightly. “What have you in mind?”

  “A mystery.”

  I was aware of the voices nearest dropping to a murmur. Of the speculation growing around us. Was this common?

  Was this what Lady Rutledge did when the Season failed to offer its spectacular array of soirees, lectures and events?

  My fingers curled into my palms. “I am listening.”

  “Of course you are.” She rose once more, an effort that suggested as large as she was, she was no delicate woman to suffer under her size. I was, to be honest, a little bit in awe of her. I could so easily imagine the imposing woman leading battles. Commanding men.

  Demanding respect.

  “A murder mystery,” she announced. Conversation ceased entirely. “Our detective will be none other than Miss St. Croix.”