Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles

by Cooper, Karina

  I refused to be the lesser half of a set. A functioning prop to serve tea and smile while the barbs of Society continued to arrow for my heart.

  I leaned my head back against the seat, the muted hum of the aether engine whispering softly in the silence. Now and again, Fanny hummed a tune under her breath, the way she was wont to do when things were well.

  It occurred to me then that I hadn’t heard her humming since before my ill-fated venture to investigate the man who would reveal himself to be my mad father.

  My fingers clenched in the folds of my skirt.

  The same night I’d first tasted those much-vaunted pleasures of the flesh. Not entirely by choice, no, but necessity had provided the opportunity, and I could not rid myself of its memory now.

  A marriage bed could achieve that much, at least.

  My mouth quirked; a wry thing. I knew as well as any other woman trapped below the drift how little a marriage bed was needed for such a thing. Yet Compton had kissed me once.

  The feelings that strangely passionate moment had engendered were not unlike that which Hawke created in me to combat the effects of the serum. Neither had been wholly unpleasant. Neither had been necessarily by my own desire, yet . . .

  Yet Compton had needed no drug.

  Was it me, then? Was I somehow offering the wrong sort of . . . signals? Clues?

  Was such a thing even possible?

  Nonsense. I could see nothing of myself that would suggest to a man that I only awaited their strong arm and kind word.

  Perhaps it was I that was being cruel. Leading the earl on because I had not found the strength to place my slipper squarely down upon the ballroom floor and deny him his intentions.

  Yes. That seemed much more likely. I would have to be bolder from here on.

  “In we go, love,” Fanny said quietly, and I jarred to sudden wakefulness to find the door opening and Booth’s white-gloved hand extended.

  Fanny made no argument when I begged off to bed. Zylphia had been given the night to herself, as such events always run into the wee hours of the morning. I did not expect to find her nearby, so shed my own clothing, stripped off the tight vise of my corset and took the time to unpin my hair and give my head a thorough rub.

  It helped, but only a little. My breath came as if through a tunnel, leaving me with a faintly light-headed feeling.

  Perhaps I was coming down with an ailment. A touch of the ague?

  I certainly had no time for such things.

  In truth—contrary to the uncertain ailment squeezing the breath from me—my heart pounded as if I were giving chase, excitement flowing through my veins.

  I was in high spirits, eager for a run; a mad dash into the unknown. The kind of feeling I associated with the day after a fact-collecting sortie into an opium den.

  Quickly, I pulled my collecting garb from the trunk I hid it in, stepped into the thick woolen trousers and cotton shirt, cinched my own corset and fastened its high neck collar around my throat. Made of thin slats of the finest metal I could acquire, it had protected me from many a stray blow and the occasional blade.

  I’d designed it to be close-fitting but not overly snug, straight in form enough to give pause from a distance—though only a blind man would be fooled up close as to the nature of my sex.

  I added warm woolen stockings, thick workman’s boots and wrapped the blackened length of my braid about my head. Finally, placing a street boy’s cap over it all, I glanced at myself in the mirror and nodded. In the fog, it would do.

  I seized a worn sack coat, pulled it on and hurried out my window.

  It wasn’t so late that I could afford to be careless. Making my way to the West India Docks took precision and planning. To get out of Chelsea, I stepped in the shadow of more than a few parties crossing the footpaths with lanterns aloft and spirit-laden cheer apparent.

  Once upon a time, the district had been the home of fashionable sorts like my mother. Intellectuals and philosophers, even artists of true talent and possibility. Now, much of the night was spent among bohemian wastrels carousing and spouting poetry about art and love and other such dreams.

  I liked it. It kept much of Society’s worst gossips away; save when said gossips were wastrels themselves.

  By the time I made it to the docks, my small brass watch warned me of Big Ben’s coming chime. A quarter of an hour would put the bells at one of the clock. Plenty of time to tend to my business, and late enough below that only vagrants and the nighttime dwellers would be about.

  I was forced to wait five minutes while my chosen ferryman returned to the dock above.

  “You again,” was his greeting as I traversed the plank.

  I said nothing; I didn’t have to. We’d long since finalized our arrangement, and he quickly set to work stacking more coal into the furnace. I watched as he did. The sky ferry was a rather simple piece of engineering, for all its purpose was complex. Coal in the fire heated the mechanisms by which steam would power the aether engine. The aether engine would draw the appropriate supply of aether from the steam, and voilà.

  A simpler and yet more unstable version of the engines that powered Her Majesty’s Navy’s sky ships, and even less powerful than the gondolas in London above.

  It took an inordinate amount of time for the shuddering ferry to reach the ground; time I spent clutching the rail and briefly wondering how many trips I would make before the old girl simply shook itself to pieces.

  The fog swallowed us within moments.

  I left Abercott his coin on my seat, hurried off the ferry and into the choking soup, holding my breath for as long as I could before forced to inhale. The fog immediately stung my nose and throat. I swallowed a sudden coughing fit, lest it draw attention from the dock men huddling around a furnace inside the warehouse I hesitated beside. Quickly, I pulled my goggles into place, fastened the respirator into the rivets under each eye and behind my ears and took a grateful, cleansing breath.

  So attired, I hurried away from the usually busier lanes of the docks and to my destination.

  I was not accosted. This, while a relief, was not a surprise. London, whether above or below, had cultivated a certain understanding with collectors. While I’d been led to understand that my presence as a woman collector was something only speculated upon, I did know that only certain sorts of people had the means and reason to wear equipment such as I displayed.

  Many collectors were inventors of a sort, or knew someone who fulfilled the role. I had seen nets cast from uniquely developed pistols, goggles which provided a certain kind of magnification, even weapon holsters specially designed to allow for the maximum amount of reach with minimum time and effort.

  We were, by necessity, a creative lot. As I spent much of my time hunting bounties more to do with debt than with actual danger, I did not need as many such things as others did. I designed my own items—my corset, my goggles and respirator.

  The end result was that I was easily recognized as, or at least assumed to be, a collector, and only a fool messes about with such.

  Above the drift, collectors were considered very different creatures indeed. I knew of a few gentlemen who dabbled with the role—I called them Society collectors with a sneer—but they were considered only fashionably dangerous. None knew of me.

  The unspoken code of the night below the drift was this: When accosting a mark, the safest way was to do so from the shadows. A cosh, a quick struggle, and the mark’s money and valuables would be there for the taking.

  When accosting a collector, the safest way to do so was in a very large gang, or not at all.

  I suspected even Jack the Ripper would leave a collector alone, taste for street doxies notwithstanding.

  And so I found myself once more climbing the steps to the University College, sometime after the Westminster clock rang out its one o’clock warning.

  Nothing had changed, although I hadn’t expected much. The cupola remained lit behind the columns, providing not so much light as atm
osphere reminiscent of ancient Greek temples. The fog was eerily thick tonight, muting everything down to a reflected glow. My yellow lens provided a clearer path, but only just.

  I could all but taste the choking edge of coal smoke in the pea souper tonight. The factories must be working double-time.

  I stepped through the front door—once more unlocked, as if two professors had not suffered a sudden and unexpected loss of life within these very halls—and made my way to the offices MacGillycuddy had shared with the unfortunate Lambkin. I stripped the goggles and respirator from my face, tucked them away.

  The door opened to my questing push, and light spilled into the lecture hall.

  Here, there had been changes. A new professor, I imagined. Gone were the winking stars of crystal. The desks were fewer in number, but arranged in a circle, which I found odd. The window Lambkin had tumbled from was now closed, and in the faint lamplight from behind me, I could pick out the shape of a large, knobbed telescope beside it. Peering up, I noticed, though I wondered what it could possibly see through the miasma.

  A book remained on each desk. I peered at its gilt lettering as I passed the closest. Complete Works of Galileo.

  Only mildly scandalous. If I recalled my lessons correctly, the Holy See had authorized the printing in 1741, thereby removing all dichotomy between faith and science.

  Or, well, in theory. Such divides still persisted, but as University College remained a secular school, I approved of the choice of reading material. I patted the book, but felt no need to leaf through it. Mr. Ashmore retained a copy in his library; I’d read it many times over.

  I passed through the hall, tested the door leading to the office of the late professors, and for once, found something locked.

  Not that it truly mattered. I’d long ago learned how to take a lock apart, and picking one was as easy a puzzle as setting one’s mind to it.

  I retrieved a long, thin bit of metal from my tool belt—a gift from Ishmael Communion, a friend as well as one of the Bakers’ most accomplished dubbers—and withdrew a pin from my hair.

  A dub, of course, is a master key such as what he gave me. Ishmael has large hands—he is a very large man—but the things he can do with a lock would surprise even the master dubbers of the black art of lock-picking.

  I was not nearly as accomplished as he, but within a few minutes of cautious application, the tumblers gave way. The door creaked open.

  I grinned, exultant. A few more moments of searching located the lantern kept on an iron hook by the door, and I struck a match from the packet on a small shelf next to it. The wick caught quickly. Firelight filtered over the strangely tidy office.

  So the new professor had made his home here, as well.

  Both desks were wiped clean, papers organized into neat stacks and clipped in place. I leafed through them, found a set bearing promising symbols different from that of other formulae and folded them in half. I tucked them into my corset for later study. A bookshelf behind one desk now featured the spines of treatises and dissertations, bound and printed in gilded lettering. I brightened. Perhaps the book I searched for was here? I reached for one, read its title and replaced it quickly.

  I could spend hours among books, and frequently did. I had not the time now. Thank heavens for the tidy new professor. I found the book I sought after only a moment’s searching.

  Mr. Humphry Ditton’s dissertation.

  I withdrew the tome, opened it reverently and with great care.

  The New Law of Fluids, proclaimed the title page in bold, Gothic lettering. I quickly muffled a laugh. Or, it went on, a Discourse concerning the Ascent of Liquids in exact Geometrical Figures, between two nearly contiguous Surfaces.

  It continued like this for six more lines, but I only shook my head and closed the book with a muted snort. Men. Even in the sixteenth century, they could go on and on.

  Yet in the onslaught of verbiage, I realized what I held in my hands, and I did not like the sudden and unmistakable comparison.

  This, written in 1729 by Mr. Ditton, was a text on alchemical solutions.

  Which meant the letters I’d taken to be initials weren’t. They were alchemical notations of some kind. My father’s laboratory, the notes I’d found in this very room, all conspired to paint a picture of alchemical study.

  Fools’ study, I thought, but I’d seen it in the flesh, as it were. My flesh. I had been the victim of my father’s own experiments.

  What, then, was I to assume as motive for the professors’ deaths now? The dean of King’s College had considered the alchemical symbols gibberish; did he know what it was I’d drawn?

  Or did this mean that I was investigating a deeper madness? One that fell too easily along similar lines as my own insane father’s legacy.

  I didn’t know. What I knew at that moment was that this book was what I’d come for.

  It was time to return home to study it. I turned away from the shelf, tucking the tome under my arm.

  Thud.

  I froze, certain I heard a footstep outside the door.

  A policeman patrolling the college grounds? A student come for some forgotten item, or the professor himself?

  What would I say?

  Collector’s business masked many sins to the common folk, of course, but the business was not a legal one. I could not justify theft to a constable.

  Perhaps it was the murderer returned to the scene of his crime.

  I was not prepared to tangle with a bobby, or to be caught unawares by something worse.

  The latch lifted.

  Chapter Twelve

  I sprinted for the door I’d seen at the far end of the office, leaving the lamp burning on the desk with a silent curse. This entry led to a narrow closet stacked with forgotten tools of the trade. Chalk and cloths to wipe the boards with, rulers, odds and ends I suspected were meant to maintain the apparatuses in the hall. There were other books I could not take the time to read, and I set my stolen book atop them quietly.

  There was no room to turn, much less reach for my blades hidden upon my person.

  Which all conspired to mean that there was precious little room for me at all. The shelves climbed up farther than even a man could reach, but I squeezed inside and shut the door as I heard the office door creak a warning. Darkness filled the tiny space. I could feel the door pressing against my bosom, trapping me against the shelves at my back, yet I could see nothing. Only smell the musty air of a storage space and hear the faint step of my unwanted guest.

  I held my breath.

  There, a whisper of sound. Papers, I thought. Rifled through. I’d only just made that sound myself. And another footstep, a quiet one. Either the person was light of frame, or attempting to be as discreet as possible.

  I heard a muted thump—a drawer, perhaps—and a low mutter. A curse? Or simply talking to one’s self. I could not distinguish further characteristics from my cramped hiding place, though I strained to do so.

  As I struggled to breathe quiet as possible, another footfall thumped gently, and with startled dread, I realized the intruder was coming straight for me.

  Bloody bells and damn! I looked side to side, looked down at my feet and saw shadows flit through the seam of light. I had no choice. I was not ready to be caught by a possible murderer, and could not reach my weapons even as flexible as I was.

  Setting my jaw, I braced my hands against both sides of the closet, sucked in a breath and stiffened my arms. I leapt straight up. Allez, hop! My arms caught my weight, screamed in protest, yet I held it as I braced my feet on either side.

  Once splayed, I moved cautiously, only as fast as I dared. The occasional creak of straining wood seemed masked by my fellow trespasser as I scurried up the closet interior like a spider. My limbs strained by the time my feet cleared the door jamb; my arms shook dangerously as I locked in the awkward split of my legs, each foot braced against the closet’s interior and my knees bent due to the narrow confines.

  This weakened the stren
gth of my locked hold, and sweat bloomed across my shoulders and forehead.

  Yet I’d moved just quickly enough. The closet door opened, allowing in a blast of light that I felt only pointed the way to me, hovering a mere few feet above. I gritted my teeth, elbows shaking with the effort as I peered down between my splayed legs.

  The narrow tunnel showed me nothing. Only the vague impression of a silhouette beyond the closet.

  But my nostrils flared as the sensitive interior of my nose began to itch fiercely. With mounting horror, I recognized the onset of an ardent need to sneeze. Of course, that could have been anything in the closet; my passing likely stirred up more than dust.

  My nose twitched, throat beginning to itch with the same need. I sucked in a breath.

  A hand appeared, barely a shape in the suddenly blinding corona of the lantern held within it. The light speared through my head, skewering the dark vision I’d grown accustomed to. Blinking as my nose prickled uncontrollably, my limbs shook and my eyes watered, I was certain this would be the end. All my mysterious trespasser would have to do would be look up.

  Yet, I realized as no hue and cry took place, it did not happen. I blinked fast, my vision clearing on an arm clad in simple, inelegant brown fustian. I heard the mild thud of books falling sideways; felt the repercussions of it in the shelves digging into my back. I didn’t dare move.

  Every second became a nightmare. A dull ache centered behind my knee, matched by the mirrored pulse of my still-tender shoulder. I was reaching an age where such contortions and feats of strength no longer came as easily as they once did, and I feared any second of losing my grip upon the wooden walls.

  If the sneeze building inside my nose did not give me away first. I bit my lips hard together, stretching my face in vain attempt to soothe the tickle.

  My eyes burned with it. Yet still the light shone, and still the figure poked and searched. Until finally—finally!—the light withdrew. The door shut, and I heard the footsteps recede.

  Just in time.

  The sneeze tore through my chest, captured between my teeth and sending fireworks of pain through my nose. I winced, froze as much as my shuddering arms and legs would allow, but heard nothing.