Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles

by Cooper, Karina

  Perhaps upstairs?

  I left poor Mr. Pettigrew where he was, promising to send someone to care for him when I could, and took three steps to the small stairs inset into the far corner.

  Creak.

  It was all the warning I received, for I saw nothing at all before a great weight leapt into my back and sent me tumbling to the floor.

  Chapter Sixteen

  My knees collided with the floor much harder than I expected, sending pain licking all the way to my back.

  A figure wrapped in a concealing cowl leapt over me in a fine display of adroitness, and sprinted in a flapping wake of black for the back door.

  I leapt to my feet, the thrill of the chase surging through my veins like molten metal; only to fail to remember that I did not wear trousers this time, and my skirts would not allow for easy maneuverability. One foot came down on my hem, my ankle twisted and I stumbled into Mr. Pettigrew’s chair, rocking him to the ground with a terrible thud. Silently apologizing—no time!—I seized my skirt in one hand, wrenched it over my ankles and hurried pell-mell for that back door as it slammed shut.

  I would not lose this time!

  “Stop,” I called as I burst out of the door, just in time to catch a shape flapping from my right. The small alley was little more than a delivery corridor for those who brought goods to the shops, and only marginally maintained, at that. Dreading every step, I sprinted off the stoop, into the choking fog as my opponent’s footsteps slapped like echoes on the uneven cobbles.

  I was not used to running in these shoes with the delicate heels, but I could not let this travesty go unanswered. Mr. Pettigrew deserved justice!

  And I deserved answers.

  Setting my jaw, my lungs already burning from the smoke I inhaled with every labored breath, I lowered my head, caught my skirt higher, and ran faster. Harder. Lanterns valiantly opposing the fog flickered as I passed, guttered in my wake; shapes loomed in leering silhouette from the swirling bank of mist and smoke. Here a cart, abandoned for the day, there a bit of wall crumbled from rot.

  And still my quarry teased me, too far ahead to see more than the shape of the cloak that concealed him.

  “Watch yerself,” snarled a man, whose poor chance had him stepping out of a door just as I passed it. I did not stop, though it nearly meant his introduction to the unforgiving ground.

  We were headed for populated ground, I realized, as more figures stepped from the fog. I hurried by two children, head to toe covered in black, beaten down by the demands of a factory workday. A small knot of men flowed around the figure in surprise, only to catch me as they turned to study the runner.

  “Out of my way,” I demanded, using my sharp elbows to carve a path through the suddenly swearing laborers. A hand caught in my bustle; fabric tore. I did not stop.

  Ahead of me, the figure leapt a small collection of barrels; I heard a woman’s cry, another’s scream, and the figure whirled, stumbled and pushed abruptly to the right.

  I rounded the pile instead. “Apologies,” I tossed at the woman staring openmouthed from her sprawled position on the ground.

  “Lunatic!” she shouted back. To me or my fleeing opponent, I did not know.

  We passed greater crowds, men and women headed home for supper, children darting through the smoke. We’d left the Philosopher’s Square, that much was clear, and my lungs were seizing within the grip of my corset. The distance between us grew.

  I would not lose him. I would not!

  Lowering my head, aware that my hairpins had long given up the fight, I summoned what strength and endurance I had left, ignored the pain in my ankle and burning in my side, and poured every last ounce of effort into my run.

  Six feet.

  The distance closed.

  Four.

  “You . . . won’t . . .” I couldn’t finish the warning.

  The cowled head turned; I saw only black in my watering vision. I heard a sound, low and unrecognizable as word or curse, and the figure wrenched to the side.

  Down an alley, footsteps pounding, splashing in the collected puddles.

  Groaning, I caught myself on the corner before I bypassed it entirely, wrenched myself around and darted after the fleeing figure.

  Only to turn a bend in the maze of back alleys and come face-to-face with a knot of men loitering around the bend.

  We all froze as one.

  In the sudden, shocked silence of real surprise, I recognized two things—one, I’d stepped into the territory of the Black Fish Ferrymen; and two, a discarded cloak drifted to the ground not eight paces away.

  My ghost had gotten away.

  I clutched at my side, my breath a labored pant in the foul alley air.

  “Well, well,” drawled a man whose stature was short as mine, yet whose width would fit three of me in a line. His teeth were blackened, his eye mirroring the color from a bruise that suggested he was no stranger to a brawl.

  Three of his mates flanked him, two remained behind, watching with avid interest.

  I raised my chin. “Co—” No! I was not a collector in this guise. “Pardon me, gentlemen,” I said with a smile, as polite and charming as the very devil on holiday. “I appear to have gotten turned about. Did anyone see a figure fleeing through here?”

  “Figure, eh?” This from another man, tall and lean like a blade. Holding one, I noted, flush to his wrist.

  The Black Fish Ferrymen had a reputation. One well deserved. I kept clear of their territory, unless I had a specific goal.

  In this case, I was too well dressed for Cat’s Crossing—that was the rooftop avenues, utilized mostly by children and cats and those too foolish to be afraid of heights.

  And I had not paid attention to the territory signs in my haste.

  I took a step backward, my skirts rustling. Every eye in every lean, predatory face settled on my hips.

  “No one else but us,” drawled the short one, a lackadaisical tone flush with innuendo. The very way he studied me, as if I were a possession simply waiting for his claiming, sent a shudder of revulsion up my icy spine. “Stay a while, luv.” And then, before I could demur, he added in obvious command, “Cooley.”

  The thin one was Cooley, then. His gap-toothed smile turned up, and he slunk forward.

  Hands closed over my upper arms, and I shrieked in surprise. “Got ’er, boss,” announced a man I had not heard behind me. Like a bloody cat, he’d cut me off from the back and held to my arms so tight, I could feel the bone aching in complaint.

  “You must be Cooley, then,” I corrected myself aloud, forcing my voice to be even, though my gaze didn’t leave the thin one approaching with a lanky stride.

  The leader, three men with him. Two behind, one at my back.

  Seven Ferrymen.

  Not even on a good day could I account for more than four.

  My heart hammered at my throat. I kept my chin high as a glint of a tarnished blade winked in Lanky’s dirty hand.

  A grunt from behind confirmed it.

  Stupid. Stupid me, I should have known my quarry would know these streets. I’d gotten careless. Again!

  And now I would have the fight of my life.

  “What say you and I—”

  Whatever the leader intended to say stopped short as a high, lilting whistle pierced the alley. He turned, squinting—I noted with distant amusement the balding spot just beneath the rim of his frayed cap.

  “Check it, lads,” he said darkly. “If it’s another foray by them Bakers, give ’em somethin’ t’smile about.”

  Three of the men turned and faded into the fog, swallowed by the yellow-tinted haze.

  “Gang trouble?” I asked sweetly.

  “Shut yer mouth.”

  Lanky stopped in front of me. The fingers at my arms squeezed. I would bruise there, I was sure of it.

  “Pretty bit of dollymop like you,” continued the short, balding man with vicious glee, “oughter have ’erself a nice time, doncher think?”

  Lanky didn�
��t touch me. He didn’t have to. His leer said it all, his watering eyes like reptilian glass in his sunken sockets.

  This wasn’t the first such offer I’d received below the drift, but it was the first outside of my guise as collector.

  A lady should not walk about on her own. This was exactly why.

  Another whistle came at us from the growing dark. I watched the leader’s eyebrows snap over his tiny eyes. “Who goes there?” he demanded, turning again to stare into the blank wall of smoke.

  “Ghosts?” I asked cheekily.

  I should not have. He snapped, “Dicker,” and the man I privately called Lanky casually lifted one hand and backhanded me.

  I saw stars.

  The Ferrymen, I reminded myself, had earned their reputation.

  Blinking hard, I missed the cue that sent the last filthy man into the fog to seek the ghostly whistler.

  “She a spy, boss?” asked Cooley behind me, from a direction that suggested he was somewhat taller than his companions. Not as large as Ishmael Communion, but bigger than I.

  “She’s a toff,” scoffed his boss, and flicked his fingers in dismissal.

  A knife whizzed from the dark, scant inches from his hand. The leader jumped three feet back, swearing most foul as the blade sank into the wooden frame of a boarded door.

  I would get no clearer opportunity.

  As all the men scanned the fog, most swearing, I drove one elbow back as hard as I could, grinning fiercely when I heard Cooley’s breath exhale on a pained whoosh.

  “Allez, hop!” I huffed, digging my feet into Lanky’s knee, his groin, walking up his chest so quickly that only his surprised instinct to push back kept me aloft. Cooley didn’t know what to do with me, all the more obvious as I flipped over his head in a froth of concealing skirts. He flailed, wrenching his grip open, and I landed awkwardly behind him, stumbling as the fabric of my skirt caught and tore. “I so would love to stay,” I said lightly, but hastily as the leader opened his mouth. “Simply must get on, so sorry!”

  I turned, sprinted back the way I’d come as the leader screamed, “The fog! They’re in the fog, y’addle-minded twits!”

  I made it halfway down the alley when a slight figure stepped out of a door and beckoned. A child? With his cap pulled low and his features smudged in black, I could discern nothing but the impatient hand.

  Yet what were my options?

  I darted into the doorway he once more vanished into. The door closed, leaving the room in pitch black.

  I sucked in a breath, bent over myself with my hands on my knees, and tried not to catalogue in all the ways my body ached.

  “Shh,” scolded a whispering voice. A hand gripped my arm. “This way.”

  “I can’t see,” I protested.

  “Keep your voice down,” said the young whisper, and a small hand slipped into mine. “Just walk with me.”

  My eyes strained to make out something, anything in the dark, but all I could sense was the pressure of unending night. Certain I would run into something—bark my shin, fall down a hole, collide with a wall—I walked gingerly as I dared while the small hand pulled.

  It felt like forever, my breath loud in my ears, the musty fragrance of disuse thick in my nose. Eventually, we stopped. “You’re two hops from a bobby shack, marm,” whispered the urchin. “Best not get caught this side of the Ferrymen again.”

  To hear myself called a marm in that achingly young voice made me cringe. I was a long way from a frumpy old school mistress; and while I flirted with the future stigma of spinster, I was hardly there yet.

  Yet this boy had saved me. And not for the first time, unless I missed my guess.

  He let go of my hand, and I heard the screech of metal against rusted metal. A seam of light appeared before me, cracked into enough to pick out the boy’s low cap and patched jacket. His trousers were torn at the knees, his boots likely fraught with holes.

  But his eyes, dark and expressive in his soot-covered face, gleamed up at me with clear mischief. I saw now the fringe of his brown hair, long enough to tangle in his lashes. My fingers itched to brush it away. And haul him in for a bath, while I was at it.

  “You’re from the Menagerie,” I accused, and an accusation it certainly was.

  His eyes crinkled; delighted, I think, that I recognized him. “Yes, marm.”

  “Did Hawke send you?” And then, because I couldn’t help my own curiosity, “Are you a circus performer?”

  He first shook his head, then nodded, pressed his body against the crack of the open door and peered outside. He rose near on his tiptoes to do it. Over his head, I recognized little enough but the ever present cloud of smoke-ridden fog.

  The gas lamps were being lit, about this time. Slowly, the pea souper would earn its moniker. Above the drift, there were a handful of daylight hours left, but not here.

  “Why are you here?” I hissed at his back. “Are you sent?”

  He shrugged, as much an answer as I could expect from a boy his age. “Cross the street here, and make like a line for the bobbies. The Ferrymen’ll see you, maybe, but I’ll keep ’em spinning.”

  “Why?”

  This time, his teeth—a pale gleam in the little sliver of light—flashed over his shoulder at me. “Wait a bit,” he counseled, streetwise in the same way a rat knows his sewer, “and then take tail. Run fast.”

  With that, he pulled open the heavy door and slipped outside.

  “Wait!”

  He paused, his posture bent at the knees, rounded at the shoulders. I recognized it; it was the demeanor of every urchin who had ever made his home in the dangerous streets of London below.

  It was the stance of a clever child who’d learned early that if given a chance, an adult would rather take the opportunity to get the boot in than offer a hand.

  My heart twinged. I saw myself in him.

  Myself, and something much less tragic. “What’s your name, lad?”

  Again, that smile. A flash, an impish line. “Flip, marm,” he offered, doffing that threadbare cap of his, and scampered into the growing dark.

  I watched him until he faded, perhaps three seconds. The fog provided excellent cover. Unfortunately, without my protectives, I was as good as blind. Worse, still, than them what lived here every day, for they developed a tolerance to the sting.

  I waited for as long as I dared, slipped out of the heavy door, and pulled it shut behind me. Gathering my skirts, I looked first one way, then the other, and saw nothing but empty cobble and the muted shine of struggling lamps.

  Make a line for the bobbies, he’d said.

  I could not risk walking through Ferrymen territory while they remained on guard. My choices had just dropped to one.

  Berating myself soundly, I stepped onto the street, took a deep, stinging breath and sprinted for the police station.

  I have a terrible habit.

  When I am not lying outright, I am sharing too much information. In my guilt, I asked the rather surprised constable on duty to tend to Mr. Pettigrew—he had no kin that I was aware of it, and I could not bear the thought of his body rotting amid his beloved books.

  Such a request only garnered interest, and before I knew, I was answering question after question, fired at me from a grizzled detective whose lined features suggested he’d seen as much of the streets as I.

  Yet I could not be as truthful with him as I wished.

  I maintained my innocence in the subject: I’d gone to fetch books for my collection, found his body, was coming to fetch the police when the Black Fish Ferrymen had intervened. The raw, red mark on my cheek gave credence to my tale.

  I said nothing of the killer in the black cloak, or the same discarded bit of fabric tossed in the alley. What would I say? That I, a young lady of Society, chased a fiend into the fog? Only to lose him when he vanished like a ghost.

  Implausible, at the least.

  Yet the constable—a Mr. Harrington Brisco, Esquire—had instincts that I could only admire. Even
as I fended them off with every tool in my arsenal.

  Not until I, Cherry St. Croix, broke into exhausted, bitter tears did the constable cease his questioning, and allow me to send word to Fanny for fetching.

  For the next half hour, Mr. Brisco was the very model of conciliatory courtesy. He bade me keep the handkerchief he’d awkwardly pressed into my hand, fetched me a cup of coffee from the station stores, which I pretended to sip. I did not like the taste as a rule. And he allowed me to sit in his small office, in relative peace from the prying eyes of the other policemen tromping in and out of the station proper.

  Exhausted by my day—by every aspect of my life, if I could be so dramatic to admit—I could barely summon the strength to do more than stare at my small brass pocket watch while the minutes ticked.

  Finally, when I could stand the small, cramped interior of the station no longer, the door to Mr. Brisco’s tiny office opened. “Miss St. Croix,” came the man’s gravelly baritone, “your escort is arrived.”

  Gods of all things kind and fortunate bless Booth.

  I rose, aware of what a frightful mess I looked. My hair had shed over half its pins, now hanging in a tumbled twist of curls to my waist. Dirt and soot smudged my fingers—I’d stripped my gloves and held them in one tight hand—and I could only imagine what my face looked like after crying so bitterly.

  Exhausted to the very depths of my bones, I nodded my thanks to the discomfited yet inherently kind Mr. Brisco, squared my shoulders and strode through the station.

  Three policemen stopped to stare. At least until Mr. Brisco cleared his throat most tellingly.

  “Be more careful, Miss St. Croix,” he warned me as he opened the station door for me.

  “I shall,” I lied, and stepped outside.

  Only to freeze, every limb rooted as an open carriage bearing the Northampton crest greeted my astonished eyes.

  A driver in livery sat at the reins, facing forward in strict propriety. But the man who waited beside the carriage was one my heart thudded to see; even as it plummeted to a gloomy death in the pit of my soul.

  “My lord,” I gasped.