Heart of Iron

by Bec McMaster

Page 6

  “The exhibition?” Blade asked.

  Where he’d found Will as a boy. Chained up on stage in London’s East End and forced to exhibit his monstrous strength and healing capabilities to the gasping crowd. The showman, Tom Sturrett, cut him with iron blades. Despite the presence of the loupe virus, the poor conditions and lack of food meant he didn’t always heal as quickly as they wanted. Then Mrs. Sturrett would stitch him up with her coarse needle.

  It wasn’t long before just the sight of it was enough to make the blood rush out of his head.

  Lena clasped her gloved hands in her lap, tendrils of soft brown hair escaping from her chignon. She must have been in a rush, for her hat was still cocked jauntily across her brow, a scarlet feather trailing over one cheek. His gaze lingered on the feather.

  “The exhibition? What exhibition?” she asked.

  Blade met his gaze. “When—”

  “Nothin’,” he snapped.

  They all looked at him again and Will cursed his bluntness. Nothing would fire Lena’s imagination more than a brusque denial. He could already see the curiosity forming in her eyes. She’d be after his secrets now like a ferret.

  Maybe it was best to give them the condensed version. “Used to be displayed in the penny gaff shops as a curio. Or up on stage in Covent Garden. ” Pitching his voice louder, he mimicked Sturrett’s showman cry. “Come and see the ferocious Beast! Witness London’s last remaining verwulfen in chains!” He could almost smell the cheap shag tobacco the audience smoked and the reek of stale, unwashed bodies. “After the singin’ and flash dancin’ I were the main event. They’d drag me out in a cage and the audience’d throw rotten food at me. Or sometimes they’d dress me in wolf furs and have some of the actors play at blue bloods. It’d usually end when they attacked me with swords. ”

  Lena’s eyes went round. “They didn’t really stab you?”

  “With iron. ” His voice was hard. “Heals right quick. Unless it’s silver-alloy. ”

  “A similarity you share with Blade,” Honoria mused.

  “Honestly, Honoria. How can you think about the disease after hearing something so dreadful!” Lena snapped at her sister. Then looked back at him. “I thought you were fifteen when Blade brought you home?”

  “I were. Or nearabouts. Didn’t keep much track o’ time, in the cage. ”

  Lena’s eyes softened with distress.

  Will hadn’t expected her to defend him or sympathize. Most of the crowd had been costermongers and the like, but sometimes one of the Echelon paid Sturrett to display him in their grand homes in Mayfair. The ladies wore fine silks and toyed with the extravagant diamonds and pearls around their necks—fancy women dressed like Lena—but at least they didn’t throw nothing at him. Instead they’d eye him with their hot little eyes, whispering and smirking behind their fans.

  The gentlemen hadn’t liked that at all. Will hadn’t the heart to tell them he shared their sentiments. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Nobody listened to him when he was in the cage. He’d become little more than an animal to them. In the end, he’d stopped speaking, growling and snapping at them when they came near him. That was the worst of the degradation. If Blade hadn’t been in the audience one night and forced Sturrett to free him, he shuddered to think what he might have ended up like.

  “Both diseases dislike the presence of silver,” Honoria mused. “Which suggests a common…ancestor, so to speak? The more we know, the more likely I could find a cure. I’ll examine the sample under the microscope and begin tests. Perhaps it were best if you weren’t here, Will?”

  It wasn’t the sight of blood as did him in, so much as the needles. But he had to get out of here. His skin was itching.

  “Aye. I’ll be off. ”

  “Not home,” Honoria said. “You’re not fit to leave just yet. I want to check on you before you go. Lena?”

  Lena’s head lifted like a startled doe. “Yes?” she asked warily.

  Honoria took a shallow breath, as though considering her words. “Can you see Will to the kitchen and sit with him awhile? Make sure he gets something into his stomach. You know how he gets after some excitement. ”

  “That ain’t necessary,” he said.

  Lena exchanged glances with him. “I was hoping to speak to you, Honoria. ”

  Even Blade stared at her, a silent question in his gaze. Honoria’s eyes met his and somehow the question was answered. Blade growled under his breath and nodded. “Best to get somethin’ into you, Will. We’ll be down shortly. ”

  No help for it. He was stuck with her and the room was suddenly far too small. Will opened the door and stalked through. Lena hurried behind him in a swish of skirts with a muttered curse about gentlemen allowing ladies to go first.

  “I ain’t no gentleman. ”

  “Well, everyone knows that,” she murmured. “They don’t call you the Beast for nothing. ”

  The words shouldn’t have stung. He’d been called worse for years. Indeed, he’d taken the name on, molding himself into it. Using it to keep curious humans at bay and predators on their toes.

  But for some reason, hearing it from her lips felt like a knife to the chest.

  Following his nose to the kitchen, he found it empty. Lady Luck wasn’t with him today. Though a bubbling pot of soup on the stove bore evidence of Blade’s housekeeper, Esme, there was no sign of the actual woman.

  A light touch fumbled at his wrist. The smooth silk of her elbow-length gloves. “Here,” Lena said, tugging his hand toward one of the low stools by the hearth. “Sit. I’ll fetch you some soup. ”

  She let him go, but the feel of her touch remained, like phantom fingerprints. Will sank slowly onto the stool, watching as she bustled about the kitchen.

  Lena looked out of place. The hearth dominated the room and emitted a constant blanket of heat. Soot stained the ceiling, and the workbenches were heavy and scarred from frequent use. Strings of onions and herbs dangled over the main bench, along with a row of copper pots strung from metal hooks. It was homey and inviting. Precisely everything that Lena was not.

  Her red velvet skirts were hooked up just enough to reveal a flirtatious froth of underskirt, and her corset narrowed an already slender waist to a size he could span with his hands. Black bands of lace decorated her bodice and the panels of her skirts. As she reached up to try and fetch a bowl, the creamy mounds of her breasts threatened to tumble from her bodice. A hint of black lace edged against her creamy skin.

  Will’s fingers itched.

  He could remember the first time he’d ever seen her, bustling along Petticoat Lane with her gray Serge skirts swishing around her ankles and her battered bonnet barely protecting her from the rain. Clutching a sodden newspaper over her head, she’d slipped on the edge of the gutter and the newspaper had torn in two, disintegrating in Lena’s hands. With a helpless laugh at a pair of street urchins, she’d given a shrug, then tossed the newspaper aside. The sound of her laughter went straight through him; it was the type of sound that always made Will feel like an outsider looking in. Joy radiated off her, like warmth from the fire on a cold winter’s night, and Will felt an almost envious stirring, as if he wanted to stretch his hands out and catch some of her effervescent happiness. Dragging her bonnet off her head, she’d tilted her face up to the rain as it wet her lips, her eyelashes fluttering against her pale cheeks, and Will had almost fallen off the roof as he strained to look.

  Women made him uncomfortable at the best of times. His own mother had sold him once it became clear he was verwulfen, and the only other woman in his life had been Esme. After a year or so of her presence at the warren, he’d started to relax around her, but everything about Lena set his hackles on edge. A curious, uncomfortable feeling that he didn’t understand. With a vampire stalking the rookeries, he’d been in charge of keeping an eye on the younger Todd siblings and protecting the house at night. Every day he’d followed Lena to work and then
home again, without her even knowing. He complained about it to everyone he knew, but the truth of it was that he began to relish the moments when she’d appear at the door of the clockmaker’s, giving a cheery little wave back into the shop. In the grim reality of Will’s life, Lena became the one bright spark, a yearning for something he’d never had or felt before.

  It was safe for him to feel that way. She was a stranger still, no threat to him, nor he to her. It wasn’t until he came face to face with her that he’d realized how different reality might be. Stepping out onto the roof one night in her nightgown, of all things, Lena had stared at him as if he were some hulking brute, darting a swift glance at the window she’d come through.

  With his palms sweating and his throat tight, Will had been unable to speak. Then suddenly the words had come, blunt and awkward. “You wouldn’t make it in time,” he’d said. “And if you couldn’t avoid me, then you couldn’t avoid it either. Are you stupid, girl, to come out here with the creature on the loose? Or just wantin’ to die?”

  The worst thing he could have said, for her eyes had narrowed and she’d drawn herself up as if she were a queen and he the lowest of street scum.

  She made him feel like the small, helpless boy that nobody had wanted—nobody but Sturrett, who’d seen a way to make coin off him. Will had sworn he’d never feel that helpless again, but seeing her always threw him into a maelstrom of emotion, and even now the hungry, angry part of him was restless. His beast, prowling like a caged wolf inside his chest.

  Can’t let it out.

  Can’t ever let it out.

  “You don’t need to do this,” he said bluntly, as she bustled around the kitchen. “I can manage by meself. ”

  Lena unpinned her hat and tossed it carelessly on the bench, followed by her gloves. The hint of smooth skin and manicured nails drew his eye. She’d touched him once with those hands and he’d never forget it.

  “You always need food after one of your episodes. ” Humming under her breath, she began to ladle soup into a bowl.

  “It weren’t an episode. ” His tone was far sharper than he’d intended and she stilled. Cursing himself, he continued, “I only get shaky when I’ve exerted meself, or lost too much blood. It’s just the virus, healin’ me. This is different. ”

  “Honoria told me to feed you. ” Despite her studied nonchalance, she was nervous. Of him. He could smell it. “You can argue with her if you want. I’m not going to waste my breath. ”

  When he said nothing, she went back to ladling the soup.

  “Didn’t know you knew your way around a kitchen,” he said, simply to chase the uneasy silence from the room. “They teach that in them fancy drawin’ rooms?”

  Dark eyes looked up over the bowl. She seemed genuinely surprised he’d asked a question. After spending the last three years trying to ignore her, there was little doubt why.

  “I used to prepare most of the meals after Father died and we first came to Whitechapel,” she replied, her lashes lowering again as she concentrated on the bowl. “Honoria was always home from work later than I. ”

  “You cooked?” He took the bowl from her and reached for the spoon. Her hand was tiny next to his, and very pale. Different worlds, the pair of them.

  “Badly. ” She shot him a sudden smile that lit her whole face.

  Bloody hell. He stared at the soup. Six months since he’d seen her last—a deliberate act on his behalf—and he’d almost forgotten the way she could heat his blood with a smile, a look.

  A careless kiss.

  “And now you go to balls. ” He put the sneer in his voice, but the effort felt hollow. Taking refuge in the soup, he almost burned the roof of his mouth.

  “I like dancing. ” Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “And balls. The men there behave like gentlemen. It’s a pleasant surprise. ”

  “You ain’t got a thrall contract yet. ” He’d been waiting to hear word of it. Imagining one of those blue blood bastards with his mouth and hands all over her as he drank her sweet blood.

  Color flooded her cheeks. “No. I haven’t made my mind up. And there’s no rush. ”

  “No rush? Ain’t you gettin’ perilously close to bein’ on the shelf?”

  “I’m barely twenty,” she snapped.

  “I see. You’d prefer to keep ’em danglin’?”

  “That’s not what I meant. ”

  “Seems like the sort of games you’d play. ”

  A dangerous look in those eyes. Lena swished on her heel, snatching at her gloves. “I hope you choke on your soup, you big, hairy lummox. You don’t know anything about me. Anything!”