Defy or Defend

by Gail Carriger

  “How could anyone possibly deny you? My own, my dearest! Who would not want to gaze upon your beauty? You will make her see reason. We are meant to be together. I am meant to be beside you, always and forever, day or night.”

  “Oh Gantry, you are too good for me. So handsome, so delicious.” Justice’s fangs gleamed.

  Crispin honestly couldn’t take any more of it. He’d learned all he needed. Gantry was willing to turn drone. His parents had made some objection to the match, but they did not know drone was on offer. Justice was feeding on a willing lover. This was enough information to be going on with – he needn’t torture his ears any further.

  He’d tell all to Dimity, for she would no doubt know the way to go about setting this to rights. And she ought to know what crimes of sentimentality had been committed while wearing her night-rail.

  Dimity explored the kitchen, finding nothing of any import and no apparent exit. Where had Mr Theris gone to fetch the milkmaid?

  She was near to giving up when she found what could only be a trap door in the middle of the scullery floor. One no doubt originally intended to lead into a root cellar.

  Cook gave her an expressive look but was clearly one to mind her own business, which currently involved putting away the remnants of tea.

  Dimity opened the door. Instead of a ladder, the door opened onto a set of narrow stairs cut into the limestone, which extended down so far into the darkness, it was impossible to see where they ended.

  Dimity climbed down with alacrity, holding her skirts high, and feeling very daring. The stairs led to a perfectly respectable tunnel (once her eyes adjusted to the gloom). It was the kind used by breweries to store beer barrels, except longer. At the far end of it was a door. As she approached, making no noise with her soft slippers and trained to be silent, she heard arguing coming from behind it.

  A strong, cultured female voice was saying, “After what was done to me, how can I show my face again?”

  Mr Theris’s voice came then, tone soothing, murmuring calm words and platitudes.

  “Never!” was the reply. “Now you must leave me, Cinjin. For everyone does, in the end.”

  The door creaked open. Dimity caught a glimpse of a rail-thin woman with red hair and a black brocade tea gown before Mr Theris and the milkmaid, now pale and punctured, came through.

  Dimity leaned against the cold limestone wall, feeling a little faint. The punctures appeared deeper and more bloody than last time. She pressed her clammy forehead to the stone, closed her eyes, and took a few deep breaths.

  Mr Theris shut the door loudly behind him. Dimity opened her eyes. The actor was glaring at her.

  “What are you doing down here, Mrs Carefull?”

  “You mean this isn’t where the extra embroidery samples are kept? I felt sure you must have more, and I thought a display in the study...”

  Mr Theris shook his head at her, exasperated. “You’re almost entirely composed of belters, aren’t you, Mrs Carefull? If that’s even your name. You may be as good an actor as I, but I know your kind. Now go on back. You know I can’t leave you down here without permission or supervision.” His eyes were cold. She was once more imposing on his domain.

  “But if I could only ask the hive queen...”

  “No, Mrs Carefull, upstairs with you. Haven’t you done enough damage already?” He turned and locked the door behind him with a large key. Certainly even a door as thickly bolted as that one could not confine a vampire queen, so the locking was for Dimity’s benefit. It was designed to keep others out, not trap the baroness. Dimity thought the lock looked very hard and solid and difficult to pick, but she might be able to steal that key.

  She sighed and turned to lead the way back though the limestone tunnel and up the stone steps. She helped the milkmaid into the scullery and they both brushed off their skirts.

  Mr Theris closed the trap door with a decided snap, and then retrieved a steak and kidney pie from the scullery, ignoring Cook’s glare. He had a decorated lace Valentine’s card in his free hand. He ushered the milkmaid before him to the entranceway, where he thanked her with the silver coin payment, the pie, and the card.

  Once the milkmaid was away, Dimity turned back to Mr Theris, who was looking around at the now clean entranceway, bare of pictures, furniture, and rugs. Two spry young men were re-papering it in a delightful royal blue pattern depicting peacocks and silver eggs, which Dimity thought would set off the mahogany railing quite nicely.

  Dimity sidled up to Mr Theris, eyes big as she could make them. Time to try a different tactic.

  He looked skeptical and then leering, clearly ready to play her game. “Mrs Carefull, be cautious now. I’m easily susceptible to the fairer sex.”

  “Are you, indeed, Mr Theris?” Dimity doubted her skills when up against this angry rake, but she also wanted answers.

  “Cinjin, please.” He puffed out his chest and took a fencer’s stance.

  “Cinjin.” She trailed a finger up his sleeve. “Not too susceptible? She upset you?”

  “She refused my counsel. She always refuses. She thinks I’m a child who could not possibly understand her.”

  “When clearly you are a man with only her best interests at heart. Why is she so reluctant to take solace in her hive? What was done to her?”

  Mr Theris shook his head, covering her hand with his and making a good examination of the neckline of her dress. It was too high to see down, although she made a note to activate her décolletage should she need to distract this man in future.

  Then he reached forward and began to twiddle with the top button of her bodice.

  Right there in the hallway.

  Really, it was too much. She was actually rather shocked.

  Dimity tittered at him and turned away. “Really, Mr Theris, there are people about.”

  “Then let us go upstairs.” His eyes narrowed. He was pushing her to see how far she would take things.

  “But the queen – I’m dying to know. What was done to her?”

  Mr Theris tried to turn her back to face him again. “Something fashion-related, I understand. Kirby knows.” He reached up to toy with her top button again and then ran two fingers down from one button to the next, bump bump bump, over her chest towards her belt.

  “Why, Mr Theris, how rude you are. Stop that this minute!”

  The hand continued.

  Dimity considered her options. This was not a subtle man, which meant, unfortunately, that violence was likely best. With a small sigh, she extracted the muff pistol that always lived in the depths of her right skirt seam, in a hidden pocket there.

  He didn’t notice. He was watching his own hand sweep down her front.

  Dimity raised her gun, pointing it up his not insubstantial nose. “Look here, Mr Theris. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if I must. You see, if I shoot you, there will be blood. It’s terribly embarrassing, but when I see blood, I have a propensity to faint. And you wouldn’t notice because you would be dead, but I would be most awfully inconvenienced. Not to mention this lovely new wallpaper would be spattered. So if you would kindly keep your hands to yourself... there’s a good chap.”

  “Why, Mrs Carefull, you have a gun. Are lady painters supposed to carry guns?”

  “Around you, Mr Theris, apparently all ladies should carry guns.”

  “Did I misread you, Mrs Carefull?”

  “I love my husband, Mr Theris.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  The front door opened then, without a knock, and Sir Crispin came in, bringing with him the sounds and scents of heavy rain. It must have started while they were in the limestone caves. “Really, I begin to think Nottingham is one big puddle.” He paused in the act of removing his greatcoat, noting the tête-à-tête before him with a raised eyebrow. “What’s all this, then?”

  Mr Theris backed away from Dimity. She found it aggravating that he was more afraid of Sir Crispin t
han of her pistol. Dimity stashed the gun back in its secret pocket, while the drone was otherwise occupied in looking at her enraged husband.

  Sir Crispin did look angry. In that quiet fierce way that meant real anger, not the simulated kind.

  Oh dear.

  “Were you touching my wife, sir?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dangerous Buttons

  Cris noted everything all at once. The bally actor’s hands all over his Sparkles. Her face – whiter than usual. The tiny gun in her hand – steady.

  If she hadn’t had the gun out, he would still have been angry, but he would have assumed she was working to extract something from Mr Bloody Theris. Cris would have played it off with bluster and confusion, the bumbling husband with delusions of fidelity.

  But she looked genuinely frightened and he’d been concerned about the drone from the get-go. Theris was the kind of man who took any offer of friendship as encouragement, for whom all flirtation was encoded seduction. A man who had to prove himself as male through the domination of others, whatever form that took. Dimity might be the intelligencer, but Crispin knew all too well the depths of male depravity. His own father was an ideal model of the species. Mr Theris was a spoiled child to whom no one had ever said no, and those kinds of boys became immeasurably dangerous men. And now, there stood Sparkles with her pistol pointed.

  Or not. The pistol had vanished.

  Dimity swept towards him. “Now, now, husband, darling, never you worry. Mr Theris and I were just coming to an understanding.”

  “Were you indeed?” He made his arms go languid, cat-like, and pulled his frame up from the middle of the back at the same time, so those few inches he had on the actor were that much more evident.

  Dimity made a shooing motion at Mr Theris. The drone took that as a courtesy and left with alacrity.

  “Let him go,” Dimity murmured. “I want him scared and confused. He’ll make mistakes.”

  “Have you figured his game yet?”

  “Dependency. He wants to be the only one they lean on. He orchestrated the removal of servants and fellow drones, I’m certain of it. Already he is nervous since I’ve brought back staff. Also, he sees us as possible new drones, as threats. Soon, I think, he will show his hand.”

  “Will he take drastic or violent measures?”

  “I don’t think so. He didn’t kill the others. Just got them sent away. He wants all the attention. Actor, you see? But I’m pushing him to his limit. I’ve discovered that he keeps the key to the queen’s cave on him.” She looked around furtively. The front entrance was, for the moment, empty but for them. Deftly, she showed him something in her hand – a large, old-fashioned key. “Or he did.”

  Unwilling to discuss it openly, he only nodded and finished sliding out of his greatcoat to hang it in the coat room.

  Dimity squeaked. “You’re still in a bathing costume!”

  He glowered at her. “It’s pouring out there. Seemed appropriate.”

  “Where did your expedition take you?”

  “Let’s go upstairs. I like the new wallpaper, by the way.”

  “Thank you.” She led the way up to their room.

  Once she strummed up the harmonic auditory resonance disruptor, he felt more comfortable talking openly.

  Cris took a deep breath and tilted his head back, rolling the sudden kinks from his neck, and asked a question that really worried him. “You planning on using that key right away?”

  Dimity shook her head. “No indeed, I’ve more groundwork to lay before I approach the queen. I want this house spruced up in the extreme, immeasurably alluring. No, I think you should go out and get a copy made, please. Tonight, if possible. Then I’ll toss it into in his room, as if it fell out of his pocket. Best he not know we have access to the baroness.”

  “Crafty Sparkles.” Crispin didn’t say how uncomfortable he found the idea of her having direct access to a possibly insane vampire queen, because she’d likely take that as criticism or doubt in her capabilities. Really, it was simply that he worried about her.

  “You sure you’re well, Sparkles? He didn’t hurt you? Anything inappropriate?”

  “The man is fascinated with my buttons.” She gestured casually to the ones that trailed down the front of her formidable figure.

  “Oh, I say!” Cris was suddenly intent on finding Mr Theris and doing something unpleasantly manipulative to his limbs. “Buttons, is it? I’ll teach him about bally buttons.”

  “Yes dear, yes, of course you could. But we might use it to our advantage. Not right now. Please stop fussing.”

  That bit of fear he’d seen in her eyes, if indeed it was honest, was long gone. Now he was beginning to second-guess what he thought he’d seen, which was one of her tricks, of course – playing with his mind as well as everyone else’s. “I don’t like that you felt it necessary to pull out your pistol. How many times have I been your safety over the years? You’ve never used a gun before.”

  “Never needed to. Not my preferred weapon – so loud and messy. Does it expose us too much, do you think, my brandishing it at that horrible man?” Dimity checked that the door was tightly closed, then wedged one of the chairs against it.

  “You explained how you came to have one?”

  “After a fashion.”

  Cris shrugged. He was far more concerned that she had felt desperate enough to brandish it. “I suspect the hive no longer thinks of us as simple artists. You, at least, have a talent for household management and the arrangement of furnishings.”

  “The three vampires seem remarkably undeterred by my highhandedness.”

  “Vampires are probably accustomed to being managed by drones and staff. Like most aristocrats, vampires rarely concern themselves with earthly matters. Only Theris seems to be noticing and minding all the activity.”

  “I will manage him too, I promise. Do stop fretting.”

  “I’m not!”

  “You’re pacing. And not your normal thoughtful kind of pacing. This is your anger-stride pacing. The room is hardly big enough.”

  He was. While she was perched calmly on the edge of the bed, watching him.

  “He frightened you.”

  “A little, or I wouldn’t have resorted to the gun. But I suspect he is of the type that would not take any other threat from a woman to heart. I mean, I could have used a knee, or a small knife. A gun is awfully crude. But then, so is Mr Theris.”

  “That man!” Cris tensed and forced himself to stop striding about.

  “He is accustomed to being irresistible. So am I. It was never going to be a good combination, unless I actually let him seduce me.” She gave a delicate shudder. “No, thank you.”

  “But did you get anything?”

  “Aside from the key? Actually, yes. The queen’s distress and resulting withdrawal appears to be fashion based and apparently Lord Kirby knows the particulars.”

  Cris was impressed enough to stop pacing and stare at her.

  She folded her hands in her lap demurely. “And I know exactly where the baroness has been hiding and how to get at her. And I’m considering an extraction plan once Theris is out of the way.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re brilliant, aren’t you?” He couldn’t help it, drawn to her coy pride. He bent and curved one hand about her soft cheek.

  She grinned into the caress. “I have my moments. And what about you? I can’t imagine you went voluntarily into the streets of Nottingham dressed like a beachcomber, greatcoat or no greatcoat. You were following Justice?”

  “I was.” He lowered his hand and sat next to her – not too close, he didn’t want to crowd, the memory of Theris’s disgusting behaviour still fresh in his mind. But she wouldn’t let him be far away. She pressed against him, copious skirts spilling over his leg.

  “And?” She bumped his shoulder with hers.

  Cris described what he’d seen and he
ard, ending on Gantry’s apparent willingness to turn drone. “Although his parents seem to object to the match. I can’t imagine they would if they knew Justice is a vampire. Not if they’re progressives. Gantry is a younger son and clearly bent enough not to get a continuation of the family line out of his loins. Drone is an ideal result. The parents should be approached with a blood-dowry, unless they have a reputation for anti-integration.”

  Dimity shook her head. “Not just yet. Even I’m not that highhanded. We haven’t that kind of authority – that’s beyond housekeeping or estate management. The queen has to approve a hive reveal, let alone a new drone contract. We aren’t there yet.” She gestured with the key she still held.

  Cris nodded. She was right, of course. He was getting ahead of himself and he had such faith in her abilities. Indeed, it seemed, given the rapidly reviving state of Budgy Hall, that his Sparkles could do anything.

  Dimity pursed her lips. “It’s possible this Gantry fellow is smarter than you think and knows Justice well enough to have invented a parental impediment specifically in order to cultivate the vampire’s interest. Added dramatic effect, if you will?”

  “Crickets! You see, Sparkles, this is why you’re the intelligencer and I’m the safety. How are the rest of the hive coming along?”

  “Vampires are tricky, but I think I need to give them purpose, an event of some kind, show off the hive house. An excuse to throw a gathering, invite the local gentry, including the Ogdon-Loppeses. The kind of high-society event that no one who is anyone wants to miss. Least of all the baroness. And I need to take Justice shopping. Can’t have a vampire stealing my nightgown every time he wants to go trysting in a forest. I only brought the one.”

  She looked at Cris, suddenly serious. “It’s interesting that you’re so comfortable with him. In my experience, men of your type are not comfortable around men of his.”

  “Justice?” He wondered what she meant by his type, but he could guess what she meant by Justice’s.

  “Yes.” She was looking at the key in her hands, fiddling with it.