Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City

by Meljean Brook

  Which part of it? Mina chose her favorite. “Inspector Mason brought in the body of a man whose lover said he fell down a flight of stairs. I spent the afternoon proving that the shape of the victim’s head wound matched the back side of the cutting apparatus grafted onto her arm, not the edge of a step.”

  “So she killed him?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Scarsdale gave a mock shudder. “I hate to think of the sins you’d discover if you ever opened me up.”

  Not many that she didn’t already know. Scarsdale was one of the rare men who didn’t need to be opened up to find the truth of a story; he opened his mouth of his own volition. But then, she’d discovered that many bounders did—perhaps because they’d never lived under the oppressive rule of the Horde. Many of them talked long, they talked often, and said nothing worth hearing at all.

  With exceptions, of course. Scarsdale couched almost everything he said in humor, yet every word was sharp and only a fool refused to listen. Her assistant, Newberry, spoke only good, strong sense, and Mina often looked to Superintendent Hale’s example as a model for her own career.

  Yet even they had something in common with the others: Every bounder that Mina had ever met could tell the story of each ancestor who’d escaped to the New World before the Horde had infected England. The tales had been passed along until they’d become family legends—the nobles and the gentry almost always including descriptions of what they’d left behind and how much they’d spent for passage across the Atlantic. Those bounders who were descended from laborers always mentioned which aristocratic or moneyed family they’d attached themselves to, and whether they begged, borrowed, or stowed away—or sold themselves into indentured servitude. Some were proud that their ancestors had been among the first to go, and spoke of them as if they’d descended from prescient deities. If their forefathers had been the last to sail, they invariably included a tale of a harrowing escape, as if the Horde had conquered England with their war machines instead of nanoagents concealed in sugar and tea.

  Families like Mina’s had stories of ancestors who’d remained in England. Two hundred and fifty years ago, William Wentworth, the fourth Earl of Rockingham, had stood in Parliament and named every noble who didn’t stay to fight and to protect England, calling them all cowards. He’d stood in attendance when the Archbishop of Canterbury had placed the crown on Charles the Second’s head after the old king had died—and who had been the last king whose reign hadn’t fallen under Horde rule. Over the next half century, the Earl of Rockingham also witnessed the Horde darga coronate Charles’s son, had seen his estate in Northampton seized and the remainder of his holdings slowly shaved away to pay the Horde’s taxes, until the only property the Wentworths owned was the town house in London where Mina’s parents lived now.

  But the man who’d been on Mina’s examination table that afternoon probably had no stories of ancestors to tell. Unlike the aristocracy and landed gentry, the commoners hadn’t been given the privilege of keeping a family. Their children had been taken and raised in a crèche, where they were trained for work and their bodies modified for the Horde’s use. The next generation had been bred in the Frenzies that were induced by the Horde’s radio signals—and the resulting generation also reared in a crèche. The man on her table likely hadn’t known who his father and mother were, let alone those who’d lived two hundred years ago.

  Had the man lived, however, he would have had another story to carry on, a story shared by everyone in England: where he’d been the night the Iron Duke had sailed his pirate ship up the Thames and destroyed the Horde’s tower. He could have told his children about the emotions that had flooded him when the radio signal the Horde used to prevent the strong, enhanced population from rebelling—suppressing their hate, their love, their fear—had suddenly stopped broadcasting. He’d have said how many of the Horde he’d bloodied in the revolution that followed, how many of their buildings he’d helped burn.

  The Horde’s holdings where Rhys’s mansion sat now might have been one of them. Perhaps that man had helped rebuild part of London after the Horde had fled . . . but he would never say so, and Mina would never know that story now. She only knew that his lover had smashed his brains in.

  “So that is why you are late,” Rhys said softly—and with a hint of relief. He’d been thinking the worst, Mina realized. “You were doing another inspector’s work.”

  Not exactly. Inspector Mason couldn’t have performed the examination, but it needed to be done, so it became Mina’s work. Yet Rhys wasn’t wrong, either. The examination had added to her duties, and she had run late because of it.

  “Yes,” she said. “That and the horrid traffic on Viktrey Road.”

  “And your morning?” he asked. Just as Mina would have in his place, Rhys picked up on the part of the day she hadn’t mentioned—and assumed she deliberately hadn’t mentioned it.

  “I survived it in one piece.” Her eyes locked on his. “I caught a dockworker who strangled a boy. He got a blow in before Newberry took him down.”

  She saw the sudden tension in him, the way his gaze moved all over her, though he’d already looked her up and down when she’d come in, though he’d already watched her walk across the room without any lingering stiffness. Many dockworkers had been augmented with pneumatic pistons in their shoulders and steel arms, increasing their strength. Rhys would know that any blow a dockworker laid on her wouldn’t have been a light one.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she assured him.

  That reassurance wasn’t enough, she knew. If Scarsdale hadn’t been here, she’d have been stretched out on this sofa within a few seconds, naked as Rhys looked her over—then holding him as he shagged her, hard and fast.

  As much as she enjoyed Scarsdale’s company, there were times when Mina wished the bounder wasn’t here so often. She saw the same thought enter Rhys’s mind, the humor that lifted the corners of his mouth.

  But despite that smile, his tension didn’t leave, and a small heavy weight settled in her gut. That worry couldn’t just be about her injury. He knew she wasn’t hurt. This fear had to be based on something more . . . and it appeared too often.

  Sometimes she thought Rhys wasn’t adjusting to marriage as well as she was.

  Ignoring that ache, she looked to Scarsdale. “And did you tackle any dockworkers today?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Not while I’m still searching for a wife.”

  He’d been searching for months—but eventually, Mina knew he’d stop looking and choose a woman to marry, even if he was never physically attracted to her. Scarsdale felt his responsibility as a future marquess too keenly to ignore his duties . . . but he’d keep on running for a while longer. Mina hoped he found someone who could be a companion to him, even if they didn’t share a passionate love.

  Dear heavens, she’d been so very lucky, hadn’t she?

  She looked to Rhys. With a single glance, she’d already seen how he’d spent part of his day—his valet had obviously forced him to sit still long enough for a trim. Mina would thank the man later. As much as she loved to sink her fingers into Rhys’s dark, overlong hair, she loved even more seeing those small gold hoops at the tops of his ears and the strong line at the back of his neck. “And you, sir?”

  “I wish I could have tackled a dockworker—and I’ve already found my wife.”

  He surprised her. Though he never made many jokes, his humor came more often and more easily than it once had. “So you have. Picked her right out of Anglesey Square.”

  And thank the heavens for that, for his stubbornness that matched hers. While she’d been sitting alone at the feet of his statue, he’d come to her, insisting that they would be together, despite her protests and her certainty that he no longer wanted her. How long ago that seemed now—the pain of not being with him, of thinking that he was done with her. Whatever small doubts and aches still lingered, they were nothing compared to that agony.

  “Yes, he h
as a wife to tackle dockworkers for us,” Scarsdale said. “So we have spent the better part of a day trying to put together an expedition to search for a lost ship in the Arctic, and offering absurd amounts of money for a Vashon to lead it.”

  The famous family of airship captains. “Will you get him?”

  “Her,” Rhys said. “And, yes. I want her, so I’ll have her.”

  Of course he would say that. He hadn’t bought Mina, but the Iron Duke was still so certain that he could buy everyone else. Mina didn’t think she was the only exception . . . but there were apparently so few exceptions that his usual methods still worked.

  She smiled faintly. “Hopefully you won’t convince her as you did me.”

  Oh. And that had not come out as lightly as she’d intended it. All remaining traces of humor left Rhys’s face, drawing his skin tight. Her heart pounded.

  “No,” he said. His voice was gruff, as if rasped by smoke. “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “Partially because Captain Vashon has enough years on her to be his grandmother,” Scarsdale said easily, as if he didn’t notice Rhys’s tension—but of course he did. He always did. He knew Rhys well.

  He knew Rhys so well—and perhaps that was why Mina was afraid to ask Scarsdale about certain things, fearful of what the answer might be. Perhaps he’d tell her that Rhys’s fierce lovemaking wasn’t just because she’d been injured, but because he was driven now and again by the same need that had driven him before: to possess her. But he had her now . . . and Mina was a liar if she didn’t sometimes wonder whether he felt his pursuit had been more satisfying than the having.

  He loved her. She knew that. But maybe he didn’t love her more than he had eight months ago. He’d asked her to fight with him . . . but maybe he was fighting to stay excited, fighting to keep his desire for her alive.

  The sick ball in her stomach became heavier. She needed him, needed to feel him against her, inside her. Now. Rising to her feet, she said, “Excuse me. I can still smell the slums on me, so I ought to change out of this uniform before dinner. I’ll return in a moment.”

  Mina knew Rhys would follow her. That tension meant he’d devour her. She needed that at this moment, more than anything—the reassurance of his touch, of his kiss, of his need.

  She almost ran into Mrs. Lavery outside the door. The housekeeper held a folded gram, her blue eyes wide and worried.

  “A wiregram from Superintendent Hale, Your Grace.”

  Likely a murder, then—one that the superintendent wanted Mina to handle, since she was being summoned after her shift had ended. Damn it. Mina unfolded the message, hoping she was wrong.

  Viscount Redditch. By the heavens. She and Rhys had just eaten dinner with him the evening before.

  She looked to Rhys, who’d come into the hall after her. “It’s Redditch. He’s been killed.”

  Surprise passed over his expression. “Where is he?”

  “His garden. In Westminster.” On the other side of London.

  “Ask Mr. Muller to ready the two-seater,” he told Mrs. Lavery before catching Mina’s hand in his. “The balloon will be faster than the river or the roads. Do you want me to fly you there?”

  It wasn’t the sort of time alone with him that she’d hoped for, but Mina would take it. “Yes.”

  Chapter 2

  Rhys had lived through danger before, through hardship. He’d looked Death in the eye more times than he could count. Yet the past eight months had been the most terrifying of his life—and he feared the worst was still coming.

  Rhys feared that he would lose the woman he loved.

  He shouldn’t have been afraid of anything. He’d married Mina within a week after finding her in the square. He’d made her his. He’d thought the fear would diminish then, the terror that had followed him since he’d realized that he loved her—after she’d insisted that a relationship between them couldn’t work until everyone in England began seeing her differently. He’d thought the terror of watching her fall in front of a bullet would be over, along with the fear that she might never return to him.

  So Rhys had gone to her when he’d found her in that square, desperate and afraid, and had insisted that she give him another chance. She’d changed everyone’s opinion by saving his life—and it had worked between them. She was his. The danger ought to have passed.

  But she still lived in danger, and Rhys in fear. Every controlling instinct in him said to make her quit her job . . . but he would lose her if he did. He could effectively force her into a safer position by making her pregnant, but if she’d discovered that he had manipulated her in that way, she’d leave him.

  He’d never risk that. So instead he watched her risk her life, every single day.

  God. With the people who worked for him, it was easy enough to make demands or to take away choices to produce the results he wanted. He couldn’t do that with her.

  And the doubt he saw in her expression every once in a while, the uncertainty—it was his damned fault. Rhys had no idea how to be a husband. Scarsdale had once said that he had the sensitivity and subtlety of a mud brick, and Rhys recognized the truth of it. But with Mina, Rhys fought to be better—yet he still cocked up and made the stupidest declarations . . . like how he wanted another woman.

  But Mina had to know the want he’d spoken of wasn’t anything like his need for her. That was business, not his heart. She had to know. Didn’t she?

  He followed her out the rear of the mansion, where the two-seater waited for them on the lawn. The gas lamps lighting their path washed its oval balloon in pale yellow. Unlike most two-seaters, they couldn’t sit side by side—his weight would unbalance it all, so they sat in tandem, with Rhys in front and Mina behind. Nor did they pedal to spin the propellers. The design already had to compensate for his weight, so he’d added an engine and speed.

  The furnace beneath the tail had been stoked, the boiler steaming and the engine huffing. Rhys paused before boarding and let the noise cover his voice. “I wouldn’t.”

  Mina looked up at him. God, her eyes. Flat and calculating, she was already working, already the inspector. They could look right through a man. He didn’t want her to see his terror. “You wouldn’t what?”

  “The Vashon woman. It’s not the same.”

  Her gaze softened. “I know.”

  That should have eased his fear. But Rhys knew it wouldn’t ease until he could hold her, until he could feel her against him, around him, his. Then the panic went away for a while.

  But he had to push it back now. She depended on him.

  He climbed into the front, waited until she’d settled into the seat behind him. Muller tossed off the tethering cables, and the rattling frame lifted off the ground. Rhys eased open the propeller valve, lowered the flaps. The balloon flew forward, quickly gaining speed as they rose into the air. The Thames served as the perfect guide to the heart of London, several miles west of his estate. On the roads below, the lanterns from carts and coaches showed the haphazard tangle of traffic. Full-sized airships weren’t allowed over the town, but two-seater balloons were becoming more common—though not nearly as common as in the New World. Most people didn’t have enough money to buy the vehicles, and those who did had difficulty finding room to keep one.

  He felt Mina’s hands on his shoulders as she leaned forward and called out, “Did Redditch seem at all concerned or upset when he was at our dinner last night?”

  Not that Rhys had noticed. He shook his head.

  “I didn’t think so, either!”

  She leaned back again, and he knew that she was reviewing every moment of their dinner, wondering if she’d missed some sign, any indication that the man might have been in fear for his life.

  A bounder who’d recently relocated to England from Manhattan City, Redditch had contacted Rhys several times, trying to drum up support for his labor initiative to reward factories that didn’t install fully automated machinery, putting manual workers out of a job. After Rhys had become active in Pa
rliament, society dinners became an unfortunate necessity—and the night before, he’d invited Redditch to hear what the man had to say. At the end of it, though Rhys agreed that protecting the laborers was a fine notion, he thought Redditch’s initiative was the wrong way of going about it, and would eventually cripple England’s industries. When Rhys had told the viscount that he wouldn’t support the bill as it was currently written, the man had been disappointed, but not angry—and he hadn’t seemed concerned about anything else, either.

  Ten minutes later, Mina leaned forward again, pointed past him to a circle of stone rubble that had once housed a bevy of Horde officials, and was now home to urchins and anyone else that cared to stake a claim on it. “There’s Grosvenor Square!” she called. “Portman Square is just north of it.”

  That square had fared better during the revolution. All of the buildings still stood, and had become a preferred location for many of the bounders returning from Manhattan City. They’d replanted the small park at the center, poured money into the houses. Columned facades looked out over the square, freshly repainted and the windows all replaced.

  Rhys lifted the flaps, opened the steam valves to stop the engine, and gently set the two-seater down outside the southeast edge of the park. He hopped out and tethered the balloon to the park’s wrought-iron fence before giving his hand to Mina. Her slim fingers folded over his as he helped her out—not that she needed help. He just couldn’t pass up any opportunity to touch her.

  Thank God, her faint smile said the same.

  Her gaze met his for a moment before searching the row of houses. “His is number thirty-eight. There.”

  She nodded at a five-story house at the center of the southern row. Rhys scanned the lane that circled the square; he didn’t see her assistant’s police cart.

  “Newberry hasn’t arrived yet,” Rhys said. “The traffic was locked up on Oxford Street. He might be some time.”

  Even though her Horde blood no longer inspired as much hatred from Englishmen—and was hardly an issue for many bounders—he knew she still didn’t like going into the scene of a murder alone, preferred to have someone watching her back. He also knew she hated waiting.