Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City

by Meljean Brook

  Parchment crackled. He smoothed the oiled sheath over his thick length, pressed the broad head against her burning flesh. With a heavy stroke, he pushed deep.

  Sweet heaven. Her body bowed with the force of his possession, hands bunching in the coverlet. They froze together, locked in the moment—as they had every time since they’d married. No matter how frantic their coupling, the moment he was fully embedded, Rhys looked down, as if capturing her, and she looked up at him, taking in his stark beauty, his rough need. She had the barest second to realize that he hadn’t even tied the sheath, but held it on with his fingers wrapped at the base of his shaft, as if his need to come into her had been so great that every triviality had been tossed aside. His hands trembled now as he tied the strings, each tug teasing the sensitized flesh stretched around him, making her wetter, hotter, making it almost impossible to remain still until he finished. His callused thumb stroked over her clit. Urgent pleasure stole her breath. Her body tightened.

  He surged forward. Again, again, his hands braced beside her shoulders and his mouth devouring hers, until she cried out, convulsing around him. He raised her knees alongside his ribs and drove harder, pushing away reason, pushing away every sensation but the heat of his skin, his thick intrusion, her clamping flesh. He pushed until she shook uncontrollably, ecstasy wringing little sobs from every breath—until he was shaking with her, and the tension finally left him.

  Then he shed his clothes, came up on the bed, and savored her slowly again.

  Chapter 4

  Mina loved mornings. She loved waking up to Rhys’s furnace of a body against hers, to his exquisitely slow possession. She loved reading the newssheets over breakfast with him, loved talking with him—and usually, she loved teasing Anne, whose surly scowl in the morning was only matched by her mischievous grin after she’d fully wakened. She loved riding with Anne to the Blacksmith’s in the Narrow, and then loved her time alone as she traveled the remaining distance to headquarters.

  This morning, Mina kissed Rhys farewell over an early breakfast eaten hastily in bed. She climbed into the waiting steamcoach alone. Traffic was light, and the steamcoach made good time—good enough that she could first stop at Leicester Square, and see Anne before she and Mina’s father left for the day.

  Though Mina visited her parents often, even after eight months she still couldn’t decide whether to knock or to walk through the front door. This time, she chose to walk in. A new wind-up butler waited in the foyer, as tall as her shoulder—and naked. Her mother must not have been satisfied with his performance yet, and had left his gears exposed so that she could tweak and adjust him as necessary.

  A new blue rug ran the length of the hall. After her parents had paid off their debt to the Blacksmith, her mother’s automatons had provided a large and steady income, supplemented by her father’s position at the Crèche—but like Mina, they found it difficult to spend, fearing that it might all disappear again. Aside from hiring another maid and an assistant for Cook, they’d barely undertaken any improvements to their home, and had only made the most critical repairs.

  The rug told Mina that some of their fear must have eased. Good. Perhaps within a year or so, when she learned to throw away money like a duchess, they would let her spend Rhys’s money on them, too.

  She heard a noise from the top of the stairs and looked up. Sally had paused to glance over the banister, her dust rag in hand.

  “Good morning, Sally.” Mina smiled up at the young maid. “Are they still at breakfast?”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  It still felt odd to be addressed as “Your Grace” in this house. At the mansion, everything felt new, and the “Your Grace” had been a part of that newness. But Sally liked to say it, and took pride in knowing that her inspector was married to the Iron Duke, so Mina wouldn’t stop her.

  She continued on to the dining room. Sitting close together, her mother’s pale blond hair against her father’s dark, her parents glanced up from the newssheets as she entered. Mina’s smile faltered.

  No place had been set for Anne. Even if the girl had already finished up and excused herself, the servants left the plates until the family had all departed the room.

  “Oh, dear.” With mirrored eyes made from mechanical flesh, her mother read her face too easily. “Tell us what has happened.”

  Nothing. Please let it be nothing. “Anne hasn’t come down?”

  Now her father stilled, carefully watching her face. “Anne?”

  “She spent last night with you.”

  “No.”

  A tight knot formed in her stomach. Fear? Anger? Mina didn’t know. “And the night before?”

  “We haven’t seen her since Saturday,” her father said.

  Their regular day to visit the Crèche together—three days past. That left two nights unaccounted for.

  Why?

  Her mother said quietly, “Anne told you otherwise?”

  “Yes. She sent me a gram, and I didn’t . . .” Mina hadn’t verified the truth of it. Should she have verified it? She’d expected that Anne might have different ideas about living with a family than Mina did. But this meant Anne had lied. Why? Was she in trouble? “Did she seem all right on Saturday?”

  Her father nodded. “Perfectly well.”

  With a sick ball of worry in her gut, Mina turned to go. “I need to look for her.”

  Her mother called, “And what of Viscount Redditch? His murder is all over the newssheets—along with a tale of a brass wheel that kills men in their gardens.”

  Damn those journalists. But Redditch would have to wait. Mina shook her head, but her father said, “I’ll ask at the Crèche, Mina. Most likely she’s there, and simply didn’t want to worry you. I’ll let you know if she’s not.”

  “But—”

  “Where would you go to find her?”

  She looked to her father again. Anne had been due at work today. It was still early, but it was Mina’s best bet. “The Blacksmith’s.”

  “Your husband can be there in a quarter of the time it will take you. You are five minutes from headquarters. Send him a wiregram.”

  “And if she’s not there?”

  “Where would you look next?”

  The Crèche. She flattened her lips in frustration.

  “If it’s the Crèche, I am already headed there—and the children won’t talk to you. But they won’t think anything of it if I ask after her.”

  Why was her father always so reasonable? And worse, he was right. Crèche children might as well have lived in a silent, invisible city. They never saw or heard anything—especially when they were protecting their own.

  Blast it all.

  “All right,” Mina said. “I’ll be in my examination room for a few hours, then at Portman Square again. Please let me know right away whether she’s there—and let Rhys know, too. I’ll send him a gram as soon as I arrive at headquarters.”

  Then try to focus on work. She couldn’t do anything to find Anne that Rhys and her father wouldn’t. That was part of being a family, too—relying on them, trusting them.

  And there was no one better to rely on than Rhys or her parents. With both helping her, Mina didn’t have anything to fear.

  But she felt it, anyway.

  * * *

  The gram from Mina had long since crumpled in his hand by the time the two-seater balloon was ready. Throwing the engine to full, Rhys launched into the air and aimed the nose toward the Narrow, trying not to let the worry overwhelm his sense.

  He knew the simplest explanation was the most likely: Anne had lied. But he’d lived through too much, had seen too much, and could too easily imagine other possibilities. Like Mina, the girl had Horde blood, and many people who’d lived during the occupation couldn’t look past that fact. She might have been attacked, hurt. Slavers abducted people from London for the skin trade or to work in the Lusitanian coal mines, and a tinker was always valuable. Most slavers wouldn’t risk taking someone wearing the Blacksmith
’s guild mark—but although it wasn’t common knowledge that the Blacksmith was away from London this week, someone might have known.

  They might not have known Anne belonged to Rhys, too. Or they had known—and that was why they continued sending grams, trying to cover their asses before the Iron Duke came for them. He already had a man heading to the wiregram station where Anne’s messages had originated from, trying to discover who had sent the grams. Except for government offices and some of the newer, wealthy residences, everyone had to use a station to send a message, and they could easily be traced. But reason told him that most likely, Anne had sent them herself.

  God, what could have kept the girl away?

  Mina must be terrified. Rhys’s chest ached with the need to go to her, but he knew the only thing that could stop her fear would be to find Anne.

  It would be the only thing to ease his worry for the girl, too.

  The balloon roared in over the Narrow, where the Blacksmith’s warehouse sat up against the north bank of the Thames. Empty but for the stone rubble that piled at the front of the buildings and into the street, the Narrow would later be crowded with dockworkers and laborers hoping to pick up an odd job for the day. If Rhys hadn’t found Anne by then, he’d pay every one of them a year’s wages to search every borough around London.

  He set the two-seater down directly in front of the Blacksmith’s door, and didn’t bother to lock it down. No one would dare steal the balloon from him.

  Eyes widened as he walked into the smithy. Rhys wasn’t a stranger here—in the past ten years, he’d met with the Blacksmith too often for that—but he’d always sent a gram first. Still, his unannounced arrival didn’t explain the unease he saw on several faces. His gut tightened. They knew Anne was his, and they knew something. What was it?

  Rhys scanned each work station, looking for her, listening for the sound of her voice over the noise of the exhaust fans, the pounding of metal. She wasn’t here, but there were two more floors above this one. If necessary, he’d tear the smithy apart looking for her.

  The floor supervisor came toward him, pushing her welding goggles up over short dark hair. Lottie’s face was set, her eyes hard, and she folded her gray arms of mechanical flesh across her aproned chest. She offered him a short nod, but no greeting.

  “He’s not here,” she said simply. “Come back when he is.”

  Rhys wasn’t looking for the Blacksmith. “I’m searching for Anne the Tinker.”

  “I know. You won’t find her here. She doesn’t come back until the Blacksmith does.”

  Lottie sounded as if she preferred that Anne never returned. His girl. He unclenched his jaw, evened out his anger into steel determination. “Why?”

  “She broke the guild’s rules. He decides whether to erase her mark.”

  “What did she do?” Whatever Anne had done, he’d fix it.

  “You don’t have a mark, I don’t say.”

  God damn her and their fucking rules. “Where is she now? Here?”

  “She doesn’t come back until he does. Where she is until then is none of my business.”

  But Lottie obviously knew.

  She knew and was keeping Anne from him. A red haze swam in front of his eyes, and for a brief moment he considered slamming her against the wall, his hand around her throat until she talked. He’d start a war with the Blacksmith, but if it meant finding Anne, he’d risk it. There wasn’t a single line he wouldn’t cross.

  But he wouldn’t have to cross any lines yet. He took a deep breath, pushed back the anger. His gaze swept the room before he started for the exit. He stopped at the door.

  “I have a heavy purse.” His voice carried across the smithy. “And I’ll give it to the first person who tells me where Anne the Tinker is.”

  And he went outside to wait.

  * * *

  Five minutes later, he was heading north to Whitechapel and the Crèche. Mina’s gram had said that Rockingham would be looking for Anne there, too, but Rhys needed to see for himself. His gaze swept the streets below, searching the upturned face of every dark-haired child he passed.

  With stone walls rising thirty feet high, the Crèche covered an area roughly half the size of Rhys’s estate. From above, gardens made a patchwork of the northwest corner. Well-kept buildings sat in rows, and formed narrow streets within the Crèche. He’d never been inside—this was the children’s sanctuary, with few adults allowed past its gates—but as a boy, he’d been in one much like it during the Horde occupation. They’d fed him, taught him to listen, but not much more than that.

  Now, all the children aged ten years and older worked, but also spent hours in their schools. Every child raised in the Crèche was well fed, well dressed, adept at reading and writing, and knowledgeable in maths.

  Though the man never took credit for it, Rhys knew the Blacksmith had been responsible for the strong direction the Crèche had taken after the revolution, pouring money into it, staying in the background while offering the children advice and support. For as long as Rhys had known him, the Blacksmith had a soft spot for children.

  Rhys hadn’t, not until recently. Before Anne, before the possibility that he might have his own with Mina, he’d never thought of them much. They’d simply been there, boys on his ship who’d needed extra protection while they learned the ropes—and he gave it to them. After settling in London, there’d been the urchins who didn’t live in the Crèche and that needed small jobs to survive, and he gave those to them. To Rhys, the Horde’s crèches had been a place for children to live until they went to work, and he hadn’t known any other way—so when the Horde had fled England, he’d provided work. But he recognized that the Whitechapel crèche was better. For some children, it was better than a life with their parents would have been.

  Until today, he’d believed Anne thought that living at his home was better. Now he wasn’t so certain—and God, that uncertainty tore him apart.

  Though every possessive instinct shouted at him to fly straight into the Crèche and land in the middle of their walled city, to search every inch until he found her, Rhys forced himself to land near the front gates.

  The children might have shot him down, anyway. The rail cannons mounted around the top of the stone walls told him they were capable of it.

  A boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age stood guard at the entrance, a steel pipe hooked to his belt. Judging by the boy’s awestruck expression, the guard recognized him. As in most of England, Rhys was a hero to these children, but he didn’t think that would get him any further than it had at the Blacksmith’s.

  “I’m looking for Anne the Tinker.”

  As if recalling that he had a duty to perform, the boy suddenly straightened, throwing back his shoulders. “We’ve heard.”

  Of course he had. The moment Rhys had left the Blacksmith’s, one of the tinkers had probably sent a gram to the Crèche, warning them. The children’s communication system was faster and more efficient than any other in London.

  “May I see her?”

  “I’ll ask if she wants to come out. Wait here.”

  If he hadn’t been so ready to tear down the walls to look for her, Rhys might have been amused that the boy had told him to wait.

  But it wasn’t long. Only a minute passed before the gate clanked open a few feet, and a slim girl in a blue tunic and trousers slipped through.

  Anne. A yellow bruise marred her cheekbone, and a faint pink line that had once been a cut extended from the corner of her left eye—mostly healed now, but someone had put them there. Sudden rage shook him; helpless pain tore at his chest. Rhys didn’t let her see it. She looked terrified, shoulders hunched and eyes brimming with tears.

  He must seem like a giant towering over her. Rhys went down on his knee, extended his hand to her. “Are you all right?”

  With her teeth digging into her bottom lip, she nodded. His heart pounded with dizzy relief as she put her palm in his.

  Carefully, he pulled her into an embrace, cl
osed his eyes when she threw her arms around his shoulders. God, he’d needed this. Needed to feel her little arms around him. How had he not known that before? “Come home,” he said, voice thick. “Whatever happened, we’ll help you.”

  She mumbled against his neck. “You might not want me anymore.”

  He couldn’t bear that she might think so—not when he remembered saying it to Mina once. At the time, Rhys hadn’t known how he’d hurt her, but he saw a similar pain now in this girl. He didn’t know how, but he’d find some way to convince Anne that he would never not want her, for any reason.

  But for now, he’d give her what he had.

  “We do want you. I swear it.” He smoothed her hair back from her face, looked her in the eyes. “All right?”

  Though she still looked uncertain, the girl nodded. Perhaps that was all that she could give now, too. If it brought her home, it was enough.

  He looked her quickly over when she stepped back. Except for the bruise and the cut, he didn’t see any other injuries—and though he wanted to crush whoever had done this to her, Rhys wouldn’t push her about it now. He’d wait until Mina was with him . . . but he wasn’t certain whether to take her to Mina now, or to wait.

  But there was one man here who’d know better than any other. “Is Mina’s father here?”

  “I’m here.” Rockingham’s voice answered. Rhys glanced up. Mina’s father stood near the gate, with a sleeping infant cradled in his arm. The earl studied Anne for a long second, seemed satisfied by what he saw. “This baby was left at the gate a little while ago. Anne had just been helping me infect it with nanoagents when you arrived. Mina used to assist me when she was Anne’s age, too.”

  Hearing that pleased the girl. Her face brightened.

  “How many babies are left here?” Rhys wondered.

  “Enough that I stay busy,” Rockingham said, and Rhys wasn’t surprised. A crèche was a way of life for many of the others who’d been raised in one, too—they would never imagine keeping a child. The earl glanced at Anne before looking to Rhys again. “I sent a message on to Mina, letting her know that Anne was here, but she’ll probably want to see her.”