Venomous Secrets

by Anne Renwick

  “Jack,” she whispered.

  At first he took her with long, deep strokes—both of them keeping an eye on the piping surround. When it proved firmly anchored, his thrusts quickened, each one more vigorous than the last. If the bolts that fixed their modern waterfall groaned or strained, they couldn’t be heard over the cries and shouts that accompanied the rushing current that pushed them careening over the edge.

  Wet, chests heaving, they slid to the tiles beneath, wrapped in each other’s arms. Warm water continued to fall in a steady downpour as their heartbeats pounded and, eventually, slowed.

  He pushed the wet mass of her hair to the side, kissed her. “Were we successful?”

  “Very.” Smiling, she stroked a hand over his face, doing her very best to memorize its satisfied, relaxed lines, an uncommon state. “Yet only a first effort. A good scientist will seek to both replicate results—and improve upon them.”

  But later, for even now she caught a hint of strain about his eyes. Certain warning that a headache simmered below the surface. They needed to visit Lister Laboratories posthaste, locate Lord and Lady Thornton and set the notebook in their hands. The sooner the penned drawings revealed their secrets, the better.

  “One of many delightful discoveries.” He traced his finger over the tiny skull and crossbones tattoo upon her ankle, eyes dancing.

  “You like it?” She grinned.

  “I do. Though I think you have it backward, wife.” His smile softened. “You’re the cure, not the poison.”

  Her heart soared. “Best keep me close.”

  “Always.” Alas, the water grew cold. “And it’s time for reality to intrude.” He stood, pulled her to her feet and turned off the water. “And we—well, you—face a conundrum.” The corner of his mouth kicked up. He toed her sodden shift. “As the household’s first and only female occupant, what will you wear?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Wicked of him, perhaps, to take so much delight in the vision his wife presented. Barefoot, garbed in one of his shirts, and wrapped in his dressing gown, Cait was not at all happy with his proposition for the day’s activities.

  Her frustrated agony was completely understandable.

  But in the aftermath of their sudden, unanticipated wedding, not a single domestic issue had been addressed. As their travel trunks had been sent to the Albany, his wife was left without, well, much of anything.

  Skeet pigeons had been launched. One to Cait’s mother. A second to her maid, Janet, with a desperate plea for clothing.

  And, after much gnashing of teeth, a third to Black, informing him of their return.

  “Carte blanche,” he teased as she paced.

  “I’ve no interest in shopping.” Cait’s eyes narrowed as she turned to face him, notebook held hostage in her arms. “Besides, I wish to be present when you question Lord Aubrey. He is, after all, my new brother-in-law.”

  “He’ll admit to nothing, and there’s not enough evidence to escort him to an interrogation room.”

  “Yet.” She drummed her fingers on the notebook.

  “Moreover, my mother is a misery. News of my marriage is bound to have her as unbalanced as a flywheel without counterweights.” His wife was a wonder among women, but the inability to locate her name within Debrett’s would have sent the dowager viscountess into a fit of the vapors.

  No need for Cait to bear witness.

  “Dress,” he continued. “Promote Janet to housekeeper so that she might set domestic matters in motion.” He tugged on his coat. “Your mother is of most value for her society gossip.”

  “We’ve been in London for two weeks,” Cait huffed. “Her efforts are mighty, but renewing old acquaintances in London is proving difficult to impossible.”

  “Still, with her ear to the ground, she might have heard rumors. A lamia is bound to draw attention. We might as well engage her assistance.”

  “Nothing like questioning your own mother about a, possibly Greek, woman who might be moving among the ton peddling a promise of enhanced fertility and heightened eroticism.” She rolled her eyes. “I can’t wait.” Cait let her gaze slip downward over the buttons of his waistcoat to settle upon the fall of his trousers. “Your own capabilities will be drawn into question.”

  That pricked beneath the cravat. “Only your opinion holds weight.” He wrapped his arms about her. With the mad scientist’s notebook trapped between them, he claimed a slow, soft kiss. “I don’t recall any complaints, enhanced or otherwise.”

  She stomped upon the floor. “You’re leaving me behind. That’s my complaint.”

  “Briefly. I need to spur my brother to action. Kick the hornet’s nest, as it were. We’ll meet at Lister Laboratories, hunt down Thornton and set him to cracking the secrets of this notebook.”

  “I’ll hold you to that promise. Which is why it’s staying with me.” She tucked the volume in question securely under her arm. “Four hours,” she warned. “Be there, or I’m transforming the front parlor into my laboratory.”

  Visions of faces pressed to the bay window, mouths agape, while his wife handled deadly creatures with careless disregard flashed through his mind.

  “You would turn our home into the neighborhood sideshow?”

  Her quiet smile was anything but demure.

  “Four hours,” he agreed.

  Chaos had overtaken Jack’s family’s townhome, a fact that did nothing to improve the growing headache expanding inside his skull.

  Workmen tromped up and down the stairs, hammers, trowels and paint cans in hand, while the steam butler rushed about, swatting at various overworked cleaning bots. One zoomed past, brooms twirling so fast its engine emitted thin curls of smoke, rather defeating the frantic efforts.

  “Lord Aubrey and my mother?” he inquired.

  “Up.” Emsworth’s iron chest heaved. “Up. Up. Up.” Bellows that served as lungs creaked as they forced the word out over a metal reed. “Up. Up. Up.”

  The turmoil centered around one particular suite of rooms where walls were being relocated and re-plastered. Paint, judging from the various splotches applied to said walls, was not yet decided upon. In the midst of it all stood his mother. At her side, a woman holding fabric swatches prattled on about color palettes.

  “Drastic alterations,” he interrupted, eyebrows raised, “are traditionally yielded to the new viscountess.”

  “These will be my rooms,” his mother countered, dismissing the woman with the wave of a hand. “Lady Mildred’s taste is entirely too provincial.”

  He knew a moment’s pity for his future sister-in-law. “No quiet, retiring country life for you?”

  “Certainly not,” she huffed. “Much instruction will be required to establish a country bride’s position in London society. A situation,” his mother planted her hands on her hips, “that your recent behavior has not at all aided.”

  “Many apologies, Mother, for my inconvenient existence. Is Aubrey about? We need to have words.”

  “Aubrey,” her voice was thin and sharp, “has withdrawn to his club for the day.”

  Jack nodded, turned to go. But his mother’s hand shot out and fingers dug into his arm.

  “Do you know how I was informed of your marriage? Your mother-in-law drove that knife into my chest. Stood in my parlor, nose so high she would have drowned in a rainstorm, and informed me that the Duke and Duchess of Avesbury had witnessed your vows.”

  “It was a small, impromptu ceremony. The only other guest was my colleague, Mr. Black.”

  His mother’s eyes hardened. “The three people responsible for driving my daughter into the arms of a foreigner, into exile.” Air scraped into her lungs over clenched teeth. “How could you?”

  Jack pried his mother’s fingers free. “Angela chose her husband fully aware of the life that waited for her beyond our shores.” Of the tasks that lay before her. “As for myself, I assure you, I am quite content.”

  “Impossible.” Mother sniffed. “Your bride’s lineage is tainte
d on both sides. Her mother strayed and her natural father is unknown. Not that any of my set find ourselves surprised, given her mother’s disastrous first Season.”

  Trouble awaited Cait in London society. While he wasn’t at all certain she would care, Jack found himself questioning the origin of the smoldering hostility glinting in his mother’s eyes.

  He tipped his head. “Who is Mrs. McCullough to you?”

  “Trouble.” She sniffed. “She defined indiscretion. Always the coquette, forever wandering off into dark corners out of her chaperone’s line of sight. Your father wasn’t the only gentleman she attempted to lure into her snare.”

  Making any future family gatherings a true treat. Wonderful.

  “When scandal broke, no one was surprised.” An unpleasant smile tugged at the corners of his mother’s pinched lips, suggesting a similar fate awaited him. “Caught in a linen closet with a footman. The next day she married a Scottish entrepreneur and was banished from London. Both Mr. Black and your wife are products of that unhappy union.”

  Interesting and most informative. But the tale altered nothing of the depth or the intensity of his feelings for Cait.

  Time ticked steadily onward, but his brother’s club, Sharp’s, was only a few streets away.

  “I must go.”

  “You can claim coercion,” his mother called as he strode for the door. “It’s grounds for dissolution of marriage.”

  He kept walking. “Not a chance. Goodbye, Mother.”

  With the headache’s onset, the edges of his vision had closed in, forcing extra attention and vigilance to weave through the crowds of pedestrians thronging the streets.

  “Pardon me. Excuse me.”

  Twice, he bumped shoulders. Crossing a street, he narrowly escaped having his toes flattened by carriage wheels.

  Dammit. The effects upon his peripheral vision had worsened since he’d left London.

  He slid inside the quiet of the club and exhaled his relief. Reflexively, he pinched the bridge of his nose, but it no longer served to force the headache into abeyance. His only hope lay in the contents of a mad scientist’s laboratory notebook. And in the chase.

  Cage a lamia.

  Imprison a mad scientist.

  Locate the pituitary extractor.

  The list of tasks drove him onward.

  Step one: bait his brother.

  He rolled his shoulders, addressed the doorman. “Lord Aubrey?”

  “In the clocktower, sir.”

  A three-story climb. During which he steeled himself for the unpleasantness to come. At the room’s entrance he paused. Stepping into the room would only further limit the field of his vision. Instead, he leaned against the doorway, watching.

  Across the room, an enormous clock face—both window and timepiece—marked the hour. Light pouring through its leaded glass illuminated the faces of three suspects. His brother, Oakes and Carruthers. Curious. He wouldn’t have thought Sharp’s would welcome an untitled physician as a member, but there sat the three old school chums, heads tipped together, in heated discussion.

  Well, two of them conferred. Carruthers was too soused. Eyes closed, his head wobbled upon the fist that propped it up. At any moment, he might topple from his chair. His companions, used to such behavior, ignored him.

  From the intensity of their conclave, it would appear that a number of disturbing skeet messages had reached their aviaries. They would know about Ceyda’s death, that the floating laboratory was no more than ashes scattered across a distant field.

  He was betting that they also knew where to find a London-dwelling lamia. One who could leap from windows, scale walls and disappear deep inside shopping arcades.

  Unless they’d lost control of a most valuable commodity. At the very least, they would need to aid Dr. Thrakos, help him establish a new facility that he might continue to culture glandular tissue and place it within living hosts, be they serpentine or human. The continued operation—and profitability—of the Grand Menwith Hotel and Spa depended upon it.

  It was that, or theirs would become yet another failed venture. For without living incubators to generate and deliver ever more venom, their most valuable commodity would stagnate.

  An unexpected undertaking requiring additional outlay of capital that, from the expressions contorting their faces, the threesome hadn’t thought to save for a rainy day.

  Aubrey lifted his head, caught sight of Jack in the doorway. Forcing an expression of nonchalance, he rose to cross the room.

  “Congratulations,” his brother said, customary smirk fixed in place. “Your marriage almost drove Mother to murder. When the Duchess of Avesbury’s name was dropped, I am convinced that only thoughts of bloodstains on a prized carpet kept her from swinging the teapot at your mother-in-law’s head.”

  “I’m not here to discuss my marriage.” Jack met his brother’s gaze with a look that made most men back away. He’d give Aubrey one chance. “When I left to work abroad, the family coffers were running dry. Now they overflow. Explain.”

  Aubrey stiffened. “Right to it, then. I’ll return the favor. It’s none of your concern.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Jack said as his brother began to turn away. “I’ve been to your luxury hotel. Availed myself of its facilities. Met a fanged masseuse. Your business plan is unsustainable.”

  Let Aubrey wonder how much he knew. Would his brother slip, reveal Helena’s role in this enterprise? How long would she suffer the partnership of these men before taking her venomous talents elsewhere—if she hadn’t already?

  Helena’s words at his brother’s engagement ball had spoken of vengeance. Yet her every action pointed toward another goal: reproduction. The London murders weren’t personal, weren’t revenge, but a quest for fertility, one following a gruesome logic. Testicles for a male partner. Pituitary glands for herself.

  Had her efforts met with success?

  “You owe me. Much. That woman cost me a pretty penny.” Aubrey glared. “Wanton destruction of my property, but not, I hear, before enjoying a nip or two.” He leaned close and mocked, “Such an upstanding agent of the Queen. I hope your balls turned blue and fell off.”

  Painfully accurate, but he’d long since stopped responding to Aubrey’s jabs. “Turn the lamia in, or I’ll see you and your partners take equal responsibility for the London murders.”

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” Aubrey lifted his chin. Challenge glittered darkly in his eyes. Did his fingers—regrettably out of sight—curl into fists?

  “I wonder,” Jack replied, “will Dr. Oakes be equally reticent when I pose the same question to him? What of Carruthers? Will he spill all under influence of alcohol? After all, I’ve yet more questions for him concerning his father, Lord Saltwell, and his visit to Menwith. Beginning with, why did you send a lamia to murder your father in Aubrey’s library?”

  Aubrey’s eyes slid away. “We had nothing to do with that.”

  Not exactly an answer. Not guilty of the crime, perhaps, but his brother knew something. When the truth came out, how central to the crimes would his brother be? He sighed. Family was family.

  “If you help me catch Helena,” Jack began, “I might be able to—”

  “Excuse me.” A gentleman pushed past them, stopped short to scan the room. “On your feet, Oakes!” His voice vibrated with anger. “You had no right to interfere. None.”

  There was a collective gasp as the gentleman raised his arm. In his hand was a pistol.

  A chair scraped back. Dr. Oakes stood. “You put her very life at risk. Five is enough, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It was not your decision to make!”

  “Or hers?”

  Whatever their argument, it didn’t promise to end well.

  “Don’t do this.” Jack edged toward the man. “There are more civilized ways of handling disputes.”

  “Civilized?” Wild-eyed, the man swung his arm to point the muzzle at Jack. “What he’s peddling is anything
but civilized. It’s dishonest and morally corrupt. He had no right.”

  Back to that, were we?

  Both hands raised, Jack angled his head, trying to catch a glimpse the man’s ankles without losing sight of the pistol. With a quick hook of his foot, he could sweep the man’s feet out from under him, drop him to the floor. But as he shifted, the edge of his vision blurred and, for the briefest of moments, Jack could swear the man had four feet.

  All which moved. At once. Swiftly.

  Shit.

  He lunged, reached for the armed gentleman. Missed.

  Bang!

  The glass clock face shattered into a thousand shards, all raining to the street below, sharp-edged and deadly. Gears and pins caught, shuddered and groaned. Vibrations shook the walls, the floor. Men leapt to their feet, shouting.

  Oakes cowered behind a chair as the armed gentleman advanced on him.

  Jack ran, reaching. He caught the gentleman’s coat, yanked hard.

  But a moment too late.

  “A wife has a duty to provide her husband with heirs!”

  Bang!

  “He’s hit!”

  Oakes clutched his chest, shocked that a bullet had found him. Beneath his hands, blood spread across the white field of his shirt. He blinked, staggered and fell backward against the giant clockwork mechanism.

  There was a loud creak, then together with the remainder of the clock, Oakes tumbled from the gaping hole in the club’s wall. From below, screams rose to meet their ears.

  Dammit.

  So much for questioning the doctor.

  Jack kicked away the spent weapon, rolled the gentleman onto his stomach and pinned him in place with a knee. Cursing, he stripped the cravat from his neck to bind the man’s wrists.

  A glance behind told him that in the commotion Aubrey and Carruthers had bolted. He’d catch up with them later.

  And while he’d not be late to the Lister Institute, he would be tardy for his appointment with Cait. Meeting with Thornton would have to wait. He had a man to question.