Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City Part 6

They didn't, and by the end of her shift, Mina was hot and irritated. The sweltering days of summer had returned full force. Beneath her heavy hat, sweat plastered her hair to her head. Her chemise seemed a thin bit of nothing between her skin and chafing body armor. Though she had already sat an hour in this rumbling steamcoach, traffic was not moving. d.a.m.n it all. On her next spending binge, she would buy herself a two-seater balloon.

And she needed to shake herself out of this foul mood before she reached home. Anne waited.

The deep breath she took smelled of dirt and smoke. She glanced out the window as the steamcoach jolted forward a few inches. In the cab beside her, a brown-haired man sat with his face in his hands- Oh, sweet heavens. She was saved. "Scarsdale!"

His head came up. The bleakness of his expression stabbed at her chest before he grinned, tipped his hat to her. "Inspector! How do you-Oh, b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l."

He suddenly hopped out of the cab into the road, and staggered. A steamcart honked. Mina covered her cry of alarm as a spider rickshaw nearly scuttled over him. She lurched for the carriage door, flung it open. On unsteady legs, he weaved his way toward her, clambered into the coach. Alcohol fumes overwhelmed the smoke and dirt.

By the starry sky, he was utterly soused.

"Forgive me." He plopped down beside her. "I can't sit facing backward."

Mina could, but she didn't want him to vomit on her feet. "Are you well?"

"I must be." He lifted his hands, offered a beatific smile. "I have just signed a marriage contract."

Smoking h.e.l.ls. "Before or after you began drinking?"

"Before."

At least there was that. "And so you're engaged to be married to whom?"

"Does it matter? It was one of the ladies I courted. I'm certain she was pretty. I will still have to close my eyes."

"Did you tell her of your preference for men?"

His bitter laugh was answer enough. No, of course he hadn't. Mina didn't know whether to feel more sympathy for him or the woman. Both of them, perhaps.

She took his hand, and his fingers shook against hers. "I used to envy you once," she said softly. "Because you could hide what you were from those who would hate you for it. But I am sorry that you have to hide."

"I envy you," he said. "And the captain."

Never the duke, always the captain. "He would change the world for you, too."

"You are kind to think so, inspector." He lifted the back of her hand to his lips. "He might try. But don't think that even he is capable of that change. Let him change it for his family."

"You are his family, you blind idiot."

His gaze sharpened. "Do you think he knows that?"

"I think that he will eventually figure it out."

"Ah, so you have discovered what a thick-skulled lackwit your husband is-"

Mina yanked her hand from his. "Tread carefully, sir."

"-when he is trying to sort his emotions." Scarsdale finished with a grin.

Oh. Well, he was not all wrong. "So that he cannot put into words the difference between wanting an airship captain for an expedition and wanting me, even though he feels a difference?"

"Quite so. We are speaking of a man who could only think of you in terms of possession, because he didn't know the word he needed was love." Even weaving in his seat, he looked rather smug. "Not until I said it to him."

"I am in your debt, then." And about to go deeper. "He fears for me when I work."

"Oh, yes. Terrified."

Her heart twisted painfully. "How do I help him?"

Scarsdale laughed, holding his stomach. "Oh, now who is the blind idiot?"

Yes, there was one obvious solution. "I don't want to quit my job."

But should she?

"Dear G.o.d. What would quitting do? Then he would be terrified when you went to the milliner's. When you took the stairs. When you used a fork." He shook his head. "Use your inspector's brain. Tell me, do you worry for your brother? He is out on the high seas somewhere, on a ship that has already been taken by airship pirates once this year."

Yes, she worried. "But it is not a fear like Rhys's."

"Because you have had years to become accustomed to it. But the captain has never loved before you. He has never had family. Now he does, and all of the little worries that he never felt before are crashing in on him."

That made perfect sense. And it meant that he simply needed time. Mina would give him all that he wanted. "Thank you," she said.

"Well, do try not to be shot through the heart again. That was beyond terror for him. And I almost lost four toes waiting with him in a freezing steamcoach outside your window."

Mina's lips parted. She'd been in bed, stricken with bug fever, with a rusty clockwork heart ticking on her breast. Now she had a heart of mechanical flesh-though she barely noticed the difference. She could run fast and far without tiring, but it still pounded. It still ached with pain or unbearable love.

And now, that heart made of metal fibers and nanoagents seemed to squeeze tight within her chest. "I was told he never came, that it was too dangerous."

"Well, we were not supposed to. You were not to have any excitement at all. So we made certain that no one knew we were there." He gave her a narrowed look. "Did you truly think he wouldn't come?"

"I didn't know then," she whispered. "I didn't know."

"And now?"

"I would climb out the window to find him, certain he was there."

"Saving my toes, as well." He sighed. "They might fall off before his ball, anyway. Ah! Today we received Lady Redditch's regrets that she will not be able to attend. I'm rather surprised. We have several others coming out of mourning early for it. h.e.l.l, there are some crossing an ocean for it."

Mina grinned. Rhys had scheduled the ball during the height of summer, when Parliament was in recess and the temperatures drove most of the aristocratic bounders away from London and into the country or back to Manhattan City. He'd hoped that would keep the numbers low and fulfill his social duty for the year.

"Does he have any idea how many people have accepted his invitation?"

There was a wicked slant to his smile. "I've only showed him a few."

"Oh, you're awful. You are like a brother."

"And will you tell him the truth?"

"Of course not." Mina laughed, shaking her head. "He's already been terrified enough."

Though in truth, Mina didn't believe a ball would frighten Rhys. He simply did not care much about it, whether one person showed or a thousand. He would not care if people said it was the best ball of the year or the worst. He would only care what Mina, her parents, and Scarsdale thought of it.

Mina could not speak for the others, but she would be equally happy sitting in a corner with her friend Felicity or dancing with Rhys-or, if she was very clever, slipping away with him into some darkened room while the hundreds of attendees had their fun without them.

Perhaps she would suggest the last plan to him later tonight.

He waited for her on the front steps again, Anne by his side. Her heart seemed to swell at the sight, and her throat ached enough that she could barely form a word when he opened the carriage door and held out his hand. He frowned slightly when he spotted Scarsdale sprawled across the bench and sawing off snores.

"Absinthe," Mina said softly. "A lot of it. He signed a marriage contract today."

Dismay filled his gaze, followed by frustration. "Christ. What can I do for him?"

She squeezed his hand. "Be his friend. And carry him inside."

He nodded, kissed her briefly before climbing into the carriage. Mina turned to Anne, waiting a few yards away. Her gaze swept over the girl's face, her arms. No injuries that she could see. "Good evening to you, Tinker Anne. Are you well? I hope you are."

The girl smiled. "I am."

With a few steps, Mina crossed the distance the separated them. She slipped her arm around the girl's shoulders, began walking with her toward the house. "You aren't at the Blacksmith's today?"

The girl's small frame stiffened. "I can't go back."

What? "Why not?"

Anne didn't have a moment to answer. Rhys's heavy tread sounded behind them before he drew even. He'd thrown Scarsdale over his shoulder, face down and a.s.s up.

The girl blinked. "What happened to him?"

"He had a difficult day," Rhys said gruffly. He looked to Mina. "And you?"

"I think we all had a difficult day." Mina slipped her hand into Anne's, walked up the stairs-with Rhys at her side, and his soused friend over his shoulder.

Her new little family.

"But it's already better," she said.

Chapter 5.

Aside from the bedrooms, the library had always seemed the warmest, most comfortable room in Rhys's house, and so Mina chose to take Anne there. She poured herself a gla.s.s of wine. A maid brought in a tray with bowls of strawberries and cream. It would ruin the girl's dinner, perhaps, but Mina could not think of a better night for it.

Rhys came down after depositing Scarsdale in his room upstairs. He looked to her, appearing slightly uncertain-oh, that was not an expression familiar to his face-but Mina had no idea how to proceed. She couldn't interview the girl like a witness.

Perhaps it was best to start where they'd already begun. "Anne, why can't you return to the Blacksmith's?"

"Oh." The girl sank a little lower in her armchair. She glanced at Rhys before focusing on Mina again. "I should tell you everything, right? Including my motivations."

"If you feel that you can," Mina said. "Or we can wait until you're ready. But if you need help for any reason, I hope that you'll let us know."

"I don't need help. But I thought . . . I thought someone else did." Her lips quivered slightly, and she touched the side of her face.

Mina tensed. Oh, she knew that touch. She'd seen hundreds of women make that same gesture. Someone had hit her girl. She glanced at Rhys, saw the same banked rage burning in his eyes.

"Who did, Anne? Does this person need our help?"

The tinker shook her head, took a deep breath. "No. It was a mistake. Geordie took an apprenticeship with another blacksmith. An inventor. He didn't pa.s.s his test for work at the Blacksmith's, but I told him to just wait another year. And I didn't hear from him for a while, and none of the others did either, so I was worried."

Mina decided not to make a point at that moment. "I'd have worried, too," she said. "Did you try to find him?"

"Yes. It wasn't hard. I knew he was apprenticed under Wilbur the Reacher." She glanced at Rhys when he drew a sudden breath, his lips white. "You know him?"

Her heart pounding, Mina watched him struggle for an even tone. "I only know of him, and the automated machinery that he builds," Rhys said. "And that his workshop is in Birdcage Alley."

Smoking h.e.l.ls. Farther into Southwark than she and Newberry had ventured the night before, and although not as dangerous as some of the rookeries farther west, Birdcage Alley was still not an area that she'd ever want Anne venturing to alone.

Blast it all, Mina would not venture there alone.

"That's right." Anne nodded, apparently oblivious to their horror.

"Did you go there?"

"I sent grams to the workshop from the Blacksmith's," she said, but Mina's relief was short-lived. "Geordie never answered them, though. So I went across the river a few times during the day; Wilbur the Reacher said Geordie was busy. He was always busy. So I realized I needed to go at night, instead."

Mina barely stopped the moan from pa.s.sing her lips. Anne was here, in one piece. She'd obviously made it through. Looking a little ill himself, Rhys came to her side. The sofa legs creaked when he sat heavily next to her, took her hand. She held on for dear life.

"So on Sat.u.r.day, I sent that first gram to you," Anne said. Her fingers began twisting together. "But I didn't make it to the workshop. Mary and I didn't like the way a pair of lamplighters were looking at us. So we stayed on the bridge and played knucklebones at a lemon ice shop."

"Mary?" Rhys asked.

"My friend. She's got a hammer." Anne clenched her right fist, imitating a hammering apparatus. "I wouldn't go alone. I'm not daft."

"Of course not," he said. The grip of his hand didn't loosen on Mina's. "And you went again last night."

"Yes. We thought midnight was a good time, just in case Geordie was working a second shift. So I saw him open a shutter in the workshop, and I catted to him." She took in their blank stares. "Miow. We signal that way in the Creche. Then Geordie came out and he was . . . he was all in a rage. 'You just want my apprenticeship, you jade wh.o.r.e, you get out of here!'"

Oh, Anne. Mina's eyes filled and she slipped across the s.p.a.ce between them, kneeled in front of the girl's chair. She took the small hand in hers. "I'm so sorry."

"It wasn't you who said it." With a hunch of her shoulder, the girl firmed her trembling lips. "I pounded one into his face."