Zylphia was a mulatto, her skin the color of dark tea lightened by a dollop of cream, her hair coarse, incredibly thick, and with enough kink from her Negro mother that it settled in heavy waves. Her mouth was too wide for fashion’s choice, which only appealed to the refined tastes of the Menagerie’s market, and her eyes were uncannily blue in her African face—legacy of her unknown white father, and all too clear a mark of the shame that birthed her, as far as London proper cared.
Zylphia had once been merely a midnight sweet—those beautiful, cultivated creatures that served as flesh and temptation for the pleasure gardens. As part of my debt, she had become my maid above as well as my keeper below. One of few who knew of both lives I led, I had trusted her more than I should have.
She’d vanished just before the marriage that would clear me of all debt to Hawke and his keepers, and thus relieve her of her duties to me. She had not been there when the rival collector we both hunted had murdered my Lord Compton.
She returned sometime between my husband’s passing and my lapse into that terrible state of raw disbelief, but it was too late. My guilt had grown too weighty to bear.
The murderer had known of my previous maid, dear Betsy of the sweet doe eyes, and had abducted her as neatly as he pleased. He had known of Lord Compton’s proposal, murdering him bold as brass in the street.
He knew where I made my home, and that I acted the collector come evening.
All that I held dear would remain in danger. Zylphia, the daft twist, had not taken to my demand to be left alone.
We were no longer friends, and it was my doing.
I glared at her from watery, burning eyes, my mouth twisted in anger. “You had no right to step in.”
She flinched as if I’d slapped her. I possibly could have done worse if I’d tried. As a creature of the Menagerie acclimated to giving her pound of flesh on demand, she did not like to be touched when away from the work.
Which made it all the more poignant when she caught my hand in both of hers, steadying me as I tottered sideways and staggered to a halt. “That’s one of the Bakers,” she told me, as if I were too daft a child to know. “He rivals Communion for size, what were you thinking?”
“I bloody well know who that was.” I snatched my hand from her grasp. My chest twisted as hurt flashed across her exquisite features.
I could stand on my own. I had no choice.
“I do not need your help, Zylphia. Go on.”
For a moment, only the fog whispered between us. It shifted and coiled, a sinuous cat without form or end.
Her jaw shifted as she straightened, and for the first time, I realized she wore the same masculine clothing I had given her for our collecting adventures. No set of eyes could ever claim Zylphia’s figure masculine, not unless the mind behind them were gone on drink or worse, but the trousers made for easy freedom. Her hair had been coiled up, black as mine without need for soot to make it so.
She was still a lovely thing.
And dangerous, if she’d sent Bartholomew Coventry running. I hadn’t seen her do anything worth running from.
Perhaps he’d thought himself outnumbered.
Perhaps I owed Zylphia more than the sharp side of my tongue.
“I am only trying to help you, Cherry.”
I hissed as she spoke my name, took a step as if I would grab her by the lapels and strike her for her temerity. “Let me be!” The words came on a poisoned point of a knife’s fury. “I’ve no use for a Menagerie whore, now or ever.”
Zylphia, my once-friend, flinched. She staggered back a pace, raising an arm as if it would ward the blow of a whip or worse, and the guilt twisting my heart sharpened to a razor’s edge.
“Go,” I snarled. “And mind your back!”
“You can’t do this alone,” she began.
I raised a hand—dear heaven, forgive me—and snarled a threat that bore no words. If it would send her home, I would strike her here and now, and no one would be the wiser for my shame.
Her chin rose. Her jaw, beautifully delineated in smooth dusky skin, hardened. A pinch of sallow fury creased the corners of her full lips. She spun without a word, fled into the fog until I could no longer see the silhouette of her figure. Her footsteps, dampened by the clinging fog, faded to silence.
For lengthy moments, I struggled to even my breathing.
There was no call for my horrid behavior. None for the anger welling from a wound too deep for a doctor’s hand, too infected to close.
I needed no help. I could accept no friends where the fog blew harsh and biting and black. As long as my path intersected that of the collector who’d killed my father and murdered my husband, I would not bend.
I would not be responsible. Not again.
My heart pounding inside my chest, I leaned back against the same brick I’d met so intimately moments before and wondered if I was expected to cry.
I returned to the Midnight Menagerie just as the Westminster bells tolled the third hour. I was lacking in collection, exhausted beyond all measure, and my wayward Mr. Coventry had retreated. No matter. When I was ready, I knew where to find him.
It would take me onto Baker grounds, but I’d been through worse. I was, I can say now with some regret, all too eager to make the attempt.
A man in green and black livery waited just inside the gates, passing out pamphlets upon which the entertainments of the week were inscribed. I refrained from taking one. I already suspected tonight’s main event took place within the glowing red beacon of the circus tent.
Years ago, after Vauxhall lost favor with the elite and became instead the haunting ground of footpads and thieves, rumor of a new decadence began to circulate among those with the means or the connections to hear them. Sensing a void—and rather more importantly, a source of ready income—the Midnight Menagerie came to be London’s most fashionable, and fashionably unfashionable, den of iniquity and debauchery.
Like much of the district, the Karakash Veil owned the pleasure gardens. Yet even in this intimate setting, the Veil was a mystery. Perhaps even more so, for the tale of the shadowy puppet masters behind the curtain were as intriguing to the purse strings as the imagination.
And what the Veil could not inspire by word alone, the reprehensible ringmaster of the Midnight Menagerie delivered.
Hawke was, simply put, a bastard. Possibly literally speaking, but most assuredly behaviorally. He was, there was very little doubt, a man whose raw masculinity allowed him a great deal of leeway in an establishment whose credibility resided on what temptations men of a certain reputation could acquire. That which he sold, men who admired or feared the ringmaster would purchase.
Yet it was not his appearance alone that earned Micajah Hawke such accolades. I was not certain if the rumors of his Gypsy-blooded birth were true or spun fantasy, yet his very bearing—haughty, implacable, powerful—established a right to rule within the grounds that allowed him to treat all who came here as fodder for his games. Or, more like, as flesh to exploit.
As the Veil’s right-hand, the public facade upon which all who attended the grounds could fawn, Hawke enjoyed nearly unfettered freedoms. I believed, truly, that no ringmaster upon this great earth was capable of accomplishing that what Hawke could with an audience.
He was in all things a man to watch.
Tonight, as the circus tent pulsed like a jeweled heart deep within the Menagerie grounds, I considered myself safe from crossing paths with the serpent. He would be inside that crimson canvas, leading the audience, guiding the circus rings, taunting the so-called freaks and sideshow displays. As any good ringmaster must, he
