A Study in Silks

Chapter Six

Evelina climbed the stairs back to her bedroom, head spinning with fatigue and far too many unpleasant thoughts. If she closed her eyes, she listed as if slightly drunk. Not a good mix with long skirts, steep stairs, and the open flame of her candle.

The tall clock on the landing chimed the half hour. The hand that foretold the weather pointed to thunder and lightning. It was wrong as usual. Outside, the stars twinkled from a clear sky, with not a cloud in sight.

She stopped at Imogen’s door, opening it just enough to see that her friend was sound asleep, her chest rising and falling in slow, steady breaths. She had slept through everything, thanks to the sedative that Dora had brought her. Relieved, Evelina turned her steps toward her own bedroom. The way her mind was scrabbling for logic, she wasn’t going to sleep for some time.

Tonight her world had suddenly turned a corner. The question was—what had changed, and who had done the changing and why?

Her thoughts turned immediately to Tobias and his black eye. He was brilliant, handsome, and—for an idle rich boy—essentially kind. If he survived to maturity without drinking himself into the grave or contracting the French pox, he would probably become a better man than his father.

So why would he be involved in Grace’s death? He had his pick of well-dowered debutantes, and kept mistresses one after the other like the links of a colorful paper chain. Many men took advantage of their servants, but she’d never suspected him.

She turned the door handle, still mired in speculation. He seemed genuinely shocked to see that it was Grace who was dead. And he’d promised that he had nothing to do with it, but—despite the fact she longed for and even liked Tobias—could she trust him? His room had been dark when she passed it on her way down from the attic. He hadn’t been there. But why lie and say he was? If he was innocent, what did it matter what he was doing? Was he the man she’d heard talking outside? Or the figure who had passed her in the hall?

Closing the door behind her, Evelina stood in her own bedroom once more, heartsick and confused.

She knew instantly that Nick was gone. In the soft stillness, shadows settled in the corners like sleepy cats. The only motion was the wavering candlelight, the only scents cosmetics and old book leather. Nothing of Nick. The air was blander for his absence.

Evelina let out a disappointed cry, soft and private. Nick had always been a combination of older brother and dashing hero. He had taught her trick riding and knives and walking the high wire above a sawdust ring—not that she could do half those things any longer, not after so many years. Tonight’s escapade in the tree had proven that.

Time changed everything, taking pieces of her life away, putting new ones in. When she had stood with Nick on the threshold of adulthood, Evelina had overheard the elders of the circus talking. Gran Cooper had been terrified that the strange energy that sparked between Nick and Evelina would become ever stronger. She had called it wild magic—by definition unpredictable because of the devas that flocked to it like butterflies to nectar. The effects could be benign or deadly, but so much power in one place was impossible to hide. Its inevitable discovery would be their downfall and, by extension, that of every member of the circus. The only answer was to send one of the two sweethearts away.

Nick—still an orphan and stranger, despite all the time he had spent with Ploughman’s—would have been the one to leave. No one would ever have asked a Cooper to go. But then chance had intervened, and Evelina suddenly had another option. She could go to a new future, and Nick—who had already been cast adrift once in his short life—could stay. To save him, she’d had to leave him behind.

Not that she had ever told Nick—she had gone without a word. Although the circus was all he had, he would never have accepted her sacrifice. Even now, the knowledge would cut his fierce pride to the quick, and that was a bigger price than she was willing to pay.

And now she’d lost Nick once more. After finally seeing him again—and when she was at last of an age to look at him as a grown woman looks at a man—he had vanished like a flash of lightning, leaving barely an afterimage.

The older, wiser Evelina knew that was how it had to be, for his future and hers. Still, a mass of sadness pulled at her. How could he be in London all this time and I never knew it? She sank into the chair by her writing desk, suddenly exhausted, and picked idly at a spot of blood that had dried on her skirt before she realized what it was and snatched her hand away.

What a horrid tangle.

There was only one good thing to come out of the whole night. At least Nick had not run afoul of Tobias. Nick might be expert with a knife, but Tobias could shoot the pip from an ace half drunk and ragged from a night of whoring. The two of them bashing heads was the last thing she needed.

After so much exertion, Evelina was growing cold from sitting still. The fire in the grate had died down, letting the shadows creep from the corners.

A new thought cropped up unbidden. Had Nick really come in through her bedroom window? Like any showman, he could tell a good tale when it suited him. No, it couldn’t be him. Or Tobias. I know them both at least that well.

But how objective was she? Wishful thinking, no doubt, was what got Grace Child with child, and then dead. Look at what had happened to her own mother, Marianne Holmes, eloping with a handsome captain only to end up disgraced and in an unmarked grave at five and twenty. No woman could afford willful blindness.

Evelina rubbed at the blood spot furiously. No man is an angel, however handsome he looks.

Her hands stilled. Evelina sat for a long moment, watching the candlelight flicker along the walls, licking along the metal tops of perfume bottles and glinting off their cut crystal sides. The silence quieted her nerves, letting her think.

Her first and most urgent fear was for Imogen and her family. The death of a servant was bad, but those automatons reeking of dark magic made things much worse. Magic and murder would bring any family down, but Lord Bancroft had political ambitions. That meant he had enemies, at least some of them rich and powerful. If suspicion of sorcery fell on any member of the household, Bancroft’s ruin—and that of his wife and children— would be swift and complete.

The men would most likely be taken to prison, perhaps hanged, perhaps shut away forever. Imogen— beautiful and frail—would lose any chance of marriage. So would young Poppy. And Lady Bancroft—she was born and bred to be a woman of Society. What would someone like her do if she suddenly had no money and no friends?

I can’t let that happen. Even if she wasn’t a real detective, there had to be something she could do. But how would she stop Lestrade and his investigation? What if he dragged her Uncle Sherlock into it? Lord Bancroft was a highly placed man, and Lestrade would be under pressure to make an arrest. He’d want to get it right, because a mistake involving a peer could sink a policeman’s career. Unless a solution came to hand right away, why wouldn’t Lestrade employ his best resources?

Evelina had to find out the truth before anyone else did, and if she could solve the murder, then there would be far less reason for anyone—like her uncle—to uncover Lord B’s secrets. That would give her a chance— somehow—to protect her friends. But common sense said that if she was ever going to find Grace Child’s killer— and perhaps the father of her child—Evelina had to learn where Grace had been, and why.

The task would not be simple. There might be a connection between her murder and the magic Evelina had felt clinging to the envelope, or not. There might be a connection between the circumstances surrounding her death and the automatons in the attic, or not. Unfortunately, there was too little information to draw any satisfactory conclusions. As Evelina’s science-minded uncle would say, she needed data.

And she had the means to get it. She could know everything the police knew.

She swiveled in the chair and unlocked the hasps of the train case. The cover swung up smoothly, showing a lining of watered pink silk. Nestled in the spaces made for glass jars and bottles were what looked like small