So he betrayed her instead, making her love him and then sending her into danger. That was what men like him—the deal-makers and throne-shakers—did.
Bancroft felt a harsh sting at the back of his eyes. He had felt oddly calm, looking at her body and hearing the news she was with child—possibly—probably—his. If he’d ever needed proof that his soul was dead after a career spent in intrigue, that was it.
The pity of it was, dead or alive, she would have been useless. Women with babies were too preoccupied for his kind of work—unless you took the child from them to focus their concentration. And, while by-blows were inconvenient for a man like him, servant girls with bastard babies were ruined for anything at all. At the very least, he would have had to pension her off, another millstone around his financial neck. He should be thankful to be spared that much.
But he didn’t feel spared. Shadows were gathering around him, dank and dark sins rising up from their carefully concealed graves.
He poured himself another whisky. He would make this one last, because he must stay alert. Not like last night, after he had come home from the theater. He remembered breaking into a cold sweat when he saw Magnus there, sinister as a demon with one cloven foot outside the conjurer’s circle. He remembered sending the grooms to move his trunks from the attic, praying that Magnus would have forgotten their existence. He remembered his first drink, and his third. But there was a blank period, before Bigelow woke him in the library. If he’d indulged less—well, Grace wouldn’t have been waiting for him to come and get the envelope when someone had killed her for it. He couldn’t even recall how he got to the library, or if he’d spoken to anyone along the way.
Could he have … no.
He tossed the whisky down his throat.
Where had the sums and averages of risk and probability failed? Where had he gone wrong? He’d told Tobias there was no danger to the family. If he’d had to place a bet, he’d say that had been a lie. But he knew better than to run. Enemies hid everywhere, waiting for weaklings to lose their nerve. Then they pounced, their teeth in your neck.
Bancroft lifted his glass to the tiger’s head, giving it a facetious salute. He kept the snarling thing as a reminder to show no fear.
When you ran, that’s when the predators got you.
Chapter Eight
NELLIE REYNOLDS ARRESTED FOR WITCHCRAFT
The celebrated actress Eleanor “Nellie” Reynolds, aged two and thirty, was taken into custody last night on charges of practicing magic. Scotland Yard arrested Mrs. Reynolds at her home in Hampstead, where detectives seized a wealth of magical implements. When questioned, the actress claimed they were props for the stage, but neighbors report unseemly “doings” under the light of the full moon. Formal charges are expected to be laid after a brief investigation. Reliable sources report that wagering on the outcome of the trial is split between a burning and remanding the prisoner for observation at Her Majesty’s laboratories. Mrs. Reynolds was last seen on stage in
—
BAKER STREET
Jasper Keating, the steam baron known to many as the Gold King, snapped the newspaper shut. He was not a betting man, but long ago the Steam Council had agreed that given their considerable influence, it would be unseemly for them to wager on trials of magic users. That might be seen as a coercion of justice. Nevertheless, it was irritating, because whoever bet against the actress was on to a sure thing.
There wasn’t a pulpit, a judge’s bench, an editorial column, or a respectable dinner table where the voice of authority would not deplore the use of supernatural powers. Through careful cultivation and steady pressure, the industrial machine had seen to that. The only power in the land came from their fires. So why, when he was one of the handful of men who ruled the Empire, did he feel so uncertain?
Keating tossed the paper onto the seat beside him. He was not a man who suffered from nerves. Yet, rolling across Marylebone Road toward Baker Street in his very expensive carriage, he experienced a flutter in his stomach that had nothing to do with the breakfast he had just eaten. No, Keating was an abstemious man untroubled by such mundane foes as sausages. There were two things bothering him.
First was the prospect of having to ask assistance from that consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes—an individual well known for his independence. Being one’s own man was a trait unwelcome in this day and age of allegiances and bargaining. But what could Keating do? Holmes was uniquely qualified to solve an urgent difficulty. And that was the second thing upsetting his stomach—the task itself. Just the fact that Keating was going to the Baker Street address rather than commanding Holmes to come to him said much about how profoundly Keating needed that brilliance at his beck and call. He hoped that a little condescension would be worth his while in the end.
The equipage slowed, the steady
The carriage door opened and the footman folded down the steps. Keating gathered his hat and walking stick and emerged into the slightly misty April day. He gave a nod to the servant, who stepped smartly forward to knock at the door. Keating’s informants said Holmes lived in the first-floor rooms with the bay window overlooking the street. A landlady lived at street level. A fairly typical arrangement.
He took a moment to look around. A steam cycle whirred by, kicking up dust. A Disconnected house stood a few doors down, a sign on the gate advertising it for sale. Some rough boys had stopped to gawk at the carriage, but the groom was shooing them off. Uninterested, Keating kept a cool gaze moving over the street and its inhabitants.
Ah, this was more pleasing. Workmen from Keating Utilities were changing the globes of the streetlamps from red to gold. He’d just recently pushed the boundaries of his territory north, taking this street, among others, from the Scarlet King.
The mechanics of such a takeover were simple: central power plants had been adopted in London, and individual homes and businesses were now hooked up to their lines. Gaslight and steam heat were supplied by one or another of the utility companies, depending on which company served that street or square. Unhooking the pipes from one trunk line and reconnecting them to another was just a matter of valves and couplings and perhaps some excavation. And so, where Baker Street had once run off the Scarlet lines, now it ran off the Gold.
But the politics that made it happen were fierce—a matter of bribes, threats, and backroom deals. There would, no doubt, be repercussions for this maneuver, but that was a difficulty for another day. One didn’t wrest possession of an empire from one’s rivals with nothing but gentle persuasion.
The thought acted like a switch in his mind, and suddenly he was irked anew by his role of supplicant. What was he doing, standing in the street like a beggar? A wave of pique rushed through him, flushing his skin until the
