My Lady Quicksilver

Tension lingered in his shoulders, then he blew out a breath and glanced at Ingrid. “We intercepted the coach carrying the London Standard’s editor toward the Ivory Tower. The escape went as planned and one of our men got him out. Unfortunately, a group of metaljackets came and we were forced to separate.”

Another avenue lost tonight. The editor had printed a caricature in the London Standard of the prince consort with a monstrously deformed head, dangling puppet strings over a wan image of his human wife, the queen. He wouldn’t be doing that again.

“No casualties?”

“Not on our side.” Though she couldn’t see it, she could sense the vicious smile behind the mask.

“And no word of Jeremy?” she asked, looking toward Ingrid with deceptive casualness. Though it rankled, there was no use in her looking for Jeremy when Ingrid’s senses were far better suited. She’d spent the entire month blundering along behind Ingrid, no doubt hindering her. Tonight had been the first night she’d forced herself to let go, to let Ingrid do what she did best.

This time it was Ingrid’s turn to drop her gaze. “Nothing. No sightings, no scent trail.” Ingrid took a deep breath then looked up, her bronze eyes gleaming. “He’s not outside the city walls, Rosa. If there’s any hope that he survived—”

“He survived,” she snapped. There could be no other option, for if there was, then she had failed him. Her baby brother, the one she’d practically raised. The world blurred, a haze of heat sweeping behind her eyes.

Jack’s hand slid over hers and Rosalind looked up in shock as he squeezed her fingers gently, then let go.

“It’s not your fault,” he murmured, then turned to Ingrid. “And nor is it yours. If you can’t find him, then he’s not there.”

It was her fault though. Rosalind had been too wrapped up in her cause to pay attention to her brother. Jeremy had fallen in with the mechs, lured by their rough talk and bawdy laughter. He was almost a man, and she couldn’t blame him for wanting the company of other men. It was only when he went missing that she realized how much she’d been ignoring him lately.

“So he’s not outside the city walls,” she murmured, rubbing her eyes. So tired. “That leaves the city.”

“No,” Ingrid snapped. “You can’t even think it.”

The thick wall that circled the city borough kept the riffraff out and the blue bloods in. Inside it was their territory. Their stalking grounds. A world of glittering carriages, fancy mansions, silk, and steel.

Rosalind slowly lowered her hand. “Where else do I look, Ingrid? He was last seen in the Ivory Tower during the bombing and the bodies were all accounted for. I’d hoped he’d escaped with the few mechs that got away but we’ve hunted some of them down and nobody knows where Jeremy is.”

“Which leaves the blue bloods,” Jack murmured.

“Or the bloody Nighthawks,” Ingrid snapped. She shoved to her feet. “And none of us can get near the Guild Headquarters.”

Nighthawks. Rosalind stilled. The very men who were hunting the mechs—and Mercury. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? “If anyone knows what happened to the mechs who blew up the tower,” she said quietly, “it would be the Nighthawks.”

Sensing trouble, Jack shot her a sharp look. “What are you planning?”

Rosalind looked around. “Where’s my file on my lord Nighthawk?” She spotted it on a pile on the table and pushed out of her chair eagerly. “There was an advertisement,” she said recklessly, tearing open the file and hunting through it. Pages and pages of notes on Lynch and his comings and goings scrawled across the page. Know your enemy. “Several weeks back in the London Standard.” Her fingers closed over the piece. “An advertisement for a secretarial position—”

“No,” Jack snapped, knowing precisely where her mind was going.

Ingrid looked between the two of them, then frowned. “The position might be filled.”

“Then we’ll have to ensure it’s vacant again,” Rosalind said flippantly, not averse to kidnapping anyone temporarily for her needs.

“Roz, this is insane,” Ingrid said. “We don’t have anyone to play the part. I can’t do it, not with these eyes.”

“But I can.”

Her words fell into an abrupt silence. Ingrid’s jaw dropped and Jack took a menacing step toward her.

“No,” he said.

“This is what I do,” Rosalind replied, knowing where the trouble was going to come from. “This is what Balfour trained me to do.” And perhaps the only thing she was truly good at. Though she hated him, the prince consort’s spymaster had recognized her talents and nurtured them early on. He knew her in a way even Jack did not. The only thing he had ever misunderstood were her limits, what even she could not be coaxed to do.

Like the day he had asked her to kill her husband.

The only time she had ever disobeyed him—the cost of which still haunted her at night. Her hand sacrificed to save the man she’d betrayed. And Nathaniel lying dead at Balfour’s hand in punishment.

“You were too late, mon petit faucon,” Balfour murmured, cleaning the blood from his hands with a rag and eyeing her dispassionately as she’d slumped to the floor from the blood loss. “I gave you five minutes to prove your loyalty.” A furious glance at the bloodied stump with its rough tourniquet. “And so it is proven.” Throwing the rag aside.

She could barely see him or Nathaniel. Her vision was bleeding black around the edges.

“Come,” he whispered, lifting the wrist and making her scream as her vision went white. “I shall make you a new hand. And you will serve me again.”

But she hadn’t. It had been Jack who broke her out of the healing ward where she lay delirious, his own skin acid-burned and bloody from the cost of her betrayal. And Ingrid, the young verwulfen girl from Balfour’s menagerie whom she’d always felt sorry for.

Because she too knew how it felt to be trapped in a cage.

“I don’t give a damn,” Jack snapped, his hand slicing the air in a sharp gesture. “Balfour used you. And me. He didn’t care whether we came back from our missions alive or dead, Rosa. Well, I do. I can’t find my brother and I’m damned well not going to watch my sister walk into such a dangerous situation.”

She couldn’t bear the cost of Jeremy’s loss on top of what she already owed those she loved. “You can’t stop me,” she said simply. “And I can manage Lynch. I know I can.”

“I’ll chain you to the bloody—”

“Why are you so certain you can manage the Nighthawk?” Ingrid asked.

Rosalind backed away from her brother. Avoid rather than fight. “He’s attracted to me—to Mercury rather. I can manipulate that. Lynch might be a blue blood but he’s still a man.”

“Christ, are you listening to yourself?”

She ignored Jack. “It’s perfect. Almost too perfect. As his secretary, I’ll be given free rein to examine his paperwork at my leisure. If he knows anything about the mechs and Jeremy, then I’ll be able to find it. If not, then I walk away and he never sees me again.”

“That’s if he offers you the position,” Ingrid replied.

“He will.” Jack shot her a cutting look. “Rosa always gets what she wants, doesn’t she?”

Rosalind curled her hands over the back of the chair and stared at him. Hard. He didn’t realize it, but that was capitulation in his voice. “Then that means I’ll find Jeremy.”

“If he’s there. If he’s still alive.” One last parting shot.

Rosalind hid her flinch. She felt better now that she had a plan. “True. But I need to find out if he is. It’s the only way I’ll ever be able to move forward.”

Ingrid frowned. “You’ll need to disguise yourself.”

“It’s one of my talents.”

“Even your height and scent,” Ingrid muttered.

“Find someone roughly my height. ‘Mercury’ can make an appearance while I’m with Lynch. He’ll never suspect me.”