The Girl with the Windup Heart

Page 25

Griffin followed his gaze. His breath caught on a sharp pain in his chest.
His hand was the same lifeless color as Sheppard’s face. He pulled out his right hand to compare the two. The right still had a pinkish hue and blue-veined vitality running through it. He pulled up his sleeve—the gray continued almost to his elbow before giving way to normal flesh tone.
“Perhaps when you touched me...”
“Sheppard,” Griffin interjected with a pointed look. “As you said, you’re a man of science. We are both learned men, so I am very well aware that you know what’s happening just surely as I do.”
His companion shook his head. “There is a wealth of possibilities to consider.”
“No. There isn’t.” Griffin pulled both arms back into the welcoming warmth of his quilt cocoon. The time for pretending and hoping for a miracle had passed. “When Finley returns you won’t say a word about this to her.”
Sheppard protested. “But, Your Grace—”
“Promise me.” Griffin fixed him with an unyielding stare. “Finley cannot know that I’m dying.
“I’m dying.”
Chapter Fourteen
Mila used the servants’ entrance right enough, but she didn’t knock. She very calmly turned the knob so hard it snapped and pushed the door open. She crossed the threshold much to the shock of two maids who were in the kitchen having a cup of tea at the table. They must have been waiting for her, or aware of her impending arrival because they each simply pointed at another doorway, indicating that was her desired route.
“Thanks,” she said, and crossed the spotless wooden floor, through the doorway and into a small corridor. A footman in the act of removing his livery jacket froze when he spied her.
“I’m here for Blackhurst,” she informed him.
“Up the stairs and to the right, miss,” he replied.
Somewhere in the house a bell rang. Someone had just been alerted to her presence. Mila smiled a grim smile. This would go so much more smoothly if she didn’t have to hunt the bastard down.
The servants’ stairs were slightly bowed in the middle of each worn step. The wood creaked under her weight. She wasn’t a big girl by any stretch, but a metal skeleton tended to add a few extra pounds. It didn’t matter if she made noise, if Blackhurst heard her approach.
She reached the top, opened the door and turned right. The house was incredible, of course. Almost as fancy as King House, but a little shabbier—as though Blackhurst couldn’t be bothered to fix things up. Or maybe he hadn’t the money. Jack had told her that many aristocrats had no idea of how to manage their fortunes.
Mila paused and focused on her hearing. She could hear Blackhurst’s voice—it was slightly muffled—but he was talking to a servant or someone. He told them to ready his bedchamber.
Blood rushed to her cheeks, but it was anger more than shame. Is that what this was all about? He would threaten Jack’s life for that?
As she approached the room from where she heard his voice, a door to her left opened and a young woman peeked out. When she spied Mila she froze, a look of sheer terror taking over her pretty, but bruised face. The bruises were oddly shaped—four perfect hexagons.
“Who are you?” Mila asked. When the girl hesitated, Mila took a wild guess. “Gracie?” That was the name of the girl Gina said Blackhurst had come for at the circus.
The girl’s blue eyes widened. “Yes,” she whispered. “Who are you?”
“Mila. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Mila?” The girl lost some of her frightened rabbit look. She slipped out of the room and closed the door. When she spoke again, it was a whisper. “Did Jack send you?”
A frown pulled at her brows. “Jack? No. Are you a friend of his?”
Gracie hesitated once more. What had happened to her to make her so afraid? “Yes. I have information for him, but I haven’t been able to leave to take it to him.”
That was when Mila noticed the marks on the girl’s wrists. She’d been bound.
Rage took root deep in her stomach. “You can leave now.”
The girl shook her head. “He won’t let me. He has people watching me. Even his wife won’t help me.”
Mila took her hand and pulled her back toward the hall where she’d come upstairs. Instead of going the servants’ route, she hauled the protesting girl straight to the front door. When a footman approached them with a stern look, Gracie gasped in fear. Mila punched the man in the face and he crumpled to the floor like a doll.
Gracie fell silent, tripping along behind Mila, staring at the fallen man.
Reaching the door, Mila pulled it open. Another footman stood on the steps. She punched him, too.
“You’re amazing,” Gracie whispered.
“That’s what got me into this mess,” Mila muttered. Suddenly, Jack’s overprotectiveness made sense. The world was a mad, dangerous place for a girl who didn’t quite understand it all. And now that she did understand—all too well—she was in well over her head. She ought to have been smarter, but she foolishly thought that her strength made her impervious to pain. What had Jack told her? That there were people who could hurt her in ways that weren’t physical.
She pulled some coins from her pocket and pressed them into Gracie’s hands. Then she took off her coat and put it around the girl’s shoulders. “When you get to the street you hail a cab. You take it straight to Jack, yeah? He’ll protect you. You do not tell him you saw me. Understand?”
The girl nodded. “What are you going to do?”
Mila glanced through the open doorway. “I have a meeting to attend. Go. Now.”
The girl didn’t need any extra encouragement. She ran quick as a little mouse down the steps to the drive, and straight to the gate. She pushed it open and slipped out into the night. Mila watched her wave down a cab and climb in. Only then did she relax a little. Only then did she turn on her heel and go back inside. She nudged the footman on the steps out of the way with her foot so she could close the door, and stepped over the one lying sprawled on the foyer floor. She continued on to the room where she knew Blackhurst waited and opened the door without knocking.
Blackhurst stood in front of the fireplace in his trousers, shirt and waistcoat. His dark hair glinted in the flickering flames—which were the main source of light in the room, other than a lamp. It was then that she noticed he wore a metal brace on his right arm. It started at the shoulder and continued all the way down to his knuckles. Reticulated to move with him, it was intricately etched and attached by leather straps. The part that fit over his fist was almost like a glove, and had hexagon bolts—brass knuckles. That explained the bruises on Gracie’s face.
“Mila,” he greeted with a smile. “I knew you’d come.”
“You should know I don’t bruise easily,” she informed him.
For reasons she couldn’t fathom, that seemed to please him. “No. I don’t imagine you do.”
As he walked toward her—like a big cat after a mouse—Mila was once again struck by that sense of familiarity. Then the light struck him just the right way as he tilted his head and looked down at her. And smiled.
Shock hit her hard in the chest. She could almost feel a dent in her breastbone. “You’re Jack’s father.”
Blackhurst stopped, a frown knitting his arched dark brows. Oh, yes, there was no denying the resemblance now that she’d finally seen it. Damnation. Of all the things she’d seen, heard and experienced, this had to be one of the worst on an emotional level.
“You threatened your own son.”
His handsome face—so much an older version of Jack’s—twisted with hatred. “That boy is not my son. He’s been nothing but trouble since his birth. He has made it his mission to ruin my life and destroy me in every way possible.”
If that was true—if Jack had put that much effort into this man—then there had to be a good reason for it. “What do you want from me?”
That charming smile returned in a blink. “You, of course. You’re a strong girl, Mila. So very strong. I think you and I could have a satisfying relationship for quite some time. Most of my companions wear out so quickly.”
She stared at him. “You’re a monster.” Jack had to know that.
“Like is attracted to like,” he murmured, reaching out to touch her face with his hand. Before she could react, he’d drawn back the metal covered one and punched her hard in the face. She felt the cartilage in her nose break as her head snapped back.
Mila shook her head. Blood dripped on her boots and on the carpet, ran down her face. She reached up and set her nose back where it should be. “My turn.” She hit him in the mouth, but held back. This was not a fight she wanted to end quickly.
Blackhurst spat blood on the floor and smiled, flashing red-stained teeth. “Brilliant.”
She did not understand this man, not at all. And she hoped she never would. “I’m not going to stay with you,” she informed him. “Using Jack against me was a mistake.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “I realized that after I sent the note. I was a bit hasty, agreed. But you see, Jack Dandy threatened me, and I needed to find a little leverage against him. I don’t think the boy realized how he tipped his hand when he told me to stay away from you.”
Jack had done that? “Well, it won’t work. Jack isn’t afraid of you and neither am I. Stay away from both of us.” She turned to leave the room.
“I’m afraid you don’t understand.”
Something in his voice made her turn. A door on the other side of the room opened and in walked another footman, but this one had an Aether pistol in his hand and it was pressed against the head of a frightened Mrs. Rhodes. Mila froze.
“This isn’t about you, my dear. It’s about that miscreant daring to interfere in my affairs.” Blackhurst’s face was hard and cruel in a way Jack’s could never be. “It’s about teaching him a lesson, teaching him how to acknowledge his betters.”
“Let her go,” Mila commanded, but her voice shook. She was beginning to understand fear now. Sometimes it didn’t matter if you were the fastest or the strongest, there would always be something that could hurt you. Blackhurst couldn’t do anything to her physically that she couldn’t recover from, but he could hurt Jack.
“Oh, no. Our dear landlady is the only leverage I have against you. You see, I will have Victor blow a hole the size of an apple in her head if you don’t do exactly what I say. You and I are going to spend some time together, and when I’m done you and Mrs. Rhodes will be allowed to leave.”
Mila’s jaw tightened. She ran the odds of escape in her head. If she charged Blackhurst, Mrs. Rhodes would die. If she charged the footman, Mrs. Rhodes would still die. If Jasper were there he might be able to move fast enough, but she couldn’t. And there was nothing within reach that she could use as a weapon. She couldn’t risk Mrs. Rhodes’s life. She just couldn’t. Blackhurst knew that. This was the person who had taught Jack that there was more than physical hurt in the world.
“You expect me to believe that you’ll just let us leave?”
“Oh, I’m a man of my word, my dear.” His lips twisted into a mocking smile. “Otherwise how can you crawl back to Dandy and tell him all about what I did to you and had you do to me?”
Still, she didn’t understand. Why were humans so complicated? God, she hoped she was never completely human if this was what it meant—being capable of such terrible evil. And this was evil, there was no doubt.
“Let me speak plainly so your feeble mind will comprehend.” His tone dripped with derision. “Dandy cares about you in a way that he’s cared about no one else. He cares about you more than he cares about himself. Ruining you will hurt him more than any physical wound ever would. So, yes. I will let you leave, because I want you to tell him what happened here, and I want him to know that nothing he does to me will ever change it.”
* * *
Finley was awake when the door to the room she shared with Griffin opened. She hadn’t slept much in the past couple of days, but then, who needed sleep when she was technically dead at times? She had been listening to a recorded cylinder of Beethoven in the hopes that it might help her sleep, but it only made her all the more restless. Smelling Griffin on the pillow beside hers didn’t help either. What if she never got to wake up beside him again?
“Em?” she asked, sitting up. She reached for the lamp and winced. Her insides felt as if someone had used her organs in a cricket match, but other than that she was unhurt. The injuries she sustained in the Aether hadn’t come back with her physically—only mentally and spiritually. Apparently those were just as dangerous as the former. Emily had explained it but Finley hadn’t absorbed too much of it; she was still reeling over the fact that she had defeated Lord Felix.
“It’s me,” Emily replied as the lamp lit the room.
“And me,” said Wildcat.
Finley managed a smile as they closed the door behind them. They were exactly the distraction she needed. “You brought me things.”
“I brought you dinner,” Emily said. “You need to keep your strength up.”
“Mmm. Dying takes a lot out of a girl,” she agreed, in a weak attempt at humor.
Wildcat held up a large paper sack and a bottle. “I brought chocolate, cake and cider.”
“I love you,” Finley told her.
“Dinner first.” Emily shoved the tray in front of her. On it was a plate of cold cuts, bread and cheese—her favorites.