Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City Page 5

  “Yes.”

  “I make this the best place I can. I’ve got the fans going, the lights up. There’s still always someone losing a finger or an eye. There’s always the flare-ups from a spark. So I put the ones with prosthetics and metal hands on the cutters, the stampers. Urchins come to me, ask for little jobs, I put them to dipping match heads and selling them on the streets, but it’s still hardly enough to feed them. One girl about thirteen, fourteen, she came to me and asked when I had an opening for a cutter. I said she can’t work with the sheet metal, because I’ve had too many lose their hands. So she went and sold herself to some blacksmith and came back with steel hands. I didn’t have a place for her anymore—she sold herself, cut off her damn hands for nothing. But when I bring in those automated machines, it won’t matter if she’s got hands of flesh or metal. If I have a spot open, she can work either way.”

  If he had a spot open—but there would be fewer spots to have. “And you told Redditch this, too?”

  “I told him. But all that he heard was that some of my people would be out of a job. And since he obviously wasn’t going to listen to the rest, I left.”

  “What time?”

  “I don’t know. A half hour after I arrived, maybe.”

  Consistent with every other statement—and forty-five minutes before Redditch had been killed. “How did Redditch appear when you left?”

  “He was still trying to butter me up. I wasn’t having none of it.” His eyes narrowed. “It’s him, isn’t it? He’s the one who’s dead—and you’re wondering if I did it.”

  “Would you have?”

  “No.” He gave a tired laugh. “He was trying to write up some bill for Parliament, and I know better to fight aristocratic types and politicians, have them turn against me—especially the Iron Duke. Redditch said he had your husband’s support. So I left and hoped they’d all just forget about my little factory here.”

  Mina didn’t think Redditch had Rhys’s support, not to the extent the viscount hoped—but she wouldn’t say so now. Her husband was quite capable of making his views known, and he often did so very loudly.

  “Did you see anyone as you left?”

  “I was angry. I didn’t see much of anyone or anything until I was across the river.” He took a deep breath, his gaze unfocused as if retracing the route through his memory. “I suppose you mean someone waiting around Redditch’s home, someone who didn’t look like they should be there. No, I can’t recall.”

  “Did you see anything else that struck you as unusual?” When he shook his head, Mina asked, “Have you ever heard of or seen a machine that looks like a six-foot-tall brass wheel that rolls along by itself?”

  He frowned. “No.”

  “Did you stay inside the house with Redditch?” The butler had said they’d remained in the library, but perhaps he and Redditch had gone into the garden through the library doors without drawing notice.

  “Yes,” he said. “In the parlor, then the library.”

  “Did you ever go outside?”

  “Not until I left.”

  “Which door did you leave by?”

  “The front.” A brief, hard smile touched his mouth. “He was trying to butter me up, remember. And I might smell like a match factory, but I’m not a servant.”

  “All right.” She shot a glance at Newberry to see if he had anything to add. With a tiny shake of his head, the constable replied that he didn’t. “Thank you, Mr. Foley. Please contact me if you recall anything else during your time at Lord Redditch’s home, even if it seems insignificant.”

  “I will.”

  Almost everyone on the work floor glanced up as she and Newberry left Foley’s office. How many of them would be put out of work? Whether Foley brought the automatons in or continued on as he was, it seemed that half of them—at the very least—would soon be looking for another way to earn a wage.

  That fear might give someone motivation to kill. If Redditch’s bill had passed and Foley wasn’t able to install his machines, he’d lose his factory.

  It was a reason to kill . . . but she didn’t see it in Foley. He’d seemed resigned, but not yet desperate. Mina would keep him in mind, though—and also look at anyone else who might have been threatened by Redditch’s bill.

  Hopefully, she would find a substantial lead before that, however. Redditch’s body might give her one when they returned to headquarters. Tomorrow, they’d return to Portman Square and knock on doors again—asking about the wheel, but also about a lorry waiting in the alley or the street that might have taken it away. In that area, that early in the evening, someone had to have seen something. That wheel hadn’t simply disappeared.

  But their front tires had.

  Mina stopped outside the factory door, heard Newberry’s quick breath as he halted behind her. In the middle of the yard, the police cart sat with its nose in the ground. She pursed her lips.

  “I did double-lock them, sir.”

  “I know it, constable.” Her reliable assistant wouldn’t have forgotten. “I was just thinking what a lovely night it is for a walk. Don’t you agree?”

  His red mustache twitched when he smiled. “The evening is rather pleasant, sir.”

  “It is settled, then. I had planned to return to headquarters and examine Redditch’s body, but I think we shall have a little stroll to the London Bridge, where we will find us each a cab to take home. We will meet at headquarters two hours before shift tomorrow morning, instead. The body can wait for us that long.” She felt a bit of relief when Newberry unlocked the boot. At least the thieves hadn’t taken their equipment. “I’ll carry the kit if you will carry the camera, constable.”

  “I can carry them both, sir.”

  “Don’t be absurd, Newberry.” The ferrotype camera assembly weighed as much as Mina did, and the trunk containing their kit half as much. Strengthened by her bugs, she could easily manage either one, and there was no sense in him trying to balance both. “We are in luck that the bridge is not far, and that it is not a repeat of our hike in the rain from Chiswick.”

  With his head in the boot, she couldn’t clearly hear his reply, but she thought Newberry might have groaned at the reminder. They had not exactly hiked—“waded through knee-deep mud” would have been more accurate, and considering the number of cows grazing alongside the road, Mina wasn’t certain that “mud” was accurate, either.

  He straightened, the camera assembly cradled in his big arms. “Very lucky, sir.”

  She reached in for the kit, hefted it against her chest. “All right, then. March on, constable.”

  There was no point in looking for the person who’d stolen the tires. No one in this area would have seen anything at all tonight.

  Unless, of course, the newssheets caught wind of Inspector Wentworth’s predicament. Then everyone would have seen her. So Mina began to walk, and wondered whether the story of her trek through St. Olave would appear in the next morning’s news, or if an entire day would pass before it showed up.

  * * *

  It was almost midnight when Mina’s cab returned her home. Rhys wasn’t just waiting up—he came out onto the front steps, waved aside the footman and opened the steamcoach door for her. Not something a duke would do. Not the normal sort of duke, at least.

  But he would never be that. A normal duke did not begin life in a crèche, and then as a slave sold in the Ivory Market’s skin trade. A normal duke did not mutiny aboard an English vessel, taking the ship for his own and using it in an eight-year run of piracy. A normal duke did not blow up a Horde tower in a fit of anger and spark a revolution that destroyed half a city.

  His big hand closed over hers. A single touch, and anticipation tightened her skin, shortened her breath. Mina didn’t know if a normal duke could have had the same effect on her; so far, only Rhys did.

  His dark gaze slid from her head to the tips of her boots. “You’re all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any leads?”

  “No. Aside
from Prescott, no one saw anything. So we’ve called it a night, and will begin again early tomorrow.” As she spoke, the intensity of his gaze deepened. Mina’s heart pounded. “I need to change my clothing, wash off this smell.”

  “Smell?” He leaned forward, bent his head toward her neck, inhaled. Humor warmed his voice. “Have you been swimming in the Thames?”

  Even through her laughter, need began to build, a hot quiver in her stomach. Her breath stilled as his lips opened against her throat.

  “I would have you even if you’d been rolling with pigs,” he said softly, before raising his head and pressing a sweet kiss to her mouth that stopped her laugh.

  Oh. How did she melt so easily? Mina clung to his biceps, lifting to her toes to deepen the incredible sensation of his mouth against hers. Who cared what the cab driver might see and report this kiss to the newssheets? Who cared that the footman would pretend to see nothing at all? Here in his arms, it mattered not a whit what anyone else did or didn’t see. There was nothing in the world clearer to Mina, more solid, than her love for this man.

  Even if he didn’t have a smooth way with words. She tucked her hand into his elbow as they climbed the steps to the entrance. “Rolling with pigs, truly? That’s not worse than the Thames. I suddenly doubt your devotion.”

  “You’ve caught me out. In truth, I’d throw a bucket of water at you first.”

  “And if it was water from the Thames?”

  “You still couldn’t smell worse than the Terror’s crew, two months away from any bath.”

  “But you didn’t bed them.”

  “They wouldn’t have me. My odor wasn’t any better. So I settled for a wife who smells like bilgewater.” His grin appeared when she laughed, then softened as he took another long look at her. “Have you had a chance to eat?”

  “We stopped by Newberry’s flat for our dinner, but wine would be welcome,” she admitted. After his horrifying loss of sense when they’d once been drunk together, Rhys never took any alcohol, but Mina enjoyed a glass to smooth the edges of a long day. “So would enough warm water that I can wash my hair.”

  Rhys relayed that to the housekeeper as soon as they passed through the door, and a moment later, maids were scurrying to comply. He turned to face Mina, his gaze meeting hers before he stepped away. “I’ll bring the wine up to you.”

  That also wasn’t something a duke did, but Mina understood that he didn’t want to be interrupted after he joined her upstairs. That suited her perfectly, as well.

  In her dressing room, she stripped off her jacket and trousers, suppressed the thought of hanging them outside the window to air, and tossed them in a basket to be laundered instead. It was still so strange, not having to think of ways to save the maid any extra work. It was strange to have a clean uniform for every day of the week, and many other finely made dresses, besides. It was strange to have a rich husband and a salary that was completely her own, with no reason to pinch pennies—though after years of frugality, she still did. A few times since her marriage, Mina had gone through deliberate bouts of spending, reminding herself that she could . . . but they’d all been followed by crippling guilt and weeks of hoarding her pennies. Perhaps one day she would be able to carelessly throw away money like a Manhattan City duchess, but apparently she’d require several years to work up to it.

  Like Foley, Mina knew what it was to worry that her household staff wouldn’t eat, that her family wouldn’t be able to pay them. She knew what it was to wonder whether letting them go and allowing them to pursue other opportunities of employment would do them more good than staying in a poor household—or a failing manufactory, where the work was dangerous and the wages low.

  In that situation, there was never any good choice. How could anyone know whether they’d be better off staying or going?

  Still in her short pants and chemise, she heard the door close behind Rhys, followed by the rasp of the lock. The familiar, excited tremble started in her belly as he crossed the room toward her. He stopped close enough to touch. She took the wineglass, sighed in pleasure as he moved behind her, his hands sliding into the hair coiled at her nape in search of pins.

  She let her head fall forward, closing her eyes. “Have you ever met Foley?”

  “No.” His fingers threaded through her loose hair, pushing the long black strands forward over her shoulder. His mouth pressed to her nape, sent a shiver racing through her. “What was your impression of him?”

  Mina forced herself to think—never an easy task when he was touching her. “New World automation is putting him out of business, so if he doesn’t install the machines, he’ll lose the factory. But I think he’d have wanted the automation, anyway. It will be safer for the workers he’ll have left.”

  “Yes.”

  His gruff reply made her realize that he might have had to make that impossible decision, too. Though primarily a shipping merchant, Rhys had interests in many areas—and now that she thought about it, Mina seemed to recall conversations between him and Scarsdale that might have referred to manufactories that he owned.

  “Do you have many? How many would lose their jobs if you automated all of yours?”

  “Three thousand. Fifteen percent of them children.”

  Sweet heavens. She turned and looked up at him, searching the hard lines of his face. There were more people than that dependent upon him—many more—yet she’d never heard even a portion of them condensed into a number.

  But she knew they were more than a number to him. Rhys saw himself as captain of a very, very large ship—and part of his duty was to watch over the crew that labored for him. After someone entered his employ, if they put in even half the effort that he did, Rhys wouldn’t easily toss them away.

  “Will you have to automate, too?”

  His mouth tight, he nodded. “Eventually.”

  “How do you bear it?”

  “By searching for other options to give them.”

  Not just hoping that they’d find something better. Creating something better. “What will you propose?”

  “To start with, building schools similar to the Crèche. If the children don’t have to work to eat, if they don’t need a job, that’s already a lot fewer who might lose a position as more of my factories install automated machines, and a lot fewer jobs that are needed overall. Then I’ll put books in front of them, so they can grow up and invent ways to make more money for me.”

  She grinned. Rhys took care of his people, but it couldn’t be said that he was driven by altruism. “Is that your plan for next session?”

  “Yes.” He slipped the wide straps of her chemise over her shoulders, down her arms. “But if I can’t convince Parliament to pay for it, I’ll do it myself. I’m already drawing up the plans.”

  With a soft sweep of his thumbs across the tips of her breasts, her nipples hardened into beads. She drew a ragged breath. “You haven’t said anything.”

  “It took me a while to get to it. There are a lot of problems to look at, everyone demanding that we solve them now, but all of these children growing up without an education or a crèche will be one hell of a problem in ten or fifteen years if we don’t do something about it soon.” His hand flattened over her stomach. “I promised that I’d make this a better place for us, for our children—and for Anne. It was after knowing her, seeing what the Crèche has managed to do, and speaking with your father . . . I finally had a better idea of how to go about it.”

  Could she possibly love this man any more than she did? It seemed impossible. Yet her heart, already so full, seemed to stretch infinitely bigger again. It didn’t matter that, at the root, his motivations were only to fulfill a promise to her, only to benefit him. She knew he would cross any line for her. He’d killed, he’d burned cities—and at a word from her, he’d do it again.

  But this was more than that. Now Rhys fought for something that he never had before. He was willing to change the world for the better . . . simply because he loved her.

 
It was incredible—and humbling. But he wasn’t humbled. Rhys was arrogant enough to believe he could change the world, and was determined to actually do it.

  Arrogance and determination. He could have ruined her with them. He loved her instead, and used them to make everything he touched a little better.

  Rhys moved behind her. “Where were you hurt this morning?”

  Of course he hadn’t forgotten. “Beneath my right shoulder.”

  His hands gentle, he turned her so the lamp on the bureau illuminated her skin. His silence weighed heavily in the room.

  “Is it bad?” She didn’t think it would be. She hadn’t felt so much as a twinge for hours.

  “It’s almost completely gone.”

  Which meant it had been bad enough that the bruise hadn’t yet disappeared. When she faced him, that terrible tension filled him again, whitening the edges of his lips, tightening the skin over his cheeks.

  She could wash her hair later. Mina put her glass aside.

  His lips found hers, softly at first but quickly demanding, taking. Oh. This what she’d waited for, but now that he touched her, the anticipation only sharpened. Her fingers pushed into his hair, her thumbs running over those small gold hoops that drove her mad whenever she saw them. With a hungry growl, Rhys lifted her against his broad chest. Mouth fastened to hers, he carried her across the room, pausing once to collect a square parchment envelope from the vanity. His tension never receded, and she knew that this time would be fierce, hard—pure possession.

  By the blue heavens, she couldn’t wait for it.

  Rough fingers stripped away her short pants and chemise. Face rigid with control, he laid her, naked, on the edge of the bed. Standing, still dressed, he pushed between her thighs, spreading them wide. His left hand tore at his breeches while he glided gentle fingers between her soft folds. Already so wet, so ready, his touch electrified her. Panting, she rocked her sex against his hand. His fingers breached her entrance, and her slick channel contracted around him. Oh, blue. Mina cried out, her head falling back. Over the pounding of her heart, she heard his tortured groan.