The Ripper Affair

Chapter Eighteen Even If I Do Not Grant

Longing thoughts of rum floated through her head. Emma pressed her fingers delicately against the bridge of her nose. “I cannot keep him in a cocoon.”

“No,” Mikal agreed. He was maddeningly calm, but the high colour in his lean cheeks told her it was mere seeming. “Prima…”

“I know. You cannot look after him, I need you elsewhere.” She decided to overlook his very plain sigh of relief, and turned the question over in her mind again.

The workroom was a shambles. Clare was propped upright, trapped in sorcerous restraints she kept steady with threads of ætheric force trickling from the chalcedony pendant at her throat. The blood on the walls troubled her, and the wild-eyed man who had outright screamed at her troubled her even more. It was so unlike him, and doubly unlike what she knew of mentath temperament.

“Perhaps…” But Mikal shook his sleek, dark head as she glanced at him. Whatever idea he had, perhaps he had discovered a great many holes in it as soon as he gave it voice.

“Finch.” She twitched a slender ætheric thread, and the call bloomed subtly through the house. It took less than a half-minute for the familiar light step to be heard on the stairs outside the workroom–he must have suspected she would summon him.

When he stepped through the flung-open door, his cadaverous face betrayed no surprise or irritation at all. It was a distinct relief to find him as imperturbable as ever. His indenture collar flashed once before subsiding to a steady glow.

Her sigh was only partly theatrical. “I’ve a bit of a quandary, Mr Finch.”

“So it seems, mum.” There was a hint of a curve to his thin mouth, and Emma allowed herself a rueful smile in return.

“I need a minder for Mr Clare. Someone singularly… useful. And loyal, though I shall of course require a blood-binding.”

Finch absorbed this, his thin shoulders stooped. He did not immediately answer, which gave her cause for hope. Which was roundly justified when he finally nodded, slowly. Sharp as a knife when he first entered her service, he had lost none of that edge in the ensuing years. Age sometimes brought a man more fully into dangerousness, and he had experienced enough of treachery to know even its hidden faces.

He was no longer youthful-quick, but he was exceedingly subtle.

To prove it, he produced an impossible necessity once more. “I’ve a… cousin, mum. He might do.”

“A cousin?” Her eyebrows rose dangerously high. She could hardly help herself.

“Well, after a fashion. He’s, well—”

Was he blushing? She forged onward, twitching her skirts absently as she turned to regard the somnolent, propped-up figure of Clare. Who looked rather peaceful, d—n him, while she was required to solve this problem. “If you think he would suit, Finch, it is enough to set my mind at ease.”

“He’s… well, he’s a molly, mum. If you catch my meaning.”

It was a mark of her distraction that she did not take his meaning immediately. Perhaps Finch was right to blush, though he could hardly think her intolerant of such a thing, considering her acquaintance with, for example, the infamous Prime Dorian Childe, and others of his ilk. Society might very well frown upon the men of Sodom, but Emma had found no few of them bright and above all, useful.

If Finch recommended a certain man, it mattered not a whit what that man liked to sport with. Unless said sport could lead him to treachery, but Finch’s recommendation would mitigate that danger somewhat. “I see. Well, I care little what he buggers, as long as he does his duty. Do we understand each other?”

“Yesmum.” Finch bobbed his head, and she caught a slight movement–as if he would tug his forelock, as he used to before he studied a butler’s manners. “I shall go myself and fetch him.”

“You are a treasure, Finch. Be about your business, then.” Do hurry. There is much to be done. She did not add the last, it was unnecessary.

“Yesmum.” And he glided out the door.

“A molly?” Mikal sounded amused, at least. He could not fail to be familiar with the term.

She gathered herself, leashed her temper, and paused once more to determine what should be done and what was the most efficient way to accomplish it. “Perhaps he will feel affectionate toward Clare. Heaven knows our mentath seems to need it, and I rather think he would not receive my affection gratefully at the moment.”

“Then he is a fool, Prima.” The warmth of Mikal’s tone was somewhat indecent, but they were alone. Or close to alone, as Clare was unconscious. He would rest until Tideturn, and by then she hoped to have made some arrangement for his comfort.

And, incidentally, for her own.

“Perhaps. But he is our fool.” She sighed, set her shoulders, and brushed at her skirts, though there was no need to set them to rights. “I had rather hoped to view the second site today, but that is of little account. Come, help me get him to bed.”

The cousin was a lean foxlike youth, a measure of rust touching his dark curls and no shame in his wide dark eyes. His cloth was indeed flash: a waistcoat very fine but the coat a trifle ill fitting, no doubt bought secondhand. His shoes were not quite fashionable but they were brushed very neatly, and the half-resentful courtesy he afforded the visibly relieved Finch was telling. A watch-chain that had certainly started life in a gentleman’s pocket before being deprived of such surroundings by quick fingers, the dove-grey gloves, and the pomade in his curls all shouted rough lad. The only question was whether he paid for his buggering–or was paid for it.

Just where the line was drawn between an Æsthete (or Decadent, for that matter) and a slightly circumspect Merry-Ann was difficult to tell, since those who affected to live for Arte and Beauty often dressed in imitation of the panthers of St Jemes or Jermyn Street. Often in finer fabric, though the end result was the same.

He passed the first inspection, and Emma motioned them further into the room.

“Mum.” Finch inclined slightly from the waist. “May I present my cousin, Mr Philip Pico?”

The drawing room was not the best setting for this lad. He belonged in one of the taverns the Merry-Anns frequented, or along the docks in the darkness wreathed by yellow greasy fog…

… or in some dark corner of Whitchapel, where the trade was less merry and far more rough. Where a gentleman might go to seek danger to spice his buggery, where the panthers, both of Sodom and murder, prowled.

“Mum.” The young man made the same motion Finch almost had that morning–as if to tug his forelock. He caught himself, and offered her a very proper half-bow.

“How do you do,” Emma murmured, not deigning to offer her hand, and examined him closely.

It was in the feet, she decided. Placed just so, his weight balanced nicely, one slightly forward. The fact that his shoulders were broad–though he was at pains to appear slender–was another indicator. He was not averse to violence, and he was alert.

“Your cousin has no doubt informed you of my requirements.” She nodded slightly, and Finch shuffled away to the sideboard. If she found the lad did not suit, she would give him a drink and send him on his way, with a guinea or two for his trouble.

“Discretion, loyalty, efficiency, so on, so forth.” He chanted it sing-song, and she almost missed the flicker of his gaze towards the door as Mikal entered, noiseless. She did not miss the sudden tension in his left hand.

That is where the knife will be, then. “Yes. You may be amusing, but I do not countenance impoliteness.”

“Your countenance is set very politely, madam.” Quick as a whip, and with a winning smile to boot.

She found herself measuring him against a Neapolitan with a sneer and dirty fingernails, and had to eye him afresh, so she would not find him wanting without reason. “I take pains to preserve it so,” she replied, dryly. “You have no objection to a blood-binding?”

He paled slightly, but set his shoulders. “None at all, mum. He—” A slight tip of his head took in the attentive Finch. “—tells me you do right by those in your service, and that I’m getting too old to molly much more. The gentlemen prefer younger, even with the rough.” A defiant tilt to his chin, watching to see if he could shock her.

Her estimation of his intelligence rose, even though he seemed very young indeed to her. “And just how old are you, Philip?”

“Old ’nough. I don’t enjoy the molly, mum. It’s just easy.”

Ah. She allowed herself to feel cautiously hopeful. “Your enjoyment of such things, or not, holds no interest for me. I wish to know if you are capable of discharging the duties of a minder for my mentath. He requires a companion of a certain… durability, discretion, and capability to deal with Londinium’s nastier areas. I require that you keep his skin whole and your mouth closed on the subject his affairs, and my own, to anyone outside this room. Mr Finch has no doubt negotiated your wages, should you be accepted for the position, and has also given you to understand certain… peculiarities… of said position.”

He waited. Mute and stubborn, giving nothing away.

Very good. “Mikal?”

The Shield was suddenly across the room, locking the young man’s wrist and striking the knife from his grasp. Finch did not move, a curious expression–part distaste, part amusement–flickering over his graven features. The youth actually almost managed to strike Mikal once, but the Shield finished by holding him by his scruff and shaking lightly, before dropping him to hands and knees and stalking away.

Her Shield retook his place by the door. “Amateur.”

Which was high praise indeed, coming from a fully trained Shield. At least he hadn’t said useless.

Emma found herself suddenly weary, and a sour taste had crept into her mouth. “Very well. You shall do, Mr Philip Pico. Do you wish the hire?”

The youth looked up. With his curls tumbled and high colour in his shaven cheeks, his true age was a little more visible. Yes, he was rather a shade too old for mollying to gentlemen, and a swift pang passed through her. Mikal must be out of sorts, to embarrass the lad so.

He climbed swiftly to his feet, scooping up the knife and slipping it back into its hiding-place behind his left hip. “One condition.”

After that display, I suppose you might be allowed to ask, even if I do not grant. “Which is?”

He pointed at Mikal. “He’s a fair boxer. He teaches me that. I’ll not shirk, I’ll not talk, and I’ll keep your mentath safe as a babe in cradle.”

She found herself smiling, and Finch’s relief visibly mounted. Of course, she supposed he had to have been very sure of the boy to bring him, and who knew what their true relationship was? “Cousin” was as good a word as any, and it mattered little, if the youth was dependable.

“I think that is quite possible, and even acceptable, though Mikal is a much harsher taskmaster than myself. As long as his tutelage does not distract from your other duties, you shall do very nicely, Philip. While Finch arranges for your effects to be brought, we shall settle you in a room and you shall see your charge immediately.” Clare will not like this. But I cannot watch him day and night, and this young enigma will at least keep him occupied while I seek to discern what nastiness is afoot.

“Yesmum.” Pico bent to retrieve his hat, as well, and darted a venomous look past her, at Mikal. Who would, of course, be entirely unaffected.

The little molly seemed to completely discount her as a threat.

Which was very much how Emma preferred it at the moment. She nodded once again, more to herself than to any man present. “Very well.”