A Restless Truth (The Last Binding #2)

Chapter 16

16

This time, Mr. Berry the master-at-arms did not offer Maud a cup of tea. Maud could see the instinctive desire to do so warring with his sense of professional duty. On the one hand, there was a gently bred young lady seated in a chair across from him, looking upset.

On the other hand, the young lady had been caught red-handed in the cabin of a complete stranger, and instead of staying to explain her innocence had promptly fled the scene.

The Lyric ’s security staff were taking the presence of a jewel thief on board as a personal insult. They had—of course—come running at speed on hearing the cry of Thief!

Maud had dashed nearly into the arms of a uniformed man whom she recognised, with a sinking heart, as Ferris. The officer she’d pestered about the ship’s security, and how one might move through it without being apprehended.

That seemed in keeping with her current run of luck.

Insulted zeal had overcome Ferris’s hesitation in laying hands on a lady; Maud had been marched, by a polite but firm grip on her arm, to the master-at-arms’s office.

She clasped her hands in her lap and straightened her spine. Maud Cutler, she reminded herself, did not have the smile of a baronet’s daughter. Maud Cutler was the hired companion to her (deceased) elderly relative. Maud Cutler had, unfortunately, spent two days treading on her own reputation and allowing herself to be seduced by barons and concert-hall performers. But Maud Cutler was not a jewel thief, and was appalled to be accused of criminal behaviour.

It was a lot to keep straight in one’s mind. No doubt Violet would have known exactly the right way to behave.

“If you are not the thief, Miss Cutler,” said Mr. Berry, “then would you care to explain what you were doing in Mrs. Vaughn’s stateroom?”

Maud had had time to think about this one. An outright lie would be required.

“I saw the door to the room was ajar as I passed,” she said. “I thought one of the maids might be cleaning, and I stepped inside. I wanted to ask for fresh towels to be delivered to my own cabin. But there was nobody inside. I assumed perhaps the door had been improperly closed.”

“Mrs. Vaughn is certain she closed and locked the cabin door behind her, when she left.”

Maud felt awful about it, but she gave the sort of delicate, telling shrug her mother had been expert in. It said: We’re both far too kind to comment on the failures of memory that might plague a woman of a certain age, but we are aware of them, aren’t we? Such a pity. “I can’t explain that, Mr. Berry. I can only tell you what I saw.”

“She has also reported a string of valuable pearls missing.”

Of course she had. They were in Ross’s possession. Maud aimed for polite but exasperated.

“If I’d taken these pearls, they would still be on me, would they not? You have my word of honour, there are no pearls anywhere on my person! In fact, you may search me, if you believe otherwise.”

Mr. Berry’s moustache twitched. “I intend to.” He nodded at the doorway. “Thank you—?”

“Agnes, sir.” A girl in a maid’s uniform shot a curious glance at Maud.

“Thank you, Agnes. If this is a misunderstanding, Miss Cutler,” the man said stiffly, “then naturally I apologise for the imposition. But there is a thief aboard, and my position—the very reputation of the White Star Line—requires certainty. I cannot take your word for it. You understand.”

“If you think it necessary,” said Maud. She was rather taken aback. But where Miss Blyth could frostily protest the liberties taken by laying a single hand upon her person, such an argument would hold less water coming from the lowly Miss Cutler. And it did seem like the quickest way to prove her innocence.

All the men stepped out of the office. The maid patted Maud carefully down, layer by layer. The girl’s face flamed and she avoided eye contact with Maud. Nowhere in her contract of employment, Maud wagered, did it mention that her duties might involve searching disreputable jewel thieves for evidence of their ill-gotten gains.

The complete lack of pearls was duly reported to Mr. Berry, whose face staged a battle of relief against frustration. Maud smiled hopefully at the man, but before she could speak, the door opened to reveal yet another member of the Lyric ’s staff.

“Ah, Jamison,” said Mr. Berry. “Is this the young lady in question?”

Jamison gazed upon Maud. Maud gazed upon the slick, dark hair and calm face of the steward upon whom she had pressed Mrs. Navenby’s pearl earrings.

“I couldn’t say, Mr. Berry. Name of Miss Cutler?” At Mr. Berry’s impatient nod, Jamison went on: “I haven’t met her, myself. But Mr. Galloway told me when he was”—he coughed—“indisposed, that he took a bribe from a Miss Cutler to let her into a lord’s cabin. He’ll deny it if you ask now, sir,” he added, lavishly decorating this confection of lies, “but I’d wager anything if you search his locker you’ll find the bribe. A pearl earring, he said.”

“Pearls again, hey?” Mr. Berry raised his eyebrows at Maud as if he’d moved his bishop to threaten her king.

Maud glared speechlessly at Jamison. They’d been allies . She’d bought him. But clearly he’d planted the earring in his drunkard of a supervisor’s belongings, as Maud suggested, and was now seizing a second opportunity to get the man dismissed. The truth of the situation brimmed at Maud’s lips, but she forced herself to think. It was her word against Jamison’s, and she was not, at present, in a position of strength. And if she kept quiet and protected him, he’d be in her debt.

“That’s right,” she said sweetly. “And if this is the only other piece of evidence against me, then we can clear this up in no time. The man whose cabin I was trying to enter is Lord Hawthorn. If you ask him to join us, Mr. Berry, then I’m sure everything will become clear.”

Mr. Berry looked nonplussed. He did, however, send Jamison in search of Lord Hawthorn. Maud spent the awkward interim making earnest conversation with Mr. Berry about how much she was enjoying the voyage so far, and how helpful Ferris had been in pointing out all the amenities and attractions on board the ship.

If she got out of this, she vowed to herself, she was going to triple her efforts. She would come up with new, brilliant ideas. She would make up for her ongoing failure. She would not only find out who that fog-masked man was, and if he’d killed Mrs. Navenby, and what form the contract piece took. She would also—somehow—find out how these people intended to use the Last Contract to steal power. Not even Edwin had managed to deduce that yet.

Maud was stuck on board a ship with these people. All right. They were stuck on board with her .

When Lord Hawthorn appeared in the office, he seemed to instantly highlight its cramped size simply by existing. Maud sprang to her feet and sent him an adoring look, and—

His name. What on Earth was Lord Hawthorn’s Christian name? Maud’s mind, already sorely tried by circumstance, was utterly blank.

Well. The man was heir to an earldom. Surely even lovers would use his title.

“ Hawthorn, darling,” Maud gushed, and took two steps to fling herself into his arms. Or rather: at his midsection. She buried her face in his chest and tried to psychically glare her need for his cooperation into the buttons of his sports jacket.

After a few moments, Hawthorn’s hand settled on her back. “Maud. May I gather that you’re in some manner of trouble?”

Maud was as revived by this as, she imagined, the fast Miss Cutler would have been to find herself in the strong arms of her protector. She raised her face to him and explained the situation— so unfortunate—and the subsequent testimony of Jamison.

“You can tell them the truth. I asked to be let into your cabin to surprise you,” she appealed.

Hawthorn exchanged a look with Mr. Berry.

“Miss Cutler is, indeed,” said Hawthorn, “a surprising young woman.”

“And I don’t need to steal things, do I? When you’ve promised to buy me all the pretty things I want?”

She kept her fingertips lightly on Hawthorn’s front, and hoped her eyes were huge and trusting. It helped to imagine Robin, whom she missed horribly; to imagine herself full of faith that this man would move the world for her.

Hawthorn, thus revealed as the sort of cad who might rashly promise luxurious gifts to a girl he had no intention of keeping upon their return to England, looked down at her. It was a look that somehow managed to communicate how dearly he wished he’d never set foot out of bed this morning.

“That’s right, sweetheart,” he said, in a low, dark drawl. “I’ll see to it you have everything you deserve.”

Maud’s hands were blocked from the master-at-arms’s view where they rested on Hawthorn’s chest. She pinched him. Hawthorn’s mouth twitched and he took her hands prisoner in his own.

“It does seem to be a misunderstanding, sir,” he said, directing the full force of his cold lordliness at Mr. Berry. “May I assume that Miss Cutler is free to go?”

Miss Cutler was free to go.

Violet had been neglecting her strumpetly duties when it came to Lord Albert. She had no idea how really promiscuous women kept strings of lovers all at one time. Surely one would need vast organisational skills, or a secretary.

“I’ve been interviewed by that reporter, Mr. Ross, for an article in one of the society magazines,” she said. “Perhaps I should go back to him and make some pointed comments about how much I’ve enjoyed meeting you, and how much time I hope we can spend together in London?”

“Good plan. Appreciate the thought,” said Lord Albert.

They stood in the Grand Reception, smoking a pre-dinner cigarette and being officially seen . Violet associated cigarettes with end-of-run parties and theatre dark nights. There was something thrillingly theatrical about accepting one from a gentleman’s silver case and smoking beneath a glassy ceiling of night sky while the glittering throngs of the Lyric ’s first-class passengers made their way up the staircase.

Lord Albert gestured to a steward, who hastily brought over a sand-filled brass ashtray on a tall stand, and they went in for dinner. Violet had agreed to eat with her aunt and cousin, and invited along their lordships Albert and Hawthorn. And Maud, who was—as usual—late, having neither a lady’s maid, a helpful aunt, nor magic to assist her with dressing.

Maud smiled at the table as the men rose, then took her seat beside Hawthorn. Her dress was a deep, pearly grey, with loops of black beads forming little cap sleeves. Falling from the waist was an overlay of dark gauze with tiny embroidered roses in pink and green. She wore a thin headband with matching silk-ribbon roses along its length. The contrast of flowers against the syrupy turbulence of the grey silk, along with the way Maud’s eyes picked up the green of the embroidery, was devastating.

Clarence’s face fell into one of abject wistfulness. Violet felt almost friendly towards her cousin, who if nothing else seemed to share exactly Violet’s taste in women. The friendliness was tried almost at once when he leapt in to plaintively scold her for not paying more attention to her aunt.

“I was looking for you earlier, Vi,” he said. “And you were—where were you?”

“Here and there,” said Violet. “It’s a large ship, Clarence. I’m sure there are people aboard it whose company will suit you better than mine.”

“There was a musical variety performance,” said Clarence. “We thought you might enjoy it. That’s all.”

Aunt Caroline sent Violet an unusually fierce version of her disapproving moue. Clarence did appear to be presenting her with some kind of olive branch. Violet couldn’t bring herself to apologise, but she managed a grudging nod.

“I didn’t think that would be your sort of thing,” she said.

“Well, you don’t know much about me, do you?” Clarence collected his tone. “You act as though you and Lady Enid were the only people in the family to care a fig for music, but it’s not true.”

Violet bit her tongue on telling him that he exuded an aura of being so uninteresting that it was bizarre to think of him having interests. But it was true that she’d never bothered to ask.

“Was your relative a patron of the arts, Miss Debenham?” asked Lord Albert.

“Of a sort,” Violet said. “Her husband was a carpenter by trade. When they married he owned only two workshops. He had a good eye for an investment, it turned out, and he ended up part of a successful shipping concern. But he kept expanding the carpentry business and also began to specialise it.” She shot a smile at Lord Albert. “His passion was always musical instruments. He sent apprentices to Germany and Austria to learn from the master violin-makers there.”

“There’s a harpsichord in our London house which Taverner made himself, when he was young,” said Aunt Caroline unexpectedly. “The lid is made of different sorts of wood, all cunningly inlaid. He made it as a special order for Lady Enid’s sister. It was how he and Lady Enid met.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Violet. “Seems rather ungrateful of them to then refuse to see their daughter in company, for the mortal sin of marrying a tradesman, doesn’t it?”

“How wonderfully romantic,” said Maud.

“To answer your question, Lord Albert—yes. Mr. and Mrs. Taverner, once they’d made their fortune, spent rather a lot of it on music. I believe they endowed the first chair of a chamber orchestra somewhere.”

In fact, James Taverner had come from a family of working magician-craftsmen, and through sheer hard work became one of the only thaumoluthiers in the Western world since the days of the Tieffenbrucker family. His workshop’s instruments were not just musical but magical; wood and catgut both held magic beautifully, and could be used to produce harmonies that were close to spells of their own. And the orchestra in question was the English Magicians’ Chamber Group, which had once caused a freak spring snowstorm when a performance interacted poorly with a difficult rain-spell being attempted by a family of magician-farmers nearby.

After they’d eaten, Lord Albert invited the other gentlemen to the first-class smoking lounge for drinks and cards. He looked so hopeful that Violet felt sorry for the man when Hawthorn declined.

“Happily, my lord, Clarence was telling me earlier how much he was itching for a good game of écarté,” said Violet. “And you share an interest in music, it seems.”

Clarence gave Violet a suspicious look, then a kicked-shin jerk. His mother wasn’t about to risk him missing an opportunity to be on friendly terms with a marquess’s son.

Violet was punished for having put a hankering for écarté into Lord Hawthorn’s head by being forced to play against him in his suite while they waited for Ross. Maud, who’d never played the game herself—“My parents preferred whist or bridge, if they had to play anything at all. More people at a table to gossip with.”—kept track of the points.

Violet herself hadn’t played it for years. She and her sisters had learned all the card games they could, from an old rule-book of their father’s, and she’d learned several more—most with variants involving alcohol, cheats both magical and unmagical, and filthy nicknames for the face cards—in New York.

Hawthorn played very fast, with his usual demeanour of bored superiority. He had a fiendish memory for trumps. Violet lost a hypothetical fortune to him while laughing at Maud’s description of the master-at-arms’s face when he was trying to arrest Miss Maud Cutler as a jewel thief. A good portion of Violet’s annoyance with Maud had eased when she wasn’t looking; and it sounded like Maud’s afternoon had been punishment in itself.

The actual jewel thief, when he arrived, was disgruntled.

“They’ve stepped up security,” Ross said. “It was already getting tighter before you embarrassed them, Miss B. Now you can’t sneeze in the first-class corridors without a chorus of bless-you-sirs from keen thugs in uniform.” He peered over Hawthorn’s shoulder and raised his eyebrows at his lordship’s hand. “I’ll have to retire the jewel arm of the business for the rest of the voyage.”

“I’m sure you’ve stolen enough to be getting on with,” said Maud. “And even though that wasn’t the dressing set we’re looking for, it did get me face-to-face with a magician, and the important thing is that he clearly recognised me .” She briefly outlined the events preceding her arrest for Ross’s benefit. “Coming across me unexpectedly must have rattled him,” she finished. “If he’d had more presence of mind, he could simply have walked right past, and I’d not have thought anything of it.”

“What’d he look like?” Ross asked. “Before the—” He waved a hand in front of his face. Alan Ross appeared to be treating magic as something akin to polo or trap-shooting: yet another eccentricity of the upper classes, with little bearing upon his own life given that he could not personally turn a profit from it.

“I didn’t get a good look. Fairish hair, heavy build. And I didn’t like his eyes. He looked as if he’d throw you overboard if you were between him and something he wanted.”

“Not exactly enough for a sketch,” said Violet. “So where does this leave us? More security is going to make searching difficult.”

“I know. And it’s a useless approach anyway.” Maud sat back in her chair. “It’s too large a problem. We need a better strategy to find these items.”

“I don’t know any tracking-spells that seem like they’d help,” said Violet. “And—didn’t you mention something about that, when you were telling us how your brother and Edwin found the coin?”

Maud nodded. “Edwin says the components of the Last Contract are magically inert to most spells seeking objects of power. They found the last piece of the coin with a fossicking-spell seeking silver, but they only had to search a single room. There’d be far too much silver on the Lyric for that to be at all useful.”

“Tell me again what the stolen items were,” said Hawthorn. “A bracelet, a locket…”

“And a scent flask, and the hairbrush and mirror set.”

“Hair.” He looked at Violet. “Do you remember your lock ceremony?”

“Barely,” said Violet. She remembered Alice’s and Julia’s, which took place closer together than their ages would have dictated; Alice was slow to show her magic, to the extent that their parents had begun to wonder if she had any at all.

“What’s that?” asked Ross.

“When a child in Britain first shows magic, a lock of their hair is cut,” said Violet. “It’s sent to the Barrel, in London, and their full name is registered there as a magician.”

“Like a christening?” said Ross. “Right. What’s the point of it?”

Violet had never questioned the point. There were a lot of pointless ceremonies in life. She looked a query at Hawthorn, who said, “The safety of magical society. In theory. If a magician is in danger, or missing, a map-spell can be cast using their hair to locate them, if they’re within the bounds of Great Britain.”

“Mother of Christ,” said Ross. “ That sounds piss-easy to use for ill purposes.”

“Robin and—” began Maud, and then shut her mouth.

“Maud,” said Hawthorn sharply, when she didn’t seem likely to continue.

“It’s rather a secret.”

“If you don’t trust us with your secrets, then what are we doing here?” said Hawthorn.

“Excellent question,” murmured Violet.

Maud shot her an uneasy look. “Kitty Kaur let Robin into the Lockroom and did the map-spell for him, when Edwin was missing. She used to work with the Coopers, so she knows how the process works.”

“You’re saying we should be able to—do it in reverse? Locate the hair in Mrs. Navenby’s hairbrush?” Violet asked Hawthorn.

“Possibly,” he said. “I know a few map-spells. The one in the Lockroom can search all of Britain because the map itself is charmed to high heaven. There’s enough magic in that room alone to blow up the Barrel. But we have a map of the Lyric, do we not?”

“We do! I do!” Maud was transformed with the scent of potential success.

“Hold on.” Ross had pulled up a chair and was sitting backwards on it, chin resting on hands folded on its back. “So there’s a spell that can find a person, using their hair. What are we using to find the hair in a brush, then?”

“More hair should do it,” said Hawthorn.

“Hats!” said Maud. “I’m sure we can find a few strands caught in the bands of Mrs. Navenby’s hats. And I can look in her spare combs as well.”

Hawthorn shook his head. “I doubt you’ll be able to get enough that way. We’ll need as large a lock as possible, to strengthen the sympathy.”

“Then…” Maud trailed off into a thoughtful silence, which remained intact while they considered the implications. Violet was the one to break it.

“Ah… where is Mrs. Navenby now, Maud?”

“In the ice room,” said Maud. “Mr. Ross, I doubt the security there is very tight, especially if they’re focusing all their efforts on the first-class corridors.”

Ross straightened and stared at Maud. “You want me to break into an ice storage room and bring you a lock of hair from the frozen corpse of a dead lady?”

“How much extra will that cost me? I can—”

But Ross gave a rippling gurgle of a laugh that shook his shoulders. “Not even my brother and sisters would’ve come up with that one, and we used to dare each other to go into graveyards at midnight and touch someone’s tomb. I’ll do it for nothing. So long as his lordship here will come and yank me out of trouble if need be.”

“You’re welcome to claim to be another of his mistresses,” said Maud, now outright sparkling with glee. “Though I’m not sure what the master-at-arms will think.”

“Nobody will accuse you of jewel theft in an ice room, Ross,” said Hawthorn. “As a matter of fact, you could very easily ask to see the place for your advertisements. Something about the amount of eggs and milk needed to feed the passengers, and how they’re kept fresh for the voyage, surely?”

“All right,” said Violet. “Say we get the hair, Hawthorn teaches me the map-spell, and we use it to locate more hair, thus showing us where on the ship the hairbrush is. We still have to break into that cabin. If it’s even in a cabin. And the problem of ship security still stands.”

“What we will need,” said Maud impressively, “is a diversion.” She beamed at them, hands clasped together as if she were holding herself back from running out and seizing the opportunity right this very moment. “And I have an idea for one of those.”