Blaze, p.23
Blaze, page 23
She stared at the empty weightiness. It was odd to hold something but not see it. She reached for the hilt and withdrew the sword only a few inches, the blade appearing out of thin air as she did. The feel of it in her hands was wonderful and terrifying.
Her heart raced as she re-sheathed the sword and slung the scabbard over her shoulder. As soon as she let go of it, she couldn’t feel the weight of it anymore. Handy, that. It was not only invisible in its scabbard when she wore it, but somehow it had been charmed to cease to be, or at least be felt, until she reached for the hilt again, allowing her full freedom of movement.
She’d been so intent on her sword that she hadn’t noticed that her father had followed her into the study and was filling a medical bag with weapons.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m coming with you,” he replied, in a voice that allowed no debate.
There wasn’t time for her to argue, anyway. She didn’t know what Grey was capable of, and the thought of David getting hurt made her legs move faster.
She and her father reappeared in the hallway where Phoebe still lingered, staring at them anxiously.
“All right,” Artemis said. “Let’s go.”
Artemis held Phoebe’s hand as the Cliftons’ carriage drove toward Trafalgar Square and the Northumberland.
“He’ll be all right,” Artemis reassured both her friend and herself at the same time.
Phoebe nodded weakly. “I just hope we’re not too late.”
Artemis wasn’t sure what to expect as the carriage pulled up in front of the Northumberland, but she was ready. As ready as she could be.
A line of a dozen or so suffragettes picketed out in front of the building. Their usual signs had a few new slogans like, “Women Are Not Chattel” and “Sell Fish Not Daughters”. No doubt the Deightons simply loved that.
A fight for another day, Artemis thought, and got out of the carriage before the footman had a chance to reach the door. She let him help Phoebe out as Tommy and her father pull up behind them.
Artemis, Phoebe, and her father walked quickly up the front steps to the ball. The strains of Strauss’s “Vienna Waltz” floated out from inside. Once they were through the entryway they passed through a set of large French doors.
Entering the ballroom was like crossing into a glittering dreamscape. Candles flickered from every corner and above them, half a dozen large crystal chandeliers caught the reflection of a hundred lights. Huge arched windows stood between stout columns that reached up into the vaulted ceiling. Everything was decorated in green and gold. It was glorious.
Several dozen couples danced while many more stood along the periphery enjoying drinks and canapés. The gowns ranged from stunning to absurd. Artemis had no idea how old Lady Bellingham could even move in that thing.
Waiters carrying trays of champagne offered glasses to the guests. From the rosy tint on nearly every cheek in the room, this was hardly their first round.
“Where’s David?” Artemis asked, surveying the room.
Phoebe’s lips turned downward. “I’ll go ask my parents if they’ve seen him.”
She hurried off toward the far side of the room where Lord and Lady Clifton were deep in conversation with Lord Spenlow.
David had to be here somewhere.
“Do you see Grey?” her father asked.
Artemis took another quick look around again. “No. Nor Rosalind.”
She did see someone she knew, though, and started toward him, winding her way through the crowd. She stopped near the punch table, just standing there and admiring Liam as he filled his cup. He was very handsome in his tailcoat.
She finally shook out of it and said, “Hello.”
Liam turned quickly, seeming surprised. “Hello,” he said a beat later, putting down the cup he’d just filled to gaze at her. They looked at each other intently, and even though Artemis knew the silence should have been awkward, somehow it wasn’t.
“Yes, yes,” her father said, breaking the moment with all the subtly of a sledgehammer.
Liam snapped out of his dreamy gaze and started slightly at the sight of him.
“Sir—”
Her father waved an impatient hand. “Have you seen David Clifton?”
Liam was confused by the abruptness of the question and looked around. “He’s here somewhere, I—Is there something I can help you with?”
“No,” her father said quickly and firmly. “Thank you. If he should appear, please tell him we’re looking for him. It’s very important.”
Liam nodded, still not understanding the urgency of the exchange. He noticed the doctor’s bag in her father’s hand.
“Is someone injured?” he asked.
“Not yet,” her father replied, then added, “Mr. Parker,” with an incline of his head, ending the conversation and taking Artemis by the elbow to lead her away.
Artemis looked at Liam apologetically.
“You look beautiful, by the way,” Liam said suddenly.
Artemis couldn’t keep her cheeks from burning at the compliment. “Thank you,” she said, turning back slightly. “Maybe I’ll see you later?”
Liam nodded. “I hope so.”
“In four or five years, perhaps,” her father muttered under his breath.
She almost glared at him, but her attention was diverted by Phoebe’s arrival.
“Anything?” she asked.
“No help at all,” Phoebe said, glancing anxiously back toward her parents. “They’re too busy being bludgeoned to death by another of Lord Spenlow’s lectures on the proper place for a woman.” Her beseeching eyes turned to Artemis. “Where is he?”
“Phoebe, you stay here,” Artemis’s father commanded. “We’ll have a look around.”
Artemis followed him toward the rear of the banquet hall, but they drew up short before they reached the door to the adjoining ballroom. A man stood in front of it, and something about him gave Artemis pause.
His suit was far too tight, muscles bulging oddly beneath the tight fabric, and he ran a finger uncomfortably under the ring of his collar, as if he’d never worn one before.
He stood alone, feet spread too far apart and hands like meat hooks dangling at his side. Artemis then noticed another of his sort, then another. None of their clothes were quite right, and their expressions didn’t hold the usual vapid delight and blandness that so often permeated parties like this. They were … alert, on edge, and definitely not on the guest list.
“Do you see them?” she asked quietly.
Her father nodded almost imperceptibly. “It would seem our Mr. Grey has brought in reinforcements.”
That was not good. Definitely not good. One shade, maybe two, she could handle, but half a dozen? She squinted, staring at them more intently. Perhaps she was worrying over nothing. There was something off about the shades, after all, something she could sense, and she certainly could feel it when she touched them.
Right now, she sensed … nothing.
“I’ll be right back,” Artemis said, slipping from her father’s side.
He called out her name in a hoarse whisper, but she ignored him. She slid effortlessly between the ball attendees until she came to the man guarding the door. Looking at the door expectantly, she smiled up at the man and said, “Excuse me. Might I?”
The man glowered down at her and jerked his head to the side. “Loo’s over there.”
“Thank you,” she said, and touched his arm. It was a risky act, but she had to know.
Again, she felt nothing. He was human. She took her leave, losing herself in the crowd again before circling back to her father.
“What do you think you were doing?” he ground out.
“He’s human.”
“Really? Interesting. I wonder why.” The scientific wheels in his mind spun so loudly that Artemis could almost hear them.
“We need to find David and Rosalind,” she reminded him.
“Yes. We do.” He looked back at the ruffian guarding the door. “There must be another way to get to into that room.”
“In the entry hall when we came in,” Artemis said, “surely there’s a path from there?”
They made their way to the entrance hall. The room that held the Autumnal Ball wasn’t the only hall at the Northumberland. A smaller, empty ballroom was to their left and billiard and other meeting rooms were in the back.
As they reached the rear of the hallway, Artemis’s father eased open the doorway for a look. At the end of another long hall were the two doors to the banquet and billiard rooms that adjoined the main ballroom. Two more of Grey’s men stood guard in front of large double doors.
Grey had to be behind those doors. Grey and Rosalind, Artemis told herself with a sinking feeling. And God only knew where David was.
“We have to do something,” she said.
Her father eased the door closed. “Yes, but we can’t get past the door with them there. What we need is a diversion.”
She agreed. But what?
“What kind?”
“Come.”
As they walked back through the entry hall and into the grand ballroom Artemis wracked her brain. Whatever they did to draw the men away from their posts couldn’t be a minor event that would be dealt with quickly. No, it needed to be big. Big enough to lure all of Grey’s men. But how were they going to pull that off with just the three of them? And without getting thrown out in the process?
Phoebe came over to them, but Artemis shook her head before she could even ask.
“I don’t know if I can stand it,” Phoebe said. “It’s bad enough that David and Rosalind are missing, but if Lord Spenlow says one more—”
“Spenlow!” Artemis cried, so loudly she garnered a few looks of disapprobation from nearby partygoers. “Sorry,” she went on in a calmer voice. “Come with me, Phoebe.”
Leaving her father perplexed, she and Phoebe hurried outside, Artemis explaining her plan as they went.
They walked down the front steps and Artemis noticed Tommy straighten in his seat at their arrival. She shook her head at him, and he seemed to understand, slouching down and remaining on his driver’s bench.
They slowed their pace as they reached the protesting suffragettes. Artemis elbowed Phoebe in the side when they neared Mrs. McPhee.
“Ouch,” Phoebe said with a glare, and then began her part. “Of course, I don’t have any patience for the ravings of someone like Lord Spenlow,” she said loudly, saying his name in a firm manner.
Mrs. McPhee reacted like a mouse to cheese, stepping out the line of women who were walking back and forth in front of the Northumberland.
“Lord Spenlow, you say?” she asked. “Is he inside?”
“And going on and on, as he does,” Phoebe said conspiratorially, earning a firm nod of agreement from Mrs. McPhee.
“Just between us,” Artemis added, “I think I overheard him say something about calling the police.”
“Did he now?” Mrs. McPhee spat, her lips pursed.
Artemis nodded, hiding how badly she felt about using Mrs. McPhee and the others, but she needed them. David and Rosalind needed them.
“He said something about how weak women were and how easily they were manipulated.”
“Take them out like yesterday’s trash,” Phoebe added enthusiastically mimicking the Lord.
“Yesterday’s trash? We’ll see about that.” Mrs. McPhee turned back to her companions, eyes flashing, her face twisting into a frown. “Listen up, ladies. Will someone wake up Dorcas?”
One of the ladies sat leaning against a low wall, snoring away, a silver flask resting against her hip. Another woman roused her and helped her to her feet. Once she was up, Mrs. McPhee addressed the ladies once more.
“We have stood by patiently, waiting for sense to descend like God’s mighty hand upon those who oppose us. And tonight, my dear sisters, we shall be that hand. We shall show those who resist,” she glanced toward the Northumberland, “the truth of our power.”
Murmured excitement and confusion rose through the crowd.
The woman who’d stopped Mrs. McPhee at the racetrack stepped forward, but the little woman held up a hand. “Save it, Ethel. We’re going in.”
And with that, Mrs. McPhee stormed up the steps. Her fellow suffragettes, galvanized by their leader, let out a cheer and followed behind.
“I hope that works,” Phoebe said.
Artemis tugged on her friend’s arm, hurrying behind the ladies as they swept into the ballroom en masse. To say their arrival engendered surprise would be a gross understatement; first, the guests slowly fell silent, and then the small orchestra followed suit, with the last violinist’s bow screeching loudly against the strings as his jaw dropped.
For a moment, there was silence.
Mrs. McPhee surveyed the room with a raised chin, her eyes narrowing when they landed on Lord Spenlow. She began marching toward him when a small commotion erupted.
“Get your hands off me!” a woman cried.
Everyone, including Mrs. McPhee and Lord Spenlow, turned to see what was happening.
Dorcas, the rather inebriated suffragette, slapped at the hands of one of Grey’s thugs. She stumbled backward and lost her balance. It looked like the man had pushed her.
A gentleman stepped forward in her defense. “I say—”
The man’s tongue stilled when Dorcas regained her footing, raised her placard, and summarily cracked the thug over the head with it. The brute shook off the blow then grabbed her by the arms. The gentleman who had tried to come to her aid tried again, joined by a surging throng of suffragettes.
Artemis wasn’t exactly sure how it snowballed from there, but before long the Autumnal Ball had turned into a full-blown melee. She stood in awe as Lady Chatham knocked someone over the head with a champagne bottle and Lord Smithers did things with puff pastry for which it was never intended. Artemis went to grab Phoebe’s hand once more, but they must have been separated by the chaos. She swiveled her head, trying to find her through the crush of bodies.
“Duck!” someone yelled.
On instinct, Artemis dipped her head just in time for a hurled silver tray to pass right over her. Had she not been warned, it could have lopped her head right off her shoulders.
She turned to thank her savior and saw Liam smiling back at her. His smile didn’t last long; an arm reached out and grabbed him, yanking him back into the fight.
“Artemis!” her father said, appearing at her side.
They both stood in awe at the spectacle before them before he took her by the arm. “Come on.”
They hurried out into the entry hall and toward the back. He eased the door open again and she pushed herself up onto her tiptoes to peer over his shoulder. Her plan had worked; the men who had been guarding the room were nowhere to be seen. They stepped into the hall, but they hadn’t gotten more than ten feet when the door to the billiard room opened.
“See what the hell is going on!” shouted Grey’s voice from somewhere inside.
Another of his men stepped out into the hall, forcing Artemis and her father to duck into an open storeroom. She held her breath in the darkness behind the closed door, hoping they hadn’t been seen.
She reached out blindly, finding her father beside her, his ear pressed to the door. Artemis took a step back and her foot collided with something. She stumbled but kept upright. Someone groaned.
Her father must have heard it, too, because she could hear him fumbling in his bag. Suddenly, the darkness was rent by the flash of a lighting match. The flame was small, but it shed more than enough light for Artemis to see what she’d bumped into.
“David!”
She knelt down at the boy’s side. Her father found a lantern nearby, lit it, and joined her. She could see now that David’s head was bleeding, his breathing shallow, and she looked at her father in a panic.
Putting down the lantern, he quickly examined David’s wound then lifted his eyelids. A frown came over his face.
“He needs to get to hospital. Now.”
She nodded, her heart racing.
“Can you look after him?” she asked. “Get him help?”
“Yes,” he said, reaching for David’s wrist to take his pulse, and Artemis knew he couldn’t be in better hands.
Slowly, she stood. “I’m going to find Rosalind.”
He looked up at her, worry for more than David in his eyes.
She gave him a reassuring look. “It’s what a Blaze does, right?”
He swallowed, fighting to keep his feelings in check, but nodded. This was what he’d raised her for, what he’d trained her for, why she was who she was. Now was the time to embrace all of that, to be the Blaze.
She turned for the door.
“Artemis.”
Shadows played across his face when she looked at him. Darkness and light. Hope and worry. A thousand things went unsaid, but they didn’t need to be; she knew them already. With a dip of her head, she turned and left her father and David behind.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The hallway was empty as Artemis made her way toward the billiard room.
She inched the door open. The room was dimly lit, the gas lamps only partially turned on, but there was enough light to see Grey. He stood at the far end of the large empty room, Rosalind limp in his arms. Artemis’s heart constricted, worried she was too late.
“Let her go,” she said, silently cursing the unsteadiness of her voice.
Grey’s head snapped toward her. Rosalind’s head lifted slightly.
Not dead, Artemis thought, thankful. The girl seemed drugged, like that woman at the racetrack. There was still hope. She walked toward them.
“Rosalind.”
The girl barely managed to loll her head to the side, her eyes glazed and unfocused.
“You are a thorn in my side, Blaze,” Grey said. “Time to have you removed.”
One of his shades stepped out of the shadows. She’d nearly forgotten about them. She turned around, quickly looking for the other one, but he was nowhere to be seen.
This shade was the bigger of the two, the one she’d faced off against at the rail yard. He cracked his neck and then strode toward her. There was a loud scraping sound as he did, and Artemis glanced down to see a heavy iron chain grasped in one of his gloved hands, its length dragging behind him, the metal scraping against the parquet floor. The endless scratching sound sent a shiver up her spine.
