Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Zephyra spent two days watching Maxham’s house.
She did all she could to ensure that he never noticed her.
He himself was quite good at remaining unseen, but Zephyra had developed the skill out of necessity, and her senses had become honed and sharp.
Her acting was flawless because it had to be or she would have been discovered, and the Citadel might have found her.
Bianca had been tall and beautiful, and while she lied about her true age, no one had questioned her because of her confidence and her youthful skin.
Zephyra’s comeliness was not like her sister’s—rather than Bianca’s cool, classic looks, Zephyra’s short stature and sweet face encouraged men to lower their guard around her.
It made it easy for her to pose as an urchin child, one among many who loitered outside of Vauxhall Gardens.
She had found two wigs in the attic of her father’s townhouse, which, once the hair ornaments had been trimmed off and the powder washed out, looked passable enough.
But then she coated them in a film of dirt to finish her disguise, and in order to not be noticed, she wore a different wig every other day.
She darkened her skin with a fine coating of mud, and she bought some rags to wear from a secondhand clothing store.
She did not sit directly across from the house but some yards away from it, nearer to the southeast back entrance. She begged for coin only enough to look convincing, and received a few shillings for her efforts.
Also, despite her dirty face, she received several requests from gentlemen, to which she agreed—and once they had taken her down a dark alley, she slit their throats and stole their purses.
It was not a burden to remove such men from the dregs of London society and prevent them from assaulting other young girls.
But most of the time, she was simply one of several beggar children, and she had plenty of time to watch the house.
After one day, she began to suspect her vigilance was wasted.
The home had a single servant, an Oriental man.
He was slender and did not have the look of a man on the Root—during the times he was more careless with his movements, he did not display the kind of strength that would easily injure another man or cause damage to doors.
He walked with a lightness of step, but not with either the swagger or the careful plodding of men who were trying to hide the fact that they could run faster than a horse.
She could not watch the house continuously, and on the second day she arrived to find light filtering through the windows of the attic.
It was likely the servant, which meant that Maxham had already dismissed his services for the evening.
But had Maxham left the house, or was he in another room at the back, where she could not see?
Then she saw a man walking away from Vauxhall Gardens with a purposeful stride. Her heart beat faster as he turned up the front steps to the house.
As he rapped on the front door, she studied him more closely. He was perhaps forty years old, but he carried himself lightly on his feet and with the confidence of an athletic man.
She studied his face, for she had last seen Maxham twelve or fifteen years ago, but she was certain this was not him. She disregarded his dark blond hair, for that could be dyed, but he could not hide the darker blue of his eyes compared to Maxham’s pale gaze.
The Oriental servant answered the door and let the man inside. She expected him to leave within a few moments, but he remained within, and yet the house was still dark.
Was Maxham indeed at home, perhaps in a back room, and the man had been escorted to see him?
If he was waiting for Maxham to return, surely there would be a light shining from the drawing room, which she guessed were the front windows of the first floor—she was not certain because no matter how many times she had walked past the house, she could not see in through the drawn curtains, which were never opened.
Perhaps this was her chance. She had been steeling herself for contending with Maxham, despite what she knew of his abilities, but the presence of another man who was probably part of the Citadel might make her task far easier.
Then Zephyra froze as she saw Maxham.
There were only a few people on the street, heading toward Vauxhall Gardens, and he appeared suddenly, stepping out from among them as if he had been made of air only moments before and was now visible.
He was dressed like a modest young lawyer or a clerk from a wealthy shipping company, and no one noticed him as he climbed the steps to the house.
Even the prostitutes standing at the corner displaying their wares seemed to have completely disregarded him.
But what shocked Zephyra the most was his age.
She had last seen him a few years before Bianca died, and he had the look of a young man burdened with the cares of the world.
But despite the dark circles under his eyes and his look of long-suffering as he conversed with Bianca, he had not looked to be beyond five and twenty years of age.
Zephyra had predicted that he would look old far beyond his time.
And yet the man she saw looked exactly the same as he had all those years ago.
The same dark circles under his eyes, the same weary resignation in the slope of his shoulders—and the same youthful features of a man not yet twenty-five, only a few years past the age when a young gentleman would have come down from university.
Perhaps her memories were unreliable. Much had happened to her in the years since, and she had met a great many people.
But she did not think she was mistaken. This was indeed Maxham—she recognized his pale eyes and pale hair as soon as she saw him.
He had the same unremarkable face—neither plain nor handsome, a face that would be easy to forget if not for her burning hatred of him.
She had kept the image of his visage in her mind for years, craving revenge.
For he had been the one to kill her sister.
Bianca had sent her to France. It was the only reason Zephyra was alive.
Her sister had told her that only she could retrieve Jadis’s gardening notes and a sack of gold that Bianca had hidden under the floorboards of her lover’s abandoned manor house in the French countryside, but Zephyra knew that was a lie.
Lord Wynwood had happened upon Zephyra at her home and complimented her gown with a touch too much enthusiasm, and Bianca had been displeased.
So she sent Zephyra away on the pretext of retrieving her lost items, despite the danger of traveling through France because of the war.
During her entire journey, Zephyra had raged at her sister, suspecting that Bianca sent her into danger in the secret hopes that a bandit or soldier would kill her.
It would relieve her of the burden of caring for her younger sibling, and her last source of competition for Lord Wynwood’s affections would be conveniently gone.
After all, despite the fact Bianca claimed to be merely four and twenty, in truth, she was just past thirty years of age. Zephyra had been nineteen years old at the time, but without hope of a debut into society, at least not until Bianca managed to kill Lady Wynwood and marry his lordship herself.
And so, despite the uncouth smugglers who ferried her to France and back, despite highway bandits and French guardsmen who would be able to tell that she was English from her accent alone, Zephyra eluded danger from them all and arrived at the manor house owned by Bianca’s old lover, Mr. Field Emsley.
She retrieved the small sack of coins, a tied packet of notes, and two ancient books of chemistry that Bianca had hidden under the floorboards.
And she returned to England, uncertain if she wanted to throw the items at Bianca’s feet and storm out of the house for good, or simply disappear into London, allowing her sister to believe she had died somehow during her journey.
Perhaps Bianca’s intention had been less than charitable, but it had saved Zephyra’s life.
She chose to return to her sister’s townhouse in order to pack her belongings and perhaps steal some of her sister’s jewelry before leaving in the middle of the night.
It was in this rebellious frame of mind that she arrived home only to find her sister’s body floating in a bathtub, the water ruby red with her blood from her slit wrists. She had looked to be asleep.
Zephyra knew immediately that Bianca had been killed. She would never have marred her skin with a blade. Bianca knew enough poisons to be able to take one that would allow her to die peacefully, painlessly, leaving her loveliness unmarred.
The body was still slightly warm, as was the bathwater, shocking Zephyra, for it was a detail she would not have expected of the murderer. And then she realized who had likely killed her sister—the Citadel. And they would come after her next.
Maxham was the only one who could have done the deed.
Jack had not yet been part of the Citadel at the time—Zephyra suspected Maxham killed Bianca in order to replace her with that painted madman—and everything was done too precisely, too cleanly for Ward and his unorganized mind.
The arrogant doctor would also never have left his country laboratory, instead happy to order Maxham about as if he were a servant.
Zephyra watched her sister’s murderer unlock the front door with a key and enter his house. Her anger had made her entire body hot, and she felt as if steam poured off of her in clouds in the cool, damp evening air.
Maxham was home with only the other man and the Oriental servant, and both of them were not taking the Blood Nectar. This was her chance.
She had planned this for years. How she would find him, how she would make him do her bidding. Now that the time had come, she found her hands trembling.