Chapter 4
Even with the moonless night, the swirling shroud of mist transformed the Soho air into an eerie, preternatural landscape. This part of Soho was populated by gantry men who were using new engineering-driven ventures to generate wealth.
Ballard, though a carpenter and blacksmith’s son, now lived a prestigious life, one of casual encounters and secular extravagance. The viper lived in a townhouse of eighteen rooms and had his personal needs catered to by an army of professionals.
Colossus stomped a foot impatiently, spurring Vincent to smooth a gloved hand over the back of the stallion’s mane. “Easy there, boy. Easy.”
With the horse stationed by the lesser, unused gates of the townhouse, Vincent easily dismounted and secured the beast before pulling out his mask and slipping it over his head.
White porcelain in the shape of a skull was overlain on a belt of black felt, the combination completely ghoulish and terrifying to the eye, justifiably earning the moniker Phantom.
Grabbing a spike of the gate, Vincent scaled the wrought iron with ease, landing soundlessly on the other side, the tails of his cloak flapping in the wind.
The rear windows of the manor house were dark, while a single room in the front had light.
A common tactic Ballard used to give the impression he was working.
Vincent’s investigator had sent word ahead that the man was already at the whist tables at Boodles and would attend the latter half of the Arundel Ball.
Spying the large oak tree near the back of the house, Vincent crouched low and, after watching for guards, sped to the tree. Nimbly, he hoisted himself up through the dark, leafy foliage and spotted the balcony that would be his entry point.
With another look for guards, Vincent leaped onto the balcony and, slipping through the glass doors, took the corridor down.
Enveloped by shadow, he crept through the hallways with focused intent, rounded a corner into another corridor, and paused as voices could be heard coming from the intersecting hallway.
Soon enough, a footman and a maid slipped away—most likely to have a rendezvous in a broom cupboard—and he found his way to Ballard’s study.
He looked around, knowing that the man obsessed with gears and contraptions would not keep his records in something as provincial as a desk drawer or a folio in a shelf.
That is if he kept them at all.
“The man is an egotist,” Vincent told himself. “He’d want to be reminded of his conquests at every turn of his head.”
Glancing around, he noted the layout of the study.
A large space cramped by fine leather furniture.
Dark bookshelves that reached from the floor to the soaring ceiling were filled with books, and smaller shelves scattered around the room held awards from the scientific community.
It even smelled rich, a mix of oiled leather, the best tobacco, and lemony beeswax polish on anything wooden.
Tall windows stood behind the earl’s massive mahogany desk, the long, thick drapes pinned back to offer a view of the darkened gardens.
Across from the desk was a large map of London, ostensibly to be the map where Ballard planned to place his railways—but Vincent felt his instincts singing sopranos and knew there was more to it.
Quickly, he examined three of the six drawers, all filled with leather portfolios.
Flipping open the top files, he leafed through the documents: bills of service from the last year.
None of the names on the clients had anything to do with his family, and there was no notation concerning the nature of the transactions.
It mattered not; the sums were nothing like those taken from his father.
After examining the desk and feeling around for hidden drawers, Vincent made for the shelves—but stopped dead.
On the desk was a large globe, the continent of America facing the wall plastered with the map of London. Something rippled on the back of Vincent’s neck, and he began to gently turn the globe… inch by inch. When the map of England faced directly to the wall map—something clicked.
Tempering a smirk, Vincent went to the wall map. Gently, he pried the paper map from the wall and spotted a recessed shelf behind it.
A sheaf of papers and a folio sat there, and Vincent reached for the folio first and found documents from the wrong year, 1811. The year Ballard acquired his grant to fund the research and development for his touted steam engine.
Gritting his teeth, he flipped the page and found the next one. 1804. The year his father had handed over the blunt to Ballard. By March 1805, the promises of wealth never materialized.
With steady hands, Vincent riffled through the thick stack of parchment. His breath stalled in his chest when he found just what he’d been looking for.
A copy of the agreement his father had made to Ballard for his stakes in the shipping company, Boreas and Co.
In Vincent’s estimation, naming a company after the Greek god of the northern wind should have set off flags that this venture was all hot air that was never created, no ship had ever sailed, and no silks had ever come from the East.
There was a bill of sale for services rendered in the month that the money had been transferred to Ballard—but what services had been rendered and to whom…?
Just then, a flicker of light beneath the door from the corridor had the hair on the back of his neck standing up as the air was lighting up ahead.
Instantly, Vincent stuffed the papers into his inner coat pocket.
Floorboards creaked, doors opened, and two brutes, seemingly already aware of his presence, tore into the study.
Vincent swiftly dodged the incoming blows, responding with a hard fist to one of the brute’s solar plexus before spinning and unleashing a barrage of blows to the other. Dazed, the hired guard stumbled back, and Vincent focused on the first, aiming to break a bone.
He grabbed for the man’s arm, but the man wrenched away, tearing a sleeve, leaving Vincent with a handful of fabric and the sight of old burn marks racing up the man’s wrist.
An explosion of pain came from where the second had slammed something blunt into his shoulder, and before Vincent could react, he was barreled into and heaved to the ground.
The position was too awkward for Vincent to get to the knives in his boots.
The brute pushed downward, but Vincent used the momentum to twist to his back and glimpsed one clouded eye in the holes of the attacker’s mask. He sent a hard knee into the man’s gut, then twisted and leaped away when the second came to him with a knife.
Kicking precisely at the blackguard’s shin, Vincent managed to get the weapons out of his boots and rushed in low and fast, his right blade slicing cleanly across a neck and his left, slashing down in a deadly arc.
Blood slid hotly over his fingers, and he spun around, not caring about the body collapsing behind him.
In the next heartbeat, a blade arced toward his face, and he leaped away, instinctively sprinting to the door. The whistle of a knife came seconds before a blade hilted itself into the door—right where Vincent was about to grab.
Reaching for the handle, he pushed—mistakenly forgetting that the door pulled inside, and those fraught seconds had the attacker barreling down on him, and Vincent had no choice but to wrestle with him for the knife.
Snatching at the man’s hand, he tried to lift his knee to break an elbow in, not expecting the blackguard to suddenly pull away and strike, sending the knife right above his pelvis, the tip nicking bone.
Ungodly pain surged up Vincent’s body, but he drew the knife out immediately to sink it into the attacker’s chest. One white, most likely blind eye, and the other dark blue bulged as he staggered back.
Crippled with pain, Vincent had the foresight to collect his knives, shoved them into his boots, and, holding the folio carefully away from his blood, managed to exit the way he came.
Climbing down the tree encapsulated every ounce of strength he had while feeling the steady pulse of blood leaking from his side. He barely made it over the gate and onto Colossus’s saddle.
“Home—” he choked, and kicked the horse’s side. Curling into the pain and holding his ribs, he ordered, “Run!”
Emma stood at the edge of the dance floor, observing.
The dastardly duke’s ball was a crush! Packed to the gills, the room was filled with the most powerful people in the county, and of course, a smattering of guests like her, those with titles but who remained on the fringes of polite society.
Charlotte and Harriet, on the other hand, were happily dancing about the ballroom with handsome young men, Harriet on her third dance with a third gentleman and Charlotte on her second with the same.
Two dances is a statement, three is a declaration.
In the past hour, not one lord had looked her way, and oddly, Emma felt accepting. Maybe it was for the best that she not marry a peer; she felt too old, too independent, and a touch too jaded to marry some lord who lived in the lap of luxury.
Spying a set of double glass doors that led to a balcony, she meandered around the dancing pairs to get to them, and after pushing them in, met the cold night air with relish.
It felt like it was the first time she was breathing freely. Leaning on the railing, she peered at the decorated gardens below. As she kept an ear on the sounds of the ball roaring behind her, the silence of the outdoors gave a little sliver of peace.
Unbidden, she started to sing a gentle lullaby she remembered her mother singing to her years ago, before she’d passed. So caught up in her self-soothing, Emma had not noticed when someone else had entered the balcony, not until the accented tones of a male voice purred from the dark.
“I do declare, you sing like a siren, my lady.”