Karina Cooper - Corroded

Or, I suspect, her.

Save me from doe-eyed females.

“Bear this in mind,” I said firmly, marching her through the hedgerows. “For every person you involve in your mischief, that’s another to feel the sting of it when you’re caught.”

That I knew intimately of what I spoke was a pain I had not dared to give acknowledgement to. Not yet. Perhaps not for a long time, if I had my say. The very hint of Earl Compton’s face was enough to send my hand plunging into my pocket.

I had not rectified my lack of bliss. Lecturing Maddie Ruth had taken much of my interest. I regretted that fact now.

I would fix that as soon as I saw Maddie Ruth off to her quarters. This, I vowed.

I walked without much mind to direction. I’d been in these gardens before, though they looked a sight different without the dark to deepen the shadows. Unlike the greater grounds, the private gardens were designed specifically to cater to those who traded in subtlety for somewhat more physical proclivities. There was no pretense of discretion here, only dark corners, merrily burbling fountains and hedgerows to lose one’s self in.

Sometimes, when the nights were quieter, the keening wail of a violin could be heard soaring across the private garden. I had not yet met the maker of such haunting music, but I hoped to.

By day, however, much of the mystique was gone, and the gardens were still. The hedge separating the garden from the grounds was easy to find, and the gate stood open.

All was quiet enough that I easily heard her sniff. “I wouldn’t get caught.”

“Oh, ho,” I taunted softly, but not kindly. “Allow me to be the first to assure you of one irrefutable fact. Eventually, you will get caught.” Her head came up quickly, and I nodded. “‘Tis a matter of course. Always be prepared for the inevitable revelation.” Again, I spoke with hard-earned experience. I knew of what I assured her.

My catching had been done after my father’s reckless scheme. To see such disappointment in Fanny’s eyes, to always be aware that my staff feared for my safety, had become a burden I dreaded.

Yet, I would return to that life in a tick, if I could only do so again.

I missed them. There were days, moments when I swallowed a bit more tar than I ought and allowed the lassitude to take me, that I reached for a bell that was not there. I ached to hear the arrhythmic step of my one-legged butler coming to deliver me tea. Even Mrs. Booth’s shrill voice berating the link-boy for tracking soot seemed as music to my memory.

I had lost so much to the sweet tooth’s vicious cruelty.

I owed him so very much in kind.

Maddie Ruth froze so quickly that my feet ended up some distance ahead while the rest of me remained attached at the arm. Wrenched from my bitter thoughts, I stumbled back, righted myself and did not manage even a question before I saw the object of Maddie Ruth’s wide-eyed consternation.

He lingered at the gate in a manner that put me in mind of a hungry black tomcat, all lean potential and challenging stare. He was tall as Ishmael, which said a great deal for his height, yet was only a fraction as wide. His skin was nearly as dark. Though he wore the same working togs as most everyone else who toiled in the grounds by day, he wore them with a careless sense of awareness. The collar of his plain cotton shirt and deep blue jacket revealed a corded throat, and the beginning of lean muscle just beneath. No gloves covered his hands. His hair, which I remembered as falling nearly to his waist, was plaited in a multitude of tiny braids and looped into a tail at the back of his head.

Had it only been some months past that I’d seen him for the first time? I’d come to visit Hawke by day, demand answers regarding the sweet tooth’s activities among the girls Hawke purported to protect, and this man had been there.

He’d stared at me, as if communicating a challenge even as he spoke a language I did not understand. I remember most that stare, much as he was staring now. A forthright scrutiny lacking in even the basest civility. His eyes were tawny gold, lighter brown than Hawke’s and tinted like the tomcat’s I’d considered him.

They were not pinned on me this time, but on the rapidly quailing girl beside me.

“Keep moving,” I murmured, trying to keep my lips from moving too much. “Who is that?”

“Osoba,” she whispered, a rasped sound.

Ah. Now, I had a face to match to the name.

We approached the whip together: myself with a cheerful swagger and a nod, and Maddie Ruth with much more deference. Osoba may or may not have been the savage African prince his own keeper labeled him, but even in British attire, there was something about him that made me consider some truth to the charade.

To be quite frank, there was much of him—his stance, the air of confidence and untouchable arrogance about him—that reminded me of Hawke.

To say Osoba was less dangerous than the ringmaster himself would be doing a disservice to both men—and my own good sense. No, I would be forced to play this carefully.

And with no small amount of boldness.

To my surprise, Ikenna Osoba spoke first. “Caught,” he repeated, in a voice that was not as deep as Ishmael’s, but seemed many times more resonant. “Caught doing what?” Accented deeply and almost lyrical in delivery, his was a voice groomed for the rings, the kind to command attention and demand obeisance. No wonder the lions listened.

If I were to take opium right then, put a bit on my tongue and let it burn while this man spoke of anything at all, I would be lost on a tide of musical delight.

Beside me, Maddie Ruth gazed at the ground before her feet.

I shook myself. “You must be Mr. Osoba,” I said, forcing a smile. I felt slightly dazed. Perhaps I was mistaken, after all. The stuff I’d eaten before I’d set out could have simply been slower to act. “Or do you prefer Your Highness?”

He did not rise to my distraction. He did not shift, at all. Leaning against the gate’s archway, arms folded across his chest, he behaved as if he had all the time in the world. His gaze remained on Maddie Ruth.

Blast.

“Caught,” he repeated again, “doing what?”

The blood rapidly drained from her face. A fine tremor rippled down her skirt, which we’d untied on the return home. No reason to fetch any more eyes than necessary.

The fear there, the uncertainty of it, spoke louder than any words she might have summoned for me. The man scared her right silent.

My shoulders tightened. I found myself stepping in front of her, so that Osoba’s eyes would fall instead upon me.

Taller though he was, and likely stronger, I did not cower. “Maddie Ruth was helping me.”

He was not a man to raise his eyebrows. They lowered, knotting in a ridge of black. “Oh?” A single syllable, with many pointed questions.

Who was I to be helped by one of his own? What could she possibly help me with?

What rights did I have to step between a whip and his mark?

“Collector’s business,” I said, answering each of those unspoken questions with a challenge of my own.

“I know what you are, Miss Black.”

Hawke’s own moniker, put to use again. I resisted the urge to frown. That it bothered me, his chosen name on everyone else’s lips, was something I was not equipped to examine. Not then.

“Then you know that I earn the highest of all collectors for Menagerie bounties,” I returned. I folded my arms across my chest in mimicry of his masculine posturing.

He did not answer me. I hoped the Veil was not so talkative with all whips. I spoke the truth, but I did not know how much of my increasing debt was common knowledge.

As he did not call me on it, I hoped very little of the truth was known.