Thief of Hearts (Elders and Welders Chronicles Book 3) (12 page)

“What? What happened to them?” she pressed.

He hesitated for so long that she was afraid he wouldn’t answer her. “They never made it out of childhood,” he admitted. “Even Bonded are not immune to murder.”

“Murder! Mother of God, Brightlingsea!”

Definitely
all the way to China. The duke sure did have a way of dropping conversational bombs.

“It was years ago,” he said, rather too dismissively, in her opinion.

“Who killed them?” Parminter demanded, joining in the conversation for the first time.

“Who do you think? Ehrengard,” the duke shot back, holding Parminter’s hard stare for a long moment before Parminter finally looked away, troubled.

“As I was saying,” the duke finally continued, a bit gruffly. “Your children should age relatively normally through the other side of adolescence. After that, they shall live perhaps two of your lifespans without a Bond renewal from their father.” He eyed her speculatively. “Though I suspect you too may live a bit longer than usual.”

“What?” she cried.

He sighed at her dramatics, though in her opinion it was the pot calling the kettle black. “Rowan didn’t properly Bond you. However, just carrying his children will have afforded you a few extra decades, at least. You will have noticed, perhaps, that you are not aging?”

“I thought it was my hearty Scotch ancestry,” she muttered, gooseflesh shivering down her spine at his revelations.

“You hardly seemed thrilled to learn of your longevity,” he said, not sounding surprised in the least.

“Should I be?”

He gave her an arid, humorless smile. “No. Surprisingly few people ever actually are.”

Parminter snorted from his corner. “You’re one to talk.”

“On the contrary, I have regretted it. Constantly. For centuries,” the duke retorted, frowning at Percy as if he had forgotten the man was there. He turned back to tinkering with the device. “Living for so long can be more a burden than a gift. I would know,” he said quietly.

He fell silent, his hands stilling and his eyes unfocusing slightly, as if seeing something very far away. Something centuries ago, perhaps, some memory capable of rendering even the Duke of Brightlingsea mute with sorrow. For he did seem sad, underneath all those inscrutable layers. Sad and lonely.

It was easy for her to spot these things in others, since she’d felt the same for a decade. Not even her children had been able to completely fill the void Rowan had left in her heart. Their time together should have been too brief for her to form such a deep bond, but then nothing involving Rowan had ever followed the rules.

She let the duke have his moment, but he soon shook off his introspection and fixed his preternatural eyes on her once more. They were so like Rowan’s eyes, but at the same time they were nothing like them. Rowan’s had been so warm and kind, whereas the duke’s eyes were…disturbingly intense. But she’d take the duke’s eyes any day over Ehrengard’s. She suppressed a shiver at
that
memory.

“But I wonder if your children’s lifespans aren’t the least of your worries, Miss Bartholomew,” he said, and if he meant to put her at ease, he failed spectacularly.

“Oh? How do you figure that?” she countered.

“Their father was a time traveler,” he said. “The moment he landed in the past, Rowan created a temporal paradox, and the moment your children were conceived, they became part of that paradox. They shouldn’t exist.”

“Well, they do,” she said with a huff.

“They do,” the duke agreed. “Which is...interesting. Probably extremely dangerous, but interesting, and definitely worthy of further study.”

And there it was. He’d broached the one subject she would have rather avoided. That ball of dread she’d carried around for years began to unfurl in her stomach.

She’d always known her children were…
different
, especially Hector. Never sick, too smart for their own good, and impervious to even the minor cuts and scrapes of childhood. And always just that slightest bit out of alignment with the rest of the world. Just as Rowan had been.

She’d not even allowed Simon to discuss the matter with her. She didn’t doubt the tinker had several theories of his own, but she’d made it more than clear that she didn’t want to hear them. Her stance on the subject had never changed, and it never would.

Once, in a busy New York thoroughfare, she’d taken her eyes off of Hector for barely a moment, only to turn around and find him standing yards away in the middle of the street, seconds from being run over by a speeding tram. She’d run toward him screaming, stumbled on a curb, and fell to her hands and knees. Just as she’d managed to regain her feet, she’d had to watch helplessly as he disappeared beneath the vehicle. Her whole world had collapsed in that moment, and she hadn’t known if she’d ever be able to breathe again.

But then she’d felt a small hand slipping into hers, and she’d looked down to find Hector staring up at her with that fathomless gaze of his. He’d asked why she’d looked so scared.

She’d been scared she’d lost him, but she’d also been scared
of
him after that, just a little bit, just as she’d been of Rowan at first. Most of all, she’d been scared
for
him and what would happen to him and to Hester should anyone else notice their peculiarities.

She didn’t think it boded well for them that the duke, of all people, had noticed. He had that same inquisitive gleam in his eerie eyes that Simon used to get when faced with a particularly challenging puzzle.

“You will not experiment on my children,” she said in a low, dangerous voice.

The duke just cocked an eyebrow at her, and she didn’t know whether he meant to imply that she was cracked in the head to even think such a thing, or to remind her of how little she could do to stop him. He turned back to tinkering upon the innards of what looked very much like the pocket watch he’d checked earlier.

She decided she’d had enough revelations for one day and turned the subject back toward what they were really down there for. “What is that?” she asked.

“A trans-temporal synchronic chronometer,” he muttered.

God, Simon would
love
this man. Not for the first time, she wished her friend was with her now, but Simon had been out of reach for months. Another problem she’d have to eventually address. But not at the moment.

“It looks like a pocket watch,” Parminter said flatly.

The look the duke sent to Parminter would have cowed lesser mortals—Hex included—but Parminter seemed blithely unaffected.

“This will allow me to accurately calculate when the time portal will open and close on the other side,” the duke explained insultingly slowly, as though he thought he were addressing imbeciles. “I have tweaked things so that I can jump back closer to Rowan’s arrival in 1887. But as a result, we cannot leave the portal open indefinitely as we did before. It will take too much energy. You’ll have to power down the device once I’m through, then power it back up at a designated time.”

“Oh, lovely,” Parminter muttered. “Nothing can go wrong there.”

Hex just swallowed with apprehension and tried not to let Parminter’s pessimism get to her.

It didn’t work.

“Once I’m through and the device is turned off, the countdown for you will start here,” he said, pointing to a clock-like device mounted on top of the main control panel, copper and steel wiring sticking out of it haphazardly. “When it reaches twelve o’clock, you must reopen the portal.”

“Will we have to wait forty-seven years?” Parminter asked dryly.

The duke glowered at the man. The joke was, apparently, not appreciated. Which was not surprising. Hex would have been a bit upset too if she’d had to spend forty-seven years in another time. The novelty would have quickly worn off.

“Time on your end will, of course, pass differently, as it did before. For you, it will be a few hours. For me, a few months. Hopefully.”

“Hopefully,” Parminter said flatly. “Meaning, you have no bloody clue, do you?”

“I’ve improved the damper,” he said, and if that wasn’t an evasion, Hex didn’t know what was. “So my memory should be unaffected during the crossing this time.”

“
Should
be?” Hex demanded.

The duke let out a frustrated sigh and ran his powerful hands through his hair, mussing it into a hopeless tangle. “The hearts are dying,” he said, nodding toward the ominous black box that was whirring with power. “The last miscalculation nearly drained them completely, so I must cross as soon as possible before the remaining energy is depleted. If I fail this time, we’ll not have another chance. And it is not just Rowan who will be lost. It will likely cost us the universe.”

“So, no pressure at all, then,” Parminter retorted.

“I’m merely stating the facts. I’m not prone to melodrama,” the duke said, shucking off his shirt with an undeniably theatrical flair.

Mr. Parminter’s cheeks heated, his eyes fixated on the duke’s torso. Hex couldn’t blame the man. The duke without his shirt on was…

Distracting.

Very distracting.

“Not prone to melodrama my arse,” Mr. Parminter muttered, just loud enough to reach Hex’s ears.

Hex cleared her throat and suppressed a snort. She tried not to gape at the duke in all of his glory too directly, for it was very much like staring straight into the sun. She settled for a sidelong glance and watched as he cast his shirt aside and strode across the tunnel, the elaborate dragon tattoo rippling with the movement of his muscles in his shoulder and back. He picked up the damper, tossed it around his neck, and began unbuttoning his trousers.

“What are you doing?” Hex cried, shielding her eyes. The man was shameless.

“Clothing doesn’t survive the crossing. I’m running low on trousers,” he said, thankfully pausing with said trousers still around his hips, though they were riding dangerously low. He was as hard to read as ever, but something told her he was laughing at her deep down.

Hex tried to focus on anything other than those hipbones. Parminter didn’t even bother, eyes wide and riveted upon the spectacle.

Damn
, the Harker men were good-looking.

But this was certainly no time to be distracted.

“And if you are not back in time?” Hex prompted.

The duke’s smirk faded. “I will be,” he assured her.

“But if you’re not? You said yourself Rowan cannot remain in the past, and neither can you.”

The duke paused for a long moment, as if reluctant to continue. “We cannot remain in the past
alive
,” the duke finally said. “There are ways to kill an Elder, Miss Bartholomew.”

Her blood ran cold. She remembered those frantic final moments with Rowan, sending him off into the unknown, wondering if it was to his death. Perhaps it had been after all. Perhaps neither of them would make it back in time.

“You would kill him, kill yourself,” she whispered, nauseated.

“Jesus,” Parminter breathed beside her, shaking his head. “That’s cold.”

The duke clenched his jaw at Parminter’s words and closed his eyes, as if he were in exquisite pain. Finally, he said, “We are but two men, Mr. Parminter. What is that compared to the rest of the universe?”

Parminter had no answer to that, and neither did Hex.

“But you love him. You can’t…” She swallowed thickly, her mind in turmoil, her hopes dwindling. Though she’d only known him for a few weeks all told, she had no doubt that Rowan had been the love of her life, and she’d never dreamed she’d get this second chance with him. But she almost would have rather Rowan had remained dead to her, a mere decade-old memory, than to have been given this hope, only to have it snatched away so cruelly.

“You can’t fail,” she settled on at last, knowing that any other option was impossible, knowing that the duke had no choice but to succeed for all of their sakes.

“I won’t,” the duke said grimly, his eyes burning with resolve. “Not this time.”

Cairo, 1887

CAIRO WAS
SPRAWLING
, bigger and more contradictory than any other city Hex had called home. The Ottoman Khedivate had long been undermined by British Colonial interference then had floundered even further in the wake of the Crimean War, when wave after wave of refugees fleeing their uninhabitable homelands in Central Europe and Asia had settled along the fertile banks of the Nile. One was likely to see an airbus full of English tourists on the same street corner as a Turkish spice seller, a Russian beggar, an old Hebrew cleric, and perhaps, if one squinted, an actual Egyptian.

The city was a study in polarity. Wealthy expatriates and the traditional Egyptian population tended to occupy the old medieval district to the east. There, in the decadent Abdeen Palace, behind the fortifications of his British allies and other less savory cohorts, the khedive himself clung onto his fading power. West of the city center, however, along the banks of the Nile, sprawled the shantytowns of the Crimean refugees, the second generation living in circumstances no better than the first.

The city was too big, too precarious an ecosystem to properly govern, and so another class of people had flocked there over the years, filling the skies with outlawed dirigibles and the streets with mayhem. Criminals loved Cairo for its lax police force, desperate populace, and ideal placement between East and West—a perfect port for smuggling all manner of goods and getting up to all manner of mischief.

Hex herself had taken advantage of a few such opportunities, but she’d always drawn the line at becoming directly involved with the Souk.

The khedive and the Brits claimed to rule Egypt, but it was the Souk—the Black Market to the rest of the world—that held the true power. It was an organization that had seeped into the cracks of every place Hex had ever lived, from London to Vienna—even as far away as the New World—since the end of Crimean War. It was as insidious as a fungus and just as unwelcome. But in Cairo, the Black Market barely bothered to hide. It was said the khedive and even the British Consul-General were in the pocket of the Swede, the Black Market’s elusive leader, and Hex didn’t doubt it.

She knew she couldn’t last much longer in the city without being sucked into the Souk’s orbit, however. Her run-in with Janus a month ago had taught her that. She’d felt under a microscope ever since, and she didn’t think she was being paranoid. Someone had funded Janus, someone had to know she was involved with his disappearance, and she didn’t fancy finding out who it was.

She needed a way out of Cairo and Egypt altogether, but that required money she didn’t have and a strategy in place to accommodate Helen’s failing health. St. Mina’s was an effective, if expensive, retreat for her sister, and Hex didn’t relish uprooting her once again. But she had no other choice. Not after Janus.

Six months and she was gone. Or at least that was her aim. She was still repairing the
Amun Ra
after her ill-fated trip to the pyramids last week, when she and a ship full of pleasure-seeking Danish tourists had been caught in a hailstorm—a hailstorm! In Egypt!—that had lasted two days. She’d never seen anything like it, unless she counted the monsoon the week before that, or the pea soup fog the week before
that
.

If the weather kept behaving as if it were drunk, it could be as long as a damn year before she’d ferried around enough gawping Europeans to earn the funds for the journey.

She just hoped the Atlantic was not plagued by the same quirks in the weather as Egypt, since even in the best conditions the crossing was taxing for Helen. But she figured her best bet at a new start, safely removed from both her father and the Black Market, was back across the ocean.

There was no returning to Baltimore, of course, not after she’d relieved the Gray family shipyards of the
Amun Ra
as a parting gesture. In Hex’s mind, the dirigible’s “liberation” was just compensation after she’d been left penniless and disgraced by Edgar Gray, though she doubted the authorities would agree. But there were other port towns in the New World, other sanitoriums for Helen, and none of them were as dangerous as Cairo.

She’d been underneath the hull all day despite the sweltering temperature, trying to weld a warped steel rudder back into its proper alignment. Her back hurt, her nose itched, and her eyes watered from the intensity of the welding flame. And she must have lost at least a stone, since she was sweating like a pig. She couldn’t remember ever experiencing a hotter day.

She was taking a moment to wipe the perspiration from her brow when she heard a throat clearing from somewhere beyond the ship. She tried to ignore it and took up her task once more. If it was Simon come around to bother her again about Rowan, she didn’t want to hear it.

A throat cleared again, and she cursed in exasperation, setting aside the welding torch and pushing herself out from underneath the hull. She shoved her goggles onto her forehead and glowered up at the interloper.

Not Simon after all. She should have known, since he’d not said anything sarcastic yet or prodded her with a boot, as he usually did when he wanted to be particularly annoying.

The stranger, whoever he might be, was glaringly out of place. Dressed in the slightly ludicrous canvas jacket, jodhpurs, and red chambray cravat that every British Colonial “on expedition” seemed to own, he was even more of a caricature of his kind with his wild white hair and long moustaches, a tan pith helmet held under one arm and a leather satchel crisscrossing his rather corpulent chest. His gray eyes twinkled down at her out of his ancient, wrinkled face, radiating good cheer.

She mistrusted him implicitly.

“Ah, good, good, quite,” the man blustered, and she could tell he was indeed very British and very upper crust just from those few words. She hadn’t even needed Simon’s boot to the side to become annoyed.

She liked the man even less.

“What do you want?” she asked without preamble, rising to her feet with reluctance.

His eyes widened at her rudeness, and something tightened in his smile, but he proceeded onward anyway. “You’re Hex Bartholomew, then? I had heard you were…of the feminine persuasion from my contacts.” He looked proud of himself for his deductions, and Hex fought hard not to roll her eyes. “Not that your femininity matters a whit to me, my girl. I am a modern man. My own daughter is an independent lady, much like yourself,” he continued, gesturing behind him.

Hex glanced toward an open-air horseless hack that sat on the edge of the docks and barely restrained her splutter of disbelief. “Like herself” her ass.

A beautiful young lady in an apple green gown, more appropriate for a fancy London drawing room than the dirty Egyptian port, sat demurely in the driver’s seat, twirling a matching parasol overhead. She had golden hair, the same cheery smile as the old man in front of her, and sparkling brown eyes.

Hex felt something cold slither down her spine as she made eye contact. The woman was remarkable only because of her ridiculously fine clothes and physical beauty, but something about the way she looked at Hex, something about her eyes, was…chilling.

It was most likely because Hex was in her oldest pair of buckskin trousers and covered in engine grease. The woman was unquestionably judging her, rather like all the women used to do back in Baltimore, even when she’d been done up in a gown just as fine as the one in front of her.

Well, she’d left that sort of spiteful, superficial existence behind years ago, and she was not about to start second guessing herself now. She liked her damned trousers, thank you very much.

She narrowed her eyes in the woman’s direction, and the woman narrowed hers back ever so slightly.

The chill did not leave her.

She turned back to the old man and cocked her eyebrow impatiently.

He started when he finally caught on to Hex’s silent question. “Ah, yes. Professor Theodore Hendrix, lately of Oxford University,” the man said, extending a hand. “And my daughter and namesake, Theodora.”

She wiped her grimy glove against her hip and shook the man’s hand in a half-hearted attempt at civility. To his credit, he
almost
managed to hide his distaste at the grease she transferred to his palm. She knew this man’s type well, and she probably should have been more welcoming to him, considering he was just the sort of client she needed at the moment: a “scholar” with more funding than sense, who needed transport to all of the usual tourist sites.

“What can I do for you, Professor Hendrix?” she asked.

He looked pleased at her attempt at manners. “I am here on behalf of my colleague, Professor Charles Netherfield, the eminent Egyptologist. Perhaps you have heard of him?”

The name sounded vaguely familiar. She had a passing knowledge of the general pecking order in the archaeological community, considering her clientele, and she had doubtless come across his name before. Though calling the man “eminent” seemed to be painting it a bit brown.

“Maybe,” she said with a shrug.

“He is engaged in a project which requires the use of your services. We have been informed that your ship is the best around,” Hendrix continued.

“You have been informed correctly,” she said, even more suspicious of him now. She had ceased trusting men who flattered her years ago, but it was hard to call him out on it. The
Amun Ra
was indeed the best, and she’d defy anyone to prove differently. “What sort of project?” she asked.

“It is an archaeological project,” Hendrix answered, and Hex couldn’t tell if he were being purposefully vague, or if he didn’t think she had the intellectual capacity to understand the details. She suspected the latter. The patronizing bastard.

Modern man indeed.

“What sort of archaeological project,” she asked calmly enough, though inwardly she was gritting her teeth.

He looked surprised at her persistence. “Ah. I am, unfortunately, just the messenger,” he said apologetically. “I’m playing errand boy, merely, for the professor’s pet project. I am not privy to the specific details, as he is keeping his research close to the cuff. You know how us bone hunters are,” he said playfully.

Oh, did she ever. She’d yet to come across an archaeologist who didn’t believe he was about to make a discovery on the scale of a Troy or Atlantis. They were irritatingly close-lipped, and when their digs didn’t pan out—usually a mere few weeks in, since very few of them were able to endure the desert for any longer than that—they pouted like four year olds. But they usually paid well.

“Perhaps you would be willing to accompany us to meet with the professor?” Hendrix suggested. “He expressed his desire to have an audience with you as soon as possible.”

“Today?” she asked, once again glancing down at her soiled clothes.

Hendrix gave her an encouraging smile. “The professor does not stand on ceremony, I assure you.” Meaning Hendrix thought she looked like a street urchin but was graciously prepared to tolerate it. “It would take but a few moments of your time. We can have you back here before sundown.”

She hesitated, something she wouldn’t have done a month ago. She’d had many similar solicitations in the past, all of which had led to money in her pocket. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d visited the Egyptian Museum for work consultations. Ever since the Western Sahara cock-up, however, she’d become a bit more cautious.

“I don’t know…”

“Come now, Miss Bartholomew, no time like the present,” Hendrix cajoled cheerily. “I’ll tell you right now, Netherfield is in rather a rush on this one, so if you don’t jump on the offer now, I doubt you’ll get another chance. The professor can be…impatient.”

She arched her brow, not at all intimidated by the implied threat. She had half a mind to tell Hendrix to piss off and find some other pilot—who wouldn’t have a ship half as gorgeous as the
Amun Ra
, by the by. But she didn’t have the luxury of
not
considering Hendrix’s offer, no matter how tedious she found the whole thing. Not when she needed the money so urgently.

Besides, between an old man and the hothouse flower that was Theodora, she didn’t think she had much to worry about.

She sighed and followed Hendrix to the hack.

A FEW BLOCKS
into their journey, Theodora abruptly turned the hack east toward the inner city, in the exact opposite direction of the museum. Hex could only sigh in frustration at her own impulsiveness. This time, at least, she probably should have heeded her paranoia.

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded.

Professor Hendrix, sitting next to her, smiled with false cheer. “Oh, did I not say? Professor Netherfield is staying at the palace, my dear girl. Quite the treat!”

Hex cursed inwardly and stared out at the passing streets, her mind racing alongside her steadily mounting anxiety. Abdeen Palace was at the political heart of the city, where the Khedivate, the British Protectorate, and the Souk maintained their delicate balance of power—and hoarded the city’s wealth. The only positive thing about her predicament was that the temperature seemed to have dropped twenty degrees the moment they entered the inner city, as if the rich had hoarded the temperate weather alongside their money.