Read Online Of Silk and Steam by Bec McMaster - Free Book Online Page B

promptly and helped her to remove the heavy gown. As she dressed, Mina was unable to stop her thoughts from drifting somewhere far away from fact.
    Goethe was dead. That alone dealt her a pang of guilt and regret somewhere in her chest. She’d warned him, after all. What else could she have done?
    Not given in to the queen and delivered the messages in the first place.
    Queen Alexandra had caught her at a weak moment. “ Please, Your Grace… I should be forever grateful… ”
    And Mina had given in, for in truth she knew there was very little pleasure in the queen’s life. The prince consort saw to it that his pretty little human wife was well supplied with the laudanum she desired and otherwise kept her in her chambers, locked away from the world. As the queen’s Mistress of Robes, Mina alone saw his petty cruelties. Pity was not an emotion she should let herself suffer, and yet she had allowed it to dictate actions she knew were dangerous.
    Fact: Mina was going to have to tell the queen that the man she had come to care for was murdered.
    Mina’s shoulders slumped.
    At least she had destroyed the note. Goethe was dead and the prince consort would eye his wife with suspicion, but he wouldn’t know what the letter had contained. Or that Mina had delivered it herself.
    “There we are, mum,” Hannah murmured respectfully.
    Mina came out of her thoughts and found herself dressed in a tight velvet day dress. It was so dark a blue as to be almost black, and gold epaulets gleamed on her shoulders. A spill of white lace framed the neckline of her jacket, with golden fringe outlining each layer of her bias-cut skirts. Eminently fashionable, but nobody else saw it as armor the way she did.
    “Will you be turning in for the day after your meeting, mum?” Hannah asked, fetching Mina’s hat and pinning her hair into a chignon.
    “No.” There was too much to do to sleep. The prince consort would know by now that Goethe was dead and that a woman had witnessed it. The theft of the airship would only draw further attention to the entire affair. She had to act quickly to allay the prince consort’s suspicions while most of the Echelon slept the day away.
    But first, Gow.
    The man was waiting for her in her study, wearing a pair of slim-fitting trousers and a tweed coat. He was such a quiet, unassuming man that the eye practically begged to skip over him. His was a face that would blend into any crowd.
    “Your Grace.” He bowed as she locked the door behind her. “To what extent may I be of service?”
    The House of Casavian’s man-of-affairs, he’d served her father before he died and now herself. It wasn’t until after her father’s death, however, that she had become fully aware of the extent of Gow’s resources.
    First things first.
    “I have a task for you,” she said, wasting no time on polite necessities.
    “Of course.”
    “I want you to find out everything you can about Leo Barrons.”
    A slim eyebrow rose. “The Duke of Caine’s heir?”
    “Yes.”
    “Personal, professional, financial?” he mused.
    “Everything,” she replied, her eyes narrowing slightly and the ghostly impression of a pair of lips haunting her own for a moment. Distracting her from the question that had begun to circulate in her mind while she traveled home—the question of why he’d been at the Venetian Gardens so soon after disembarking from the dirigible from Saint Petersburg. Certainly not for her.
    “Most importantly…” she continued, “I want to know what his weaknesses are.”
    * * *
    The Warren lay directly in the heart of Whitechapel, a large house with heavy brick walls lining the accompanying yard and lights gleaming in the top layer of windows. The lower floor of the house was full of cobwebs and dust, the timber floorboards so creaky they threatened to break beneath each step, but upstairs was a gleaming haven of light and warmth, the scent of beeswax, elegant furnishings, and modern conveniences like hot