Corpse & Crown Read online

  “What do you think?”

  She took a second sip. It was stronger than tea, and she thought she might have wanted a bit more milk and sugar in it, but after taking a bite of the buttered bread, she decided it was fine as it was. “I like it.”

  “Brings you back to life, doesn’t it?”

  She took another sip and felt more wide awake. “That it does.” It was odd, sitting next to this strange boy in a strange city, surrounded by other night owls. She watched the two soiled doves as they laughed and gossiped, then caught the drover letting his cow lick the butter from his hands. When she turned around, she caught Dodger watching her.

  “All done?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  He took their cups back to the vendor and then walked beside her away from the light and the people, his hand hovering near her elbow but not quite touching. She stumbled, and that was the excuse he had been looking for. His hand closed over her elbow, making her feel warm. She stopped in her tracks.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Holding your arm?”

  “No.” She gave an impatient shake of her head. “All of this. Taking me there, buying me coffee, bringing me home—what are you expecting in return?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So you were just helping me out of the goodness of your heart?” She snorted. “Pull the other one.”

  “Maybe at first I wasn’t thinking of helping you,” he admitted. “But I’m not looking for anything now.”

  She turned to face him, withdrawing her arm from his hand. “Come on. You’re a thief. You don’t just help people.” Suddenly, she realized something. “You pinched my change purse earlier tonight, didn’t you?” She held out her hand. “Give it back.”

  His dark eyes held hers without a trace of embarrassment. “Check your cape pocket, Aggie. I already did.”

  She patted her pocket—it was there.

  “Count it, if you like,” said Dodger. “It’s all there.”

  “Don’t think I won’t.” Glaring at him, she opened the purse and counted each coin. He’d been telling the truth, though—he had left it all, down to the last thrup’ny bit. “What’s your game, then? And don’t hand me some rubbish line about love at first sight.”

  “Don’t you believe in such a thing?”

  Aggie stashed the purse back in her pocket. “Even if I did, it’s not for the likes of girls like me. Or boys like you, for that matter.” She knew she couldn’t be looking particularly pretty at the moment, but she was well aware of her appearance even at her best: solid. Buxom. Strong. Not the kind of girl who got escorted and protected and cosseted. As for Dodger, he was a flash man, fond of quick wins and hasty escapes.

  He shook his head, bemused. “So sure you know what I’m like?”

  “So sure I know what men are like.”

  His laugh was a mixture of ruefulness and admiration. “Good Lord,” he said. “You’re more jaded than I am.”

  Maybe it was the whole unsettling drama of the night, or the unexpected impulse she felt to step into Dodger’s arms and rest her head on his shoulder. Whatever the cause, anger flared in her, making her reckless and bold. “Give it a rest. What is it you’re after, if it’s not money? This?” Her gloved hands grabbed at his lapels as she tugged him closer and kissed him hard on the mouth.

  It was a quick, blunt mockery of a kiss, intended to take this impudent lad down a notch. She drew back, folding her arms in front of her. “Or were you hoping for more than just one chaste kiss? A little tongue, perhaps? Or perhaps a five-minute alleyway romance?”

  She expected some equally brazen rejoinder, or perhaps a passionate denial—no, no, such base thoughts never crossed me mind. Instead, he reached up and touched her cheek with such tenderness that she forgot to move away. “I didn’t hope for anything. That was my first kiss, by the by.”

  “Now, that’s a load of bull.”

  “On me life. Strike me down if I’m lying.”

  She gave a huff of exasperation. He was confabulating, of course he was, but there was a tiny sliver of doubt in her, and just in case he was telling the truth, she leaned forward and closed the distance between them again. A first kiss shouldn’t be done in anger, after all. She pressed her mouth to his and then paused, their lips barely touching, breathing each other in and out. “There,” she said softly. “That’s better.”

  Then, for no good reason, she found herself closing that miniscule distance and kissing him again.

  It was very different from kissing Byram—different from kissing any boy she had ever kissed before. He seemed to have no plan, no agenda, no final destination in mind. She was almost exactly his height, and everything lined up with startling, riveting exactness—chest to chest, belly to belly, hips to hips. They kissed some more, and then he buried his nose in her hair, breathing in the scent of her neck, nuzzling the curl of her ear. He pressed kisses into her skin, then cupped her jaw in his hand and kissed her again before leaning his forehead into hers.

  “We should probably get you back.”

  “Yes,” she said, flustered. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.” Yet she knew, given the chance, she would probably wind up doing it again. She knew how to protect herself against most boys’ stratagems, but this streetwise romantic was something unexpected.

  He grinned at her. “Sorry won’t do it,” he said. “You compromised me.”

  She looked pointedly around them at the empty alley. “No witnesses.”

  “I was saving my first kiss for my one true love.”

  She snorted. “True love, me unbustled arse.” Not that he meant a word of it.

  He took her hand and raised it to his lips, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “I’ll kiss that, too, if you like.”

  “Come on,” she said, cuffing him lightly on the shoulder. “Let’s get walking before you start composing a sonnet to my charms.”

  “Too late,” he said, falling into step beside her. “I’m utterly besotted with you now.”

  “Not my fault if you’re that easy.”

  “Blaming the victim? Typical.”

  She laughed at his affronted tone, and the spark between them flared back to life. “What do you want, Dodger?” This time, she did not ask it as a challenge, and this time, he didn’t pause to consider the answer.

  “I don’t know. Maybe...just to get to know you better?”

  “Sorry, luv,” she said with a pang of regret, “but that’s one thing I can’t afford.”

  9

  William Frankenstein knew he was in trouble. He was fine as long as he remained stationary, propped up by the polished mahogany bar, but when he moved his head too quickly, the entire lavishly decorated room seemed to rotate on its axis. He wished he could sit down, but that was impossible. The Crown might be one of London’s most luxuriously appointed gin palaces, filled with marble accents, gilt-embossed wallpaper and an elaborately framed mirror over the bar to reflect the profusion of flickering glass sconces, but it catered to the poor, and the one luxury it did not offer was a seat. The advert over the bar showed His Royal Highness Prince Albert in full Highland tartan, saluting a bottle of The Celebrated Balmoral Mixture, but even this elixir only cost a penny a glass.

  Unlike the public houses that offered cheap cuts of meat and oysters, gin palaces served no food and offered no seats, and most of the day laborers and washerwomen standing around Will were drinking their dinner while growing steadily more belligerent. On Will’s left, a red-nosed man kept thumping his copy of The Police Illustrated News.

  “It’s happening, I tell you,” he told his companion, a blowsy woman in a battered hat decorated with one cloth daisy. “The kaiser’s secret corpse walker army is preparing to invade our shores!”

  “You can’t believe all the rubbish you read in that rag,” said the woman. “Last week they was repo
rting that some amorous octopus attacked a bunch of girls on Brighton beach.”

  “Oh, yeah?” The man peered at her suspiciously over his glass of gin. “And how do I know you ain’t one of them German spies?”

  Will turned carefully to check on Byram, who was on his right, chatting up a curvy blonde in a faded red dress. “You’re awful,” she said to Byram in a tone that implied quite the opposite.

  “Hullo, Will,” said Byram, his arm draped over the bar so that it almost touched his companion’s shoulder. “Meet Nancy.”

  Nancy’s eyes gleamed with mischief. “A good friend, from what I hear,” she said, offering her hand. He could feel the warmth of her skin through her lace half gloves. What exactly had Byram been telling her? Not the truth, but perhaps some hint of it, tucked in between the old stories about childhood friendship and boarding school hijinks. Nancy looked too young and fresh-faced to be a dollymop, but there was no mistaking her easy smiles. “Seems you two have gotten up to all sorts,” she added. Dear Lord, she couldn’t mean—Byram wouldn’t tell her about that, would he?

  “I’ve been telling Nancy all about the travails of being a second-semester medical student,” said Byram, as if reading Will’s mind. “And that little prank we played with the skeleton in Grimbald’s anatomy class.”

  “Oh, right. Of course.” Will gave a weak laugh.

  “You two certainly know how to have a good time,” said Nancy, draining her glass. “I like a good time, myself.”

  I’ll just bet you do, thought Will, and then realized what she was saying. “Byram, Old Man, it’s getting a bit late. Perhaps we should be getting back to our room?”

  “It’s not even midnight yet,” said Byram, regarding Will out of half-closed eyes before turning back to the pretty tart. “Oh, look, your glass is empty, Nancy. Can’t have that. What are you drinking? Cream of the Valley? Dew of Ben Nevis? Mother’s ruin?”

  “Order me a gin shrub, darling, and I’ll be eternally in your debt.”

  “Will you now?” Still gazing at Nancy, Byram said, “And what about you, Will? What d’ye fancy?” For a moment, Will found himself staring at his friend, struck anew by how handsome and un-British he seemed. With his thick, darkly waving hair and dark eyes, he could have been an Italian princeling or a Romany musician. Then Will became aware of Nancy, observing him as he watched Byram with amusement. She’s got your number, he thought.

  “Beg your pardon,” he said, “but I have to go see a man about a dog.” He nodded abruptly to Nancy, then accidentally kicked Byram’s walking stick, which had been leaning against the side of the bar. It fell to the floor with a clatter, but Will didn’t dare bend to pick it up. “Sorry,” he said, making his shaky way toward the door.

  Outside, the cold air made Will feel fractionally more alert, but The Crown’s brilliant gaslight forced him to squint. Like most gin palaces, The Crown advertised itself with an enormous light fixture, and the three rows of flickering burners illuminated the street outside the establishment like a fisherman’s lure. It was late, though, and there were only two figures standing in the shadows, looking as though they were undecided about where to spend their coin. Even addlepated from the gin, Will noticed that they seemed an unlikely pair. They were both young, but while one was dark and broad and unshaven under a workman’s cap, the other was slender, with an aesthete’s blond hair worn under a gentleman’s top hat. The thought of what might bring those two together brought a flush to his cheeks and made him dart his gaze away.

  Ducking into the shadows of the alley, Will leaned against the filthy wall and attempted to unbutton his fly. Damn, he was thoroughly stewed. He didn’t want to think about how he would feel in class tomorrow morning.

  Being drunk always sneaked up on Will. Normal people had a drink and felt it smooth the rough edges away. But I’m not normal, and not just when it comes to drinking. All day, every day, he was constantly, exquisitely, painfully conscious of himself, like an actor in a play who knew he was wrong for the part. Wherever he went, whatever he did, he was goaded by a sly little voice in his head that whispered, “There’s a reason you don’t feel like you measure up to your brother.”

  Victor had been the inquisitive one, the bold one, willing to risk bruises and broken bones to investigate what might be hidden in the rafters, and cheerful about enduring the pain if the gamble didn’t pay off and he fell. Will had been the moody child, too sensitive, happy to have his adventures within the pages of a book.

  One night, he had been seated in a large chair in the library, reading, and his father hadn’t realized he was there. “Will should have been a girl,” his father told his mother. “But since he’s not, you’d best stop treating him like one.” They had sent him off to Eton after that, clearly assuming that the company of boys his own age would thrash some toughness into him. Instead, he had found Byram.

  Chin up, Will. It’s a good thing we get to see the future leaders of our nation before they have the wit to mask how monstrous they really are.

  Byram had been the first person to say that Will had a hollow leg. “He looks like a slip of a fellow,” he liked to tell people, “but don’t try to match him or he’ll drink you under the table.” It was true, up to a point. The first drink hardly registered with him. Gin was much easier than beer to drink, at least for him, and if he drank the second glass quickly enough, he began to feel a little quieter in himself. By the third drink, he could contemplate his brother and Lizzie without the roiling shame of remembering the night he’d discovered that Victor was alive—reanimated as a Bio-Mechanical. He had tried to shoot his brother that night and had nearly murdered Lizzie instead. They had both forgiven him, but he still felt a twist of misery whenever he thought about it.

  Or, at least, whenever he thought about it sober.

  By the fourth drink, he could even joke about that night. He could talk about his inability with firearms and his lack of athletic ability as if it were all a huge joke, and look at Byram without worrying that he would give himself away.

  Unfortunately, at some point, he always had another.

  Five drinks in, and he was all too willing to give himself away. At that point, his legs felt a long, long way from his brain, and he thought about the likelihood that he would fail out of school, or worse, not fail, and have to spend the rest of his life as a mediocre doctor and the genial visiting bachelor at other people’s family tables.

  He also thought about all the nights when Byram couldn’t sleep because his bad foot was aching, and how he used to massage the twisted muscles until they unknotted and his friend’s breathing slowed. He thought about the nights he hadn’t stopped until Byram’s breath grew ragged again. We’re getting a bit old for schoolboy pranks, Will.

  Byram had always been skittish about the times they touched each other, but ever since the night they had walked Aggie home, he had seemed more distant. William didn’t know everything that had happened between the two of them, but back at Ingold, he had been jealous of the way Byram looked at Aggie. Then something had changed. What had she said, the other night? A garden variety pervert. Will was certain Aggie hadn’t meant to insult Byram, yet that evening had marked some kind of change in him.

  And now he was romancing this gin-house tart. No, that was unfair. But Will didn’t want to be fair, he wanted... He wanted things he couldn’t have.

  Will came to himself with a start. He must have drifted off, a daft thing to do when you were standing propped against a filthy alley wall with your trousers partway undone. Time to do your business and then get yourself home, he thought.

  “Having a bit of trouble, are we?”

  Will flinched, startled by the voice behind him. “Afraid I’m a bit fuddled,” he admitted, not turning around. “I’m all right, though.” The speaker sounded like a gentleman, so perhaps he was just checking to make sure that Will was all right.

  “Are you certain? Perhaps yo
u need a helping hand?”

  Dear Lord, perhaps the stranger was checking on him for an entirely different reason. Will shook his head, buttoning himself up. “Appreciate the offer, but I’m just heading back in.” Maybe there would come a time when he stopped thinking about his friend and roommate and considered other options, but this was not the night.

  “Don’t be so hasty.” It was the young man who had been loitering in front of The Crown with his thuggish companion. He was a little too thin, but still good-looking, even if his breath did have a faint, unpleasant, medicinal smell. “What’s your name? I’m Oliver Twist.”

  “William Frankenstein. But I’m afraid I can’t stay. My friend is waiting for me inside,” said Will, giving the man an apologetic smile as he turned to leave.

  “I could be your friend.” Now the man was standing directly in front of Will, blocking his way. A prickle of unease penetrated the fog of gin and fatigue around Will’s brain.

  “Please, don’t hurt me.”

  Twist raised his eyebrows and smiled as if Will had told him a secret. “Who said anything about hurting?”

  “I’ve got some money,” Will stammered, reaching into his pockets and pulling out some notes. He felt sick from gin and embarrassment. He wanted Twist to take the money and leave him alone—or, at least most of him wanted that.

  “That’s obliging of you.” Twist stuffed the notes into his own pockets. “Now, what were you wanting to pay me for?” He took a step closer.

  “My friend will be looking for me.” The bright glitter of the gasworks was just around the corner. There were people, crowds, Byram, just feet away from him.