Mina grimaced. “He wasn’t human, then.”
“No. I’m not sure what. I’ve heard a rumor or two. Constructed beings. Never anything concrete. As it were.” He laughed, which made him cough. When he’d finished, and Mina was glaring at him, he went on. “This one had a trap inside.”
“I’d say it did. Who could do that?” Mina wrapped her arms around her body. “Make a fake person with a cloud of poison inside? How do you figure that out?”
“Most people don’t,” said Stephen. “We can use that.”
Seventeen
Stephen claimed he was recovering without help. He claimed he could talk. He might have been right. Mina didn’t know much about either poison gas or dragons.
She did know that he was pale, even by the dim light through the cab window, and that he talked at half his normal speed, with frequent pauses to cough. She wanted to sit by him, or at least to keep a hand on his arm and give him what reassurance human touch could provide, but she hung back. Too much attention could just irritate an ill person, and she didn’t want to be one of the fluttering women her brothers had both complained about.
Besides, that was a dangerous path to go down.
Mina kept silent for the rest of the cab ride, and Stephen seemed glad enough to follow her lead. At his house, she passed him into the hands of Baldwin, by way of an aghast-looking James. Baldwin himself kept his emotions well hidden, only a quick exhalation showing that he wasn’t completely used to finding his master in such a state.
As Baldwin and James helped Stephen up the stairs, the older man also cast a sideways glance at Mina. She felt his gaze take in everything about her, from her disarranged hair to her lack of gloves. She said nothing.
Instead, she went upstairs by the back way, conscious of Emily’s startled look as their paths crossed. When the door to her room closed, she leaned against it heavily for a minute, resting her head on the thick wood, then crossed a short distance to sit down on the bed, absently undoing her coat buttons.
She was supposed to be pinning up her hair again. That had been Mina’s plan: make herself look respectable, then go see what she could find in the kitchen. When she undid her coat, though, she sat and stared at her hands. They looked the same as they’d always done: short nails, faint ink stains. The night had left no mark on them—even if she felt that it should have.
Poison gas. Fake people. And Stephen, coughing blood.
She shuddered. Her tears in front of the lodging house hadn’t all been fake. Three near-death experiences in as many weeks were overdoing it even for her nerves.
Someone knocked at the door. Mina sucked in her breath and shrank backwards on the bed. Then her mind reasserted itself, but in no particularly reassuring manner. The other servants almost never sought her out.
“Come in?” she asked, her voice much higher than normal.
The door opened. Of all the people she hadn’t been expecting, Mrs. Baldwin stood in the doorway, her hands clasped behind her back. “I hate to be intruding, Miss Seymour,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’ve a great need to talk with you.”
“Do you?” Mina said faintly. “Oh, good.”
“Aye.” Mrs. Baldwin looked at the room over Mina’s shoulder. “You see, his lairdship told my husband that you’re the one with answers about this evening.”
Mina’s eyes hurt. Her head hurt. Hermindhurt, like her legs after a three-hour walk. She cleared her throat. “And why,” she began, in the most clipped tones she’d learned for Carter’s, “do you think you’re entitled to answers?”
“We’re living here,” said Mrs. Baldwin simply. “And we’re none of us blind or deaf or stupid. We may not know what’s been happening the last few weeks, but we all know it’s something odd.” She took a breath. “Clyde and I have been with his lairdship some time now. We know there are often odd things happening around him, around all of his blood, and we haven’t been in the habit of asking many questions. But he hasn’t been in the habit of coming home injured, either.”
“It’s his own neck to risk, isn’t it?”
“Is it, now?” Mrs. Baldwin asked. “Have you ever known a man’s enemies to care much about making sure his servants were safe?”
“Well—” Mina remembered the shadows. And the thieves—had they caught her alone, she wouldn’t have ended the night happily. “No,” she admitted.
Mrs. Baldwin nodded. “Well, then.”
“Maybe you should come in,” said Mina.
With another nod—more polite, this one, and less satisfied—the housekeeper entered and settled herself on the small chair by the window. Mina perched on the edge of the bed and tried to think, to balance fairness with discretion.
“There are some things I can’t tell you or anyone. Lord MacAlasdair might, but they’re his to tell. He does have an enemy. Someone from his past.”
At that, Mrs. Baldwin’s eyes flickered just a little. “Ah. Not someone he can tell the Yard about, then?”
“He says he’s worked with the police a little. But—”
