“None taken, Mr. Ogunlana. I have lived with my scars for a long time.”
Kehinde smiled, tapping the marks on his own face. “Something we have in common. And please, Miss Elderwood, call me Kehinde. Come—your uncle’s coach awaits.”
Kehinde pushed the luggage cart forward with surprising vigor. He moved through the crowd effortlessly, even with the cart, and soon they were outside, in the open air. The street outside King’s Cross was a filthy thoroughfare bustling with people. Carriages and omnibuses rattled past them, depositing their passengers on the station’s steps. Brick buildings rose above the street, each as tall as Elderwood House but crammed together into rows.
Kehinde hailed the carriage and it stopped before them, pulled by lithe gray mares. As he strapped her trunks onto the rack, Elswyth let her eyes wander around the street. People shouted,carriages bounced on cobblestones, and soot-covered children ran through the crowd.
A young boy stood on the station’s steps, holding a stack of newspapers. He called out to anyone who passed by, and a small crowd surrounded him, handing him coins and taking their papers. “Reaper Returns! Girls butchered! Three pence!”
Elswyth approached the boy, hesitated for a moment, and then handed him three pennies from her reticule. The coins disappeared into the boy’s pocket, and Elswyth took her paper. The headline read, in bold black print: “Reaper Strikes Again. Dreadful Mutilation of a 5th Woman.”
“Miss Elderwood?” called Kehinde. He stood, looking at her curiously, at the door to the carriage. Elswyth tucked the newspaper into her handbag, concealing it, and then stepped inside.
The carriage stopped before a stately house in Mayfair, far from the soot and filth of King’s Cross. It was a stone manor house, snow-covered with wintering ivy that crawled over a red door. The gate was small, and a gravel path led through slumbering flower gardens on either side. They rattled past a stone sign that readIV DEVEREUX PLACE. Elswyth disembarked from the carriage, onto the street, where Kehinde unloaded her trunks. All around her, women in their finery dallied along the concourses, taking their daily walks. The carriages were large and private, and quaint shops lined the streets. The air still reeked of a city, but Elswyth felt she could breathe through her nose again.
Kehinde led her into the house, opening the red door into a grand foyer where the ceiling stood two stories above her, capped with a green-glass dome. A winged staircase of polished mahoganyled to a second-floor mezzanine, which circled the main chamber, branching off into several halls. To her right, a stately drawing room waited behind half-closed doors.
She barely had time to take in the splendor of it before a booming voice interrupted her, echoing down the stairs. “Elswyth, my dear girl!”
A silver-haired man in a fine gray suit waited at the top of the grand staircase. Small details—a purple silk cravat, neatly groomed beard, and a walking stick topped with a silver lion’s head—marked him as a nobleman. His eyes were bright blue, crinkled at the edges by a seemingly permanent grin. The man came down the stairs quickly, but he leaned on his cane, walking with a pronounced limp.
Elswyth dipped into a curtsy. “Lord Devereux. I must extend my deepest gratitude—”
“Oh, none of that,” the man said. He pulled her into a tight hug, and she made a sound of alarm. His eyes glistened. “Apologies for the informality, but you must call me Uncle Percival. I know you must not remember me. Why, it must seem as though we’ve never even met. But I remember you, my dear. Last time I saw you, you were small and red as a radish!”
Elswyth turned her scarred side away, not knowing what to do with the man’s exuberance. “Then it is nice to see you again, I suppose.”
Her uncle shook his head, again looking at her face. “Eden, you look just like your mother. But you must get that all the time. Apple falling from the tree, and all that.”
Percival turned to Kehinde, meeting the man’s eyes. “How did she fare?”
Kehinde smiled. “An ambitious porter made her a few pence lighter. But on the whole, I’d say she’s adapting quite naturally.”
“Wonderful. I’ll imagine you’ll want to freshen up after such a journey. Is there anything I can get you right away? Tea?”
“Tea would be lovely, Uncle.”
“Of course, of course. Kehinde makes a cup of hibiscus tea so scrumptious it makes me wish I were a floromancer. Kehinde, will you be joining us?”
Kehinde inclined his head. “I would like to, but I’m afraid I have my meeting with Mr. Gambari.”
“Of course,” Percival said. “Send my regards. And do remind him again that the vote is next Tuesday, yes?”
Kehinde nodded, smiled at Elswyth, and disappeared out the open door. Percival clapped his hands and said, “I’ll get these bags later. Let me start the kettle, and then I’ll give you a tour.”
Elswyth nodded, and her uncle went to the kitchens. It was a bit strange for a nobleman to make his own tea, but Elswyth did not mention it. In a moment Percival returned and ushered her through the foyer and into the drawing room. It was high-ceilinged and painted a rich emerald color with ornate wainscoting of red mahogany. A stately hearth of black marble occupied the center of the room, the mantel held aloft by twin caryatids carved into the shape of dryads. Two leather sofas sat across from each other over a long mahogany table.
This was all splendid, but not out of the ordinary. What was shocking were the corpses.
Taxidermied animals hung from mounts on every inch of the walls: A meerkat peered out of its papier-mâché burrow, an antelope leapt from a platform set with grass, and rare birds of paradise with their kaleidoscopic colors flitted, frozen between branches, held aloft by concealed wires. Clever-faced monkeys, golden-scaled serpents, heads of buffalo with dark, tired faces—all ofthem stared down at Elswyth with glassy eyes, possessed by an unearthly stillness. It made her skin crawl to look at them. All that senseless death, mutilated to give the appearance of life, resurrected through the necromancy of wire and glass.
Elswyth knew that Percival Devereux had been an explorer, and a rather famous one, although her father rarely spoke of him. Occasionally, they had received letters from his travels, which her mother would read aloud to Elswyth and Persephone as though they were adventure novels. But as Elswyth understood it, the Lords Elderwood and Devereux had not spoken overmuch since her mother’s passing. Elswyth did not, therefore, anticipate the extent of her uncle’s eccentricities.
In the far corner of the room, beneath the tall window, stood a stuffed lioness. The beast reared on her hind legs, forepaws raised in a swipe, claws extended and teeth bared in an eternal snarl. Even with her distaste, Elswyth could not contain her curiosity. She stepped toward it.
“Ah, yes—my prize,” Percival said. He stood alongside her, watching her take in the beast. “This lion killed fifteen people before I hunted her down. They called her the Man-Eater of Njombe.”
Percival raised his fingers, curling them into claws, and made a terribly silly roaring sound.
