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Chapter Twenty-Two

An Admission

The smell of brine and fish was thick in the air as Beatrice and Drake approached the water’s edge.

The Thames looked eerie in moonlight. The water sparkled silver and the ships’ sails rustled in the night breeze, small waves sending the boats creaking from side to side.

Most of the boats were quiet, their sails furled, captains asleep somewhere safe on shore.

Except one.

A packet boat rocked on the water, movement aboard drawing the eye. A few sailors walked around the deck, unfurling sails. A gangway stretched from the dock to the boat, and crew members carried boxes of mail and packages from shore to ship.

Though Beatrice had only dreamed of embarking on a voyage by sea, she knew that packets were the quickest way to travel from England to the colonies.

They were used mostly to transport letters and a small crew, but a few passengers were also permitted on board.

It appeared that this voyage would contain a passenger.

He waited at the end of the gangway, two trunks at his feet.

Horace Vane—very much alive.

“I knew it,” Drake growled.

Mr. Vane turned toward the sound of his voice, his chiseled features and salt-and-pepper hair illuminated by the moon. He let out a noise somewhere between frustration and laughter.

“Beatrice Steele and Vivek Drake,” he said, “you two have a knack for turning up where you don’t belong.”

“We know the truth,” Beatrice told him. “It’s all over, Horace.”

“Mr. Vane,” he said, correcting her, his eyes crinkling as he smiled.

“You have not earned such respect,” she told him.

“I don’t have to earn it,” Horace said, squaring his shoulders. “There is a hierarchy in the world, inherent things which gentlemen like me are due. I am your superior, Beatrice.”

“That is Inspector Steele to you,” Drake said. “And I do not think you could be considered anyone’s superior.”

“Why do you hate artists so much?” Beatrice demanded. “It was only one you were after, in the end. Oliver Beauchamp.”

Horace’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps at first,” he said in a low voice.

“But I realized something important, Beatrice . Oliver was representative of the dangers all artists pose. I do not ‘hate’ artists. I fear them.” He lifted his chin.

“I am not na?ve. I see the influence that a painting, a song, a performance, has on people’s hearts and minds.

It can effect change. Topple the correct ways and order of society.

Give power to those who have never had it and therefore don’t deserve it.

Precisely the things I do not want.” He held up his arm, drawing back his sleeve.

“Before the NAGS, there was the Brotherhood of the Moth. A pact between myself, Cecil, and Walter. From the shadows, we would do what needed to be done to preserve proper principles. We created the NAGS years after our schoolboy pact, so we could recruit others to the cause. But not everyone would go as far as us. The NAGS were our wings, but we were the thorax, ensuring what needed to happen would occur.”

“Why the thorax?” Drake cut in. “I don’t follow your metaphor—”

“It is just a little wordplay!” Horace snapped, his cheery tone faltering for the first time. “I never said I was a writer.”

“ That is obvious,” Drake replied.

“You will face justice for what you have done. And I don’t mean your faulty metaphors—I am speaking of murder,” Beatrice told him, taking a step forward, but Horace just chuckled again, his affable countenance returning.

“I don’t know why you are so angry with me, Beatrice. I have been nothing but nice to you. And I didn’t have to be. I am a nice man.”

“You killed four people,” Beatrice said incredulously. “Two of whom were your closest confidantes!”

“Who betrayed me,” Horace told her. He indicated his tattoo. “ I took our bond seriously.”

“This has gone on longer than the villain’s speech in Figaro and Don Giovanni, ” Drake cut in.

“A failed crossover,” he explained to Beatrice, then turned back to Horace.

“Your monologue is up; we are apprehending you now.” He lunged forward, but Horace held up something that gleamed in the moonlight.

A blade, embossed with the words THE SWEET MAJESTIC .

“I had an extra one of these made,” he said conversationally. “One should always have a backup. If you had done so with your dress back when my carriage first sprayed you with mud, Beatrice, all of this could have been avoided. Isn’t life funny that way?”

“We know you made custom knives to try to frame Percival Nash,” Beatrice said dryly. “It was hardly clever; Drake noted at once that they were fake.”

“I also sent a squirrel statue to frame Felicity Lore,” Horace replied, “just in case Percival ever came up with an alibi.”

“You do always have a backup,” Beatrice said. “Is that because you are a backup? Diana never wanted to marry you.” She let the words hang in the air.

If she could unarm him somehow, they could still catch him, she thought furiously.

“Diana did not know what she wanted. And in the end, it wasn’t her decision to make,” Horace said pleasantly. He was frustratingly unprovoked. “An artist would never have been an appropriate match for such a high-class lady. She was always meant to be mine.”

“A lady must have a say,” Beatrice told him. “Or else it is not true love.”

It happened too quickly for Beatrice to register: The moment the words left her lips, Horace raised his arm and hurled the knife through the air, straight for Beatrice. Drake shoved her aside, and the blade lodged itself in his arm. He crumpled to the dock.

Beatrice immediately rushed to Drake’s side.

“Now, that is the appropriate use of your skills, Beatrice,” Horace told her. “Assisting Mr. Drake.”

“ Inspector Drake,” she snapped. His wound was deep, but it would not be fatal. Not if she could stop the bleeding—but she had to fast.

“Let it be a lesson to you: Never try to stand on equal footing with a gentleman,” Horace continued. “Nothing good can come of it. Though,” he added thoughtfully, “I suppose Mr. Drake is no gentleman, in the end.”

Even with these final words, he still spoke amiably. Kindly. He was nice, Beatrice thought.

But nice did not mean much at all.

Horace turned on his heel and ascended the gangway. Two valets appeared and dragged the trunks on board, and a ship hand pulled up the gangway behind them, collapsing the connection to shore.

The ship began to float from the port toward the horizon. The sky and water were the same pitch-black, blending together, and it was as if the ship were being swallowed by darkness.

“Drake,” Beatrice said, focusing in on her partner, “are you all right?” She grasped the knife and pulled it from his wound, then tore a strip of fabric from her Huxley costume. She wrapped it around his arm, tying it tightly to stop the bleeding.

For a moment Drake was quiet as he composed himself. And then, he spoke in a low, angry growl.

“No one gets away with ruining an evening at the opera…or quadruple homicide.”

“It’s too late,” Beatrice told him miserably. “The ship is leaving. He already got away with it.”

Drake’s mouth curved into a smile. “If you ever get to see an opera in full, you shall learn that the best ones have a twist in the third act. We have come to ours,” he told her.

He winced in pain as he pushed himself to his feet. With his unharmed arm, he reached into his jacket and withdrew a small parcel. He tore it open with his teeth, took out the contents, and hurled them toward the boat.

As a handful of little balls hurtled through the air, Beatrice looked from them to the packet, and recognized the stamp on the container. Mr. McCrockett’s Shop-o’-Tricks—her father’s favorite brand of firecrackers.

The balls scattered in the wind, but they hit their intended mark.

They smacked against the ship’s sail, and the impact caused their casings to implode.

Seven tiny explosions lit up, orange and red against the moonlit sails.

There were shouts aboard as sailors rushed to the sails, but the damage was done.

The sails caught fire, their rough fabric no match for pyrotechnics.

Beatrice could see how her father had accidentally burned down a wing of their home back in Swampshire—he favored heavy-duty pranks.

The sailors began to scramble. Beatrice could just make out Horace on the deck, his face darkening. He glared at Beatrice, then turned and strode away, toward the ship’s bow.

“Horace was right,” Drake told her, turning back to Beatrice. “You should not stand on equal footing with me. You must stand higher.” With fiery determination in his eye, he knelt down and interlaced his hands.

“But then you won’t be able to follow me,” she said, meeting his gaze. “I will have to go alone.”

“Yes,” Drake agreed. “I trust you will be able to finish the job.”

Her chest grew warm with his words. She had longed to hear them since she came to London. Though she didn’t need them now—she had learned to trust herself—she wanted them.

She placed her foot in Drake’s hands, and her palms on his shoulders.

“Ready?” he said.

She nodded, swallowing back any nerves. “One…two…” she said. “Three.”

Drake launched Beatrice into the air, and she hurtled toward the ship.

She plummeted down just shy of the deck and landed against the ship’s side with a smack.

But she had anticipated this and flung out her arms. Her hands curled around the edge of the ship, and she managed to hoist herself over the rail.

She scrambled onto the deck, her heart pounding.

“Oi! Stowaway!” one of the crew members yelled, but Beatrice shoved past him.

The other deckhands were too busy putting out the fire in the sails to notice a lady half-dressed as a gentleman racing across the deck toward the back of the boat.

Where she knew Horace and Diana would be waiting.

He had two trunks, after all; his wife had to be somewhere on the boat.