Quicksilver Read Free Page B

moment.”
    “What occurred here?” Virginia asked gently.
    Becky hesitated. “I don’t remember too much, ma’am. I was at my usual corner outside the tavern. A fine carriage stopped. A handsome gentleman inside leaned out and said he thought that I was very pretty. Said he’d pay me twice my usual fee. I got into the carriage, and that is the last thing that I recall until I woke up in this dreadful place. I called and called for the longest time, but no one ever answered. I gave up. Then I heard you and your gentleman friend.”
    Owen got the door open and stood back. “Come along, Becky. We’ve wasted enough time here.”
    Becky hurried out of the cell. “Thank you, sir.”
    Owen did not respond. He was looking at the stone floor. Virginia felt dark energy shift in the atmosphere and knew that he had raised his talent, whatever it was.
    “Interesting,” he said.
    “What is it?” she asked.
    “I believe this may have been where Hollister encountered the person who planted that knife in his chest.”
    He kept his voice very low, but Virginia knew that Becky was not paying any attention. The girl was wholly focused on getting out of the stone tunnel.
    “You can
see
that sort of thing?” Virginia asked.
    “I can see where the killer stood when she did the deed,” Owen said.
    “A
woman
killed him?”
    “Yes. What is more, she was mad as a hatter.”
    “Dear heaven. Lady Hollister.”

TWO
     
    I t occurred to Owen that he had no right to be offended by Virginia’s deeply wary attitude. After all, he was a Sweetwater. As a rule, women were either fascinated or repelled by the men of his family. There was rarely any middle ground. But regardless of which group they fell into, women intuitively considered Sweetwater men dangerous. According to his Aunt Marian, an aura-talent, something about the auras of the Sweetwater males made sensible people—male and female, talented and untalented alike—uneasy.
    Nevertheless, romantic fool that he was, Virginia’s edgy suspicion had blindsided him. He was chagrined to realize that he actually felt rather crushed. It was his own fault for employing poor tactics, he thought. In hindsight, establishing himself as a psychical investigator who specialized in exposing fraudulent practitioners had been a mistake. But he had not been able to think of any other way to gain entrée into the tightly knit community of practitioners affiliated with the Leybrook Institute.
    There would be time enough to ponder his blunder later, he told himself. He now had two females to escort to safety.
    He picked up the clockwork carriage and tucked it under one arm. The small horses dangled in their harnesses.
    “Miss Dean, if you would take the lantern,” he said.
    “I have it,” she said, hoisting the lantern.
    He looked at both women. “Stay close.” He started forward. “We will leave this place the same way I entered, through the old drying shed. There is a carriage waiting nearby.”
    He heard a small muffled sound behind him. The lantern light flared wildly on the stone walls.
    “Are you all right, Miss Dean?” he asked.
    “Yes, of course,” she said coolly. “I stumbled on one of the floor stones. They are very uneven, and the lighting is quite poor down here.”
    In spite of his ill-tempered mood, he smiled a little to himself. Virginia Dean was living up to his expectations. It would take more than a bloody corpse and an encounter with a deadly clockwork curiosity to shatter her nerves.
    Not that he had anticipated weak nerves from her. He had known from the beginning that she was a formidable lady infused with determination and a strong spirit. She was also a woman of considerable talent. He had never doubted that, unlike the talents of so many of her colleagues at the Institute, her gifts were genuine. There was an exhilarating energy in the atmosphere around her—at least he found it exhilarating.
    In his experience, the vast majority of her competitors and