Chapter Three

Three days later, we are on our way to the mummy-unwrapping party, with me wearing a gorgeous gown that makes me happier than I ever thought a dress could make me. Chamber-pot scrubbing isn't the only bone of contention between myself and my employers. Wages are another issue. A housemaid makes relatively little on top of room and board. Gray and Isla pay more, of course, but that doesn't mean I can buy dresses for which I have no practical use, especially when they'd cost the equivalent of a designer gown in my own time.

I can't just pop into a discount shop and buy something off the rack either. Even if I chose to splurge, I then need to match it with proper footwear and gloves and jewelry and winter cape and a crinoline cage. I have a decent secondhand brushed-wool "going out" dress that takes me almost everywhere. It will not take me to an exclusive party at the home of Sir Alastair Christie.

Here, Annis plays fairy godmother. Or she does when Isla insists on it. Isla may not have her sister's gift for manipulation, but she did grow up bearing witness to it.

"Annis wants you at that party," Isla said the day we were first invited.

"She wants the shock value of bringing a housemaid to that party," I said.

"Perhaps, but she likes you. You are interesting, and she loves interesting people."

"I'm a puzzle to be solved."

"Also fine company. The point is that she wants you at the party, and so she must ensure you have everything you need. I will insist she play your fairy godmother for this particular ball." Isla's lips twitched. "Please be sure you take full advantage of it. Remember that if Duncan seems well-off, he is a pauper compared to Annis."

I did take advantage. That's not my usual style, but there's a vast difference between accepting the ridiculous wage Gray tried to offer me as his assistant and letting his wealthy sister outfit me in a dress suitable for a party she wants me to attend as scandal-bait.

What I get isn't new. It's too late for that and too extravagant. Instead, Annis had one of her dresses quickly tailored to fit with fresh trimmings. The gown is silk, which I could never afford in this era—and probably not in my own. It's turquoise with rust-brown embroidery and beadwork, trimmed in brown lace. The neckline is high, and the bodice is tight enough that I need help with the strings on my new corset. The crinoline cage is also a hand-me-down from Annis, as is the crinoline petticoat that goes over it. The petticoats underneath are my own. My gloves are white silk, and my slippers are also silk, with thin leather soles.

The accessory I'm most pleased with, though, is my poison ring. It's the first chance I've had to wear it since Gray gave it to me for Catriona's twentieth birthday last month. It's a gorgeous black enamel and gold piece, antique even in this time. The best part, though, is the tiny compartment for, yes, poison. Okay, they're not actually used for poison. Women store pills in there, maybe a bit of scent. But anyone seeing it knows it could contain poison.

The ring is in honor of our last case, which had involved a poisoning ring. I'd been terribly disappointed to realize that only meant a suspected ring of poisoners. Gray gave me this to make up for it.

Annis fetches us in her coach. Can I say that's a bit inconvenient? It means McCreadie needs to come to the town house, rather than have us pick him up on the way. Then we have to wait for Annis, and she's late—as usual. Also, coaches really aren't made to fit five people, especially when three of them are women in Victorian evening gowns.

Gray helps me in, and then slides in beside me, which has Annis waggling her brows. I swear the woman is as bad as that annoying friend in fifth grade, always whisper-singing "Jason and Maria, sitting in a tree…" Okay, in fifth grade that annoying friend had been me, but at least I've outgrown it.

Gray takes the spot next to me to allow Isla to sit beside McCreadie, because they are the ones who deserve the juvenile singing, and while Gray and I won't subject them to that, we are not above doing everything we can to nudge them together.

After we're all seated, though, Isla sighs and says, "This will not do." She looks at Annis. "Were you not going to mention it?"

Annis only smiles her cat smile.

Isla shakes her head. "We cannot arrive at the party in this configuration. Duncan? Hugh?"

They switch spots without comment, as if they knew better but just weren't going to bring it up. McCreadie sits beside me and Gray between his sisters, for propriety's sake, I presume.

Isla is a widow almost out of her mourning period, and her dress now is a gorgeous rich lilac. Following the death of Prince Albert, there are very strict social rules for a widow of Isla's class, with a two-year public show of mourning for the loss of an asshole that Gray had paid to stay away from Isla. There are, of course, no such expectations placed on widowers. How could one expect them to find a new bride if their dress publicly reminds everyone they lost their last one?

Isla and McCreadie have known each other since childhood. In a proper romantic tale, they'd have grown up together, realized they loved each other, and married. It didn't work like that. Maybe they didn't realize how they felt until it was too late, with Isla married and McCreadie engaged. I don't pry. Oh, I totally would, if that were an option, but when two people refuse to admit they're crazy about each other, you can't exactly ask how long they've been that way and why they've never acted on it. You have to wait for them to figure it out, which is extremely frustrating.

McCreadie is a police detective. A "criminal officer," as it were, a relatively recent position in a relatively recent institution, formal policing only dating to the early part of this century. It isn't a case of Gray befriending a poor boy from the lower classes. McCreadie's family comes from the Grays' social stratum, and the boys met at private school.

McCreadie is now estranged from his family, and again, it's not the sort of thing I can ask about. I only know what I see, which is a very good-looking guy—despite luxurious period-appropriate whiskers—who is clever and good-natured and decent in every possible way, making him the perfect match for brilliant, strong-willed, and kindhearted Isla. But enough about that. For now.

As always, McCreadie is dressed like he stepped out of a Victorian advertisement. Gray might be nattily attired—in a single-breasted mid-thigh silk jacket with a high starched collar and cravat—but next to McCreadie, he looks like he rolled out of bed and pulled on whatever was at hand. It's not that McCreadie is dressed any differently. Men's black-tie wear here is as limited as it is in my time. McCreadie's attire just somehow always manages to be a little better, in the cut and fit and the fabric.

The least fashionably dressed person in our entourage is the one who can best afford it. Annis is in deep mourning, and even coming to such an event could be scandalous. She must wear head-to-toe black, and it can't even be a fashionable black gown. It must be as shapeless as possible, and so on her buxom figure, it looks like she's wearing sackcloth, as if she's being punished for having outlived her husband.

The coach stays in the New Town, naturally. There is a definite "right side of the tracks" in Edinburgh, and it's the New Town. The coach takes us from Robert Street toward grander homes, and it stops at one that I'd mistake for two town houses if it weren't for its single entrance.

Or I think it's only a single entrance. It's hard to tell from our vantage point, at the end of a queue of coaches.

I try not to plaster myself against the window. I haven't been on this street. Gray's town house is stately and beautifully appointed inside, but the exterior could best be described as austere, rather like its current owner. These town houses are fancier Georgian architecture, complete with decorated embedded columns and wide, central front steps.

"Is there some problem ahead?" Annis grumbles. "At this rate, we shall miss the unwrapping altogether."

"We could get out and walk," Gray says. "It is but a few hundred feet."

"It is November, Duncan. November. There is…" She nods her chin at the sidewalk and says "snow" with the same expression one might give a pile of horse dung.

"It's only a sprinkle," I say. "It looks lovely."

I gaze out the window. With the darkness and the party, the house is so well lit that it twinkles. The coach is cold enough for me to see my breath, and with the fur muff warming my hands, I feel as if I'm heading off to a Yuletide party instead.

Gray leans toward me and whispers, "Would you like to walk?"

I glance toward Annis, expecting some comment, but she is too busy rapping on the roof for the driver to move.

The line inches forward, and I look through the window again. I would like to get out. It's both too cold and too warm in here. Too cold on my face and too warm where I'm bundled in layers. We usually do walk wherever we can, but winter fancy-dress parties here are like ones in my time, where you expect to be dropped at the door to avoid needing to bundle up over your party best.

When the coach stops again, I lean to whisper, "Would it be unseemly to walk?"

"Does it matter?" Gray says, his eyes dancing.

I'm supposed to say it doesn't. That's what he expects and what he wants—the Mallory who flouts convention and lets him do the same. I know how much both Gray and Isla enjoy pushing against the constraints they've battled all their lives, and when it comes to that, I'm a terrible enabler.

Gray and Isla exist in a bubble where no one expects them to conform to all social conventions. Coming from a notably eccentric family gives them latitude, as does the fact that they are merely middle class. But bubbles are fragile things, and they must still live and work within this world.

It may seem as if I'm overthinking this. It's just walking a couple of hundred feet to a party. But if walking calls attention to us, and if it invites whispers and sneers and mockery, then that could damage an evening Isla is very much looking forward to.

The coach thankfully rolls forward again. When it stops, McCreadie is the one pushing open the door to look out. He's frowning, as if he heard something, and when I catch it, I kick myself.

I might not be a cop in this world, but for me, a career in law enforcement was more than something that paid the bills. I chose policing because underneath my sarcasm, I'm an idealist and a humanist. McCreadie is the same—a public servant who understands the meaning of the word, committed to being a torchbearer through the shadows. He's heard something concerning outside, and I was too engrossed in my own minor drama to notice.

Now I pick up the sound of angry voices, and when McCreadie steps out of the coach, I start to rise. Naturally, Gray is already moving past me. In his case, it's not so much bearing a torch through the shadows as wondering whether those shadows hide anything interesting.

Annis huffs when I go to follow, but she doesn't stop me, only saying, "Leave your muff in the coach, Mallory. One cannot trust servants, as I am certain you know from experience."

I'm ready to hop out of the coach when I see McCreadie there, hand raised to help me down. Right. Formal event.

"Here, let me help you, Miss Mallory," McCreadie says, loud enough that I know the words are a reproach to his friend, already making his way along the sidewalk, oblivious to everything but the siren's call of adventure.

This particular siren's call seems to be the rather shrill voice of a young woman. She's following two guests up the steps into the town house, haranguing them about something I can't quite catch.

Two footmen slide behind the guests like closing doors. The young woman glares at them and strides back to await new victims. The next coach pulls up, and she is right there, waiting for the guests to descend. When they do not—likely trying to figure out how to avoid her—she spots our party walking along the sidewalk.

Once I'm out of the coach, I realize why Annis and Isla stay behind, other than propriety. I'm wearing thin soled slippers, walking on an ice-cold, snow-dusted sidewalk. Luckily, we don't have far to go.

Gray has slowed enough to notice me and offer his arm, though the gesture seems more reflexive than genuine. I still take it. It's awkward enough walking into a party where I know I don't belong, and I will fully admit that I would rather do it on the arm of a dashing gentleman.

Speaking of gentlemen and dashing, McCreadie dashes in front of us, cutting Gray off from reaching the young woman first. The young woman turns, and I get a glimpse of her. She's maybe in her midtwenties, with dark hair swept back in what looks like an intentionally severe style and spectacles poised on her nose. Her outfit is drab and her boots are scuffed and…

Will I sound terrible if I say she looks like a stereotypical bluestocking? There is a type. There has always been a type, and it originated before this time period, and continues to be used in memes right up to the modern day.

See this feminist? See how pinched and unattractive she is? Of course she's a champion of women's rights—she can't win a man to take care of her.

Except this young woman is neither pinched nor unattractive. She seems to be intentionally dressing this way, and I'm not sure whether it's a uniform of sorts, or it's just a way to deflect attention from her looks.

Sometimes, it's easier to be taken seriously if you pull on a cloak of sexual unattractiveness. Unfortunately for me, that's a whole lot harder to do these days, cast into the body of a shapely blond twenty-year-old with the face of an angelic milkmaid.

The young woman disappears from view once McCreadie cuts in front of us, but not before she sees our group heading her way, and her eyes flash like a hawk spotting mice.

"You there," she says, the clacking of boots telling me she's bearing down on us.

"Yes, hello," McCreadie calls back. "I heard a commotion and came to see if you were in need of aid." He takes off his hat, bowing his head. "Detective Hugh McCreadie of the—"

"You're going to this party, Detective?" she cuts in.

"That is my intention, along with—"

"Then I want Sir Alastair arrested. There are laws against disturbing the dead."

"Ah, I presume you refer to the—"

"You do not think it counts? Because the deceased is not a Scot?"

"Perhaps," Gray says, his voice low with warning, "you might let Detective McCreadie finish a sentence before deciding what he does and does not mean?"

"Oh, you wish me to be polite, is that it? Being polite gets us nowhere. The only language your sort understand—"

As she catches sight of Gray, she stops. Her mouth works. Then she finds her voice.

"You are here, Dr. Gray? I would have hoped for better, though I suppose that is foolish of me. You are not known for speaking out against injustice. Better to hide behind your family name and pretend you have nothing in common with the poor man whose corpse they are about to defile."

"Defiling requires cutting into it," Gray says, his voice mild now that the rudeness is directed at him. "I do so all the time with men—and women—of every sort. I am an equal-opportunity ghoul."

His smile is all teeth and no humor, and the young woman pauses again. She finds her mental footing quickly, though, and says, "This is not the same, and you know it. This is an outrage perpetrated against a man ripped from foreign soil and brought here for the amusement of bored toffs."

"I would agree," Gray says.

Pause. Pause. Her eyes flash as she tries to regroup. Then she thrusts her chin up. "You agree, and yet you do nothing."

"I do something. I attend to ensure the proceedings are as respectful as possible."

"Look," I say. "I understand this upsets you, but I'm not sure who you think you're going to convince."

I wave at a well-dressed couple sneaking into the party behind her, taking advantage of her distraction.

"Them?" I say. "Those other ones back there?" I motion to the queue of coaches as Annis and Isla exit theirs. "They don't care. If you want to have an impact when you do this sort of thing, you need a public record of it. Alert the press. Raise a fuss where it can be heard."

"Yes," Isla murmurs as she reaches us. "I know you are upset, Miss King, but this display will not achieve what you intend."

The young woman looks sharply at Isla. "Do we know each other?"

"I follow news of the Edinburgh Seven most keenly," Isla says. "I supported your fight to be admitted to medical school, and I am delighted that you won it. I have heard Miss Jex-Blake speak, and I am thrilled at what she—what you all—have accomplished."

"You supported our victory? Odd that I have not seen you before. Ah, you quietly supported us, yes? From the safety of your drawing room?"

Isla flinches. I know why she doesn't more actively support the Seven. Poking her head over that parapet puts a target on it. She's a woman in a male occupation, doing backflips to avoid being noticed.

"You are one of the Seven?" Annis says, moving forward. "Then convey my words of appreciation to the illustrious Miss Jex-Blake. I do not understand why anyone would wish to practice medicine, but I support her right to do so. I would advise, however, that she keep you"—a feral smile—"on a shorter leash. Now, come, children, we have a corpse-defiling to attend."