Phoenix Rising by Pip Ballantine

Author:Pip Ballantine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

In Which Miss Braun Treads the Boards

and Brings the House Down

After the torture of opera it felt good to Eliza to be out of that damn seat and hot-footing it away from the screaming on the stage. How Wellington could be so entranced with that glorified caterwauling was beyond her.

However, all discomfort at the performance had melted away when she had heard the assassin’s words. Harry was dead. It mattered little to this Italian bitch that he’d been nothing but a shattered wreck in the asylum. So long as Harry had been alive, recovery was always a possibility, no matter how small the chance he could have been rescued from madness. The edges of guilt pricked her as she wondered if she should have just broken him out of Bedlam and nursed him back to health on her own. Considering her own ghosts and the brother she left in New Zealand, tending to Harry would have been a delight. Perhaps the chase had become everything, and she’d lost sight of why she was here at all.

Yet she could not seek vengeance—not yet. They had to follow the clues, just as Harry had taught her. Then, and only then, would there be a reckoning.

In the civilized atmosphere of the opera, pretense had to be maintained. This situation required a little stealth, so she didn’t bolt out the door as her impulses demanded. Eliza shut the door firmly between herself and Wellington, leaving him to tidy up his contraption. Where in the blue blazes he had got that thing? The clankertons in the armourey were damn tight with their toys, and Books wasn’t exactly their chum. Another creation of Welly’s, like the Archives’ analytical engine? So very strange.

That little mystery would have to wait however—there were villains to track down. Admittedly, tailing anyone in the height of evening fashion was not an ideal scenario, but like all good field agents Eliza knew opportunity was not a thing to be squandered. This was as close as they had got to those who had destroyed Harry. The only thing better would have been if he were here to share in the moment.

No, I must not think of Harry. Not yet.

Just outside their box, Eliza kicked off her satin high-heeled shoes and left them next to the door. Wellington could not fail to stumble over them and pick up after her. He better—those shoes had cost her a pretty penny in Paris.

She crept down the stairs, her ear tuned for the quarry from the box below. An usher passed her, heading up, and his eyes turned in shock to the length of calf she was showing, but he was too well paid to question the goings-on of the gentry. Still he did let his gaze linger there several good moments longer than propriety would have dictated. When he made eye contact with Eliza, she granted the boy a wicked wink before continuing down the stairs.

When the door to the box below popped open, she flattened against the curve of the stairwell, her heart picking up its pace.

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