AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’ve been granted an audience with the queen,” he says. “And I don’t mean the one in Bucky Palace.”
“Queen Mab,” I say.
“The only one that counts in these parts.”
Gray nods. “Wait here while we gather our things.”
TWENTY-TWO
We don’t cross the Mound to the Old Town. That surprises me a little. When I picture a woman who deals in birth control—and possibly poisons—I picture some dingy shop down the darkest of dark alleys. Instead, we stay in the New Town, walking until we reach a row of small town houses close to Princes Street, making it a quick crossover from the Old Town and, perhaps equally important, easily accessed by the women of the New Town.
As we walk up, I’m assessing. Does Queen Mab live in this town house? Or does she rent a floor for business? Maybe the basement? That seems most likely as the boy—who has ducked the question of a name—leads us down the mews to approach from the rear. It seems even more likely when we take stairs down to enter through the basement door.
The inside is dark, which far better fits my image of such a place. There’s a low hum coming from behind a closed door down the hall. We head for that door, and the boy opens it, calling, “They’re here, ma’am.” Then he retreats, letting the door shut behind him. As he walks past, he gives Gray a final, appraising look and then lopes out the way we came.
I glance from Gray to that closed door. He considers. Then he opens the door and walks in. I follow.
We find ourselves in what looks like Gray’s town house library. Leather-bound tomes fill floor-to-ceiling bookcases of gleaming wood. A fireplace crackles. Flickering gaslight illuminates an armchair beside the fire. Abook rests on the chair. Gray goes straight to that book, but I can tell even from here that it’s not in English.
He pauses there for a moment, while I look around and realize something’s missing from this room. Queen Mab. I jog back down the hall and wrench the back door. It opens easily.
I hesitate there, and then return to the library, where Gray stands with his head cocked. He’s staring at a bookcase, and I soon realize why. That low hum comes from behind it. He steps back and examines the books. When he touches one, I lean in and read the title.
“Romeo and Juliet,” I say. “The original Queen Mab reference.”
He tugs it, and the bookcase moves to reveal an actual hidden door. Ten-year-old Mallory squeals with glee. Okay, even thirty-year-old Mallory might make a tiny noise of delight.
The bookcase opens into another room, this one more brightly lit. I peer inside to see what looks like Isla’s laboratory, except with older equipment. Several mortars and pestles rest on a stone table, along with a distilling apparatus. Where Isla has shelves of bottles, here there’s an entire wall of ingredients, some in bottles, some in bowls, some just dried roots on a plate. More drying herbs hang from the ceiling.
Behind that table, a woman is hard at work with a pestle. The noise we’d heard is some sort of automated mixing device, endlessly turning a corked vial end over end. When it slows, the woman reaches out to wind it without even stopping her work.
“Queen Mab, I presume,” Gray says.
The woman is tiny—no more than four ten—and with an unlined dark-skinned face and dark curls raked back from her face by clips. Gorgeous hair clips, I might add, gold-filigree works of art. Her dress is equally gorgeous, a waterfall of jade silk that is the height of current fashion, with what I’ve learned is an elliptical crinoline—it sticks out a bit at the front and then sweeps back with a bustle pad.
“Not going to mistake me for Her Ladyship’s servant?” the woman says with one arched brow. Like the boy, she has an English accent, but there’s more there, hints that Edinburgh is but the latest stop in a lifetime of travel.
“I would not make that presumption,” Gray says.
There’s no sarcastic twist to Gray’s voice. No emphasis on “I.” Still, Queen Mab’s eyes narrow as she studies him. Then she sighs.
“The boy mistook you for a manservant, didn’t he,” she says. “I fail to warn him, and he makes the most inexcusable of errors.”
“He recovered with aplomb,” Gray says. “And I doubt he will make it again.”
She puts a dried herb into the mortar bowl. “The infamous Dr. Gray, I presume.”
This time he does react, even if it’s only the barest tightening of his lips.
“You don’t like being infamous?” she says. “I do.”
Before he can answer, she continues, “One would think that you would not pursue your particular line of study if you did not expect to be infamous.”
“My line of study being?”
“The science of the dead, of course.” She eyes the bowl and adds a few more tiny dried leaves. “A manwithoutyour skin color or scandalous birth wouldstillearn his share of sidelong looks and whispers. But you?” She shakes her head.
“Perhaps I am too dedicated to my studies to allow myself to care about that.”
