The Girl in the Steel Corset (Steampunk Chronicles #1)(7)

“What the hell is she, then?” Sam demanded, his fists clenched tight at his sides.

Griff shrugged. “I have no idea. But the three of us should find out, shouldn’t we?”

“Cordelia isn’t going to like this,” Emily reminded them. Griff’s aunt wasn’t due back from Yorkshire until the day after tomorrow. She was up there investigating strange circles that had appeared in a farmer’s field.

“It’s not her house, nor her decision,” Griff reminded her.

Emily held his gaze. He’d always admired her backbone. “If she is different, then it’s our duty to help her.”

Sam shot her a dark look, then one at Griff, as well. “The two of you are too bloody trusting. Being different doesn’t make her good any more than being metal makes one of those monsters a toaster.”

Normally Griff would have laughed at such an absurd comment, but the door to the library burst open at that exact moment. It was the housekeeper, Mrs. Dodsworth.

“What is it?” Griff asked, stepping forward with a frown. The woman was positively white in the face. Had one of the few automated servants left in the house turned on them? After Sam’s attack, Griff had decommissioned many of the machines out of consideration for his friend and for the safety of every living creature under his responsibility.

“It’s the girl you brung home, Your Grace. I think you should come right away. It’s as if she’s got the very devil in her!”

Griff took off running. Emily and Sam followed, chasing him up the stairs to the room where the girl had been left sleeping just a short time ago. A man came flying out of the open door frame like a child’s toy tossed aside. Sam caught him before he could hit the wall.

“Thank you, Master Samuel,” the footman said in a shaking voice as Sam set him on his feet. “I thought she was going to kill me. She’s like a demon, she is!”

Sam’s mouth tightened as he lifted his gaze to Griff’s. “I told you so.”





Chapter 3




Griff ignored his best friend’s taunt and turned his back on his friends. What in the name of all that was holy had he brought into his house? What kind of girl could hurl a full-grown man?

From the sounds of it, she was definitely angry. He couldn’t quite make out all the words, but the ones he could were…colorful.

“I’ve met dockside trollops with cleaner mouths,” Sam snarled.

“Met many of those, have you?” Emily’s tone was sharp.

Griff shot both of them an annoyed glance and turned to the open doorway once more. He wasn’t offended by her vocabulary, just surprised by it. It made him all the more curious about her.

Taking a deep breath, he walked into the room, confident without having to look that his friends were with him. Out of habit, he tugged on his waistcoat, straightening it. He should have put on a coat and tried to look more lordly, but he’d never been very good at that. His real strength wasn’t in intimidation. It was in subtlety and confidence. And in the fact that people tended to know who he was.

He didn’t bother to knock. Quite frankly, he thought better of announcing his arrival. The less time she had to prepare, the better. As it was, he narrowly missed being brained by a candlestick. It whipped past his head to embed itself in the opposite wall.

“Oy,” he said roughly. “Is that any way to act when you’re a guest in someone’s home?”

“Guest? You mean, prisoner,” came the growled reply.

The girl stood in the center of the large four-poster bed. She wore a nightgown and robe that Cordelia had generously, and unknowingly, donated. Anything of Emily’s would have been far too short and too small. Her honey-colored hair fell over her shoulders in messy waves and her similarly colored eyes were almost black with wildness, her pupils unnaturally dilated.

Fear. He felt it roll off her in great waves. It shimmered around her in a rich red aura Griff knew he alone could see, as it was viewable only on the Aetheric plane. She was afraid of them and, like a trapped animal, her answer to fear was to fight rather than flee. Interesting.

She was certainly a sight to behold. Normally she was probably quite pretty, but right now she was…she was…

She was bloody magnificent. That’s what she was. Except for the blood, of course. She’d opened the wound on her forehead and blood was trickling down toward her nose.

“What have you done to me?” Blood covered her hands as she held them out to him, not in supplication, but to make him acknowledge the mess. “Why do I feel like maggots are crawling beneath my skin?”

“The Organites,” Griffin whispered to Emily. She had come to stand on his left. “Is it possible for her to feel them?”

“I don’t know,” Emily replied in a hushed voice, her gaze glued to the girl on the bed. “She shouldn’t.”

“Organites?” the girl snarled. She looked at her hands, the sticky crimson fingers. “You mean, this excrement you smeared on me?”

She’d heard? Griff tilted his head in silent contemplation. So not only was she fast and strong, but she had heightened hearing, as well. It made him wonder if all of her senses were so acute.

“It’s to help you heal,” he informed her softly. “And now you’ve made it worse.”