Free Boneseeker by Brynn Chapman

see what else transpires. I expect we’ll make six before a fortnight.”
    In a blink the teasing is gone; he’s deadly serious. His hands fidget, twirling his pocket watch, considering.
    I sigh. “Go ahead. I know you wish to ask me something. Something dreadful by the way you’re mucking about.”
    He smiles. “You honestly don’t know the meaning of small talk, pleasantries—”
    “Wastes of breath. Speak, Henry?”
    “Your mother. I’ve never asked about her, not in all this time. Do you know who she was?”
    My face boils with heat. “I believe your father actually knows more than I. I know she was…an opera singer.”
    Henry’s eyes widen as his brows disappear beneath his hair. “Really?”
    “Yes. Apparently I was a burden, so off to the Holmes’s I went.”
    Henry’s fingers steeple. He’s lost in thought, staring past me.
    “Ahem?”
    His blue-green eyes flick back. “So, do you show musical inclination?”
    I know what he’s thinking. Stygian’s predictions from my skull, and now, the revelation I’m descended from musical blood.
    “I never had much time to find out. All science and math and Latin and—”
    “Yes. Well, perhaps we should find out.”
    “You only want to test the phrenology’s prediction. That I’m gifted in music.”
    He shrugs. “Perhaps. We will go to the theater, when the expedition allows.”
    He leans forward plucking up my journal, my locked journal, from the bedside table. “What secrets do you keep in here?”
    “None of your bloody business.”
    His fingers trace my neck and my heartbeat surges. I freeze, wanting more, but unable to ask. My face falls as he slips his finger under my necklace.
    He tugs it gently and I feel it slide up my stomach and between my breasts till it appears on my chest to reveal a key.
    He smiles wickedly. “I assume this key, fits in this lock.” He gives the journal a little shake.
    His attention shifts again and he drops the journal into my lap.
    He sits beside me and leans closer and I’m lost again in a deluge of his scent.
    My heart skips a too-long beat in my chest as his lips pass so close to mine. Anticipation and want dizzy my head as he plucks a letter from my nightstand.
    “You’re—” I try to swallow the tremble in my voice. “You’re in rare form. Are all my private papers your personal expedition?”
    He smiles. “You don’t reveal much. So I’m conducting research. I’m not often privy to the cave of the reclusive genius.”
    He’s clutching father’s letter. I don’t care. I’m almost bloody unconscious.
    His eyes scan the perfect penmanship and he looks up. His smile is crooked. “Digger? He calls you digger?”
    I snatch the paper from his hands. “Yes. What of it?”
    “May I call you it, too?” His lips are trembling as he tries not to laugh. He stands.
    I spring.
    He leaps out of the way, running around my bed.
    I chase him and grab hold of his sleeve. I hang on as he tries to throw me off and manage to off a punch at his chest.
    “You are a brute. An awful, sophomoric little boy in a man’s body.”
    Newton’s bark is sharp, his hackles rising in my defense. He bears his teeth.
    I point at the door. “Go, you imbecile! You shouldn’t be in here in the first place. We’ll both be let go!”
    Henry runs out the door, but turns to look through the crack. “Good night, Digger.”
    I throw my shoe and he slams the door shut.

Chapter Eight
     
    Judgment Day
     
    Racing down Mutter Hallway
    Henry
     
    I flip my hair from my eyes and hurry down the Mutter hallway, checking my watch. My boot-falls echo wildly off the high ceilings.
    I grit my teeth as a curse slips out; I am going to miss the meeting about Arabella.
    “Blast.”
    A nightmarish blur of images fly past me on either side—a plaster cast of a fifteen foot colon, my wax specimens of syphilis and smallpox. I avert my eyes, breaking into an all-out dash.
    I skid to a halt outside the boardroom door and make a last, futile