he’d be a good kisser?” Before she would have blamed these thoughts on her darker nature, but now she wasn’t so certain.
“I think he’s had enough experience that he’d be a very fine kisser.” A sly light brightened Emily’s eyes. “What about Griffin?”
Finley feigned ignorance and pretended to notice something of interest on her fingernails. “What of him?”
“Has he kissed you?”
“He has not.” She made a face. “Lord, I’m a charity case to him—a female whose life he feels responsible for. Nothing else.”
Emily didn’t look convinced. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you, and how you look at him. He’s thought about it. Trust me.”
A tiny smile flittered across Finley’s lips. She leaned closer, just in case the machines could hear her, and confided, “I’ve thought about it, too, but I don’t think it would be an intelligent thing to do—not while he’s trying to help me. It would only complicate things.”
“Then you might as well go back to Dandy.” Emily’s tone was heavy with teasing as she studied the figure’s wax left hand. “I’m sure he’d be more than happy to let you practice on him. Maybe that will make Griffin realize he wants you for himself.”
“No, thank you. I won’t be practicing on anyone. I can’t juggle two admirers like you can.” But even as she spoke, Finley felt a strange confusion in her chest. She liked Griffin, and thought him very handsome, but she also felt something for Jack Dandy. Oh, the two feelings weren’t nearly the same, but they were similar in the fact that she found both of them attractive in their own different ways.
She had no business thinking that way about either of them. It wasn’t proper and it was just plain wrong to be thinking about kissing when obviously there was someone out there trying to ruin her life by making her look like a criminal.
“What are these?” she asked, pointing to the small grooves she had just noticed in the wax on the side of the figure’s face.
Emily frowned. “I don’t see anything.”
It took Finley a moment to realize she wasn’t imagining things, but rather she saw the “queen” the way her darker nature would see her—with preternaturally sharp eyes. “Look closer. There are marks in the wax.”
Still frowning, Emily slipped her goggles over her eyes and covered both lenses with the attached magnifiers. She turned a small knob on the either side, fiddling with both as she bent slightly to study the figure’s face. Still adjusting the knobs, she studied one side of the head, then the other. “They look like caliper marks. Someone was measuring Her Majesty’s face.”
“Could it have been someone at the museum when they made the figure?”
Emily shook her head as she gently searched the rest of the waxwork for more marks. “These figures are made by taking molds and measurements of the actual person whenever possible. The queen would have sat for all those things before they made her likeness. These, I suspect, were made by our thief.”
“Again I ask, why?” Straightening, Finley folded her arms over her chest. “What is this mad bugger up to?”
“I don’t know,” Emily murmured, clearly as baffled as Finley. She lifted her goggles once more. “But he wanted to blame you for it, so maybe we should ask a different question.”
Her gaze locked with the smaller girl’s, Finley could only nod her head in grim agreement. “Who is he? And how does he know me?”
“She’s trouble and no one else can see it.” Sam was in a decidedly petulant mood as he sat sprawled on the sofa in Leon’s apartments in Russell Street. “Scotland Yard came to the house to talk to her about the murder of the son of her former employer, and everyone’s all ‘poor Finley.’” He said the last bit in a falsetto dripping with disgust and mockery.
His older friend came into the small sitting room from the small kitchen area and handed him a cup of coffee. Sam accepted the cup with thanks, wincing as the hot pottery burned his flesh. Leon’s metal hand hadn’t felt the heat, of course, but Sam’s—even the one with metal underneath—did.
He set the mug on the low table in front of him and glanced down at the welt on his palm. It lingered for a moment, stinging and then gradually began to fade until it was little more than a slightly pink itch and then nothing at all.
“That’s quite amazing,” Leon remarked, seating himself in a chair beside the