Burning Up

photographic equipment. St. John half turned, as if to offer his assistance, then glanced back as Mina asked, “When did you arrive here from Wales, Mr. St. John?”
    “Yesterday.”
    “Did you witness what happened here?”
    He shook his head. “I was in the study when I heard the footman—Chesley—inform the housekeeper that someone had fallen. Mrs. Lavery then told his grace.”
    Mina frowned. She hadn’t been called out here because someone had been a clumsy oaf, had they? “Someone tripped on the stairs?”
    “No, inspector. Fallen.” His hand made a sharp dive from his shoulder to his hip.
    Mina glanced at the body again, then at the balustrade lining the roof. “Do you know who it was?”
    “No.”
    She was not surprised. If he managed the Welsh estate, he wouldn’t likely know the London staff well. “Who covered him with the sheet?”
    “I did, after his grace sent the staff back into the house.”
    So they’d all come out to gawk. “Did anyone identify him while they were outside?”
    “No.”
    Or maybe they just hadn’t spoken up. “Where is the staff now?”
    “They are gathered in the main parlor.”
    Where they would all pass the story around until they were each convinced they’d witnessed it personally. Blast. Mina firmed her lips.
    As if understanding her frustration, St. John added, “The footman is alone in the study, however. His grace told him to stay there. He hasn’t spoken with anyone else since Mrs. Lavery told his grace.”
    The footman had been taken into the study and asked nothing? “But he has talked to the duke?”
    The answer came from behind her, from a voice that could carry his commands across a ship, without shouting. “He has, Inspector.”
    She turned to find a man as big as his voice. Oh, damn the news sheets. They hadn’t been kind to him —they’d been kind to their readers, protecting them from the effect of this man. He was just as hard and as handsome as they’d portrayed. Altogether dark and forbidding, his gaze was as pointed and as guarded as the fence that was his namesake. The Iron Duke wasn’t as tall as his statue, but still taller than any man had a right to be—and as broad through the shoulders as Newberry, but without the spare flesh.
    The news sheets had shown all of that, but they hadn’t conveyed his power. But it was not just size, Mina immediately recognized. Not just his looks. She’d seen handsome before. She’d seen rich and influential. Yet this man had a presence beyond looks and money. For the first time, she could see why men might follow him through kraken-infested waters or into Horde territory, then follow him back onto shore and remain with him.
    He was terrifying.
    Disturbed by her reaction, Mina glanced at the man standing beside him: tall, brown-haired, his expression bored. Mina did not recognize him. Perhaps a bounder and, if so, probably an aristocrat—and he likely expected to be treated as one.
    Bully for him.
    She looked to the duke again. Like his companion, he wore a long black overcoat, breeches, and boots. A waistcoat buckled like armor over a white shirt with a simple collar reminiscent of the Horde’s tunic collar. Fashionable clothes, but almost invisible—as if overpowered by the man wearing them.
    Something, Mina suspected, that he did not just to his clothes, but the people around him. She could not afford to be one of them.
    She’d never been introduced to someone of his standing before, but she’d seen Superintendent Hale meet the prime minister without a single gesture to acknowledge that he ranked above her. Mina followed that example and offered the short nod of an equal. “Your Grace. I understand that you did not witness this man die.”
    “No.”
    She looked beyond him. “And your companion . . . ?”
    “Also saw nothing,” the other man answered.
    She’d been right; his accent marked him as a bounder. Yet she had to revise her opinion of him. He wasn’t bored by the death—just too familiar with it to be excited by yet another. She couldn’t understand that. The more death she saw, the more the injustice of each one touched her. “Your name, sir?”
    His smile seemed just at the edge of a laugh. “Mr. Smith.”
    A joker. How fun.
    She thought a flicker of irritation crossed the duke’s expression. But when he didn’t offer his companion’s true name, she let it go. One of the staff would know.
    “Mr. St. John has told me that no one has identified the body, and only