Evie did not get a chance to ask the earl more questions about magic and what the bloody hell it had to do with Bernard's death. Westmorland decided that the hour was officially too late (as if it hadn't been before) and the rest of their conversation could wait until the morning.

"You will sleep here," he told her imperiously.

Evie bristled at his tone. "I am not a child," she said. "I have my own bed in my own home. I will sleep there, and if you are amenable, I will return here tomorrow at a more conventional hour."

She started to rise from the armchair, but he shoved her back down. She yelped in surprise and glared up at him.

He continued to loom over her, gripping onto the arms of her chair. He was too near, his big body blocking the light. "Don't be a fool, woman," he snapped. "Your house is not safe. You will stay here until I say otherwise."

Evie's mouth dropped open. How dare he! "You do not own me, my lord. I am not a servant or wife you can just order around."

He brought his face closer, until they were practically nose to nose. "And I thank God for that," he sneered. Then he abruptly let go of his tight hold on the armchair and stepped back. "Mrs. Remmington, I will not lie. I do not give a damn about you, and I could not stand your husband. I offered you a room in a rare moment of kindness. You are, as you said, a grown woman capable of making her own decisions, however foolhardy they may be. Come back here in the morning if you wish. Or don't. It doesn't matter to me."

"You have made your position perfectly clear," she said stiffly. "I'll show myself out."

A thunderous look crossed his odd face, the metal flesh creasing into deep furrows like ordinary skin. Some of her own anger cooled as she watched him, fascinated. She was no less curious about what had happened to him than when he'd first stepped into the light. Was it science or magic? He never explained much of anything.

He must have caught her staring, because he flinched and angled himself away from her. He pointed towards the laboratory door where they'd first entered. "The exit is that way."

Evie rose to her feet and swept into a deep curtsy. "Thank you, my lord," she purred, enjoying the earl's bewildered expression as he tried to figure out whether she was sincere or mocking him. She knew, somewhere deep, deep down, that she was foolish to antagonize the only man who believed her innocent of Bernard's murder, but he was an arrogant ass, carelessly upsetting her entire world as though her world were worth nothing. She would need him tomorrow—or was it tomorrow already? Tonight, she would sleep under her own roof, away from him and his magic.

"Goodnight, Mrs. Remmington," he said coolly.

"Goodnight, my lord." And then she marched out of his laboratory without looking back once.

The hackney she'd hired was still waiting for her outside Westmorland's home. The carriage wasn't steam powered, but at least the horses were iron, and the coachman was an automaton. Some automatons were programmed to talk to their passengers, but this one was blessedly silent.

Evie would have taken the autowheeler, but it was too loud and conspicuous for secretly dropping in on earls in the middle of the night. She didn't want to wake the servants when she returned either. Henrietta had probably convinced most of the staff Evie was guilty of murder. It wouldn't help her cause any if they caught her sneaking into her own house at half past one in the morning.

Evie sighed and leaned her head against the carriage window. She was an idiot. Why hadn't she taken up the earl on his offer? She was going home to a houseful of servants who wanted to see her hang. They were really Bernard's servants. He was gregarious and charming, and, for all his faults, he never talked down to the people who served him. They loved him, but their affection had never extended to his wife. Her, they would happily betray for a pound or two. She should fire the whole lot of them.

As the hackney rolled along, Evie's mind wandered and eventually she slipped into a fitful half-sleep. Every once in a while the wheels of the hackney would hit a loose stone or dip into a hole, jolting her in her seat. London was not quiet tonight—though when was it ever? West of Charing Cross, the night belonged to the rich and fashionable—for them, the night was still young. For Evie, however, the evening's shock had faded into exhaustion. Fortunately, the journey between the earl's home in Grosvenor Square and hers in Regent's Park was not a long one.

Evie had the hackney drop her off a short walking distance from Davenford House to avoid her neighbors' scrutiny. It sped off as soon as it let her off, leaving her shivering on the side of the road. She frowned, squinting. London was perpetually foggy; the smog and soot from the factories was inescapable whether you were on the East End or the West. But the thick curtain of fog in front of her was unusually thick, especially for this time of evening. And a proper London fog smelled like sulphur. Here, the air smelled of burnt wood and smoke.

Evie knew that smell well. Six years ago, her family home in the Borough had caught fire. By some miracle, no one died, but the house was unlivable and they lost most of their possessions. In the end, her inventions saved them from total destitution. Her inventions, and Bernard, who had gallantly offered to sell them in his name. At least, it had seemed gallant at the time, and Bernard was a born salesman. Together, they'd made enough money to buy her parents a new home—in Bath, where her mother had always dreamed of living—and scrape together a small dowry for Dru. The house fire had been a new beginning for all of them.

Though they'd managed to turn bad luck into good, Evie still had nightmares about the fire six years later. And she'd never forget the singularly horrible stench of her home burning. Dread formed in the pit of her belly. Someone's house was on fire, Lord help them.

The smoke was thick enough to choke, but Evie trudged onward. She could hear shouts now, and the sound of a woman crying. She followed them through the smoke, until she could see for herself what was burning.

It was Davenford House. Of course it was. What was that saying—bad luck came in threes? Evie thought such superstition was bosh, but then again, she hadn't believed in magic either. Rationality told her the probability of experiencing a house fire twice was miniscule. Well, rationality was wrong.

A crowd of people stood on the lawn—neighbors, servants, and Evie suspected some journalists—watching the men from the London Fire Engine Establishment fight the wild inferno. It was an unnatural fire, with threads of neon green streaking through the orange flames like bolts of lightning.

Magic, Evie thought, then laughed silently. Now she was seeing magic everywhere.

"They're saying it was an explosion in Remmington's laboratory," she heard someone whisper sotto voice.  "Scotland Yard thinks foul play."

"Remmington's recently dead, ain't he? They say the wife did him in."

Evie jerked and stumbled, falling into a hard wall. "Mrs. Remmington," said the wall in Detective O'Doyle's Irish brogue, reaching out to steady her. His mechanical eye whirred while his unaltered eye glared down at her. "You ought to have stayed dead."

She'd had too much shock tonight, and her mouth worked faster than her brain. "What do you mean?"

He released her, massaging the scarred tissue at his left temple. "Your servants are talking. They said you weren't home when the fire started. I told them to consider the possibility that you'd died alone in the lab, since I'd caught you sleeping down there before. I half-believed it myself." He gave her a crooked smile. "Can't arrest a dead woman, can I?"

"Arrest me?" she said on a shrill note, halfway between outrage and hysteria. "For what crime?"

His smile dimmed. "Arson," he said simply. "At least to start."

Her jaw dropped. "You can't possibly think I did this."

Light and shadow from the still-blazing fire played across his features, obscuring his expression. "Where were you tonight between the hours of 10 and 12?"

She gaped at him for another long moment, and then something inside her detonated. "It's my property! Why on earth would I set my own house on fire?"

Neither his mechanical nor his unaltered eye blinked. "Answer the question, Mrs. Remmington." He paused and then added, "I'd really like to know why as a suspect in a murder case you thought it was a good idea to go traipsing about in the middle of the night. What possessed you? I'm genuinely curious."

The detective was angry with her, Evie noted with surprise, and not because he thought she was a criminal. "You think I'm innocent."

He glowered at her and said bluntly, "I think you're an idiot." He rubbed his hand over his face. "Tell me where you were this evening. If you have an alibi, I can help you."

He was serious. He really would arrest her if she couldn't prove her innocence. She opened her mouth and then shut it. "I can't," she said miserably. How could she tell the detective she'd gone alone and uninvited to a man's house--and not just any man, but the Earl of Westmorland, her husband's greatest rival? Even if she dared tell the truth about her whereabouts, the earl had no reason to support her claim. When he'd offered to help her before, she'd thrown his generosity in his face. She had no right to drag his name in the mud with hers.

"You can't," Detective O'Boyle repeated dully.

Evie pressed her lips together and shook her head.

"Then I'm afraid, Mrs. Remmington," the detective said with a heavy sigh, "you're under arrest."

A/N: Are you liking this story, or do you wish I exclusively updated Uriel? Love to hear your thoughts!