Steven Harper - The Doomsday Vault

Richard Caraway, a thin, ash-blond man in a dark business suit, all but bolted to his feet as Alice entered the front room. His hat perched on a rack in the corner. He looked both nervous and familiar, but Alice couldn’t place him, and she wished for Louisa’s gift with names and faces.

“I’m sorry you came all this way, Mr. Caraway,” Alice said after introductions and handshakes, “but my fiance isn’t at home, and my father isn’t seeing visitors.”

He blinked pale eyes. “I had an appointment. Wednesday, four o’clock.”

“Oh! There’s the confusion, then. Today is Tuesday, Mr. Caraway.”

He blinked again. “I see. Of course. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“What was the nature of your business with him?” Alice asked, genuinely curious. “I would think most people would go down to the factory or to his office.”

“It was…” He swallowed, staring at her, and Alice felt a little uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Miss Michaels, but I don’t know how much your fiance involves you in his daily business, and I don’t feel quite right about-”

“Quite, quite,” Alice said, mystified. Did it have something to do with munitions? Or some other secret project? But if that were the case, why would this man come here rather than go to Norbert’s factory? She wanted to ask further, but manners didn’t allow. “I could offer you some tea. We have some lovely-”

“I should go.” The hat rack handed him his hat as he approached the door. “Please tell your fiance I was here. So sorry.”

The moment he turned his back to walk out, Alice remembered him. He was one of the men who had left this very house on the day Norbert had proposed to her. It piqued her curiosity.

“Excuse me,” Alice called, hurrying after him, “Mr. Caraway, I remember seeing you here before, with another gentleman. Don’t you run a mining concern in Wales?”

He stopped and turned. His face was pale. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s rather unusual for someone of your stature to stop by a private home during business hours, and I was truly wondering-”

“I do have to go,” he said shortly. “Good day, Miss Michaels.” And he fled the house.

“What was that all about?” Louisa was sitting at a kitchen table with another cup of tea at her elbow. Kemp stood nearby holding a plate of biscuits. The spider paused in its work to eye the biscuit plate for falling crumbs, then went back to scrubbing.

“I honestly don’t know,” Alice replied.

“Biscuit, Madam?”

“No thank you, Kemp. So odd.” She related the details of the conversation. “It’s a complete mystery.”

“So many of them in your life,” Louisa said.

A bubble of emotion Alice hadn’t been aware she was carrying suddenly burst, and Alice slapped her hand on a worktable. “And I’m tired of it!” she cried. “It’s been nearly a year, and I don’t know what happened to my aunt, and I don’t know what happened to that grinning clockworker, and I don’t know what happened to Gavin, and I don’t know what’s happening in this house, and I’m bloody tired of it!”

“Gavin?” Louisa said. “Who’s Gavin?”

Alice paused in her tirade. “Did I say Gavin?”

“You did,” said Louisa, zooming in for the kill. “Who is he?”

“A young man I … assisted.”

“How exciting! And romantic! Do you like him? Is he handsome?”

The hell with it. “Very handsome,” Alice snapped with an angry toss of her head. “Stunningly handsome. Gorgeous. Blond and blue-eyed and quick and strong, with a voice like an angel and hands that create music to make heaven weep.”

“Did you kiss him?”

This was rather fun. Alice leaned forward with pointed wickedness. “I didn’t, but I wanted to, and more, even though I had just given my hand to Norbert only hours before. I still think about him all the time. When I fall asleep, I see his face in the dark, and when I wake up, his memory is in my dreams. How do you like that ?”

“I think it’s marvelous!” Louisa’s eyes were sparkling. “Is he rich?”

“Dirt poor. He’s a street musician.”

“Lowest of the low. Shocking! How old?”

“Eighteen when I met him. He must be nineteen by now.”

“Cradle robbing already. Darling! I’m so proud!”

The remark, however, yanked Alice back to reality. The daring anger drained away and she deflated. “It is, isn’t it? Good heavens. Even if I weren’t engaged to Norbert, I couldn’t pursue Gavin. Not in a hundred years.”

Louisa blinked. “Why on earth not?”

“You just said why not. He’s nineteen years old, and I turn twenty-three next month. I’m a cradle robber.”

“Oh, please!” Louisa took up a biscuit and angrily bit off a chunk. “These are modern times. How old is Norbert?”

“Thirty. Why?”

“But you’re twenty-three? No one bats an eye when a man marries a woman seven years younger, but if a woman looks at a man four years her junior, everyone gets in a tizzy.” She crumbled the rest of the biscuit onto the platter. “If your ages were reversed, would you see a problem?”

Alice thought about that. Louisa had a point. No one would think twice about a relationship if Alice were nineteen and Gavin were twenty-three-or even older. Why should it be any different when it was the other way round? It wasn’t as if Gavin acted anything other than like a man. He was smart and resourceful and witty and-

“All this is hypothetical,” Alice said stiffly. “I’m marrying Norbert. Gavin is-was-a passing fancy.”

“I don’t think so,” Louisa replied. “Gavin stirs up strong feelings, even after a year. I can see it in your face. Why not walk out on Norbert and pursue him?”

“I can’t. I even had a chance to work with”-the Third Ward’s machine froze her tongue again-“with him. At a salary. And I turned it down.”

“What? Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“Because Father owes more than I could hope to pay off on my own. Because Norbert has moved Father in here and is providing for his care. Because the banns have been published, and if I back out of the marriage now, Norbert would have the legal right to sue me for the title I had promised his firstborn child. Logic dictated I turn the offer down.”

“You’re a woman, Alice, not an automaton.”

“I don’t want to discuss it anymore.”

“There’s more to this than mere logic,” Louisa said shrewdly. “I can tell.”

There was, but Alice refused to think about it. “I said I don’t want to discuss it anymore.”

“You have a lot of things you don’t want to discuss,” Louisa replied. “Well, what do you propose we do?”

“I want to clear up some of the mysteries in my life,” Alice said. “I want to know at least one thing that’s going on round here. I want to take apart one of these blasted automatons and find out why Norbert is so fascinated by these things.”

“ You’re fascinated by them.”

“Not in the same way. Kemp, bring me my tools. And if you see Click, tell him to-oh. Here he is. How did you know I wanted your help?”

Click, who had jumped up to the kitchen worktable, didn’t respond. In a few minutes, Kemp returned, wheeling a walnut cabinet the size of two steamer trunks. Brass fittings gleamed, and every surface was carved to show gears, pistons, rotors, and other bits of machinery. One of the rubber wheels left a small mark on the floor, and the spider rushed over to work on it with frantic movements of the scrub brush. Alice twisted the cabinet’s handles, and the doors sprang open, revealing rotating shelves of tools and dozens of tiny drawers for spare parts.

“Well!” Louisa said. “This is a step up from your garret.”