Lynn Viehl - Her Ladyship's Curse

She nodded quickly. “I keep some family portints on my vanity. I can remark on your resemblance to my great-aunt Hortense and invite you up to see them.”

“ Our great-aunt Hortense.” I sighed. “Lady Walsh, you should know that in the past I’ve been hired by other families on the Hill. Some of your servants might recognize me. If anyone asks, it’s best that we not lie about how I earn my living.”

“I’m sure that Nolan will think it’s charming that you, ah, work for yourself.” She glanced at the gold letters spelling out Disenchanted & Co. on the frosted glass of my office door. “He’s very progressive that way about women, you know. He even believes we should have the vote, bless him.”

But he would never employ any women at his bank, I guessed, or trust them to manage their own funds. “Good on your husband.” I held out my hand. “I’ll see you at four.”

Lady Walsh clasped my hand tightly. “Thank you so much, Miss Kittredge. Oh, dear, what is your given name? With our connection I should call you by that.”

“I’m known as Kit.” Only one person left in the world still called me Charmian, but one day he’d walk in front of my carri and I’d put an end to that. “And you?”

“I’m Diana, and forever in your debt, Kit.” She gave my hand a final fervent squeeze and went to the door. A man dressed in cream-and-scarlet livery standing outside opened it for her and closed it before he followed her out of sight.

Odd that I hadn’t seen him when I’d confronted Gert. Most footmen waited with the coach; only the wealthiest of women used them as body servants.

“Or your dear, loving Nolan doesn’t quite trust you to leave the house alone,” I murmured under my breath as I picked up my keylace and knotted it around my wrist. “I wonder why.”

After I locked up the office, I took the stairs down to the underground level, better known to me and the other tenants of the Davies Building as the Dungeon.

The sole occupant of the understair had once been a royal machinist, one of the finest who had ever served H.M., or so the Honorable Reginald P. Docket would have everyone believe. We never asked why he had given up his choice position to immigrate; no one left England for the Provincial Union of Victoriana unless they had made a horrible marriage or committed an unpardonable offense against the Crown. Since Docket remained a bachelor, and his constructs sometimes didn’t perform according to spec, I imagined it to be the latter.

“Who’s that?” A sweaty face smeared with grease popped up from behind a cabinet filled with cogs and gears. “Kit? Oh, fabulous. You’re just in time for the latest bash.”

“Am I?” I glanced around me to see if anything appeared ready to clout me, fall on me, or explode. Most everything did. “I can come back later, if you like.”

Docket waved a wrench. “Nonsense. This is just the sort of thing you females love.”

I studied the cabinet he’d been fiddling with, which seemed to be sprouting mechanical arms with hooks on the end. “It’s a tenner printing press?”

“No. Take off your jacket and I’ll show you.”

“It’s almost new,” I warned him as I shrugged out of it. “I’m very fond of it.”

“Precisely why you need my HangItAll.” He adjusted one of the dials on the side of the cabinet and stepped away as its internal works began to grind and whistle. “Hold it out. Go on, it won’t bite you.”

With a great many misgivings, I held out my jacket. One of the mechanical arms stretched out, folding over on itself to form an elongated triangle with its hook at the top. It inserted one corner of the triangle into a sleeve as it pulled my jacket out of my hand and then tilted up as it inserted the opposite corner. The arm retracted my jacket into the cabinet, catching a rod inside with the hook and neatly hanging it.

“You see?” Docket beamed. “You’ll never have to wait for a maid to answer your bell again.”

“That’s good, because I don’t have any maids or bells,” I reminded him as I peered into the cabinet. “You’ve got this working off your boiler, then?”

“I started out with hydraulics, but the joints leaked oil onto the garms. Bloody mess it was.” He caressed the side of the cabinet with his hand. “What do you think? I’ll wager someday one of these will be in every man’s front hall, and every female’s boudoir.”

“Possibly the wash house.” I reached in and removed my jacket from the interior, which caused him to yelp. Then I held it up so he could see the condensate drip from the sodden hem. “If you change the name to WashItAll.”

“Bloody hell, that wasn’t supposed to happen.” As he watched me wring out the sopping-wet material, he scratched at his chin whiskers. “WashItAll’s not bad. Would it sell, do you think?”

“I suppose, if you came up with a way to dry them as well.” I glanced down at the puddle forming around the base of the cabinet. “And install a catch basin.”

“Capital idea.” Never one to brood, Docket closed off the boiler feed valve and wiped his hands on a dirty rag. “So what can I do for you today, love?”

“I need some dippers and an echo.” I briefly described Lady Walsh’s situation, leaving out the names and personal details, and added, “The echo will have to be very small. Something I can hide in a satchel or under my skirts.”

“I’ve just the thing.” He disappeared into his mechanized warren, and after some loud banging and scraping emerged with an envelope and a small mallet. He led me over to the nearest worktable, shoved aside some blueprints, and set them out.

“Best tuck the dippers somewhere they can’t be spotted,” he said, carefully counting out from the envelope five thin, folded strips of paper. “Dip or dab them with a drop of wine, trace of powder, or whatever you think is tainted. If all’s not as it should be, they’ll show color.”

I removed and unfolded one strip and sniffed it. The chemical odor wasn’t so strong that it would be detected coming from my person. “Blue for drugs, black for poison?”

“Aye.”

I took out my da’s pocket watch and tucked them in the back of the case. I could get at them easily by pretending to check the time. I glanced at the little mallet beside the envelope “I can’t go about hammering on the walls, Doc.”

“Don’t have to.” He gestured for me to follow him over to one of the Dungeon’s support walls. He placed the flat end of the mallet head against the wall, and flipped up the cap on the other end, revealing a magnifying lens. “Press in the bottom of the handle, like so.”

He demonstrated, and through the lens I saw a wide, solid green bar appear. The bar glowed faintly, as if it were hot.

“That’s a strut on the other side of the wall. Move it along careful-like”—he slid the mallet slowly across the wall until the green bar disappeared and the lens filled with rough green pebbles—“and there, you see? That’s the fill between the struts. The foundation walls down here don’t have any hidey-holes, but if there’s one in your manor house, it will show black on the lens. Then you’ve only to find the seams and pop it open.”

I took the mallet from him and studied it. “What makes it glow like that?”

He grinned, showing all the gaps in his teeth. “If I told you that, I’d have to marry you.”

Not because he loved me, I imagined, but to keep me from bearing witness. Once a woman gave her hand in marriage, she became her husband’s legal property. Property could not testify against its owner—something I imagined would prove useful if the Crown ever questioned the origins, and the exact rights claim, to any particularly clever mech.