Emma Holloway - A Study in Silks

She felt an almost palpable relief. That had to be the ugliest automaton ever made, the face staring and slack-jawed. Was it one of Lord Bancroft’s souvenirs from Austria? She’d never heard anyone mention such a thing. Did each of those trunks have a monstrosity like that inside?

Of course, the appearance of the clockwork girl wasn’t the most interesting thing. Even from where Evelina sat in the tree, she could tell the automaton vibrated with magic. And not any magic, but sorcery of the wickedest kind.

A chill of relief, anxiety, and a peculiar kind of terror shivered through her. What she had just witnessed was both a shield and an Achilles’ heel. Whatever secrets Evelina was hiding, she now knew the impeccable Lord Bancroft was concealing much, much worse.

Speculation faded as Evelina, trapped in the tree, grew colder and increasingly disgruntled. It took another half hour before the grooms left, carting the trunks away to who knew where, then another thirty minutes to make sure all was quiet again. Finally, half frozen and aching, Evelina crawled back through the attic window.

Her first priority was safety. She willed her feet to make no noise as she crept down flight after flight of plain oak stairs to the soft carpeting of the second-floor corridor. Her box was nestled in a canvas bag slung crossways over her shoulder, and her breath was frozen in her throat. At every turn of the stairs, she paused to listen for the slightest movement, but so far her luck had held.

Her final task was to run the gauntlet of the family’s bedchambers, where the row of doors stood like oak-paneled sentries. Behind each, a titled or at least honorable head lay on goose down pillows. Her bedroom lay at the other end of the long hallway.

Pausing to listen, she heard only the ghostly tap-tap of the oak outside the stairway window. At the end of the corridor, a longcase clock beat a rhythm half the pace of her racing heart.

She shielded the flame of her candle with one hand, the light etching her fingers in glowing red. The glimmer that escaped touched the pattern of the Oriental carpet, the dark paneling, the glint of brass on doorknobs and wall sconces. Evelina tiptoed forward, catching the scent of wood polish and lavender. Lord B’s domestic staff ran his house with exacting efficiency.

She made it past Lady Bancroft’s chamber, then the youngest daughter’s bedroom. Poppy was in the country with her grandparents, so there was no need to worry about waking her. Then came Tobias, the handsome son of the family. Though he often sat up very late, there was no light under his door. There was under Imogen’s, but then she always slept with a candle burning.

The clock made a chunking sound as something inside it shifted. As well as the time, it told the date, moon phase, barometric pressure, and occasionally spit out a card in a cipher only Lord Bancroft understood. Clockwork drove part of it, but tubes of bright chemicals were also nested inside, powering parts of the machine. Evelina had figured out some of the workings, but by no means all. Every dial and spring worked perfectly, except for the function that predicted the weather. For some reason, it was wrong as often as not.

At least the clock, unlike some of Lord B’s other souvenirs, didn’t give her the shudders. Her mind went back to the trunks in the attic, the thought of them raising a chill down her nape. Why did the ambassador have those automatons? And why was he moving them?

Then without warning, Imogen’s bedroom door opened.

Evelina sprang into the air, barely stifling a squeak. The box rattled as if she had purloined all the silverware in the house.

Bollocks!

A figure stepped into the corridor, closing Imogen’s door. Despite the hour, the young upstairs maid was crisply turned out in black and white, though dark circles sagged under her eyes.

“Miss Cooper! Have you come to check on Miss Roth?” Her gaze flicked over Evelina, but only for an instant.

Evelina felt herself coloring. She had the bag slung over her shoulder, her hem was ripped, and no doubt her hair looked like she’d been climbing a tree. Yet the well-trained servant pretended to see none of it.

“What’s the matter, Dora?” Evelina asked. “Is it her old complaint?”

“I don’t think so, miss.”

“Is there a fever? Should Dr. Anderson be summoned?” The questions came out in a panicked rush.

Dora shook her head. “I don’t know, miss. Miss Roth simply said she could not sleep. I was going to prepare the draft the doctor left for her, miss, just as she asked me to.”

Evelina exhaled slowly. “Then you do that. I’ll look in on her.”

Dora nodded, visibly relieved to be able to share the responsibility. “Very good, miss. I’ll come back in a tick with fresh candles.”

Imogen couldn’t abide the dark. Evelina pushed open her friend’s door and stepped inside. The room was cool and spacious, a sitting room on one end and a large bed in an alcove at the other. Bed curtains of heavy sky-blue silk were looped back, framing Imogen where she sat propped against a mountain of snow-white pillows.

“Evelina!” she said. “What are you doing up and about at this hour? And why do you look like you rolled through a forest?”

Imogen’s fair hair hung in long, thick braids against the pin tucks of her nightdress. Her face looked pale, but part of that was her porcelain complexion.

“Dora said you couldn’t sleep.” Evelina set down her bag and candle and crossed to the bed. “Are you unwell?”

Her friend’s gray eyes searched the ceiling as if she expected to find poems scribed on the ornate plaster. “I had a nightmare,” she said flatly.

Evelina was silent for a long moment. Night terrors were a symptom of the nervous ailment that had plagued Imogen since she was no more than four or five years old. The illness came and went, until finally her parents had sent her to the Wollaston Academy for Young Ladies, hoping the good Devonshire air could achieve what the doctors could not. That was where Evelina had met her.

More to the point, that was where Imogen had taken her under her wing and given her the social advantage of her companionship. Though Evelina’s disgraced mother had tried to teach her how to act the lady, a lot of polishing had been required, and Imogen had taken it on with a will. Evelina owed her a great deal for that, as well as for being a steadfast friend.

“You haven’t had one of your bad dreams for a long time.”

“No.” Imogen was still looking at the ceiling, seeming embarrassed. “It wasn’t the usual one about being trapped. This time I was dreaming about the castle in Vienna, where Papa was ambassador. I was floating through the tower. Flying, you know, like a feather on the breeze. I was terrified because I couldn’t find my way back to my bed.”

Vienna. Mention of it reminded Evelina of the trunks in the attic. She thought of asking Imogen if she knew about them, then discarded the idea. Her friend was already having nightmares without bringing up ugly automatons. “My grandmother says that dreams of old houses mean you’re trying to find a lost memory.”

“Your circus grandmother?” Imogen finally looked at Evelina.

“Yes, Grandmother Cooper. She knows what dreams mean. I don’t think Grandmamma Holmes would let such fancies through the door. She’d tell the footman to toss them out.”

Imogen chuckled. “I can see her doing it, too. You’re lucky, having two such different grandmothers. Mine are almost interchangeable.”

Of all Evelina’s acquaintance, Imogen was the only one who knew about Ploughman’s. The circus was all very fine to watch, but the gentry would never embrace someone who grew up with knife throwers and clowns. The first thing Evelina had been forced to learn when she joined the gentry was to hide her past.