Mickey rubbed at his embedded grime diligently. He knew the rules of working for me, even if he’d only been tamed a few weeks before. Many of my boys, orphaned guttersnipes, one and all, were like feral cats who had to be tempted back to civilization with tidbits of nourishing food, a discarded blanket, and an occasional foray into the warmth. I pushed them toward a full bath by insisting on clean hands and faces indoors—even if the occasional dishtowel had to be discarded, too grimy to ever come clean. Trust came hard between us, so I let them stay a bit wild. They kept their familiarity with the streets better that way. If they ever showed signs of wanting to stay inside, they lost their usefulness to me. That’s when I found them apprenticeships and permanent shelter. No sense littering my nice clean café with muddy boot prints and ragged clothing. Boys were messy and rebellious. Too much trouble past the age of twelve.
Except for . . .
“Cain’t find Toby,” Mickey said around a sniffle.
I gestured toward the damp and now very hopelessly grimy towel.
“Toby is a big boy.” The biggest of my boys, pushing sixteen and all arms and legs and feet. The slight uptilt of his eyes and round face made him an endearing cherub long past needing his first shave. Keeping him in shoes was getting to be a problem, though his castoffs did help the littler ones.
“Toby can find his way home when he wants.” I sniffed this time. Lately Toby had shown a streak of dependence and a need to sleep by the fire that indicated I’d have to find him new employment before long. Who else would take on his slow mind? His extreme loyalty to me would be hard to transfer.
“But that’s just it, Missus. He gets lost. Cain’t read the road markers like I kin. Toby don’t know up from down without me tellin’ ’im,” Mickey protested.
There was that problem. A boy with a body too big for his mind.
“He allus stays real close to me. Holdin’ me coattails. Today he just disappeared, cain’t find him in any of our usual places.”
“Where did you lose him?” I demanded, seriously worried now.
“By the Circus.”
Not far from Trafalgar Square where the black balloon hovered.
“Piccadilly,” I sighed. For some reason the circular road around a looming statue that connected Regent Street with Shaftesbury always fascinated Mickey but frightened Toby. He saw the winged bronze statue on its tower pedestal with a nocked arrow—often called The Angel of Christian Charity, though it was intended to be Anteros, god of requited love—as some kind of vengeful monster about to break free of its bronze casing and devour him.
“What were you doing there, Mickey?” I tapped my toe impatiently, hoping he’d enlighten me to something unusual that the black balloon might spy upon. Maybe Toby was at nearby Trafalgar Square, lost in the open spaces, using the statue of a warrior to protect him from the vengeful angel at Piccadilly.
Inside the darkened café the bronze clock bonged the three-quarter hour. Time was slipping away, and I needed to prepare for tonight’s gathering.
Where was Violet?
“We was watchin’ t’ nobs, like you tell us to.” Mickey sounded defensive, building a bit of courage, I hoped. Courage to go back out into the twilight and search for his lost charge and maybe Violet as well.
“Did you see anything interesting? Or useful?”
“Aye, Missus. Aye, that I did. Heard things, too, I did. Seen the beggar with the withered right hand, and heard him say somethin’ odd, too.” Now his eyes became cunning. I’d have to pay for whatever information littered his brain in scattered fragments. Organization was not Mickey’s best talent. He showed signs of needing greater order, like touching his fingers as he recounted things, building lists in his mind, but so far hadn’t mastered it.
“There’s bread in the pantry, butter and cheese in the stillroom.”
“Cream?” His eyes brightened in anticipation.
Did I say he was like a feral cat?
“Tighter, Mickey,” I ordered as the little boy tugged feebly on my laces. I could manage my corsets most of the time. Tonight I needed to go tighter, almost to not breathing, in order to fit into my gown. Made two years ago, before I began to fill out.
Where the hell was Violet? She’d lose her job the moment she poked her nose in my door. I had to trade Mickey’s report on the odd comment about the black balloon by a beggar with a withered hand for assistance in dressing. By the time we finished, Mickey would have forgotten what he heard.
“If’n I pull any tighter, you won’t be able to breathe,” Mickey protested. Puzzlement colored his voice rather than embarrassment. He was only eight and I showed little more skin in my nether garments than I did fully clothed in evening wear.
“That is rather the point: keeping women from breathing deep enough to speak their minds, or getting up and leaving fast enough to avoid being restrained by a man.”
He gave another weak tug and I resigned myself to looking a little stout, with less of a distracting shelf shoved above my corset to hold male eyes this evening. Maybe if I only ate two sugar buns with breakfast instead of four . . .
“You are fed. You are warm. You are clean, and I’ve given you three ha’ pennies. Tell me about the black monster in the sky above Trafalgar Square and what the beggar said about it.”
“Making me your lady’s maid’s going to cost you extra, Missus.” He looked sullen and embarrassed after all.
“You may have two each of the savory pastries.” I’d saved out some of the broken ones just in case.
His smile brightened a bit. “An’ you won’t go a-tellin’ me mates about this? Cain’t have ’em thinking I’ve gone all fancy boy on ’em.”
“I won’t tell a soul.” I had more of a reputation to lose than he. One thing to be bold and flamboyant, quite another to be so penurious I couldn’t afford a proper maid who showed up on time. If only Violet had given me some warning that she was about to elope! Or, worse, gossip from the gutter spread faster to the fine houses and salons than butter on hot toast. Rumor would have me the corrupter of young boys. Now if they were older boys. . . .
“Talk, Mickey.” I scooped a frothy red gown over my head so I only heard a few muffled words.
“Dragon, it were. All black with one horrible orange eye. An’ it spit flame, too.”
I didn’t correct his redundant language. “A black dragon, you say. Flying over the Square.” The black balloon could be described as such by the unlearned. The one orange eye: the glow from the firebox. Spitting flame could describe the pushing of hot air into the envelope.
But how did it hover? And what was it looking for?
“Not just the Square. All over t’ West End,” Mickey insisted. “The beggar said ’e’d seen it spitting flames, green flames, right at Parliament. Toby might ’a run from’t.” The boy sidled toward the door of my private rooms, aiming for the backstairs. Like any feral cat, the time had come for him to escape comfort for freedom. I’d left the cream out for him along with the pastries.
He fled before I could ask him to fasten the back of my gown. “Keep an eye out for Violet! Check with the drayman at the dairy. And tell him I need an extra gallon of milk,” I called after him as soon as my head was free of layers and layers of frothy red silk. Cursed fashions. I said a harsher word, actually, but I don’t usually curse, let alone in public. Unless I really, really need to.
Twisting and turning, I managed the top two hooks at my nape and the bottom three up to my waist. After that, the strictures of the corset kept me from stretching further. I almost wished for my boring gray serge costume that fastened in front—or the bulletproof corset that laced up the front. But that one was too heavy and added bulk to my figure rather than compressing it.
Nothing for it but to hope someone “friendly” was the first to arrive. Perhaps Sir Andrew Fitzandrew?
Heavy treads on the outside stairs set my he
art pounding. I took up a regal posture along my lounge, disguising the incomplete fastening of my gown from casual view.
Fortunately, Sir Drew was the first to arrive. Taller than me by a full two inches, with trim waist, broad shoulders and long, long legs, he and I had been friends for years.
Five minutes later I was properly laced and fastened into my ensemble for the evening.
“You know I’d rather be taking this gown off of you than fastening it before your audience arrives,” he chuckled as his knuckles ran the length of my spine. A frisson of delight followed his touch, even though I knew he merely checked that all the fastenings were in place. “Shall I set my groom to minding your side door and private stair?” he asked, arching one auburn eyebrow. Then he kissed my cheek and lingered long enough I wanted more.
“The assistance of your groom at the door would be most helpful. I have no idea why Violet has not returned.”
“Or if she will?” he replied more seriously.
“What do you know?” I whirled to face him, needing to read his eyes and posture, not just his voice. The clock bonged a full-throated half hour. I’d run out of time.
“Rumors only. Young women and street boys disappearing in batches of three or four. My sources are not as reliable as yours.”
I studied him for a long moment. He hid nothing from me. At least on this subject.
“Are you certain your necromancer friends aren’t behind this?” I teased, running a delicate fingernail along his cheek with affection. A second son of a wealthy baron, Drew had too much money with little to occupy his mind or his energy. So he sought thrills, skirting the edges of the law with obsessions such as magic, the occult, and now necromancy.
He grew rigid and cold, face going blank, hiding all emotion. “I have no friends who are necromancers.”
“Colleagues? Mentors? Teachers?” I offered, on guard as well. If I didn’t need to understand every nuance of his posture, I’d turn away and fuss with my accessories. I still needed to affix a gaudy arrangement of red-and-black feathers bound to a ruby-and-jet brooch—a gift from Sir Drew—into my hair and the matching necklace around my throat.
Then he shook himself, and a veil of strong control lifted from his face. “Doubtful. I am but a married dilettante whose wife affects invalidism, so I distract myself with arcane puzzles—and you. Heaven help me if Victoria gives me a baronetcy and I actually have the responsibility of a title beyond the knighthood Father bought for me from King William upon his coronation. Beside, none of my colleagues, mentors, or teachers would know what to do with kidnapped street urchins, other than throw them into a bathtub with a bar of soap and orders to scrub.” He laughed. It sounded hollow.
Before I could ask him to fasten the necklace, he trooped off down the stairs to set his groom in place.
Chapter Three
LONDON’S “NOBS” ARE A cautious bunch. They constantly watch the others of their class, making certain that their prestige (within specific parameters of wealth and lineage) is never lessened by the rise of another and that their manners can never, ever be called into question. What they do behind closed doors is another matter.
Therefore, each of them must make an entrance to an assembled crowd. To arrive before a certain quantity of people have already gathered makes them timid and anxious to please, rather than established. To arrive at a salon too late is pompous. Thus, they tend to arrive en masse one carefully measured hour after the announced invitation.
When I began hosting a salon and extended invitations to learned scholars in mathematics, science, and language, to budding politicians, and wealthy philanthropists, to artists and performers who could discuss more than their own subject, I knew that if I invited them for eight of the clock, they’d arrive at nine. If I invited them for nine, they’d not show their faces before ten. Since I had to open the café with coffee brewed and sugar buns baked at seven in the morning, I called them all together at seven in the evening, knowing they’d all arrive by eight and depart to more fashionable gatherings before midnight, most by ten.
Oblivious to the perceptions of polite society, my Lady Ada arrived at the stroke of seven thirty. She and her newly belted earl of a husband saw themselves up the grand staircase from the heart of the café—wider and less creaky than the back stairs from the kitchen, and carpeted but otherwise quite ordinary—and greeted me with the affection of long familiarity.
“My Lord and Lady.” I dipped a proper curtsy before embracing my girl. “You are still too thin and pale,” I whispered as we touched cheeks.
“I agree,” Lord William replied. He had extraordinary hearing, honed on the hunting course. “Ada should not have ventured out so soon after rising from her sickbed.”
“Nonsense, Billy.” She was the only one who got away with using the casual nickname to his face. “I have been stuck in my sickbed for nearly a year.” She may have been ensconced in her bed, but she hadn’t been idle. Her nimble mind had played mathematical games and come up with new inventions. “’Tis time I saw the world again and the world glimpses the new first Earl and Countess of Lovelace.” She squeezed my arms in reassurance as she withdrew.
I bit my tongue, hard, to keep from noting aloud that my Lady Ada had taken ill after the birth of her second child in two years and arisen the day after our new queen had granted the lofty titles—honors granted in return for foiling a kidnapping plot three years ago.
I suspected other reasons for her invalidism. More than the strain of bearing children so close together. After a difficult birth with heavy bleeding she’d taken a full year to recover.
Lady Byron, Ada’s mother, and her two special friends had moved into Ada’s household to “manage” the servants while Ada recovered. Diligently they used Romany charms of herbs and incense and something more I could not imitate to protect her from magical attack. We’d nicknamed the companions “The Furies” long ago. For many reasons. The likes of a necromancer, even one as potent as Lord Byron, could not breech a house they protected.
To separate my flamboyant image from Ada’s respectability we made choices and saw little of each other in public. Where my gown dipped, hers were restrained and covered. Where my skirts flipped and flirted over three petticoats, her cautious bell with two petticoats swayed in discreet lilts. I wore bright jewel tones with lots of lace and accessories; she kept to more sober and pale earth tones. My sleeves were wispy puffs on the upper arms, leaving my shoulders bare. Hers covered her arms from collarbone to elbow.
Even here in my private parlor, she and I maintained opposite public images.
Drew rejoined the salon hard on the heels of the Lovelace family’s arrival. As second son of a minor baron with only two generations of heritage, Drew needed to pay his respects to higher nobility and maintain his unofficial duties as my companion and co-host.
Oh, the public face among the nobs can be a very entertaining dance. And since I lived on the edge of this society, slightly outré, I could do as I pleased, watching them jockey for position. Though I’m not sure this race could be won.
“Still no sign of Violet,” Drew said under his breath as he placed a tray of delicacies on the sideboard and expertly poured wine for the four of us.
“Violet? Where is Violet?” Ada asked. She flipped and fumbled with her pearls in agitation. “You brought her into my household five years ago. Hopeless in the kitchen but very organized and efficient. She cleaned up the pantry and linen closets, even labeling each shelf so the others could put everything back where it belonged.”
“I had errands today away from home. She used her half day off to visit her mother. As she usually does. She has not returned,” I replied quietly.
“Her mother lives in Southwark,” Lord Billy said blandly. “I’m surprised she has not gone missing before. Robbed and murdered, kidnapped into white slavery are the least of the dangers there. The place should be burned to the ground a
nd rebuilt properly to eliminate the criminal element.”
I actually bit my tongue that time. And Drew nearly swallowed his own. New housing would only encourage the criminal element to prey upon a better class of victims.
“We shall be outrageously casual tonight,” I pronounced. “We will serve ourselves as and when we wish. We shall laugh and talk and debate with freedom as there are no servants in the room or listening at the door to later spread gossip about us.” I flung out my arms in a grand gesture.
“Only you could get away with this,” Drew said on a laugh. He took my empty wineglass (how had I drunk it dry without noting?) and filled it nearly to the brim with my favorite Madeira.
“Ah, Charles has come after all,” Ada interrupted our exchange, turning to face her business partner and scientific colleague, Charles Babbage. He invented the Difference Engine, proving machines capable of complex mathematical calculations. Lady Ada had corrected his designs and made the machine work.
That invention had led to the Analytical Engine that took the process ten steps further, a machine that could “think” (within the limitations of a stack of thin gold cards punched in precise patterns). My Ada and Mr. Babbage were rapidly becoming extremely wealthy; producing gadgets that performed menial tasks, enhanced factory production, and soon, I was promised, would make a locomotive no longer dependent upon rails to move people and goods about the country.
Something about a special processing of rubber to encapsulate wheels . . .
To my mind, their best project was the steam-and-clockwork–powered book catalog that shifted and rotated, spat out books appropriate to a specific search, and became the heart of the Book View Café.
The day of my grand opening flashed before my memory as if it had happened that morning.
I remembered pacing before the front door for what seemed like hours, the last five minutes before I should officially unlock the doors.
The Transference Engine Page 3