So I’d gone myself and taken care of the chore. Afterward, I sat beside her, holding the baby while she slept. Ada’s eyes were heavy and her face pale. Her left hand lay listlessly beside her, not stirring even to stroke her baby’s hair.
“Ada, what ails you?” I asked.
“Two difficult births in two years,” William King replied from the doorway. He shuffled his feet and looked up and down the hallway as if he’d rather be anywhere else, and yet could not pry himself away from his ailing wife.
Ada barely lifted her fingers, and he dashed to the other side of the bed. Deep lines of worry drew his mouth down and furrowed his brow so deeply the skin looked like a recently plowed field. He turned her hand over and kissed the palm, holding it in both of his.
“I told you we should wait,” he said. “It’s all my fault. I should have made you wait, but I love you so much . . .” He dropped his head to the sheets. “Don’t leave me, Ada. I couldn’t go on without you.”
“Hush, Billy. Don’t invite Death when I’m not ready for him yet.”
“I think, Ada, that you will live. But you do need time. And rest. I should give the baby to her wet nurse and go myself.”
“No, Elise. Stay a bit more. I . . . I want my baby close.”
I settled back into my chair and rocked the tiny child. She opened her big blue eyes and stared at me, puckering her rosebud mouth. Then she let out a wail. Probably demanding food and a change of nappy.
Ada sighed her consent. The effort of staying awake for ten minutes had exhausted her.
I rose, still cuddling the child and turned to find the wet nurse. Just then, I smelled sulfur. Rancid, hot, and the tingle of electricity, like the first second after a lightning strike.
I knew that smell. The one time I had used Lord Byron’s transference engine, the process smelled like this; a soul hovering between two bodies smelled like this.
Ada had nearly bled to death. She’d need months to recover any vitality. She was vulnerable. A greedy soul that needed a new body waited for her.
I whipped off my shawl and threw it over Ada’s face and upper body. William lifted his head, instantly alert, and added his own body as protection to cover his wife from invasion. The baby willingly pressed her face against my chest, rooting for the food she craved, but would not find. I held her for several long, breathless moments. I thought I saw a dark mist swirling around and around us. It sent long stabbing tendrils toward Ada, and then the baby. William and I kept our vigil. With a snap and a cold breeze that came from nowhere, the mist was gone. In the far distance, perhaps only in my mind, I heard a howl of disappointed rage.
We relaxed and checked baby and mother. Other than gasping for air, Ada seemed untouched by the invader. The baby howled for food.
Ada kept to her bed for over a year after that. The baby grew naturally with fine dark curls like her mother and a sunny disposition.
Ever after, I checked Ada’s babies every time I saw them. They were both free of any blemish. Feet and hands were clean, devoid of evidence of a puncture, and deliciously ticklish.
Lady Byron sighed. “I forgot how good you are with children. Perhaps we should hire you as nanny for these two.”
“I am too old,” I said firmly.
“Did you never wish for children of your own?” A personal question from the great lady herself! Was the world coming to an end?
Thirty-eight might not be too old to bear children, but my mind and life were no longer young enough to cope with the demands of motherhood. I replied to Lady Byron, “Only occasionally and briefly. I had eight younger brothers and sisters that I helped raise. Then, at the age of sixteen, I went to work as a nurserymaid to Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley at Villa Diodati to earn enough money to send my younger brother to school. I don’t need any more children of my own.”
Something pungent wafted to my nose from the region of a nappy. “One of the advantages of visiting other people’s children is that I can play, delight, and be delighted. And then I can give them back when they need changing.” I rose with the child in my arms and handed her to the nurserymaid who hovered protectively just behind my shoulder. She had watched diligently all the while that I had sat in the rocking chair with children climbing over me.
“Now if you will excuse me, Lady Byron.” I bobbed a sketchy curtsy and sidled past her to the top of the stairway. “I have letters to write and a business to run. I’m training new employees and dare not leave them more than a half hour. I’ll let Little Miss Doyle know where you should send your contribution to the war widows.”
“Do you have any special news to impart?”
“Nothing for certain. A few rumors suggesting we be wary and extra diligent throughout the coronation celebrations.”
She nodded curtly.
Without a backward glance, I departed Lovelace House, hailed a hansom cab, and returned to the Book View Café where light from the new windows brought life to an otherwise dreary hole of a building. Light, the giver of life. So how did one use it to take a life?
When in doubt, duplicate. I sent notes to Dr. Ishwardas Chaturvedi at both the new address and the old. Then I wrote to the Oxford scholar who had returned the bad translation tome, apologizing for my error in purchasing the book or offering it up in the search engine. I never offered Byron’s last book of poetry, but it slid down the chute at regular intervals. Then I asked if he knew of a better translation that I might acquire on the subject, and—by the by—did he know a better address for Dr. Chaturvedi.
“Mickey!” I called from the center carousel of the library.
“Aye, Missus?” He poked his head through the open front door, a fierce grip on his broom.
When I’d returned from Lovelace House, I’d noted that the front stoop looked spotless and scrubbed.
“Mickey, I have a chore for you.” I held up my letters and a tuppence.
His eyes grew wide at the size of the coin.
My boy was growing up, equating money with success, security. Safety.
But giving employment to Toby, Violet, and Jane hadn’t kept them safe. “When you have delivered the letters to the post, I need you to spread the word that Toby, Violet, and Jane must be found, alive, if at all possible.”
His chin trembled and he looked away from the enticement of the coin. But his focus came back to the shiny round of copper. I added a second tuppence to the first. “This one is yours if you spread the word that I need another girl to serve coffee and pastry and bring one back here.”
“What happens when Violet and Jane come back?” Lucy asked. She stood straight with shoulders thrown back and defiance in her level chin.
“If the new girls work out, I’ll keep them on. We need the extra hands.”
Both Emily and Lucy breathed easier. They had known the tantalizing hope of permanent employment and a chance at a better life dangled in front of them, only to have it yanked out from under them, throwing them back onto the street. I’d faced that fate a time or two.
“I like to reward hard work and loyalty. Would either of you consider moving into the attic and taking on the chores of assisting me, both personally and professionally?”
Violet was hopeless in the kitchen but extremely organized and insistent upon cleanliness. I baked; she cleaned my utensils and made sure they were always close to my hand.
The girls exchanged silent glances. “Only one of us?” Lucy asked. They’d been friends and flatmates for a long time, companions and protectors of each other on the street before that.
“I can use you both if you can squeeze yourselves and your things into the attic.” They’d be safer there, neither had family to entice them to walk alone through London.
“We’re paid through the end of the month at the flat,” Lucy said. “If you hire new girls and vouch for them, they can stay there.”
“Thank you. That�
�s a good enticement to get girls off the street.” I smiled widely at them. “Mickey, spread the word. I need servers in the front of the café, a dishwasher, too.”
“If . . . if you bring in extra hands, may I learn to bake and stay in the kitchen?” Emily asked shyly. She twisted her hands into her apron and kept her eyes on the floor.
“That sounds like a marvelous idea!” I nearly crowed. “Tonight, after we close, I’ll start teaching you both the fine art of baking.” And then I could send the sullen Helen back to Lady Ada’s household.
“Me, too?” Mickey asked. He plastered a look of bland innocence on his face. But he couldn’t hide the light sparkling in his eyes, brighter than when he’d spied the second tuppence.
“Cooking school starts tonight. I host salon tomorrow night, so we’ll need both sweet and savory prepared before then. Now, back to work, all of you.” I swept upstairs to my private sitting room and the ledgers, inventories, and new book acquisitions that badly needed my attention.
Chapter Ten
DREW DID NOT RETURN in time to attend my salon. He said he’d be gone for a few days. I shouldn’t expect word from him yet. He sometimes retreated to his country home for weeks to attend to business or see to his son’s education. Friends invited him to house parties for his wit and charm.
So why did I fret about his absence while Lucy tightened my laces to make my old sapphire gown fit properly. The last time I’d dressed for salon Drew had performed this chore. Because Violet had gone missing. She had not returned yet. The chances of finding her or Jane or Toby alive diminished with each passing day.
Enough worrying about things I could not change. I needed to host the intellectual elite and gather information, the two things I did best.
The first guest, much earlier than fashionable, through my door surprised me. “Ish!” I squealed the moment I spied Dr. Chaturvedi standing awkwardly in the doorway to my parlor. I threw my arms around him and held him tightly. He returned my embrace with equal fervor and kissed my chin. He stood half a hand shorter than myself with a slight frame and the vague myopic expression of a man who truly needed spectacles but refused to wear them in public.
“My dear, it is good to see you again,” he whispered in my ear in that lovely singsong accent. “I am most satisfied that you went to such lengths to find me.” His fingers dug into my back fiercely, then released me, and he stepped aside to reveal an even shorter man standing hesitantly behind him.
The newcomer ran a finger around his tight collar while studying the door lintel. He wore little round spectacles with a silvery wire frame that slid down his nose. His tweed coat had seen better days, revealing fraying threads at the lapel edges and sleeve ends. His nose looked raw and damp. I wanted to hand him a clean handkerchief, but had to remind myself that he was a grown man, unlike Mickey.
“Madame Magdala, may I present my colleague Dr. Jeremy Badenough.” Ish bowed slightly, tugging on his companion’s sleeve to indicate he should imitate the action.
Ah, scholars! So intent on their studies they had trouble remembering etiquette. I loved them for their brilliant minds and loved them when I taught them what they needed to know about life and they remembered it afterward.
“Jeremy Badenough, you borrowed the book of bad translations,” I said, holding out my fingertips to him.
He clasped my hand, as a man would shake another man’s. That intrigued me. He hadn’t bothered with the etiquette of greeting a . . . mature woman of casual acquaintance. Instead, he treated me with the respect he’d accord a man he admired and considered an equal.
I liked him immediately.
“It wasn’t all bad,” he said, blinking rapidly. I wondered if that was an indication of embarrassment or a need to replace shyness with intellectual zeal.
“Did you learn anything of use?” I gestured them to proceed me into the parlor. Trays of pastries lined the sideboard, wine breathed in its decanter, and a coffee urn simmered over a candle burner, all waiting for my guests to serve themselves.
The men gathered refreshments and settled on the settee while I perched on the wing-backed chair as if on a throne. Ish preferred the cheese and savory delicacies with coffee—I had no tea prepared, which was his preference. Dr. Badenough loaded his plate with sweets and filled his glass to the brim with wine, most of which he drank in one long gulp, then topped off the glass.
“So what nugget of information did you glean from the bad translation of Persian into Latin and then a worse translation into English? I must admit that I had a great deal of difficulty parsing anything sensible from the twisted sentence structure.”
“Actually, the most useful bit was that the Oriental magicians cling fiercely to the notion of cleanliness. They insist their laboratories must be completely whitewashed: walls, floors, and ceilings. Not a single dust mote must enter the equation,” Dr. Badenough said, leaning forward in his enthusiasm until his hopeless cravat nearly dangled in his wine and his spectacles slid farther down his nose.
“Whitewash,” Ish mused. “The lime in the compound has proved effective in preventing certain molds from growing.”
“Did I read somewhere recently that some physicians are expounding the value of washing hands and . . . disinfecting surgeries?” I interjected, trying to remember where I had read that, or overheard a conversation. I knew that farmers, such as my father, frequently whitewashed both interior and exterior walls of a dairy. They said that the brighter atmosphere kept the cows happier and the milk sweeter. But there might be a more scientific explanation behind the old folk wisdom.
“Yes.” Ish leaned forward, nearly dropping his tray. “I have heard of this obscure theory of cleanliness. Some cultures value scrubbed hands and thus suffer fewer contagious illnesses. In Calcutta, for instance . . .”
A knock on the door interrupted us.
I excused myself and rose to open the door at the top of the private stair. “Hold that thought, Ish. We will talk more, later.” My two guests looked to each other and nodded.
Three esteemed, if not well-selling, artists descended upon us along with a sprinkling of minor nobility. Coronation parties and special performances at theaters about town drew many of my usual guests. Well enough, this smaller group suited my mood admirably. And they were all young enough and hungry enough not to complain if my pastries were less than perfect, baked by my new apprentices.
Quickly the conversation turned to the way Vernon St. George used light in his paintings of the Madonna.
Surprisingly, Ish contributed to the sprightly conversation with his scientific observations of the properties of light. He even recommended a chemical wash to layer on top of oils to give the illusion of glowing in dim light.
The technical terminology meant nothing to me.
Dr. Badenough, Jeremy, looked as bewildered as I. When Ish shifted to a straight chair beside a painter and his . . . er . . . model, I took his place on the settee.
“What intrigued you about the book?” I asked, transferring one of my jam scones from my plate to his and topping off his glass of wine. His eyes looked a bit heavy, but his nose had dried in the cozy warmth of my parlor.
“The book?” he asked blearily.
“An Examination of Necromancy and Soul Preservation After Death in the Magic System of Persia,” I reminded him, deliberately correcting the title.
He opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. “The book you borrowed and returned to my library. Why did you borrow it in the first place?”
“Lord Ruthven requested my analysis of the text.”
“Lord Ruthven.” The fine hairs along my spine stood up straight.
“Yes. He attended school with my older half brother. He took advantage of the family connection. My brother begged me to assist Ruthven so he wouldn’t have to. Ruthven’s always been fascinated with necromancy. I don’t know why. Rather repulsive if you ask me. He
quotes Lord Byron at length, giving the poet king’s melancholy as evidence of a need to study death in all its phases.”
I sighed in relief. Badenough wasn’t a practitioner. But Lord Byron reared his ugly head once again.
“Why you?”
“I have studied many obscure religions as part of my ancient language studies, and their inherent magic in foreign realms. He thought there might be spells encrypted in the text and that was why it was so difficult to understand. Once I discerned the Latinate grammar beneath the English and a foreign subtext, I knew there were no true secrets, just bad scholarship.” He bit deeply into the rich cinnamon bun, strewing spiced sugar across his beleaguered cravat. I wanted to brush it clean and launder it for him.
But I needed one more piece of information from him first. “Is Adam Lord Ruthven a practitioner?”
He paused with the remnants of his sweet halfway to his mouth. His mouth twisted in distaste and he set the bun back on his plate, then put it all aside on the end table. “He never said so. My brother was most anxious to prevent him from pressing his cause at the family manor.”
“You believe he does more than study and observe.”
“His fascination with death is untoward. When he visited my brother some twenty years ago—I was but six or seven—he spent nearly the entire two weeks in the parish cemetery or the manor crypt—it’s very old, from the days of its original abbey foundations, and not altogether sound. He liked the crypt best. My brother discovered him trying to open one of the tombs and terminated the visit. We believe he made off with the skull of one of our Crusader ancestors. He left under protest, spouting nonsense about the magical powers contained in the bones of a true believer.”
“I will not go to Mass this morning!” Augusta Ada Byron stamped her foot as she screamed at Mrs. Carr, one of Lady Byron’s “friends.”
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