"While the Empress Catherine will always be my sovereign, forever and in my heart, this Emperor Paul is a tyrant and a fool. He alienated the very people that—"
The words hung between us. Simon's eyes grew wide.
"What were you going to say?" he asked.
I was going to speak of my exile from the country, but then I remembered that I wasn't supposed to be of the nobility. Only a once-wealthy widow seeking a fresh start in a new country.
"He's a fool, that's all. He'll be the ruin of that country," I said.
He didn't seem to be buying my answer. "When you speak like that, Empress Catherine will always be my sovereign, forever and in my heart, you're not helping yourself. I've got to find a reason not to arrest you, especially since you won't return the egg."
I turned away from him and chewed on my lower lip. Catherine and I had been close friends, though somewhat estranged towards the end. It felt like a violation of the trust she had in me not to speak my mind about her.
"By what proof can you arrest me?" I asked, trying to change the subject. "It's only her word against mine. How do you know she didn't lose this egg?"
He glanced around the room as if that should be proof enough. "I'm not sure what dealings you had with the nobility in Russia," he said, "but once a woman like Lady Bingham decides you've committed a crime, no judge in this city will disagree with her."
"Then what use are the freedoms you fought the English for? Will this become a country run by aristocrats as well?" I asked, throwing the words in his face. "It's one of the reasons I fled from Russia."
He flinched and narrowed his gaze. "Then give me something I can work with. I cannot return to the Lady Bingham without something. Either the duck egg, or you in chains. Give me something worth that."
He spoke the words with distaste, as if it hurt him to have to be this way. I'd give him at least that much credit.
"What if I find this egg of hers?" I ask. "Find out who took it and get it back for her. Will that work?"
"Find the egg?" he asked, sardonically.
I kept my chin high. "Yes, find the egg. Can you give me time to do that?"
He squeezed his hat in his hands, bending it back and forth, the peacock feather twisting like a quill at work. Then he jammed the hat on his head and grimaced with full teeth. It was an unattractive gesture, but I gave him a break on account of what he said next.
"I might have been too quick to judge you up at the estate with the dead man and the cauldron. I suppose it's possible that your pewter button fell off upon our investigation. But this is wholly different. On this charge, I cannot simply make my own choice and live with it. Lady Bingham is a powerful woman and not one to be trifled with. But I can give you a few days to get the egg back, from whatever you did with it."
"A week," I said, steadfast.
"A few days," he said, frowning. "I can't keep her back that long."
"A week, please. I have my printing business to run," I said, thinking that I needed to visit the paper shop after he left.
"You shouldn't be thinking about your printing business during a time like this. I'm only giving you this chance because of your association with Ben Franklin. His word means a lot with me, though it also worries me that he's been gone so long."
"A week?" I asked.
"A few days, no more. Bring that duck egg back and your long-term prospects in Philadelphia will greatly improve," he said. "Now, I must take my leave. I wish you a good afternoon, Miss Carmontelle. Try to use this time wisely."
He raised an eyebrow as he turned and left. I stood in the open door, too stunned to move, until the growling sound of a steam carriage went past, startling me into closing my door lest someone else see me in my nightgown.
Return the egg. It sounded a lot simpler than it was. How hard could it be to find a duck egg protected by a gangly murderous maniac with a mail shirt that rattled like bones? And why was this duck egg so important to the Lady Bingham?
First things first, I decided. I needed to return to the Bradford Paper Store to check on their inventory. Then I could worry about finding this duck egg. After knuckling away the sleep from the corner of my eyes, I marched back upstairs to put on proper attire for the day's duties.
Chapter Seven
Philadelphia smelled like gunpowder and sewage on this warm August day. South of the city, President Washington's army was drilling in the flatlands. Despite the Federalists’ love of England, tensions still kept the country's military on alert.
Cloud-bursting booms shattered the idyllic afternoon as the American artillery unleashed its might. Airships skated across the sky, dropping bombs and barbed-wire caltrops. The colony's air superiority had beaten the English, along with an devilishly clever, dirt-spitting steam tank devised by Franklin—the troops called it the Eagle's Talon for its ability to fly across the battlefield and crush its enemies.
While the others on the street flinched at each explosion, I merely smiled and lifted the hem of my overskirt as I hurried to my destination. My previous encounter with Mr. Bradford had been unsuccessful in part because I'd been wearing men's attire. This time I hoped to properly impress him with my propriety.
I'd once worn this outfit while riding with the French painter, Boucher, on a journey through Europe when I'd been taking my son Pavel to university in England. The outfit, made of Indian cotton with a verdant forest pattern, appeared more common and homespun than it actually was. The riding coat had a masculine touch, but I was a printer after all. Hopefully my high-crowned hat trimmed with feathers and tassels would impress Mr. Bradford that I was not a poor sot, not to be trusted on credit.
It was a dozen blocks to his store, and I was quite winded by the time I arrived. I was worried that his store would be closed since it took me much longer to make the journey than it had the day before. Along with the threads of gray in my hair, I felt the weight of each step as if I were thirty years older—and maybe I was.
Even without testing the wound on my shoulder, I knew it had not healed. Whenever I moved my left arm, the skin felt wet and sensitive beneath the bandage.
My patience and delayed arrival were rewarded when I saw a steam carriage pulling a wooden wagon filled with crates packed with paper. I recognized the seal branded into the side. I was feeling fortunate that I had arrived before anyone else could purchase it, though it appeared they had enough that no one could buy out the stock.
The wagon rattled behind the shop, going to their storage area, I presumed. It was filled with so many crates that it chattered like a thousand teeth.
The bell gave me a victorious welcome when I stepped inside. With paper purchased, I could complete the pamphlets for the Agrarian Party and take on other business, including that of poor Morwen Hightower, who'd lost her husband.
My first hint that things would not go as planned was when Mr. Bradford stepped out from the back room, his eyes narrowing briefly upon seeing me. He wore the same mustard-brown jacket, and the pockmarks on his cheek crinkled as his face went through contortions.
"Mr. Bradford, I'm right heartily glad to see you."
He glanced at the floor, having trouble meeting my gaze. "Miss Carmontelle, I am your humble servant."
Forging ahead, I cleared my throat and spoke. "I won't keep you long, but I came for the paper. I would like to purchase three reams on credit, delivered to my printer."
Mr. Bradford rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm afraid I cannot sell them to you."
"By what reason? I observed a wagon full of reams arriving just this moment," I said.
"That you did," he said, finally meeting my gaze.
"Is this paper for sale?" I asked.
He nodded. "It is."
"You can't possibly have sold it all. Or have you?"
"No, madam. A few reams are spoken for, but the bulk is for sale. The mill had generous amounts of cloth pulp for turning into paper," he said in a forced, level voice.
My narrow-waist riding jacket seemed to cons
trict around my midsection, coiling until I could barely draw breath. My hand developed a tremble as if an earthquake had formed in my palm.
"You had a visit earlier, didn't you?" I asked, somehow keeping the quivering from my voice.
His lips soured as he gave me one curt nod.
"The Lady Bingham, I presume?"
A second nod, this time slower and more reluctant.
"She said selling you the paper would be considered unpatriotic in this tenuous time of potential conflict, because you were not born in this country."
I should have been more considerate of his predicament, especially when he held the very materials that my business and livelihood relied on, but cowardice offended me to the deepest core.
"And you accepted this? Is she your Queen, that you bow down to her? Have you fought for nothing that you would trade your freedom to another master?" Anger was a balm to the trembles in my hands.
His face grew blotchy. "Now, madam, I do not deserve this ill treatment. This is my store at risk, and the Bingham's are powerful foes for those that wish to make them so. I do not appreciate this sentiment."
I nearly held back my tongue, but truth had always been a virtue and a vice for me. Even when it was against my own interests.
"Then I shall find my materials elsewhere. As only a fool would give money to a man frantic to sell himself into indenture. And for a pittance at that. She didn't even have the decency to bribe you."
I swept out of the store, slamming the door in my wake, desperate for a breath. I was well aware the Bradford Paper Store was the only one in town, but I would find a way around that. As I shrugged off my anger, the trembles returned, and I suspected it was only partially due to the lack of powder.
After composing myself, I prepared to return to home, but a contingent of soldiers turned onto the street. By the mud on their boots, it appeared their drills had been strenuous. They wore navy blue coats over brown shirts and pants, with a carryall thrown over their shoulder for holding gunpowder and supplies.
Boots slapped stone in a soothing cadence. I'd once been a colonel in the Russian military, a position appointed by my beloved Empress Catherine, and to this day I believe I am the only woman ever to have held rank.
The soldiers passed and I curtseyed, my knees crackling at the bend. The men were kind and a few smiled in my direction, though it was not the interested gaze I was used to, but one saved for someone's mother. Their uniforms were splattered with mud, and they carried rifles of a design I'd never seen before. Further sparking my curiosity was a strange apparatus around their necks that looked like it could be pulled up and over the face. The soldiers turned down the next street and out of my view before I could consider it further, and I was regretful that it was a mystery I didn't have the luxury of investigating.
I suppose I should have been grateful that Lady Bingham hadn't figured out my debts were owned by her husband's bank. If she had, then I'd already be out of business and forced to flee the city for safer shores. This prospect wouldn't have been terrible, except that I'd grown to love the city of Philadelphia, and with the life-sustaining effects of the powder fleeing my body at an alarming rate, I needed to stay in the city should Ben Franklin miraculously return.
Even as I stood on the corner as steam carriages rumbled past, I wondered if that pistol-wild Voltaire had succumbed to his rapid aging. He'd looked ancient upon our last meeting, and I could scarcely guess that he'd last the week.
Each of my three problems seemed impenetrable by their nature, though I suppose one of them was attainable. While I had no ideas on how to find that duck egg, nor did I have an inkling of the location of Ben Franklin, I did have an idea on how to acquire funds.
I knew it wasn't the most pressing need, but until I had ideas on the other two, I decided to make hay with the one I could. It was the only reasonable choice.
White Horse Alley along South Street wasn't far from the Bradford Paper Store, though in taking that course, I would be further from my home, a prospect that was not at all pleasing. I made my way south through the city, staying to the edge of the street, away from the steam carriages and horses that hurried past, but far enough away from the sewage that people left outside their doorstep.
Half a block from White Horse Alley, I froze and remembered why that location seemed familiar. I'd been at that place only a week before at the blacksmith, where I'd purchased a new set of movable lead type for my printing machine. Before I'd been using carved wood blocks, and the letters had become worn with use.
The configuration of the street stuck in my mind because it had been one long row of residential buildings with two business lots at the dead center: one was the blacksmith and the other was empty.
Even before I turned the corner, the noxious fumes of the foundry assaulted my sense of smell. The inside of my nose burned slightly. As I made my way up the street, a growing unease filled my belly.
The smithy, a brick building of two stories with a workman front, stood exactly where I remembered it. On the back, a chimney rose to a height of twice the house, black smoke leaking from the top, the metallic tint of its fires causing my nose to wrinkle.
Next to the smithy's, where an empty lot should have been filled with high grasses, was a marvel speckled with a riot of colorful flowers. My gaze was first drawn to the banquet of flowers growing from planter boxes and hanging pots. They were filled with all manner of flowers: azure orchids, moonflowers, bright crimson calla lilies, purple hellebores, and plumeria. I even spied a bunch of chamomiles, which I had grown at my home in Moscow. Each bouquet was so expertly manicured that I assumed I'd come to the wrong place, and that it was a flower shop rather than a chocolate confectionary. The arrangements of flowers had more in common with the interior of a watch than a display of horticulture.
But hanging above the door in bright yellow lettering was a sign that read Marvelous Morwen's Confectionary & Sweet House. Like an injection into my olfactory senses, the deliriously sweet smell of candies put warmth into my chest.
The door sprung open, releasing a trio of ladies in muslin gowns carrying closed parasols. Their laughter tittered like bells as they slipped chocolate treats past their demure lips, barely paying me any attention as they glided across the street to a waiting carriage, which swallowed them up before rumbling to other parts of the city.
While the outside lured me to the front door, the inside delighted my inner child, releasing an unexpected chortle from my lips. My eyes could not contain themselves—so many visions to comprehend.
Hanging from a bar near the front was a chocolate parakeet, made with such exquisite detail that I swore I saw the eye twitch when I looked away. A maze of glass cases led me further in, and at the center, I discovered a table displayed a battlefield of chocolate soldiers marching, muskets bristling with bayonets, cannons readied to fire.
I couldn't decide what I wanted to do first, move the tiny chocolate figures across the field like chess pieces or bite off their heads in delicious glee. The sweet smells of the shop were an intoxicant to my weary body.
Laughter escaped my lips at each new sight. A display case was filled with what at first I thought were fresh flowers. But the sparkle of crystalline sugar suggested they were candy marvels, delicately created by hand, and possibly too beautiful to eat.
Another display case held trays of treats wrapped in decorative cloth and festooned with pink bows. A tag with a scrawling script on it marked the candy presents as: Friendship, Gratitude, Industry, Contemplative, and even Love, among others.
The whole shop was bursting with display cases. I could scarcely believe everything fit into the space, and had the urge to step outside just to mark the size, when I realized a woman was standing behind the case in front of me.
"Miss Carmontelle, the printer, how lovely to see you in my humble shop," said Morwen Hightower.
Almost as surprising as the candies in her shop was her attire, which was completely different from the womanly grace she pr
esented upon my doorstep. I almost mistook her for a soldier of some kind, with all the gear and accouterments hanging from her person.
Her flaxen hair swirled about her head, contained by petite metal flowers with petals as sharp as razors that served as pins. Her arm was covered in a brass-and-gear contraption, which wrapped around her hand and clicked when she moved it. A tiny blue flame hissed from a tube that ran the length of her forefinger and was connected, through her mechanical contraption, to a pair of glass cylinders on her back. Inside the vessels, it appeared clouds had been trapped.
"What are you wearing?"
The words leapt from my lips before I put thought to how they would be received. Miss Hightower speared me in her sights momentarily before tilting her head back and giving a warm, delicious laugh.
"It helps me make the candies and chocolates," she said, winking.
"How remarkable," I said.
"Indeed," she replied, her green eyes sparkling like the warm seas around the Adriatic.
I twirled around slowly, and still more sights threatened to distract me. I heard the wonder in my voice as I spoke. "How did you have time to make all of this? And this shop? I remember an empty lot just last week."
She lifted one shoulder in a delicate, what-can-you-do manner. "I'm sure your memory is wrong. I've been setting up for over a month, though I just opened last week. Most of this was made when I was in New York, though I keep at it."
Pointing into the case between us, I said, "What of these chocolates? Each one is marked with a name."
She smiled as if we were sharing a secret and lifted two trays out of the case and set them on top, careful not to catch anything on fire with the flame that was still lit on her candy-making device.
"My customers say that each one makes them feel like the emotion on the paper, and who am I to disagree?" she said.
"Are they are the same chocolates and you just put different names on them?" I asked.
"Oh, no," she said. "Each one was made with a different recipe. A little of this, a pinch of that, you know how it goes."
A Cauldron of Secrets (The Dashkova Memoirs Book 2) Page 5