by Candace Camp
“Too old? For what?”
“For what we all feared was going to happen to Kyria, I imagine,” Olivia said.
“No, I don’t think they had any designs that way. He didn’t do anything except ask me questions. He didn’t even leer. Nor did he hurt me when I wouldn’t answer his questions. He just roared and stomped and shook his hand threateningly.”
“Perhaps he has something of a conscience,” the duchess said. “I blame his upbringing for his life of crime—born into poverty, with no way to improve oneself. If society did not turn their backs on the problem of the slums—”
“Yes, Mother, I know, and no doubt you’re right,” Kyria interrupted her. “But I don’t think it was from any innate nobility. I think he was acting on orders from someone else. He didn’t seem to know any more about this key than I did. I asked him to explain what key, to describe it, and so on, and it just enraged him. He couldn’t tell me a thing about it. And apparently they didn’t know who we are, which one would think they would if they had come up with the idea.”
“Perhaps they took the wrong person,” Thisbe offered. “They were supposed to grab some other woman at the vigil.”
The others regarded her doubtfully. “Doesn’t seem likely.”
“No doubt you’re right,” Thisbe agreed after a moment’s reflection. “If there’s trouble about, it will go to the Morelands.”
“I think that whoever hired them kept the information from them, for fear they would be scared to do the job.”
“Well, whatever they’re doing or whoever it is doing it, it doesn’t change our situation. We still need to escape.”
Kyria looked down at the pile of objects on the bed beside her. “What’s all this?”
“We’re taking stock of our tools and weapons,” Thisbe told her. Then she added, “You have a chatelaine, too. What’s on yours?”
Kyria unhooked the jewelry from her waistband and handed it over to Thisbe. “Not much of any weapons, I’m afraid.”
Kyria’s piece of jewelry was more ornate than Olivia’s, with an onyx at the center of the main piece and beautiful engraving on the objects. Thisbe opened the round ornament, expecting a watch, but found a mirror instead.
“Isn’t there some way to start a fire with a mirror and your magnifying glass?” Olivia asked.
“Maybe, if I were a woodsman.” Thisbe continued listing the items. “Buttonhook. Smelling salts, of course.”
“Buttonhook.” Olivia reached for it. “Perhaps I could use this along with the hatpin on the lock.”
Thisbe pulled the hilt from a casing that looked rather like a tiny scabbard. “A nail file. Now that has potential as a weapon. It looks as sharp as your penknife, Liv. Scissors. What’s this acorn?”
“Thread. And you can use it as a thimble, see, without the lid. That long round one next to it is needles.” Kyria unbuttoned her top few buttons and reached down into her cleavage to pull out another glass bottle, this one with a tapering tip at one end. It was made of elegant cut glass and boasted a stopper topped with a marcasite pyramid. “I have some perfume, as well. It’s too large for the chatelaine.”
“Well, here are our weapons.” Thisbe laid them together. “Penknife, nail file, hatpin. And Olivia has a hatpin, as well.”
“I seem to have lost my hat.” Kyria sighed. “I did love that hat.”
Thisbe decided it was best not to tell Kyria that she had tossed her hat out the wagon window.
“But I have this.” Kyria reached up to the back of her hair and pulled out a silver hair comb of graceful design with two long pointed prongs. “It’s pretty wicked.” She gripped it, one finger between the prongs and the rest clamped around it, and made a little jabbing motion to demonstrate.
“I’d say that would do the trick,” Thisbe said drily. She glanced around. “They could have at least left us a chair or stool.”
“What about the washstand? It looks rickety.”
While Olivia went back to work on the lock, Kyria and her mother examined the washstand and bed, but could not pry anything loose. Still, the water inside the pitcher might be useful. Thisbe sat down on the floor, bottles in front of her. The bottles were all very small, but maybe... Taking the small container of needles, she emptied it out and poured a little water in it from the pitcher. Then she rolled the metal perfume bottle stopper over one of her lemon drops, grinding it into powder.
“What are you doing?” Her mother sat down on the edge of the bed, peering down with interest.
“An experiment. We have several small bottles with stoppers or lids. If I put water in them, then drop in your sodium bicarbonate tablet, it will create carbon dioxide. If I add a bit of acid to the sodium bicarbonate, I’ll have a nice quick buildup of gas, enough to pop off the stopper. It isn’t really dangerous unless the top hits you in the eye, but it should make some noise. It might even fool someone into thinking it is dangerous, at least for a moment.”
“Create a distraction anyway. But why are you grinding up lemon drops?”
“They have citric acid in them.” Thisbe popped one in her mouth, then offered the bag to her mother, and the duchess took a lemon drop, watching as Thisbe broke off a piece of one of the digestive tablets and rolled it in the lemon powder. “Now, step back, and we’ll see if it works.”
The duchess moved away, and everyone turned to watch Thisbe. She put the bottle down at arm’s length and picked up the lemon-coated bit of tablet. “Can you make some noise, just to cover up the pop?”
All three of them began pounding on the door, keeping an eye on Thisbe’s experiment. Quickly, she dropped in the tablet, shoved the cap on and jumped back. Almost immediately, the stopper shot out of the bottle with a pop, spewing water and knocking over the bottle. The top landed on the bed.
“That’s marvelous!” The duchess exclaimed in delight. “What else can you do?”
“The other thing I think I can use for an explosion is the hartshorn.”
“Smelling salts?” Kyria stared. “They’re explosive?”
“They’re ammonium carbonate. It doesn’t really explode. It’s the same thing as baker’s ammonia.”
“What’s that?”
“You can use it in baking cookies,” her mother said. “I remember Cook doing it—terrible odor while they’re cooking, but it doesn’t leave a smell or taste.”
“It degrades under heat,” Thisbe explained. “It creates a little water and, again, carbon dioxide.”
“So it would blow off its top, too.”
“Tightly sealed in glass—and heated—I’m hoping it would blow up the whole vial.”
“Could we break the lock with it?” Olivia asked.
“I’m not sure. Without being able to make precise measurements of the amounts, I’m not even sure the mixture will degrade enough to work. But that keyhole is rather large, and I think Mother’s smelling salts will fit into it.” She walked over to the door and tested the tube in the lock. “I think it might be our best chance. We can brace it against the doorknob below it, then heat it.” She grinned at Olivia and turned to the others. “I need some strips of cloth.”
“I’ll use my petticoat,” Kyria said, then added, “What happened to my petticoats, anyway? I know I was wearing more.” She sent her sisters a suspicious look, and Olivia and Thisbe began to laugh.
Kyria sat down to cut and tear strips of cloth and Olivia related the tale of their journey to her. Thisbe sat down on the floor again to experiment more with her water-and-digestive-tablet combination. The duchess sat on the bed beside her, ripping a ruffle from around the bottom of her petticoat.
“I knew you’d think of something,” Emmeline told her. “You’ve always been such a clever girl. And so practical.”
“Thank you.” Thisbe glanced up at her, a faint note of surprise in her voice.
Her mother gave her a quizz
ical look. “Surely you knew that.”
“Well...” The corner of Thisbe’s mouth lifted. “I’m not sure many people would call me practical. Usually they say I have my head in the clouds.”
“Pfft. It’s no matter what others think. You want to understand things—how things work, what they’re made of, how they interact. What could be more practical?”
“Thank you,” Thisbe said again. “I’ve always thought... Well, I wondered if you wouldn’t have preferred me to be interested in social reform...the things you are so passionate about.”
“Goodness, child, I hope you don’t think I ever expected you to be a copy of me. All of my children are wonderfully unique, so very much themselves. I couldn’t be more proud of my brood. You became a scientist despite all the obstacles. Your papers are in scientific journals.”
“Which I have to publish under my initials because they won’t publish an article from a woman.”
“It’s terribly unfair.” Emmeline’s eyes flashed with her usual zeal over injustice. “But it only shows how ignorant and prejudiced they are. It makes your accomplishments even more impressive.” The duchess cast her a teasing glance. “Though I admit, it was something of a trial when you took apart the clocks to see how they worked. Or threw the crockery from different heights on the stairs.”
“I was studying gravity,” Thisbe protested with a little laugh. She reached out and took her mother’s hand. “We’ll get out of here. Everything will turn out fine.”
“I’ve never doubted it.” Emmeline squeezed her hand.
Kyria’s interrogator came another time to take Kyria away to question her, but when Olivia slammed the door into the man’s arm and Kyria jabbed him with her hair comb, he jumped back and hastily relocked the door. After that, he shouted questions at Kyria through the door, a process which rather leached the intimidation from his threats.
Thisbe added more smelling salts to her mother’s batch, increasing the volume, and capped it tightly. She swaddled the lower portion of the glass tube in strips of cloth, trailing a tightly braided strip several feet long.
Then she set about pouring a bit of water into the bottles that could be capped. She wished she had more of the noisemakers, but several of the bottles had no stoppers or ones that would come off too easily, creating no bang.
However, the ones without lids could be useful in another way. She blew out the kerosene lamp, making the room much dimmer, and carefully poured a bit of kerosene in each, stuffing in cloth and leaving long tails hanging out.
“First, we’ll cap the vials with sodium bicarbonate and toss them down the hall. Then we can light these little bottles of kerosene to throw right after them. The glass ones will shatter when they hit the floor, spilling out little bits of fire, and this lovely wooden sheath that Mother’s smelling salts were in will burn. Between the loud pops and crashes and bits of fire, hopefully we will startle them, perhaps even scare them, making them hesitate.”
Thisbe knew her brain was one of her best features; her aim, however, left something to be desired. She turned to Kyria. “You were always better when we played cricket with the boys. You take this biggest one, the test tube, and throw it down the hall right in front of the door where they were questioning you.”
“Gladly.” Kyria grinned and inspected the glass vial, a bit wider and a couple of inches longer than any of the others. “But why are there jacks in here?”
“At the very least, they’re murder to step on, as I can attest.” The rest of the women, all mothers, nodded in heartfelt agreement. “And if we’re lucky, they go flying out and hit one of the men.”
“They’ll be hot, too,” Olivia said. “Thisbe, I never knew you had such a dangerous streak.”
“Well, I’ve never been abducted before.”
“You have lived a rather quiet life for a Moreland,” Kyria said with mock sympathy.
“Now, let’s line the little bottles with caps by the door and put water in them.”
Olivia and Kyria did as she directed, and Emmeline carried the stoneware pitcher over to them, saying, “I believe I’ll take this pitcher for a weapon. It has a nice heft to it. And the handle makes it easy to carry.”
As they busied themselves with that task, Thisbe crushed a few more lemon drops and made her effervescent tablets. Soon the four little bottles were sitting in a row, stoppers and tablets placed neatly beside them. In another row behind them stood their makeshift bottles of kerosene.
Olivia wrapped more of the cloth strips around and behind the doorknob, creating a sort of saddle for the vial of smelling salts. Then she slipped the narrow tube into the keyhole, angling it slightly, and wedged it against the metal doorknob. Around all this, she and Thisbe wound more cloth, fuel for the fire that would heat the hartshorn inside and cause it to decompose into gas.
“There.” Olivia stepped back and turned to her sisters and mother. “If this little explosion works and the lock opens, we will pick up the water bottles, drop in the tablets, close the lids and toss them down the hall.”
“Very quickly,” Thisbe added. “You saw how quick that reaction was.”
“Then take the fire bottles, light the ends of the cloths and throw them. Here’s a couple of matches for everyone—in case one doesn’t work.”
“With these you must be very careful,” Thisbe warned. “The others will just spew water. These are dangerous. Don’t spill any of the oil on you.”
“That’s one reason why we’re doing it in waves,” Olivia went on. “First the water, then grab these and throw them. If they react to the bottles popping and come charging out, they’ll see fire shooting at them.” Olivia took a deep breath and looked around at the others.
“What if it doesn’t break the lock, and we can’t get out?” Kyria asked.
“Hopefully they’ll come running and open the door to come in and we’ll attack them with our weapons. Everyone’s got hers in her pocket.” She pulled her penknife and hatpin out of her pocket, and around her the others pulled out hatpins and Kyria’s nail file. “And Mother, of course, has her pitcher, as well.” Olivia grinned. “Maybe we’ll manage to get away, maybe not, but at least we’ll give them something to think about.”
“Well, then.” The duchess smoothed out her skirts. “Girls? Are we ready?”
Her words were met by nods all around. Thisbe’s chest tightened, her breath coming faster, her heart pounding. She could see in the other’s faces that they felt the same things she did. Was it fear? Excitement? Anticipation? Perhaps it was all three.
The other three picked up their bottles of water, lids and tablets in their other hands, poised for action. Thisbe poured a little oil on the cloth holding the vial to the door, then stepped back and picked up the end of the long “wick.” With a last glance at her family, she struck the match on the wooden floor and lit the cloth.
Thisbe joined the others, picking up her bottle and tablet, watching as the fire licked up the cloth. It reached the oiled cloth and flamed ferociously. Holding her breath, Thisbe waited. For an instant she feared it wasn’t going to work, that it had all been for naught. And then it went off with a boom—a small boom, admittedly, but infinitely satisfying.
A disgusting smell filled the air, and Olivia covered her nose and mouth with her handkerchief as she reached out to the doorknob, using her skirt to shield her hand from the heat. All the others took several steps backward, hands coming up to block out the smell.
As Olivia jerked at the knob, there was a clank inside the lock, and the door swung open. The women darted into the hall, dropping in the tablets, capping the bottles and hurling them. The bottles burst open in midair in almost-simultaneous loud pops, then fell to the floor of the hall, the glass bottle shattering and the two metal ones hitting the floor and bouncing as they rolled.
There was a startled noise from inside the room at the other end of the hall, and as a
man ran out of the door, the Morelands launched their lit bottles. With a shout, the man dodged back into the room he had left. The women turned, lifted their skirts and ran.
But before they could reach the stairs, another one of their captors ran out of the next room and now stood between them and escape. Behind them, they could hear the other man coming out of the room. They were caught between them.
On the floor below, however, there were sounds of another fight—clatters and bangs, shouts and curses, one of them in a very familiar voice. “Con!”
With renewed heart, Kyria and Olivia whirled around, their sharp weapons raised to fight. Thisbe and the duchess charged at the other man, startling him so that he took an involuntary step backward. Then he raised his fists, eyes glinting.
“Come on, then, I’ll—” His words were cut off as the duchess flung a pitcher full of water into his face.
As he coughed and wiped at his wet eyes, staggering back, Emmeline completed her attack by swinging up the pitcher and crashing it down on the man’s head. He fell backward, knocking his head again on the stairs, and slid down the length of the staircase to wind up crumpled at the bottom.
Behind them, the other man, who had started toward them, turned and ran, climbing through the window at the end of the hallway.
The noises from below had stopped. The duchess turned to her daughters. “Well. I believe that was Con’s voice I heard. Let’s go down and say hello.”
* * *
IT WAS INDEED Con standing in the midst of the shambles of the kitchen, two of their kidnappers unconscious on the floor behind him. More surprisingly, Lilah Holcutt was there with him. The other men, he explained, were back in London, variously searching for them and intimidating people into giving up the location of the kidnappers.
It was no surprise to Thisbe that Desmond had been the center of calm in the storm of rage after the kidnapping. It was exactly like him to stay cool and composed, organizing the men’s endeavors and keeping the duke from giving in to panic, when all the while he was churning with worry inside. She wished with all her heart that he was here right now. Thisbe knew she wouldn’t really feel safe and at peace until she was in his arms again.