“I hardly noticed it,” I said, and then I turned to Olive and added, “and we don’t need to discuss this further with anyone. It will be our secret.”
At home I found an unexpected letter in the morning post. It was from Lizzie, apologizing if Alec’s radical talk had made me uncomfortable. “You must forgive him,” she wrote. “Machines are his passion, and all he can see is the good they could do.” She went on to invite me for afternoon refreshments. There was no time to decline the invitation, so once the girls began their music and art lessons, I put on my hat and went out.
Lizzie had given me the address of a coffee shop on Third Avenue. Although it was only four blocks from the Lyndon home, it might as well have been in an entirely different city. The streets were dirty and noisy, full of horse-drawn carriages and omnibuses, and there were many more people on the sidewalks. “Oh, good, you came!” she cried when I entered the shop, taking both my hands in hers and squeezing them fiercely. “I was worried you’d never want anything more to do with me. You fled so quickly yesterday.”
“I was a little taken aback,” I admitted.
“I am very sorry for that. Sometimes I wish I could muzzle those boys.” She hooked her elbow through mine and led me to a table. “I do want us to be friends. You’ll need friends outside magpie land, and I could do with some intelligent conversation that’s not about machines.”
She sounded so contrite that I wanted to reassure her. “I would like that,” I said.
She brightened instantly. “Oh, good!” We sat down, and a waiter soon came over. “I’ll have coffee with milk, and we’ll have some butter cakes,” she said to him. “Verity?”
“I’ll have a cup of tea.”
The waiter stiffened and snarled, “We do not offer tea in this establishment.”
“She’s new here,” Lizzie said to him. “She must not know.”
“Do you offer lemonade?” I asked nervously. I didn’t frequent coffee shops, but I didn’t think it common to be criticized so harshly for one’s choice of beverage.
“Lemonade it is. One moment, please,” he said.
“This shop is sympathetic to our cause, and patriots don’t drink tea,” Lizzie explained when he was gone.
“Why ever not?” I asked.
“Because all tea in the American colonies must go through England so that we have to pay English taxes on it. We aren’t allowed to import it directly from China or India. It’s only a small form of protest, but every little thing that strikes back at them helps us.”
“I never heard anything about that.”
“You’ve been reading the wrong newspapers. Do you think the officially sanctioned papers would acknowledge that any subject of the Crown is less than perfectly content?” She laughed and shook her head. “And I promised we wouldn’t discuss politics after we drove you away yesterday.”
“You didn’t drive me away,” I insisted. “I had to get back to work. I hope I didn’t offend Alec.” It was the first time I’d said his name aloud, and my cheeks grew so warm I knew I must be blushing furiously.
“He’s very difficult to offend.” She smiled and added, “I believe he was quite taken with you.”
My face grew even warmer. “Really?” I said in a squeak.
She laughed. “You like him?”
I was afraid to answer because I didn’t want to appear overly eager. “I barely know him, but he did save my life, and he seems very clever.”
She grinned. “Then I shall have to play matchmaker. It’s high time Alec looked at something other than an engine.”
A thought struck me, dampening my spirits. “I don’t know if I’m allowed to have gentleman callers. Governesses aren’t usually encouraged to court.”
She winked. “He doesn’t have to call on you, and it isn’t anyone’s business who you meet in your free time.”
The waiter brought our refreshments, then Lizzie said, “Now, tell me about yourself. What brings you to New York to be a governess?”
I didn’t want to tell her the version of the story I’d given Lord Henry. It sounded so very dull. “I had a good education and wanted to put it to some use other than becoming a professor’s wife, so I decided to strike out on my own.”
“And you landed among us your first day in the city! I suppose that was hardly what you expected.”
“Not at all,” I admitted.
“What is it like working in a magister house?”
“I’ve never lived among such wealth, but Lord Henry is very kind.”
She snorted derisively. “For a magister, I’m sure he is. But that just means he’s almost human.”
My mouth went dry in spite of the sip of lemonade I’d just taken. “Almost human?”
“The magisters are what’s wrong with the colonies, what’s wrong with the Empire. They act as though they’re some higher race with every right to subjugate us mere humans.”
“Really?” I asked. That didn’t fit my impression of Lord Henry at all.
“Why do you think it’s so important that their children be chaperoned everywhere? They’re terrified that if enough of them made improper liaisons, there might be common people with magical powers, and that would chip away at the basis of their rule. Not that it would make much difference. I imagine that anyone who got power would end up becoming like them.”
I fought not to wince at what she’d think of me if she knew my heritage. If the magisters thought I was an abomination because I was a commoner with power and the Mechanics thought I wasn’t entirely human because I had magical blood, then who might accept me? At least the Mechanics were unlikely to discover my secret. Being nonmagical, they wouldn’t sense magic if I used it around them. “The family seems human enough to me,” I said. “You’d hardly know they were magical.”
“They have money, and plenty of it. That comes because of the power they control.” She laughed and shook her head. “And there I go talking politics again. I’ve forgotten how to have a normal conversation. What do people talk about when they’re not ranting about the inequities of the system and the role of machines in evening the balance?”
“I usually talk about books.” It turned out that Lizzie was a great reader, too, and she enjoyed pulp novels as much as I did. It was the first time I’d been able to talk about these books with anyone else, and the rest of our visit passed far too quickly.
As we left the coffee shop, Lizzie said, “We shall have to get together again soon. Oh! I know just the thing. Do you have any obligations Saturday night?”
“As far as I know, there’s nothing I have to attend with the children.”
“Some of my friends are having a party, and I think you’d enjoy it.”
“It isn’t a political gathering, is it?”
“Of course not. It’s just some music and dancing.” She added with a meaningful grin, “I’m sure Alec will be there.”
“It sounds like it would be great fun,” I said, trying to appear calm and collected even though my heart was doing flips inside my chest.
“Excellent! I’ll meet you on the corner near your employer’s house at eight. I promise it won’t be anything like the magister parties where you’ll play chaperone.”
* * *
Saturday evening, I put on my nicest gown. It was probably far too formal for the Mechanics’ party, but it was the one gown I owned that didn’t make me look like a governess, and I didn’t want to look like a governess that night. The flounces were perhaps out of style, but I thought the bright teal silk was a becoming color for me. Lord Henry was heading down the stairs at the same time I was, a butterfly net over his shoulder and binoculars around his neck, and he gave me a second look after nodding absently in greeting. “Ah, going out for the evening, I take it,” he said.
Hoping he wouldn’t suddenly need me to work, I said, “Some friends have invited me to a party.”
He didn’t question how I had friends so soon after coming to the city. He merely said, “Have a good time, then.�
� He sounded even more preoccupied than usual. After nodding farewell at the foot of the front steps, he crossed the street to the park. I watched him go, wondering why he was going out with a butterfly net at this hour, but then I forgot about him when I saw Lizzie waving at me from the corner.
When I reached her, she took my arm. “I was worried you’d change your mind.”
“I’ve been looking forward to this,” I assured her as we headed down the street. I felt very free and independent, going out for the evening with no parent or any other chaperone, like a proper career girl in the city.
At Third Avenue, we caught a horse-drawn omnibus heading downtown. I had to remind myself not to gape as I stared out the window while the bus trundled slowly down the street. The streets ran like canyons between towering storefronts and tenement buildings, and the lower we went in the city, the more crowded it became.
When the bus stopped in a particularly busy area, Lizzie said, “This is us.” We stepped down to the curb and were immediately swallowed by chaos. Lizzie steered me through the crowds to a restaurant where a small group of young men and women were gathered around two tables pushed together. As a professor’s daughter, I instantly recognized university students, though these were somewhat more down-at-the-heel than I was accustomed to seeing at Yale. A few of them wore the eccentric attire of the Mechanics. As I’d feared, I was dressed far more formally than any of them. I looked like a girl attending a tea dance, not a young woman out on the town with her friends.
This wasn’t what I’d expected when Lizzie invited me to a party. A couple of them had drinks in front of them, but there was no food, and there wasn’t room for dancing in the small restaurant. I tried to hide my disappointment as I took the seat Colin held for me. “Ah, the beautiful Miss Verity, gracing our humble gathering with her presence,” he said, and I couldn’t help but smile. A quick scan of the faces gathered around the tables made my smile fade because Alec wasn’t there.
“Are we all here?” Lizzie asked.
“No, Higgins is on his way with a spark,” said a boy about my age wearing a brightly striped waistcoat.
“He does have a way of finding them,” one of the girls said with a giggle.
“Everyone, I’d like you to meet my friend Verity,” Lizzie said. “She just came to the city this week, and she’s working as a governess in the Lyndon house.” They greeted me, but none gave their names in return, which I found very odd and rather rude.
Colin draped his arm around my shoulders. “Verity was brave enough to ride on our test run on her first day in the city,” he said.
“She deserves a medal of valor for that,” one of the men said, raising his glass to me.
The door opened, and in came a short, stocky young man with an equally stocky girl who looked as though she did physical labor. “Sorry we’re late,” he said. “This is Gwendolyn. She works in the laundry at the West Battery fort.” The others greeted her, but as with me, they didn’t introduce themselves.
Colin pushed his chair back from the table and said, “So we’re ready, then.” The others also stood, and I joined them, unsure of what was happening.
Lizzie hooked her arm through mine and whispered, “Don’t worry, you’ll see soon enough,” as Colin led us through a narrow hallway beside the kitchen to the rear of the restaurant. We went down a flight of stairs into a basement, where a door opened into a dark passage. “Just follow me,” Lizzie instructed, and I allowed her to lead me into the darkness.
The passage made many twists and turns before we came at last to another door that opened into a well-lit basement. The others headed for the stairs, but I held Lizzie back. “You said this wasn’t a political meeting,” I said.
“It isn’t!”
“Then why all this secrecy?”
“It’s the best way to keep out uninvited guests.” She tugged on my arm, but I stood my ground.
“Lizzie, I expect my friends to be honest with me.”
She sighed, glanced toward the stairs, then turned back to me. “Very well, then. Yes, most of the people at the party are members of the Rebel Mechanics, but this isn’t an official meeting. We’re merely having the party at the Mechanics’ headquarters for convenience. But because the headquarters is secret, we can’t very well issue invitations with the address. So the nonmembers have to enter a different way.”
“It is merely a party, nothing more?”
“Some of the members will show off their inventions—they’re having a little competition—but that has nothing to do with politics, I swear. It’s just what happens when these people get together. Now, do you still want to come? I’ll understand if you don’t, and I’ll take you home, no hard feelings.”
Loud music and the sound of laughter wafted down the stairs from above, and I felt torn. Could being at this party be considered treason? Then again, if the location was so secret that not even all the party guests knew where it was, would the authorities know about it? I’d feel terrible making Lizzie leave to take me home, and it did sound like fun. Besides, if I left, I probably wouldn’t ever see Alec again.
Feeling as though I was making a momentous decision, I squared my shoulders and said, “I believe there’s a party upstairs.”
IN WHICH I SAMPLE STRONG DRINK, STRANGE MUSIC, AND STEAM
We entered the room at the top of the stairs, and all my senses were assaulted at once. I smelled smoke and dust and spicy food and spicier drink. Color, light, scent, and sound all competed for my attention, making it impossible to notice any one thing.
I finally regained enough equilibrium to distinguish individual elements. The cavernous space looked like it was an old theater. The light came from great glass globes hanging from wires draped across the ceiling. Red banners with large gears sewn on them hung among the globes. It wasn’t a brass band I heard, but rather a small band playing lively dance music on a stage near where I stood. There were the usual fiddler and drummer, but there was another sound layered beneath that, a jaunty tone that sounded like a particularly breathy and brassy church organ. The sound came from a set of pipes on a cart next to the stage. I’d seen a steam calliope in a circus parade, but never thought one would be used as part of a dance band.
Most of the guests wore the Mechanics’ unorthodox mix of attire. Their colorful clothing was garish in the bright lights. In the center of the room, couples spun wildly in time to the unusual music. Around the perimeter, groups of men and women tinkered with or showed off their inventions. Tables laden with food, punch bowls, and ale kegs lined a nearby wall. An odd contraption made up of tubes, clockwork gears, and strangely shaped bits of glass spewed vapor and flame and made loud clattering noises.
While I was still assessing the situation, someone rushed at me, grabbed me around the waist, and lifted me off my feet. “Verity, my lass! I thought we’d lost you in the tunnels!”
“Put her down, Colin,” Lizzie scolded, and I was most grateful when my feet returned to the floor.
“You look positively parched,” he said to me. “Lucky for you, I know just the thing for that ailment.” He took my hand and led me toward the strange device. “The lady will have one, if you please,” he told the man operating it.
The man, who wore a physician’s white smock and a pair of laboratory safety goggles, said, “The lady will have to try her luck.” He handed me a small brass gear and pointed to a metal dish on the end of the contraption. “Get this in there and you get yourself a drink.”
Colin leaned over my shoulder. “Go on, Verity, you can do it.”
“Didn’t I see a punch bowl?” I asked.
The white-smocked man puffed out his chest and went red in the face. “You’d rather have punch than my fantabulous elixir?”
“It’s not a case of preferences, sir,” I hurried to say. “I merely doubt my ability to earn it.”
He raised his goggles and winked. “I might be persuaded to give you a second try if you miss on the first one.” He licked his lips to indicate how I
would have to persuade him.
No drink was worth that, I decided, so I had better make the first shot count. As I tossed the gear, I mentally nudged the ether to surround the gear and guide it into the metal dish, the way I used to move buttons into a jar. “The lady has earned herself a drink!” Colin shouted, thumping me on the back.
When the gear hit the dish, it set the whole device in motion. Other gears turned, and an amber liquid flowed through the glass tubes. Flames shot up from a string of nozzles surrounding the tubes. The amber liquid poured into a jar, where another ingredient dropped in, then the jar shook before tipping over to spill into a funnel that led into another set of tubes that passed through more flames. Finally, the liquid poured down a chute and into a battered tin cup, which the man in the white smock handed to me with a flourish. “Your beverage, miss.” It seemed an unnecessarily complicated way to dispense libations, but I supposed it was in keeping with the spirit of the occasion.
One sip of the drink sent a blast of heat throughout my body. At first, I thought it was because the liquid was so hot, but after I’d drunk nearly the entire cup, I realized that some of the warming sensation came from a generous portion of alcohol.
“Thank you for bringing your sister a drink,” Lizzie said acidly to Colin, one eyebrow arched, when we rejoined her.
“You know the rules, Liz. You have to make the shot for yourself. But if you need me to escort you over there, I would be happy to oblige.”
A young woman in a shockingly short skirt that showed the tops of her calf-high boots skipped over and grabbed Colin’s arm. He shrugged helplessly as she dragged him away before Lizzie could retort. “He really is hopeless,” Lizzie said with a shake of her head. “Come on, you should meet everyone.”
She led me around the room, making introductions. She still didn’t tell me anyone’s name, but the people were warm and friendly. Most of Lizzie’s friends had brought friends who didn’t seem to be members of the group, and they came from all walks of life. Some were factory girls, others worked in government offices, and some were laundresses or seamstresses. Most were Irish, some were Chinese, some appeared to be of African ancestry, and a few were German. The one thing we all had in common was that we worked for magisters. Then again, it seemed as though everyone in the city worked for magisters, either directly or indirectly.
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