by Riley Cole
All here to gawk at the oddity.
Ada jerked back into the safety of the shadows. She hated public speaking, hated the pressure to appear both knowledgeable and scintillating. More than anything, she hated the smirks and sneers and outright guffaws of men too insecure to believe a woman might have something of value to offer.
Having to fumble her way through an impromptu address while keeping one eye out for a killer didn’t help.
Not that she felt unsafe.
Quite the contrary. Edison’s league had every inch of the place under surveillance. She trusted them to keep her safe. Still, to be onstage. Exposed. She might as well be waiting for a large bucket of cold water to cascade over her. She knew it was coming, knew it would chill her to the bone, knew it would make her heart pound and her breath catch.
If they could just get on with it.
Meena frowned up at the top of her head. “The hat isn’t too distracting, is it? It’s quite smart, but if it’s uncomfortable, we can—”
“It’s fine.” Ada put a hand on the brim of the daring little piece. “Unless you don’t think it suits?”
“I quite like it. The netting gives you an aura of mystery.”
A laugh bubbled up in Ada’s throat, catching her by surprise, but the levity dissolved faster than bicarbonate bubbles in vinegar, leaving a leaden sadness behind.
Meena squeezed her arm. “This’ll be over soon.”
Even though she knew he was backstage completing alterations to his automaton, Ada couldn’t help scanning the audience for Edison’s familiar silhouette. She was trying to keep her mind on chemical interactions and hidden killers, but every few seconds a needle of pain jabbed her in the heart.
Meena sighed, a long, weighty sound. “We all know my cousin’s a porridge-brained imbecile, but I do think the sentiment bears repeating. I’m just sorry he wasn’t brave enough to hold onto a good thing when it came his way.”
Ada shook her head. “We’re not a good fit, the two of us.”
Meena snorted. She straightened the edges of Ada’s high collar. “Who wants a good fit? All that harmonizing and agreeing? Ugh. One wants sparks. Chemistry. The two of you had plenty of that.”
“Too much.”
“I used to feel the same about Spencer.” She stepped back, surveying her handiwork. Her smile was sad. “You’re an extraordinary woman. I should’ve liked to get to know you better.”
Ada agreed wholeheartedly. Meena and Briar were electrifying. Inspiring. She wouldn’t run across their kind again.
“This should do.” Edison barreled up, the gangly automatic butler in his arms. He set the automaton gently on the boards. Its spindly brass arms tinkled against it’s drum-like body.
Watching his broad shoulders move beneath his woolen jacket made her think of the power in his arms, his muscled torso, his hands. His clever, clever hands. A sharp stone swelled in her throat, making tears fill her eyes. She dashed them away with the back of her hand and ground her teeth together.
Not now. She couldn’t turn into a stupid old watering pot now. She blinked hard, trying to focus on his instructions.
“The switch is here.” He showed Meena the small lever at the base of the conical body. “Simply flip it on.” He paused to activate the device.
With a smooth whir of well-oiled gearing, the rotund little metal man lurched forward, his silly jointed arms rising up from the center of his body as he wheeled off in a straight line.
Two steps and Edison corralled the machine, bending low to switch it off.
“Just point him straight at Ada and he’ll wheel himself across the stage to her.”
Meena shook her head in wonder. “Well done.”
“Yes.” Ada felt compelled to add her praise, although she’d just as soon avoid any further contact with him. Even the sound of his voice hurt, the way a careless brush against bruised flesh throbbed.
Meena scooted the machine off toward the very edge of the stage.
“Are you all right?” Edison’s question hung in the air between them.
Ada nodded decisively, not trusting her voice. She feigned great interest in the dull man still emoting onstage. From the way his thick fingers gripped the edges of the lectern, she didn’t think they’d be prying him away anytime soon.
“Ada, I…” Edison’s voice trailed off toward the ceiling several stories above.
She should respond. She should take the olive branch. But it wouldn’t help.
They simply didn’t suit.
She gripped the thick velvet curtains between her fingers, rubbing her thumb over the soothing nap of the fabric, trying to pretend that the sound of his voice, the heat from his body, wasn’t urging her straight into his arms.
The instant he moved off, she knew it. It wasn’t a sound, not a scrape of shoe leather or a whisper of cloth that marked his leaving.
Just an aching emptiness.
* * *
“I understand we have a most… unusual speaker coming next,” the old windbag onstage announced. “If I might—in closing—quote the great Samuel Johnson.”
“Good God,” Sir Beauford muttered from his seat behind the podium. He pressed a hand to his forehead, as if he could hide from what was coming.
“Oh, no,” Ada murmured. She could only pray that neither Meena nor Briar would storm the stage and throttle the man.
“A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs,” he said, his voice heavy with laughter. “It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
The swell of applause that greeted his remarks didn’t bode well for her presentation. But when did it ever? She tried to take a deep breath, but that only succeeded in making her stomach roil.
She drummed her fingers on the top of Edison’s automaton. The hostility of the crowd had long ceased to bother her. It was the infernal waiting that ate at her. Waiting to take her turn at the podium. Waiting for her bruised heart to scar over. Waiting for a killer to strike. The frustration ratcheted her nerves tighter and tighter until she thought something inside her might break.
Ada tapped her foot. Really, if the ancient old codger didn’t cease rambling, she might hook him with Meena’s parasol and drag him off the stage herself. Her fingers pounded down on the automaton, setting up a pleasing rain of sound.
Just as the speaker flung her a pointed look, Meena’s hand came down atop hers, silencing the rainfall. “Sorry,” Ada whispered stiffly, although she wasn’t. Not in the least.
“I’d like to teach him a thing or two about women’s capabilities,” Meena whispered.
Ada chuckled. “It would be a lost cause, but I’d love to watch.”
Finally, his so-called expertise exhausted, the man trundled off the stage to a swell of genteel applause.
Sir Beauford rose from his seat behind the podium. He sent Ada a hearty smile and stepped up to speak. “I should like to introduce our featured guest, Mrs. Ada Templeton. As many of you are aware, Mrs. Templeton has succeeded in harnessing the energy of certain chemical reactions, giving her the ability to fashion a stable dry-cell battery device, about which she will now enlighten us.”
The more he talked, the more detached Ada became. She felt as if she were moving about inside a glass bubble. It deadened sound, deadened the feel of her limbs, making her feel as if her gait was stiff and unnatural.
Tepid applause flowed from the audience. She forced herself to move across the stage and plant herself in front of the slender lectern. It was too delicate for her liking. She wanted something big, something tall and wide and massive to hide behind. Instead, she had was a narrow pillar topped by a square of lacquered wood hardly wide enough to hold a girl’s diary.
“Sir Beauford and esteemed members of the London Chemical Society,” Ada began. Her voice, thin and uncertain to start, grew in volume with each word. “I’d like to thank you for your kind invitation.”
The audience rustled in their seats. After the stultifying recitation
they’d just received, she didn’t wonder. Though gaslights flickered along the walls and the back doors remained open, letting in a flood of afternoon light, the room was dim, making it difficult to make out individual faces.
One of them a killer.
Her knees trembled. Ada grabbed the edges of the podium, trying to wait out the wave of anxiety. He wouldn’t strike now. He needed her to disappear, not become a martyr.
He’d wait. He’d wait until she was as isolated as possible before he snatched her up.
The only thing to fear now were the cutting tongues of the mean-spirited souls in the audience who believed it was their sacred right as men to be the best and brightest.
Ada sighed, struggling to remain on topic as she peered out at the sea of strangers. Thick legs sticking out into the aisle, Stanton Grenville stood out among the strange faces. Though seated at the far back of the room, he seemed to feel her attention, offering one of his wide, friendly smiles and a bracing nod of encouragement. Not ten feet behind him, Spencer and Nelly waited, each positioned in a back corner, angled to best observe the assemblage.
Meena and Briar stood in the wings, flanking Edison’s automatic butler. Meena leaned on her parasol, and though she appeared to be unarmed, Ada knew Briar had enough knives stashed in her hidden pockets to stop a battalion of killers.
A dull ache that had nothing to do with public speaking twisted her guts.
How she was going to miss them all.
She cleared her throat, and dove into the speech she’d prepared. She touched on the battery’s development and expounded on the stability of its power.
If the audience wasn’t enthusiastic, neither were they the boorish crowd she feared. Mostly, she sensed polite—if skeptical—interest. Fair enough. She wouldn’t be inclined to believe her claims on their face, either.
Soon enough, it was time for the demonstration. She nodded to Meena, who aimed the automaton in her direction and flipped it on.
The whir of wheels and gears seemed louder onstage. Ada smiled at the gasps from the audience as the oversized teakettle rolled his way along the boards, pipe-stem arms rising out from his sides. When he reached the lectern, a tinny voice rang out, startling her.
“Hello. I am Brutus. How may I help you?”
Ada laughed. Though smaller, more contained, more metallic than his creator’s deep tone, Edison’s voice rang out from the small speaker.
Gasps of delight sprang up here and there in the audience.
Still smiling, Ada remembered to switch the automaton off.
“As you can see,” she said, “the chemical battery has more than enough power for locomotion… and speech.”
He must have added it last night. She pictured him on the floor of his workshop, cursing as he fitted a miniaturized gramophone speaker inside the mechanical.
All to make her smile.
Grief made her breath catch. He was an extraordinary man. She wouldn’t find his kind again.
A man in the front row waved a hand to catch her attention. “But how does it--?”
His question was cut off by a great many shrill hissing sounds, as if a whole platoon of tea kettles came to a boil at the same time. The piercing sounds came first from the left, then the right side of the room as thick white smoke spiraled up from under numerous seats. Great plumes of unnaturally white mist poured out from under the chairs.
Panic seized the gathering. Men vaulted over seats, falling atop others as people scurried for the exits. A few hardy souls ran toward the smoke.
In the time it took for Meena to rush onto the stage and grab her, tendrils of smoke stretched all the way to the ceiling.
“Come on!” Meena grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her offstage.
Just as the reached the cover of the wings, Ada squinted out over the confusion. Edison stood at the back of the room, jostled this way and that by panicked audience members racing for the exits. Body rigid, he was staring at the stage.
What had he been thinking? She wanted to throttle him. He’d been so preoccupied with plans and contingency plans. He’d fashioned ten different ways to spirit her off the stage, should it come to that. His devices must have malfunctioned. Malfunctioned and caused a panic.
Ada glared at him.
Eyes wide, he raised his hands and shook his head. “Not mine.” Though there was no hope of hearing him over the din, the words were clear enough.
“That’s not good,” Meena observed.
Now Ada could see Nelly and Henry—Spencer too—fighting their way through the crowd to get to the stage. The three of them had just disappeared into the thickest of the smoke when a great commotion at the back caught her attention.
“Help!” A man’s voice, raw with panic, cut through the din. “Help me!”
Ada squinted out through the dissipating smoke. The room was clearing, both the smoke and the audience dissipating. At the back though, signs of a struggle caught her eye.
Stanton.
She leapt back out onto the stage. Arms pinned behind him by two large brutes, Stanton was being dragged out the door.
“Help him!” Ada yelled. “Help!” Jumping up and down now, she jabbed a hand toward her friend.
Edison, Briar and Spencer whipped around, fighting to make their way to him. Before they got near, his assailants manhandled him out the door.
Skirts fisted at her hips, Meena leapt off the low stage. She turned, offering a steadying hand. Ada’s heart was already racing so fast, she felt nothing as she slammed to the ground. Only Meena’s grasp kept her on her feet.
Without a word, Meena raced up the aisle, Ada on her heels.
By the time they reached Stanton’s seat, Edison and Spencer were coming back into the empty theater.
Hands on his slim hips, Edison was shaking his head. “Vanished.” He thrust his fingers through his tousled hair. “Must’ve had a carriage right outside.”
Spencer kicked a chair.
“We’ll find him,” Edison said once he caught her attention.
He was trying hard to reassure her, and for that she should have been thankful, but Ada couldn’t throw off the despair that squeezed her like a corset laced beyond all reason.
She sank down in the very seat her friend had just occupied and ran her trembling fingers over the lacquered arm rests. He’d been right here.
Right here.
She stared out over the auditorium, empty now, but for a few last wisps of white smoke. “It was him, wasn’t it? The one who wants my device.”
Cheeks flushed with anger, Edison glared at the doors to the lobby. “Most likely.”
Ada screwed her eyes shut. Regret swirled inside her, mixing with anger and fear and shame to twist her stomach into a painful knot.
Henry rushed in from the lobby. “They knocked her down,” he said, his voice thick with outrage. “Knocked her straight to the ground.”
“I’m fine.” Nelly followed more slowly. She seemed far more concerned with the streaks of dust on the arms of her white blouse. “Been bashed about a lot harder than that.”
Henry pointed at her reddened cheek. “You just wait until I find those pigs. Think they can strike a lady.” He glared down at the mark on Nelly’s cheek. “I’ll teach them a thing or two about manners.”
Instead of the sharp retort Ada expected, Nelly turned away from him, cheeks lightly pink, a small, secret smile curving her lips.
“See anything of use?” Spencer asked Nelly.
The smile evaporated. “I’d recognize the goons should I happen on ‘em, but they took ‘im off in a hired cab. Nothing outta the ordinary about it.”
Ada let their talk wash over her like waves at the shore, unable to concentrate on anything but Stanton’s fate. Whoever took him had already killed at least twice. She screwed her eyes shut, trying to banish the lifeless face of that poor woman in the alleyway. Even Ravensworth, the priggish sot, had fallen victim.
It was too much. Too much terror. Too much violence. Too much ri
sk for too little return.
“They only took him because they couldn’t get to you,” Edison said.
“He’s right.” Meena patted Ada’s shoulder. “We’ll be hearing from them before the day is out.”
“They’ll want you in exchange,” Spencer added. “And the device.”
“Oh we’ll give them a device.” Edison’s voice was edged with fury.
Despite her own anger at the kidnappers, Ada shuddered. The force of his rage shimmered behind a wall of self-restraint, making it all the more intimidating.
There wouldn’t be much left of anyone foolish enough to have stoked his wrath.
Ada forced herself to breathe slowly, deeply. The league would rescue Stanton. She had every faith in their drive and their extraordinary abilities.
None of which would do a blazing thing to relieve her guilt.
When she discovered her battery truly did work, she’d been so exhilarated, so full of pride. Now those good feelings had soured, turning to acid. Her discovery was responsible for so much danger, so much pain and fear.
She glared up at the automaton resting next to the podium, oblivious to the panic and fear still swirling through the room. How she longed to tear out her battery and chuck the damned thing straight off a bridge.
Chapter 24
Edison set the delicate bell jar on the countertop before he gave in to the urge to smash it, and tried to unclench his teeth. Insisting Ada accompany him to shop for chemicals was proving to be one of his poorer decisions.
If she contradicted him one more time, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop himself from hurling something satisfyingly heavy through the center of Mr. Grimstout’s front window.
Not that the poor shopkeeper shouldered any of the blame for his sour mood.
He hefted a jar of boric acid. Tilting it this way and that, watching the white powder pile up along one wall of the canister before sliding, sandlike, to the other, he considered the best way to construct a flash grenade.
A pocket-sized object that could be lobbed quickly and quietly would have great value as a distraction.