To be Charles…
The servant wanting to become the master, Gine had found a way to switch places with Charles, take over his life. The ultimate coup for a service, the ultimate dream realised.
If that was true then she understood why he had summoned her. It couldn’t be simply to talk. There was something more nefarious to his plan.
Soon she would find out how far Gine would go to keep his secret.
Chapter Twenty-Two
THE FOOTMAN SHUT the carriage door. James thumped his walking stick twice on the ceiling and at the signal, the carriage rolled away and they drove through fog that changed colour from the ghost of mud to the dilation of yellow peas-pudding.
Berd settled herself on the seat opposite her brother. Her nostrils flared slightly at the hint of nicotine lingering in the enclosed space. She suspected that James had been smoking early. That along with the faint lines around his eyes alerted her to the fact he was worried. He was not the only one.
If she had her way, James, for his own safety, should not be accompanying her. It was, however, an impossibility to persuade him otherwise. She was a female and according to the rules of society, not allowed out unchaperoned.
Unprotected. The reality was that it was up to her to protect him.
She smoothed the folds of her peacock-green pelisse, hearing the comforting swish and rustle of the brilliant aquamarine silk beneath. If only she had the answers under her fingertips. She knew it had to be Gine at the Fotheringay mansion. Yet James was expecting to meet Charles, a human, not a lethal engine.
Somehow she had to warn her disbelieving brother about Gine and about doppelgangers. James needed to be prepared, for that was their best chance of leaving the mansion alive.
I have lost my love; I do not wish to lose my brother also.
A hole had been cut into her heart and all hope fallen out, leaving her hollow and empty and aching. And now horror had crept in.
“Fotheringay is a fool,” James announced. “Who in their right mind would turn down marriage to the daughter and sister of an earl?”
So James thought her anxious as to whether Charles would declare his intentions. It annoyed her that all men thought marriage the ultimate goal of every woman. “I see. My worth is to be calculated solely by my relationship to the men in my family. What about our mother? After all, she did reach her majority and she did bear two children. Or is she just to be seen as a child her whole life because she is female?”
At the mention of their late parents, James anger lessened. His young face paled, adding to his vulnerability. “I did not expect to play the role of mother and father.”
That was true. Had their parents been alive, it would have been their father’s task to check a future spouse’s finances and prospects. Just as it would have been their mother’s task to check everything else. Now the dual roles fell heavily upon her brother, who was also her guardian despite there being barely five years between them.
James coughed into a fist. Dressed in his dove-coloured morning coat his fair face appeared far too youthful for such heavy responsibility.
“Thank-you for agreeing to this, James,” said Berd, her tone softening as she loved him even more.
He was her brother. In his own way, he cared for her. Hence, she had to tell him that their visit was not to persuade Charles to marry her in order to stave off her ruin, but to engineer a murder. Specifically, a death.
“I am glad you did not suggest Aunt Agatha,” she said, after muddling about the idea in her head for some time.
He raised a brow in inquiry. “Did you wish her present?”
“No, but that’s because I do not know what to expect.”
“What are you expecting?”
To die. To be trapped once more inside the Engine.
Berd gave a sardonic laugh. All her dreams of being the world’s first computer programmer had come to naught.
“I started this journey hoping it would save lives,” she mused. “Now, no matter what path I tread, I will be scorned. If Charles does not marry me, I will be scorned for I am ruined. If Charles does marry me, I will be scorned for marrying beneath myself. How wonderful then, that I have never cared for public opinion.”
James polished the silver top of his cane with his thumb then examined it intently as if for defects. “Somehow I have the feeling you mean something else.”
Well-done, mon frère. Maybe I can’t tell you directly, but I can drop little hints.
Berd smiled what she hoped was a mysterious smile. “Tell me, what did Mr Fotheringay tell you about our kidnapping?”
“Nothing much. Simply that he had been kidnapped first. Then you four days ago.”
“Did he mention the identity of the kidnapper?” She held her breath.
James turned to her smugly. “Does it matter?”
Cowards. She let her breath out and baited her brother again. “So you and Mr Fotheringay decided to bury the details.”
James tapped a finger knowingly against the side of his nose. “Fotheringay will speak to the police about his kidnapping. He agreed that we did not need to involve the police any further with what happened to you.”
Clever. That way no one except her immediate family and the servants would know about her disappearance. Of course servants would talk, but if there was nothing in the newspapers and the police kept mum, it would be hard for any blackmailer to prove anything especially if Charles married her...
She sighed. Where are you Charles?
It made no sense to her that Gine, who no doubt was pretending to be Charles, would agree to keep quiet. His current behaviour had been to avoid her. Yet, his actions appeared to be protecting her. Then she gasped.
Cads! “The Engine! You bargained to protect my reputation in return for the Engine.”
James shrugged, but would not meet her gaze. “Why splash it about the papers? The Police Commissioner is a great friend of his late father’s. Actually, Fotheringay and I have half a dozen mutual friends, so the circles we move about aren’t too disparate. You may even have met him before this. I just regret the fact you have led a rather circumspect life.”
How ironic that James was decrying her lack of choice of a life partner. “Women in my position generally do, don’t they?”
The higher born a woman, the more secluded and shielded her life was, but Berd regretted her accusation when James huffed.
“Not when they’re out supposedly enjoying their first season. Not when they’re supposed to be going to balls. To parties, to—”
“Messing about with engines?” She added innocently. “It was rather interesting how Mr Fotheringay and I met, don’t you think? How no one noticed any abductor and how there was no ransom demanded after a year.”
James mumbled something that did not sound complimentary.
She toasted him with her parasol. “Might make abduction popular. How to meet your future spouse. Try abduction. But you needn’t worry about finding Mr Fotheringay...” She bit her tongue for she had almost said ‘don’t worry about finding Mr Fotheringay at all.’
“Foppish, frivolous or slovenly, but you may find him eccentric,” she finished.
James glanced heavenward and with an exaggerated groan continued, “Fotheringay’s family owns two banks. His income easily surpasses mine, so I have no worries he can provide for you. Fotheringay’s New Money, however. Two mayors, but still New Money.” He grimaced.
Berd pictured Charles’s family barely sneaking across the imaginary line the nobility had drawn in the sand in terms of what was acceptable. Bankers’ families were amongst the few that were. Money was what made the upward progression more acceptable, but no one ever admitted to it.
All that money, however, would make it very easy for Gine to escape.
She teased, “What a sordid thought! Are you worried the beau monde will think you’ve sold me off for money?”
James ignored her and droned on, “He is well-known down at the Royal Society. In fact, there is talk about his
invention changing the world...”
James was deliberately not taking the bait at all.
She knew she should be telling James about Gine. About what she planned to do when they met, only she herself had no idea.
“And that interests you?” she asked when he stopped for breath.
“It does if it can lead to a peerage from the Queen.”
A barony? Somehow she couldn’t see Charles accepting a life peerage. She didn’t think rank mattered to him. In fact, if she could hazard a guess, she would have thought he’d prefer if she had no rank at all. Gine, on the other hand, would deem it too lowly. If she knew him, he wouldn’t stop until he became emperor of the whole world.
“I see. How nice to know you’re not upset if I marry someone without a title.”
James glared down his nose at her. “Do you or do you not love him!”
Touche! Her eyes misted. And it was her turn to avoid his gaze.
“Good!” He slapped his gloves smartly against his thigh as the carriage drew to a halt on the Fotheringay driveway. “I believe we’re arrived.”
***
A dark semi-circle of trees blocked the view of the Fotheringay mansion from the street. Like a ghastly grin, they formed the loose curve of the lower lip, with the mansion itself the straight upper lip. And from within, that hum. It entered Berd’s bones as she sat in the carriage, pulling on kid gloves.
The door opened, and she was immediately blanketed in static. Every movement she made crackled. Her lungs were twin bellows with a hole in each side.
They were in their own little world of Egyptian darkness. Neither breeze nor bird rippled the sky. All that was left of the sun in the mantle of slate-grey was a dim depression, as though some giant fingernail had scratched it out.
It reminded Berd too much of the sky in the Engine. By now the taste of metal was strong under her tongue.
“Are you sure about this?” Concern was etched on James’s face as he held out his arm.
“Yes. Please.”
“Courage,” James muttered as he helped her out of the carriage.
She nodded. Thinking and acting as if she had won had got her here. Now she had to think like a programmer. Even though she would never be the world’s first programmer, she was still a programmer. For what was Gine after all but a program? Well, that was the theory. In practice Gine could and would run circles around her.
The air seemed to vibrate with electricity and the driveway appeared to give under her tread like rubber. She heard neither echo nor footstep. She rubbed her arms to halt the invisible ants crawling up and down. If only she could stamp her feet or jump. Anything! Just to be rid of the nervousness. She might not be back in the Engine, but she was back on Gine’s territory. Though she was closing in on him physically, he was closing in on her mentally.
They stood on the front step.
“I do not fancy this at all. Is that sound emitted from that dratted Engine? It would drive a man to suicide. Can Fotheringay stop it? I—”
“James, please.”
James huffed then rapped on the door with the end of his silver-tipped cane. They waited.
By now her breath was coming in little gasps. She expected Gine to peel himself off a wall. Or even the front door. Exactly like in the Engine.
James squeezed her hand in reassurance, and she loved him all the more for it.
Then the door opened. The doorman appeared.
Berd started. Her nerves were so on edge she had expected Gine to grab her. This was far too normal. She grinned embarrassedly at James as she composed herself.
James did not respond to her faux pas. His face remained impassive as he handed over their ivory calling cards. “For Mr Fotheringay,” he muttered dismissively.
The doorman placed them on a silver salver then bowed and held the door open for them. He said nothing, but he was most definitely breathing.
Berd’s heart was in her throat as she stepped over the threshold.
James, there’s something I must tell you...
It was no warmer inside the massive mansion. The entry hall was as large as a ballroom with the ceiling at least two storeys above their heads. Their boots seemed to crunch, echoing on the white marble floor, giving Berd the distinct impression they were treading upon the frosty ground of a cemetery on a wintry twilight. She half-expected the dreary scent of raw earth and lilies-of-the-valley. Instead her senses were cloyed with the odour of damp, mildew, dust and decay.
Beside her James sneezed then hacked as if a broken wind-up horse was within his chest, and he could not get rid of it. His asthma. She laid her hand on his shoulder, and he managed to nod while waving her on as his coughing fit eased.
Her heart panged at what she was causing James to undergo. But it was too blasted late to turn back. They were in the Fotheringay mansion.
At first glance all seemed normal. Houses in London tended to have partially shuttered windows and to have curtains drawn across in order to keep out the ubiquitous soot and dirt. This added to the oppressive deadness of the air within, but the windows in the Fotheringay mansion were fully shuttered and the curtains let no light in for the inhabitants who were mourning the recent death of the late Robert Fotheringay, Charles’s father.
Even the grandfather clock to their right had been stopped and when Berd saw what looked like a huge mirror over the mantelpiece covered, she was sorely tempted to say the threat did not lie in that direction. It was not the ghost of the late Mr Fotheringay returning that the inhabitants of this mansion had to fear.
But in the stiff yellow radiance from the seven candles on the mantelpiece, what soon became obvious was that the paintings hanging on the wainscoted walls, like the enormous chandeliers above, were covered in dust and cobwebs. Even as she stared, a spider dropped from nowhere. Had she not taken a hurried step towards James, it would have landed in—
She snapped her mouth shut.
It was then she noticed the slightly whiter spots on the marble which marked the spaces where objects had once stood.
The statuary was missing.
Lines and gouge marks showed the direction where they had been dragged from their resting places deeper into the house...
Suddenly, watery blue eyes swum before her while a woman’s crackly voice played in her mind, ‘Do you wish the company of the dead in your house.’
This was a house where the dead or something worse walked. As if to confirm her suspicion, further up the passageway were open doorways, yawning like the entrances of charnel houses and beyond, from what little she could see, indistinct shapes draped in Hollands.
She repressed a shiver.
The doorman bowed. “Please wait here, my lord and lady while I inform Mr Fotheringay.”
As the doorman moved to close the door, Berd turned to James. “James, there’s something I must tell you—”
The thud of the front door closing interrupted her. The echo seemed to signify that she and James were sealed off from the rest of the world. Of course, that wasn’t true, but it was another sound, a sound that partly died out when the door was shut that alarmed her. For when the door closed, the hum lessened by half.
Her heart skipped a beat. Then it did a triple tattoo as the implication of what this meant became clear. Her attention changed direction. She forgot about the dusty, cobwebby interior, the missing statuary, her enraged brother and that it was her last chance to warn him.
And for a split second, she even forgot Gine.
For in the door closing, one thing and only one thing became very obvious.
The Engine was not inside the house.
For the hum had dimmed.
Blast you, Henry!
This turn of events did not make sense. She assumed the Engine would be close by Gine in order for him to protect it.
And Henry had confirmed the Engine was in the house.
No, Henry had lied—
No, she had simply asked the wrong question.
That was all.
She had asked Rose to ask Henry what he had noticed in the house and standing in the foyer even Berd would have had to answer that the most obvious thing was the humming. Henry or Rose had probably decided not to mention the neglect in case he appeared insolent.
Berd now knew that she should have asked him whether the humming was louder in the house or outside because then she would have known where to start looking for the Engine. She wouldn’t have been surprised if Henry had been confused with her questions.
If only she had come to the mansion last night. The delay had cost her; it allowed Gine to concoct his plans. She had not known the Engine and Gine could be separated by distance.
In one sense, Gine was the giant and the Engine the heart he had hidden away. If she destroyed the heart, she killed the giant, Gine, but Charles was in the heart. And she would kill him, too.
Now she had the dilemma of either searching for the Engine or for Gine. Already Gine was one up on her for he had split her concentration.
Divide the enemy and conquer.
Great move. Only it wasn’t hers.
In order to win she had to emulate him. To think. Fast. And to work with what she was given.
She needed to find the Engine. But Berd knew that while she stood guard over the Engine, she was allowing Gine to escape. He didn’t need to come near the Engine. The heartless giant didn’t need to. But being in the Engine’s vicinity meant the Engine could swallow her up again.
It made more sense to find Gine. Only how could she get him to release Charles? She had hoped the Engine would provide some leverage. But if the Engine could swallow her, Gine would do far worse.
She had no doubt the Engine and Gine each, in their own way, was dangerous. She felt as if not one, but two tigers were circling.
Then somewhere upstairs a door shut. Footsteps pattered, rapidly approaching. There was no time to figure out the mystery of the Engine’s location because the doorman had reappeared.
And he was followed by two men.
Berd exhaled heavily, stunned as all three descended the shadowy staircase towards them. And though she couldn’t see who the two men were, it was clear there were two.
The Ghost Engine Page 20