“Bridegrooms?” Tobias asked, his thoughts straying to Serafina’s detailed anatomy. He yanked them back, somewhere between disgusted and amused.
“I am being metaphorical, of course.” Magnus lifted the head and admired the painted face. “Do not mistinterpret my meaning as some piece of low comedy. Serafina represents a test, as I said. The questions she poses are not a matter of springs and gears, much less of the flesh.”
Bucky lifted his eyebrows, but said nothing more. Of all of them, he seemed the least interested in the doll.
The exchange was entirely lost on Edgerton, who was all about the mechanics. He squinted at the steel socket of her left hip, his concentration absolute. “The wear here is bad. She’s going to be arthritic before her time if we don’t replace these. The curve is wrong for the shape of the joint.”
“How hard will that be to fix?” Tobias asked.
He shrugged, taking measurements with a protractor square. “It’s finer work than we can do here. My father’s man is in town today. I’m going to talk to him before he catches the evening train for Sheffield. Either he’ll have something we can use, or I can get him to order some custom work.”
He cast a glance at Magnus. “If I have to bring something in from Sheffield, it might mean a bribe to the Gold King’s officers. You know how the barons are about machinery.”
Magnus simply nodded and flicked his fingers, as if the cost was nothing. Edgerton left.
Tobias and Bucky remained at the table, one on either side. Bucky cast a look at Magnus, his face doubtful. “What are you going to do with her once she’s operational? You say you want a troupe of these puppets?”
“There are specialized kinds of theater that require a durable cast.” Magnus rose and began pacing the floor. He wore no cape, but one seemed to swirl about him anyway as he stopped, reaching into the trunk. “These are the designs.”
He drew out a dull brown portfolio and unwound the string that secured the cover. He withdrew a handful of sketches, laying them out on the edge of the worktable. With a start, Tobias recognized his father’s handwriting.
“Yes,” said Magnus. “She is of the latest technology, but the original concepts were your father’s work. You come by your talent honestly. My hope is that, unlike him, you do not become entangled in mundane considerations. A gift like yours demands freedom to fly.” Magnus met his gaze and held it, as if to make sure Tobias grasped the full import of his words.
“I’m just a dilettante.”
Magnus’s mouth curved in an expression that said humility was sweet, but utterly unnecessary. It made Tobias taste the lie on his tongue.
He didn’t want to be a mere dabbler. Tobias felt his skin heat with a sudden desire to live up to the task Dr. Magnus had set. It felt like a hunger, or the thirst after an entire night of drink. He was a rich man’s son. His life might not depend on proving himself, but something else, something important inside him, did.
Magnus replied without taking his eyes from Tobias. “My goal has always been to unite artifice and animus.”
“What does that mean?” Bucky asked with a nervous laugh.
“There are a thousand ways to construe the concept. I like to think that we always put a little bit of our souls into what we create. In turn, creations feed their creator by seducing the public with their beauty.”
“You made your puppet sound like the bride of a vampire,” said Bucky.
Magnus laughed, but it wasn’t a reassuring sound. “An apt comparison, in a way, though I would not put it in such graphic terms. Creators need the awe and wonder of their audiences the way a revenant needs blood.”
Bucky’s face twitched, as if he were trying very hard not to laugh. “I hope you don’t expect children to play with your dolls.”
Dr. Magnus narrowed his eyes. “I don’t let just anyone play with my toys.” Then he chuckled. “Serafina is dear to me. I owe her much. Creating a thing of beauty purifies the soul, don’t you think?”
Tobias winced. “I wonder what a flaming sheep says about my chances for salvation.”
Bucky scratched his chin. “Perhaps slightly more than the exploding still. But not much.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
I shouldn’t be here. This is utter and complete folly. Evelina stood across the street from the Hibernia Amphitheatre, looking up at the marquis—The Indomitable Niccolo! The Fabulous Flying Coopers!—and tried to identify the burning in her chest. Regret? Jealousy? Relief that she had escaped that life?
Much of it was loss. She was going to be presented the next day. After that, there was the Season and perhaps college, if she could manage it. Evelina carried magic within her, but her path was clearly pointed toward a life within the gentry. She’d made that choice long ago.
Yet seeing Nick again last night had left her hollow and uncertain. He still watched over her. In the complicated world she lived in now, she was terrified of never finding that kind of unconditional affection again. Of never deserving it. Of never loving any man, not even Tobias, as much.
It wasn’t only Nick that she missed. She desperately wanted to see Gran Cooper, but would Gran want to see her? In Evelina’s dreams, sometimes the old woman turned a look of reproach her way that made her start awake in tears. Evelina felt like two people—one scrambling away from Ploughman’s toward the safety of Society, the other screaming in her face that lopping off that part of herself would never be possible.
Evelina took a shaking breath, gripping her beaded reticule until it crushed against the dark navy stripes of her skirt. Damn you, Nick. She knew she couldn’t go back, but he had still managed to shake her. She would be presented and she would take her place in Society, but she had to go back to Ploughman’s and take one last look before she could go forward to the queen. It was a rite, a ritual, and perhaps a final good-bye.
Evelina had meant to come alone to make her farewells, but had invited Imogen at the last minute. Her friend had seemed too quiet, almost haunted, since last night. Evelina put it down to the stress of the presentation, or perhaps that she had endured another nightmare, perhaps the one about being trapped inside a box. Those were the most frequent and the ones Imogen hated the most. At any rate, she needed a distraction, and Ploughman’s was excellent for that. It seemed to work.
“What are you waiting for?” Imogen tugged excitedly at her elbow. “Let’s buy our tickets! Where do we get them? Oh, there’s a little booth by the door over there.”
Evelina looked to where Imogen pointed and, sure enough, there was a tiny automated ticket office. The Hibernia was an up-to-the-minute venue, painted in brilliant vermillion and gold. A large clock soared from the roof, brass gears flashing as they whirred inside the enormous glass case. The entire place looked like a child’s toy.
“You’d think I would feel like I am returning in triumph,” Evelina said quietly. Her voice was barely audible above the sound of steam cycles purring past and a boy selling hot pies.
Imogen visibly reined in her excitement, putting on a dutifully sympathetic expression. “But you don’t.”
“I feel a bit ashamed. It’s like by leaving I said they weren’t good enough for me, and that is so far from the truth …”
“But you had no choice. Your Grandmamma Holmes took you away.”
Evelina didn’t reply, but studied the sun slanting across the front of the theater.
“In any event, you did what made sense to you at the time. How could it not?”
Evelina laced her arm through her friend’s. “There were things I lost. I didn’t see it at the time.”
One of the steam cycles streaked through a puddle, sending up a cloud of pigeons.
“Your friends and family? They’re not lost. They’re right here.”
She thought of Gran again. Maybe it would be all right, if she could just see her. Just hug her again and chat over a cup of that strong, strong tea. “It’s not just the people. It’s such a different life, Imogen. I was one of the Flying Coopers. I
miss the circus itself. There’s a moment in the routine when you’re holding nothing but air. The crowd may roar, but all you hear is an absolute quiet. All you can count on is your own equilibrium and that silence to carry you to the bar of the trapeze. It’s life or death.”
Imogen gave her a sharp look. “I’ve never heard you say that.”
Possibly because she had been too young to be a performer when she’d first been part of the show. Not legally, anyhow, and she’d always been careful of saying too much. Evelina’s gaze slid back to the marquis. “I don’t think I wanted to admit that I missed it. Leaving was like taking a knife to a limb.”
She started toward the ticket booth, Imogen matching her step. The carriage had dropped them off at the shops a few streets away and was scheduled to pick them up in two hours. With luck, no one at Hilliard House would be the wiser about where they’d spent the afternoon. Imogen broke into her thoughts. “What will you do if you meet Magnus on the street?”
Evelina had told her about last night, though nothing about the magic she shared with Nick. That wasn’t entirely her secret to tell.
The thought of Magnus blackened everything, like a cloud coasting in front of the sun. “For now, I’m not going anywhere alone.”
“And for the long term?”
A young man turned to look at Imogen and walked into a lamppost. She seemed entirely unaware of it.
“He’s got something to do with the murders. I’m sure of it.” She wasn’t about to say that Lord Bancroft was tangled up in everything as well, not until she absolutely had to. Imogen was his daughter, after all.
“So Magnus is part of the investigation.” Though she kept her words soft, Imogen’s voice was filled with excitement. “It might take some doing, but we’ll get him.”
As far as Evelina could tell, they weren’t getting anyone or anywhere, just coming up with more questions. “If my Uncle Sherlock were doing this …”
Imogen poked her in the arm. “He’d be coming at the problem in his own way. You have resources he can’t touch. He might have even been eaten by that wretched dragon, although he undoubtedly would have deduced who it had for breakfast three weeks ago by the residue stuck in its fangs. Never mind your uncle. Look at everything we’ve learned so far.”
“Which at the moment is a lot of unrelated facts.” They hurried to avoid a steam dray moving too fast for the crowded street.
Imogen waved a hand. “That’s the trouble with gathering truth. It’s never neat and tidy, whatever that nice Dr. Watson writes. I still want to know what kind of goods that importer was receiving. There was nothing there but empty crates and mechanical jumble.” The strained look was back on Imogen’s features.
Evelina frowned. “Are you sure you want to be involved with my investigation?”
“Of course I do!”
Imogen sounded almost testy, which wasn’t like her at all. Evelina would have said more, but they’d stopped at the ticket booth. It was coin operated, the clockwork ticket seller inside made to look like a tabby cat wearing a green bow tie and bowler. Imogen fed her shillings into the slot and pulled the lever. The cat’s tail waved frantically, a paw lifted the bowler, and a ticket shot out of a slot in the front of the booth surrounded by embossed gold scrollwork. Imogen took her ticket, and Evelina repeated the procedure.
The ticket read: EQUESTRIAN DRAMA: THE KNIGHTS OF TATIANA VICTORIOUS OVER THE FORCES OF KING OBERON. Evelina felt a twinge of relief. At least they weren’t still doing Waterloo. There were only so many times one could watch Wellington defeat Old Boney, especially decades after the fact.
“I think we’re too late to see the battle,” Evelina said. “That’s all right, though. I prefer the second half.”
The afternoon performance was well attended, but the theater was large and there were plenty of places to sit. Imogen insisted on finding seats in the lowest tier of boxes hanging right next to the sawdust ring. Evelina angled her chair, using the curtains on the box to shadow her face. She wondered how many of the troupe would recognize her, or her them, and wasn’t sure she was ready for that moment.
Imogen gave her a sly smile. “I’m looking forward to seeing this Nick of yours. Is he really so very indomitable?”
“He’d love to think so.”
The next act was setting up. A young girl was walking along the seats selling ices. Evelina wasn’t hungry, but she could taste the cold sweetness in her memory. The circus smelled the same—churned dust, animals, the lingering sharpness of sweat. A sense of displacement swamped her, skewing her perception of time and place and leaving her lonely as a ghost that has outlived its century.
Imogen pulled out a dainty white leather case that unclasped on one side and popped up to reveal collapsible opera glasses. She studied the faces in the other boxes. “I see the Whitneys, but no one else we know. Oh, wait. They’re leaving.”
That was a relief, but Evelina had barely unclenched her shoulders when, moments later, the show began. Old Ploughman strode forth, arms raised as if to conjure. He stopped in the middle of the ring, bowing to one side of the auditorium, then the other. The knees and elbows of his suit were a little shinier with wear than Evelina remembered, the fit a little tighter in the waist, but his grandiloquence still rolled like thunder. “Gentlemen! Beautiful ladies!” his introduction began.
The sound of his voice straightened Evelina’s spine, as if she were still bound to his orders.
Just as Ploughman finished his prologue, Maximilian the Fierce paraded his lions and tigers through the ring, the cats fluid as tawny liquid as he jumped them over his stick. Evelina recognized the old, scarred lion and shivered a little in her seat. Xerxes was many things, but the padding giant could never be called completely tamed.
No sooner had the tip of the last feline tail disappeared then the Maharaja appeared and made Bessie the elephant stand on her hind legs and balance a ball on her trunk. That was the odd thing with elephants—why would a creature that big ever do anything for a mere human? And yet they did, so they must have their reasons. They were complex beasts.
When Evelina had been no more than eight or nine, she had hidden one night in the soft warmth of the elephant’s pen. It had been after a bad day—she’d done something wrong and Gran had scolded, and she’d leaned up against Bessie and cried and cried. The elephant had wound its trunk around her, as gentle with little Evie as if she had been Bessie’s own calf, rocking her gently from side to side until she was all but asleep. The memory pierced her, fixing her to the past with links of unbreakable sweetness.
By the time the elephant left the ring, the Maharaja and his monkey swaying on her back, Evelina was clutching her handkerchief in a tight, moist ball. Imogen gripped her other hand.
The riders came next, two bay horses side by side. Young men stood in the saddles, and atop their shoulders stood Nick. His dark hair streamed behind him, showing the clean lines of his face. He raised his hands triumphantly in the air, the brilliant silks of his costume rippling in the breeze created by the horses’ steady canter. The crowd cheered, the sheer bravado of the cavaliers a joy to behold.
Once they made a circuit of the ring, another horse pranced into the arena. This mare was slightly smaller, gray with a flowing mane and tail bound in colorful ribbons. Nick called something from his perch, and the horse reared, dancing for a moment with her front hooves churning the air. In one glance, Evelina knew this would be Nick’s special horse. He had always trained his mounts to do that trick—sometimes it was almost as if he had the ability to talk to his horses, the way he could understand almost any deva. That affinity with animals was part of what made Nick who he was.
As the other two horses galloped once more around the ring, he caught one of the trapeze bars hanging from the ceiling. In one smooth move, he lifted off the shoulders of the other two riders, then swung around the trapeze to balance above the crowd, his hands stretched out to show only his hips touched the bar. Evelina looked up, knowing how skilled he was but ne
rvous all the same. There was no net, and he had been badly hurt the night before.
He whistled, and his mare trotted over with a toss of her head. Like something more liquid than human, he whirled around the bar, somersaulted in midair, landed in a crouch on the sawdust floor, and, with no pause, vaulted into the saddle. The horse took off, moving around and around the ring at a clip faster than the other riders.
Then Evelina realized the others had vanished, and she hadn’t even noticed. The walls of the auditorium could have fallen away unheeded. The Indomitable Niccolo, his face taut with concentration, completely commanded the stage.
Evelina had seen plenty of trick riders, but Nick’s style was his own. He rode standing, then using a handstand to rotate so he faced backward, then hung from the saddle to trail his fingers through the sawdust. The audience applauded and Imogen clutched her hand so tightly that Evelina had all but lost circulation, but he was just dispensing with the preliminaries.
A young juggler in motley came out tossing a cascade of four balls while two clowns carried out a brightly striped pole on a stand. As the clowns left, the juggler took his position before the pole. While the horse cantered around the circle, Nick brought out a fistful of knives and threw them between the balls. Each blade hit the red stripe of the pole, never once grazing a ball—or the juggler.
The audience was silent, not even the sound of a single breath escaping from the hundreds of gaping mouths. And then the sequence of the balls changed, one bouncing from the ground and fountaining into the air like a grouse flushed from cover.
Thwack! A knife skewered it to the pole.
A second ball made a bid to escape. Thwack!
Thwack! Thwack!
The juggler raised his empty hands, the balls pinioned in a neat vertical line above his head. Nick jumped to stand in the saddle, accepting the sudden roar of applause. Evelina and Imogen clapped as enthusiastically as the rest, Imogen giving a very unladylike whoop. One of the female members of the troupe ran out with an armful of roses, and the juggler immediately began to toss them into the air. The flowers weren’t particularly good candidates for the job, but they worked well enough for Nick to snatch one from the air as he rode by.
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