The Strange Case of Finley Jayne (the steampunk chronicles)

by Kady Cross

  Just as the thought crossed her mind, her sensitive ears picked up a faint grinding sound that seemed to grow louder and louder. A small light shone through the darkness, and then she saw that the light came from a bulb implanted in the chest of an automaton. The bright beam swelled to illuminate the garden like a torch, sweeping a radius of perhaps seven feet in front of the graceful machine.

  A sentry. It had pistols mounted on its shoulders and pincers on the end of its humanoid hands. It was made to maim, perhaps even kill intruders. Finley frowned. She understood that Lord Vincent was a rich and powerful man, and that his house was full of things thieves would love to steal, but the Watch kept an eye on this area, and Lord Vincent already had iron grates over his lower windows, and top-notch locks on all the doors—she had noticed them the night of the ball.

  Which begged the question: what was Lord Vincent trying to protect? Or better yet, what was he trying to hide?

  Finley stayed where she was until the automaton had navigated around the side of the house; it gave her time to figure out a way in. She jumped down from the wall, thighs slightly tight from crouching so long, and bolted toward the house. She didn’t have much time. The automaton would eventually make its way back, and if her estimation of Lord Vincent’s secrecy and intelligence was even half of what it should be, the metal would sense her from a distance.

  She was strong and fast, but a bullet could kill her just as easily as it killed anyone else.

  Speed gave her momentum and she leaped up at the house, fingers clutching at the top of a window casing. Toes and fingers dug in as she pulled herself up. Was she getting stronger? She felt even stronger than she had before punching that idiot governess.

  That silly part of her that worried too much was not going to be happy about that, but she was! Quickly, she scampered up the side of the house, sometimes using nothing more than breaks in the mortar for purchase. Past the ground floor, then the first. She stopped at a second-floor window—one without shutters—and pushed.

  There was a slight popping noise as the latch broke, bits of it hitting the floor. The window swung open and she pulled herself over the sill just as the automaton approached far below.

  As a precaution, she closed the window once more. It gaped slightly without its latch, but as far as she was concerned that wasn’t her dilemma.

  She was in a bedroom. As she surveyed her surroundings in the dark, with nothing but moonlight and her keen eyesight to guide her, she saw that she was in what must have been the late countess’s bedchamber. Either the earl had never closed the room up after she died, or he was in the midst of preparing it for his new bride.

  She picked a brush up from the vanity. Auburn hair clung to some of the bristles, answering her question. He had never closed the room up after his last wife’s death.

  Did he plan to move Phoebe in here without changing a thing? Or would he put her elsewhere, so this room might remain a museum of sorts? Whichever he chose, it was still…creepy. Marrying a girl who looked that much like your dead wife was just unsettling. Surely society thought the same way? But no one would dare tell an earl that he was clearly on the short list for Bedlam, the lunatic asylum.

  Flesh prickling with goose bumps, Finley made for the door. She couldn’t stay in this room any longer, cryptlike as it was. Why, her overactive mind could almost imagine the husk of the former Lady Vincent beneath the bedcovers.

  Her heart was pounding as she slipped out into the corridor. It was dark and quiet here—not a mechanized servant to be seen, nor a human one. The only light was what peeked from beneath a door at the end of the hall.

  Finley crept toward that light, wincing when the floorboards creaked beneath her feet. She froze, scarcely daring to breathe. Nothing. No metal guards, no weapons flying out of the walls, no trip wires designed to maim or kill. Lord Vincent put all of his energy into keeping people out of his house rather than taking precautions against a stranger romancing the inside—thankfully.

  At the end of the corridor, she crouched down and put her eye to the keyhole.

  Please, don’t let him be naked, she prayed. She might have to gouge out her own eyes if Lord Vincent was prancing about in his flesh pajamas on the other side of the door.

  She needn’t have worried, she soon realized. This wasn’t a bedroom—or at least it wasn’t anymore. It might have been at one time, but now it appeared to be a laboratory of some sort. Lord Vincent stood with his back to her—fully clothed. He seemed to be fiddling with some sort of cabinet with a glass top. She couldn’t quite see it all because he was in the way.

  The room was brightly lit, and the odor seeping from underneath the door smelled vaguely of chemicals and smoke, and was moist with steam. Jars and beakers sat on shelves and workbenches. Strange tools that looked like things a dentist or surgeon might use hung ominously from hooks in the walls. If it wasn’t so clean and bright, she might think she was spying on Dr. Frankenstein himself.

  Lord Vincent was probably building a new automaton, or working on one of his inventions. She’d been foolish to be overly suspicious of him. At worst he was an eccentric, dirty old man eager to marry someone almost a third his age.

  Finley was just about to move away from the door and go home, when Lord Vincent moved away from the cabinet. Sitting on top of the wooden base was a large glass tank filled with a viscous pink liquid. Coils of wires ran from various apparatus and switches into the tank, bobbing as whatever it was they were attached to moved—or rather twitched—in the fluid. The movement brought the thing flush against the glass….

  Finley barely covered her mouth in time. Swallowing her cry, she rocked back on her heels, gripping the wall for support as prickles of heat swarmed her mind. She did not shock or surprise easily, especially not when the weaker side of herself was asleep, but what she had seen horrified her.

  She peeked through the keyhole again despite her better judgment. She had to know if her eyes had deceived her. Her heart hammered as she turned her attention to the tank.

  It was still. The wires leading into it did not move, nor did the jellylike contents. There was nothing bobbing like an apple in a barrel of water, only stillness—like a jar of jam.

  Could she have imagined it? She wondered as she rose to her feet. Her limbs trembled and her heart continued its throbbing rhythm, even as she doubted her own eyes.

  The sound of footsteps grew louder on the other side of the door, spurring her into motion. She had barely ducked into the eerie bedroom at the end of the hall when she heard the door of the laboratory open. Through the crack, she spied Lord Vincent walking down the polished floor toward that room. Whirling on her heel, she raced toward the window and squeezed out onto the ledge, closing the glass behind her. She quickly climbed down to the grass and sprinted toward the wall, narrowly avoiding the patrol automaton.

  The vision of that tank haunted her all the way back to Lord and Lady Morton’s, and continued to plague her as she lay in bed, wishing for a fast and dreamless sleep. She could not forget the image no matter how hard she tried. Not for the first time she doubted her own sanity, because she couldn’t have seen what she thought she had seen. But still…

  She had seen something similar in an anatomy book Silas had in the store, and though the thought made her stomach churn, she could have sworn that what she had seen in the tank at Lord Vincent’s was a human brain.

  Chapter Six

  The bright light of day made everything so much clearer.

  When Finley woke up the next morning, mortified that the other part of herself had taken over and broken into Lord Vincent’s home, she told herself of course there hadn’t been a brain in that tank. It had only looked like one—not that she had any experience with brain examination. It had probably been something his lordship was working on—something machine related, and not human at all.

  That was what she told herself, and part of her believed it enough to decide not to give it any more thought. Even when she went down to breakfast a
nd found herself alone with Lady Morton, she said nothing.

  “You look tired this morning, Finley, my dear,” the lady commented, her tone sincerely concerned. “Are you quite all right?”

  “I’m fine, thank you. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  Lady Morton concentrated on spreading jam on her toast and did not look at Finley. “I thought I heard you come in quite late last night.”

  Finley froze. “I… I went for a walk in the garden. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “You didn’t. I thought perhaps you might have gone out.” Now she raised her pointed, and somewhat unsettling gaze.

  Frowning, Finley could only stare back. Was she correct in suspecting that her ladyship had hoped she had gone somewhere, or was the woman merely trying to control her anger? It was difficult to tell, but a little voice in her head—a voice she recognized as her “other” self, urged her to trust her instinct. Against her better judgment, she listened to the voice.

  “Where do you suppose I might have gotten myself off to? Had I gone out, that is.”

  The lady smiled and poured hot coffee into the delicate china cup in front of Finley before topping up her own. “Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps around the neighborhood? Perhaps you might take a walk around Lord Vincent’s?”

  Finley swallowed. Hard. Had Lady Morton spied on her? She hadn’t seen anyone follow her—not that she could remember. Sometimes when her darker half took over the details were fuzzy. “Why ever would I go to Lord Vincent’s?”

  This time her ladyship lost all pretense. She set aside her coffee and her toast, and leaned in. “Because you have become a friend to my daughter, and because, like me, you have an unsettling feeling about Lord Vincent.”

  This was unexpected. Finley’s fingers trembled as she picked a piece of bacon from her plate and lifted it to her mouth. She took a bite of the salty, crispy goodness and chewed thoughtfully before answering. “He wants Phoebe to replace his dead wife.”

  “Yes.” The older woman looked relieved to hear it said aloud. “But there is more. There is something in the way he looks at her, something that makes me shiver. It’s as though he has plans for her, Finley. Like she’s just another one of his inventions.”

  This was obviously something that had been bothering Lady Morton for some time. “What does Lord Morton say about it?” It was impertinent for her to ask, but she didn’t think the lady would mind.

  Lady Morton rubbed the back of her neck. She looked tired. “He says I’m being foolish, but he would sell Phoebe to a gypsy caravan if they offered to pay his debts.” She pressed her fingers to her mouth, a horrified expression on her face. “I should not have said that.”

  But she had, and now Finley had a better idea of what the woman thought of her husband. And what Phoebe’s father thought of her. Poor thing. Finley might not have grown up in a fine house with servants and pretty gowns, but at least she’d always known that her mother and Silas would do anything for her—including lay down their own lives. Silas would never sell her off to protect himself.

  “Why did you hire me, Lady Morton?” An unsettling suspicion had begun to form in Finley’s stomach. “It wasn’t merely to be a companion to Phoebe, was it?”

  The lady wrapped her fingers around her cup of coffee, as though trying to warm them. “No. I heard from Lady Gattersleigh about your…altercation with that dreadful governess of hers. I knew you would protect anyone you cared about, and how could you not care about my Phoebe?”

  That was true. “She’s easy to like, ma’am.”

  “Yes.” She smiled faintly, but proudly. “She’s a good girl. Lady Gattersleigh also told me that she thought you were unnatural in regards to your strength. Is that true?”

  Finley swallowed the rest of her bacon. Since she’d begun to change she’d had to hide what she was, because people always reviled or feared her for it. Now, someone actually wanted her to be different. “Yes. I am unusual, but Phoebe is not in any danger from me. I want you to know that.”

  “I have seen enough to know you would never hurt my daughter. Your excursion last night proves to me that you are exactly as I hoped.” She reached across the table and took Finley’s hand. “You will protect her, won’t you? If his intentions are nefarious, you will find out before the wedding?”

  The wedding was to take place closer to the end of the Season, in late June. “I’ll do everything I can,” Finley promised with a solemn nod.

  The older woman squeezed her hand once more before releasing it. “Thank you. I want you to know you have my permission to come and go at all hours. So long as you do not neglect Phoebe or raise her suspicions, I will gladly make excuses for your absence.”

  Finley thanked her. She didn’t know what she could do against someone as powerful as an earl, but maybe she could find a reason for Phoebe not to marry him. That would please everyone.

  “Three evenings from now we are expecting Lord Vincent to dine with us,” Lady Morton informed her, returning to her toast. “If you should happen to develop a headache immediately after the meal and need to lie down, I shouldn’t hold it against you.”

  One of Finley’s brows rose. The woman was actually encouraging her to lie in order to sneak away from the house and break into Lord Vincent’s! Why, it was enough intrigue to make a girl’s heart race. And yet…and yet that dark part of her relished the opportunity. Even underneath all her misgivings, Finley wanted to do this.

  “That’s good to know,” she replied. “I believe I am due for a headache that evening.”

  They shared a conspiratorial smile, but it was the relief and thankfulness on the woman’s face that meant more to Finley than anything else.

  “What are the two of you talking so quietly about?” Phoebe asked as she came into the dining room looking brighter than anyone had the right to when just out of bed.

  Her mother smiled at her. “You, of course.”

  The girl laughed. “Because I’m such a fascinating topic.”

  Finley smiled, as well, and when Phoebe joined them at the table, the conversation turned to happier, lighter subjects, which suited her just fine. She felt almost like a normal girl sitting there with Phoebe, discussing parties and dresses and who was caught doing what in the scandal sheets.

  But the part of her that wasn’t normal kept thinking about Lord Vincent and how something just wasn’t right with him. After all, it took a monster to know one.

  That afternoon Lord Vincent came calling to take Phoebe for a ride in Hyde Park. It was a fashionable pastime, though one Finley thought ridiculous. Imagine, a bunch of rich people all swarming the park at five o’clock just so they could be seen there? Why not go when it was less busy? At least then a body could enjoy themselves.

  Finley was not enjoying herself. While Phoebe and his lordship rode in a comfortable open carriage pulled by gleaming brass automaton horses, she was forced to follow behind on an actual smelly horse.

  She had only ever been on a horse twice in her entire life, and the first time she had cried until her mother took her down from the saddle. Horseback was a long way up when you’re five and city-raised.

  At least she was able to ride astride. It wasn’t terribly fashionable, but it wasn’t considered as scandalous as it had been years ago. A famous horsewoman from Astley’s Amphitheatre had started a trend for it and it had only taken a few noblewomen to follow suit for the rest of society to catch on. It was supposedly much safer than riding sidesaddle, for which Finley was greatly thankful.

  She wore a black split skirt—wide-legged trousers that had a panel that could be brought about in front to make it more resemble a skirt—and a purple riding jacket with matching hat. She felt like a great eggplant atop the chestnut mare, despite Phoebe’s assurances that she looked “smashing.” The ostrich plume in her hat kept bobbing in her face no matter how many times she blew it out of the way.

  She followed behind the carriage at a discreet distance, obviously a chaperone for the couple. If th
at wasn’t bad enough, many of the young men she had danced with at the engagement party tipped their hats and said hello to her as they rode past in their modern vehicles, calling even more attention to her eggplantishness.

  Still, she could hear whatever Phoebe and her fiancé said to one another. No “usual” person would be able to at this distance, but since she was unusual the same rules didn’t apply.

  “I have something for you, my dear,” Lord Vincent said.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have, my lord,” came Phoebe’s pleased reply. She might not want to marry the old man, but who didn’t like presents?

  There was a space of silence, probably the time it took Phoebe to unwrap or open the gift. “Oh, they’re beautiful!”

  “Champagne pearls,” Lord Vincent explained. “They’ll look lovely with your skin. They were Cassandra’s favorite.”

  The dead wife. Finley winced. Not the sort of thing you wanted to say to your future bride. Oh, I bought you this gift that my dead wife loved.

  “I can see why,” Phoebe replied politely, but Finley could hear the stiffness in her voice, the disappointment. No one wanted to be compared to someone else.

  “I thought you might wear them on our wedding day.”

  “I should be delighted to, my lord.”

  And that was it for the conversation. Personally, Finley thought Phoebe handled it very well. For a man who was a genius with machines, his lordship didn’t know much about women.

  The silence gave Finley a chance to look around—and to enjoy the ride. It was easier now. Her body seemed to adapt to the mare’s natural rhythm. She was comfortable enough to notice how beautiful the day was as the sun began its slow descent. The grass was green, birds were singing. Voices carried on the breeze, the sounds of conversation and laughter mixing with the smells of grass and horses and machine oil.

  Occasionally a young man or woman would pass by on a penny farthing, the large front wheel so funny when compared to the tiny back one. Others rode mechanical horses much like Lord Vincent’s, only their metal had been dulled so it didn’t glare so under the sun. Finley preferred these to his lordship’s. Some of them had fancy scrollwork on them, as well, unlike Lord Vincent’s hammered and embossed plates.