A Spark Unseen (10 page)

It was a very comfortable room, not large, but airy in its sense of space. The ceiling was high, with the same slope as the storeroom’s, but instead of one small window and the resulting corner shadows, here the roof was cut by a row of five of them, tilted to the sky, sending a bright swath of light through the air to the carpeted floor. A long roll of pink cloth was set along the top of the windows, a system of crank, pulleys, and thin rope ready to let the cloth down or roll it back up again, to block the sun as wanted.

I left Mary and Mr. Babcock to explore and went to the back wall, past a little stove tapped into a chimney of bricks, and through another door. Behind it was a tiny bedroom, windowless, with a cot and a door on either end. The first door was locked, bolted, and painted shut, but the second opened easily. I shook my head, surprised, and yet not surprised. It was a bathing room. The convenience was not as modern as the one my grandmother had put beside her bedchamber in Stranwyne, but there were pipes connected, a copper tub, and a faucet hanging over a large shallow bowl. I turned a tap, and watched the water run.

“Look, Miss!” I heard Mary calling. I came out of the little bedchamber to see her standing beside a workbench — though I’d hardly recognized it as such, it being so clean — searching noisily through a box of tools. There was a box of metal parts, I saw, and a few dingy tin toys. Other trunks and boxes lined the walls, which instead of being painted or papered were covered in a pale pink cloth.

“There’s most everything Mr. Tully would be needing in here,” Mary was saying excitedly, “though I’m not seeing his hot pen, Miss, what he uses for making them bits of metal stick together. Did we bring this with us? I’m thinking we did but everything was done in such a tearing hurry, I can’t be sure. …”

“Mr. Babcock,” I said, “is all well?” He was standing perfectly still in the middle of the room, hands clasped behind his back, staring up at nothing, his belly when left in that position looking amazingly close to the shape of his head. He smiled.

“Oh, yes, my dear. It’s just your grandmother … she did a rather good job of it, didn’t she?”

I knew what he meant. I’d felt it, too, the same presence as in my bedchamber at Stranwyne, one that I suspected my uncle also sensed in places like his clock room. My grandmother’s stamp was indelible, and the thought made me long for home. But I only replied, “And she’s managed to get water and pipes up here, too, though I can’t imagine how.”

Mr. Babcock smiled again, and then we both jumped violently at a sudden crash, as if every pane of glass above us had burst into a thousand shards. I spun on my heel to see Mary, wide-eyed at the workbench, holding the ripped lace of her sleeve, the full box of tools now a scattered mess on the floor. “I’m sorry, Miss, I —”

“Shhh!” said Mr. Babcock, holding up a hand.

We waited in silence, listening to three sets of breath. I hadn’t had time to think of it yet, but I realized that what had to be below us was the house next door. The house, it came to me suddenly, where Mrs. Hardcastle was living. I held my breath and heard nothing, not even the noises from the street, and then I understood the raised, carpeted floor, and the thick, cloth-covered walls. The sound in this room had been deliberately deadened. But how much so? If my uncle woke frightened, unable to find the familiar, could this room possibly conceal one of his tantrums from whomever might be directly below?

When the silence continued, Mr. Babcock slowly lowered his hand, closing his eyes for a moment in relief. But I could not be certain that relief had a foundation. How quickly would rumors of strange noises in the house next door get from Mrs. Reynolds to Mr. Wickersham? Or even to the French? We could not allow my uncle to stay here without knowing. I would not. I ran a hand along the side of my head, smoothing the curls that were springing their way out in the warm attic air. I felt infinitely weary.

“What time is it, Mary?”

She snatched up the pocket watch hanging on its chain, and then paused, nose wrinkled. “But I said I’ve already been giving Mr. Tully his —”

“What time?”

“Not quite a quarter past one, Miss. Why?”

“Because I think we must hurry. We need to unload Uncle Tully’s things, have this room ready as quickly as possible, and get him out of his trunk before I have to go.”

“Go? But where do you have to be going, Miss?”

“Dinner,” I said. “With Mrs. Hardcastle.”

If I had exchanged the words
dinner
and
firing squad
, I think my expression might have been the same.

B
y a quarter past eight I was ready, or as ready as I was going to be. The three of us had worked feverishly, dragging the cases and trunks up the stairs and into the storeroom, handing through the hidden door my uncle’s floor pillows, his teacups, a smattering of clocks, and the tools, pieces, parts, and half-finished automatons from the workshop at Stranwyne, all his comfortable familiarities I’d told Mr. Wickersham had been melted. I pronounced the mattress on the cot in the bedroom unusable, so Mr. Babcock ransacked the house to find another while Mary warmed water, scrubbed, swept away mice droppings, and brought out the linens.

Then carefully, and with a struggle, we brought my sleeping uncle out of the trunk and got him through the little door. We laid Uncle Tully out on the floor and cleaned him — no time for modesty — dressing him in his usual nightshirt before putting him on the bed with a new mattress and fresh coverings. He was thrashing some now, groaning and speaking the nonsense of dreams, not asleep but never truly awake either. Dr. Pruitt had told us to expect this, a certain time of grogginess and weakness after the prolonged anesthetic, and that my uncle would become himself again given time. But it hurt me to see it. Uncle Tully drank half a glass of water, eyes closed, before I laid him back on his pillow.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” I’d asked Mary in a whisper, helping her tighten the blankets around his kicking legs. Lane had discovered this, cocooning Uncle Tully in a blanket when he was upset, a trick that had always seemed to give my uncle security. It was doing nothing for him now, and the guilt of leaving him was nearly intolerable. But for his own safety this task had to be done, the quicker the better. And short of burglary, I could not see how it was a task that could be performed by anyone but myself.

“We’ll be just fine, Miss,” Mary said softly. “I’ll be taking care of Mr. Tully; he’s used to finding me with him. It’s Mr. Babcock that’ll have to be staying away, but I’ve sent him off to be getting us a bit of bread and honey for toast, as I’ve already got Mr. Tully’s tea. I’ll be keeping Mr. Tully wrapped up tight, but if he’s waking up proper while you’re gone, then I’m thinking I should be giving him a time for your coming, Miss, so he can look at my watch. And I’ll explain how we’ve all been doing just as Miss Marianna said, and let him wind up the clocks.”

I considered. “No, I think perhaps have the clocks wound already, if you can possibly manage it, Mary. Seeing them stopped will make him upset. Though I daresay he’s going to throw a tantrum once he understands his surroundings, no matter what we do.”

“But, Miss, if Mr. Tully does shout his head off, and if you can be hearing it from next door, and the others can be hearing him, too, what are you going to do, then, Miss?”

What we would do, I thought, was pack our things again and take my uncle out of this place. I had not the first notion of where we could go. The knot inside me twinged with familiar pain as I glanced guiltily at Mary; there was nothing about my life lately that did not involve guilt. “I had thought to tell them that my maid was … prone to nightmares. Do you mind?”

“Lord, what would I care, Miss?” she replied, tucking in the last corner of blanket. “’Tis no skin off my nose, as they say.”

I wondered what I had ever done in life to be blessed with the likes of Mary Brown. “Then let’s try to keep him calm,” I said, “but if he shouts, he shouts. And be sure and move about normally. I need to understand what can be heard from the other house. But you’re perfectly right about giving him a time. Let’s say eleven … no, we’d do better to say half past. Mrs. Hardcastle mentioned four courses, and I’ll need time to look about the house.” Only heaven knew how I was going to manage that.

Mary shook her head, a dark smudge beneath each eye. “Well, don’t be a minute after, that’s what I’m saying, Miss. There’ll be the devil to pay if you are. Is there anything fit after being stuffed in your trunk — your dresses, I’m meaning, Miss, not your uncle, and I’m meaning your real trunk, of course, the other one — and are you needing any help with your hair?”

I’d told her that I could find something to put on and do my own hair. And I did, my appearance scarcely being a priority. But the deep brown silk rustling at my toes suited me well, and under artificial light should be dark enough to be taken for proper mourning. It was a far cry from a gray worsted dress, I reminded myself. I touched the small, healing cut on my neck, pulled some wisping curls around my face, hoping to lessen the effects of fatigue I could plainly see there, turned from the gilded mirror of the foyer, and shut the red doors quietly behind me.

It was nearing full dark and the streetlamps were lit. I pulled a patterned shawl tighter around my shoulders, more against the strangeness than the slight chill. Rue Trudon was mostly residential, it seemed, with only a boy, whistling, moving leisurely to what was likely his last destination of the day. I could smell cooking that was not like London, could hear the
clop
of horse hooves from the cross street, oddly muffled on the smooth, black pavement and, from an open window, a conversation I could not understand. Seven days and eight nights had passed since the Frenchman had died in my uncle’s workshop, and since then I had buried a stranger in my own family plot, told more lies than I could count, bribed a sea captain and a bevy of French officials, committed what I suspected might be treason against the British government, and left behind the only place in the world I had ever known as home. It seemed blatantly unfair that dinner with the likes of Mrs. Hardcastle had to follow. I sighed, walked thirty-two steps to Mrs. Reynolds’s door, and knocked.

A servant answered, very formally attired in a black frock coat with silver buttons. He stared at me without the slightest hint of welcome, brows raised in inquiry.

“Miss Katharine Tulman,” I said to him, “acquaintance of Mrs. Richard Hardcastle. I believe I … am expected to dinner.” I only just kept the question mark from my sentence. I’d sent Mary flying next door with a note accepting Mrs. Hardcastle’s invitation several hours earlier. Surely it had been received? The door opened a bit wider.

“Come in, Miss,” he said, “and I will summon my mistress.”

Vaguely uneasy, I stepped inside a foyer the same size and proportions as mine, only much more sumptuously furnished. It was all knickknacks and portraits, fringed velvet hangings and thickly woven rugs. Stuffed birds, eyes sparkling in the gaslight, peered down at me from glass-domed perches on the walls, and I felt instantly sorry for whichever maid had the misfortune of dusting. The black-frocked man disappeared through a green velvet curtain to my left, its edges leeching the light and the sound of voices, many of them, male and female, while I ran my gaze over the gently curving stairs.

Just as in my grandmother’s house, the stairwell rose upward through the center of the foyer, while to my right there was a closed door. A room, I surmised, that must share a wall with my ladies’ salon. It would be important, then, to see whether the top floor had any rooms to the right of the stairwell. I suspected that it did not, that my uncle Tully was currently occupying that space. The longer I looked, the more each step seemed to lure my feet, enticing them to climb, to run all the way to the top, find what I needed, and then dash back down and out the front door again before anyone was the wiser. This fancy was cured by the unmistakable tremolo of Mrs. Hardcastle as she flung aside the hanging velvet.

“Oh!” she said, the pince-nez in the act of falling from her nose. It swung crazily on its chain, bouncing against a dress of salmon-striped taffeta with gigantic, poofing sleeves. “Katharine, my … Forgive me. Miss Tulman, what a lovely surprise! I am so happy you decided to accept my little invitation!”

I cringed inwardly at her use of the word
surprise
. “Did you not receive my note, Mrs. Hardcastle? Truly I would not have …” I took a breath. “I would never have meant to …”

“Your note? Oh, of course, my dear. Your note! Think nothing of it. I merely forgot to notify Hawkins is all. Silly mistake.” She turned back to the servant in the frock coat, who I assumed must be Hawkins, and said something in his ear. He took my shawl, bowed, and then left the room in a dignified hurry, to have an extra place set at the table, more than likely.

Mrs. Hardcastle took my arm. “Now do come and meet everyone. I simply can’t wait to introduce you.” She pulled me firmly through the curtain, and when it fell shut behind us I froze for just a moment, like an animal trapped, eyes as wide as those of the company staring back at me.

I was in a room full of skirts, huge, billowing, in shining pinks and yellows and pale greens, with lace and flowers and trimming of every sort from head to hem. Necklaces, bracelets, and earrings winked, and there were also pure-white cravats and neatly trimmed whiskers, coal-black jackets against waistcoats of satin, gloves and handkerchiefs, and beribboned shoes. This was not the sort of clothing I would have worn to a dinner. This is what I would have worn to a ball. Or an audience with the queen. I smoothed my brown silk. I might as well have been back in the gray worsted. Mrs. Hardcastle beamed.

“Gentlemen and ladies, may I present Miss Katharine Tulman to you, lately of Devonshire, previously of London.” I barely managed the bending of my knees. “Miss Tulman has only just arrived today in Paris.”