Agent of the Crown (18 page)

“I’m living in Longbourne with my Aunt
Weaver.”

The woman’s face cleared. “Our Alys is
apprenticed to Mistress Weaver. You’re her niece?” She gestured to
Telaine to enter the kitchen. “Come in and have a seat. Haven’t
seen our Alys in weeks. Don’t get much time off.”

Her smile made her wrinkled cheeks more
deeply lined, the creases at the corners of her eyes giving her a
merry look. “I’m Mistress Wilson. Alys is my daughter’s youngest.
Pretty as they come.” Telaine agreed, keeping her opinions on
Alys’s character to herself.

“Here, have a taste of this,” Mistress Wilson
said, holding a spoon to Telaine’s lips.

Telaine tasted and said, “That’s
delicious.”

“That’s supper, that is,” Mistress Wilson
said with satisfaction. “Say what you like about himself, but he
sets a good table.”

“Mistress Wilson, what
is
it they say
about Baron Steepridge? I’ve been working for him, on and off, for
several weeks now, and no one will say why he’s disliked.” Telaine
helped herself to an apple.

Mistress Wilson’s eyes went guarded. “Not my
place to speak against the Baron,” she said. “He’s got his ways and
they ain’t Longbourne ways. Happen people don’t warm to them as
aren’t the same.”

Telaine was certain that although the woman
wasn’t lying, she wasn’t giving Telaine the whole truth. Well, time
enough to press Mistress Wilson on future visits. She was an
interesting, pleasant lady, and she was a fabulous cook.
And
she’d be a good asset to cultivate
, she thought, an agent’s
thought, and was surprised to find it had been her
second
thought.

“Don’t let that boil over!” shouted Mistress
Wilson, turning her attention to a hapless assistant at the
fireplace. Telaine, munching her apple, casually exited the kitchen
and proceeded in the direction opposite the stairs. The next
doorway revealed a table laid with a white cloth and four benches
drawn up around it. Servants’ dining hall.

Opposite the dining hall were a number of
closed doors; she peeked into a few and found storerooms for spices
and baking needs, the housekeeper’s offices, and a short stairway
leading down to the wine cellar. Nothing interesting.

She turned another corner and found a short
hallway with three doors, one straight ahead and two to her left.
The two to the left, broader and squarer than normal, were locked
with reasonably good locks Telaine was sure she wouldn’t be able to
pick without being noticed by a servant. The door at the end of the
hall swung open easily, revealing bright midday light and a view
down the valley. Telaine noted how wide the doors and the hall
were.
Easily able to accommodate large, mysterious
shipments.

She scrutinized the locks again, then
regretfully turned away. Whatever was in those rooms would have to
wait until some time when all the servants were busy elsewhere.

She went back around to the stairs and up to
the third floor. Time to get back to work before the Baron
returned. Telaine hadn’t caught a whiff of mint and lilac anywhere;
how inconvenient. At some point her need for a source would be
real. The binoculars were a simple repair, just a new spring, but
they were beautiful and she couldn’t help taking them apart further
to see how they worked.

She was tightening down a minute screw when
the door opened and someone entered without speaking.
Morgan
. She was as certain of it as if he’d announced his
presence. He made no movement to approach her, so she chose to
ignore him. Then he took a step, and another, and her heart began
beating faster with anxious anticipation—should she continue to
pretend unawareness, or greet him with that innocent, ignorant
expression she’d cultivated just for him?

She moved on to another screw, waiting for
him to speak, her nerves making her hands shake enough that holding
the tiny screwdriver was difficult. Then he stopped, very near to
her, and his hand caressed her spine, from the base of her neck to
above her hips. She jumped; several tiny pieces fell to the floor.
“Mister Morgan!” she exclaimed, squatting to retrieve the pieces.
“Please don’t take such liberties.”

“But you’re so attractive when you’re intent
on your work,” he said quietly. He took a step back, but was still
far too close for Telaine’s peace of mind. She laid the pieces back
on the pedestal where she was working, and turned to look at him.
Now her hands were shaking too much to hold a tool at all. She
clasped her hands and kept her voice steady.

“Mister Morgan, I’m here to work for the
Baron. That’s all. I would rather you not stand so close to me
while I’m working.”

“Does that mean you’d welcome my…closeness…at
other times?” The pointed smile was back. It still didn’t reach his
eyes. She tried a demure smile.

“I don’t have time for any sort of closeness
now,” she said. “Though I’m honored by your interest. Please don’t
be offended by my refusal.”

The smile widened. “On the contrary. I find
it…refreshing.”

The Baron entered the room. “Morgan, are you
disturbing my Deviser?” Telaine, her hands no longer shaking, had
to clench one of them on that “my.” “My dear, are you finished?”
Funny how the Baron’s “my dear” never had any tenderness in it.
Funny, and a relief.

“One more moment, milord. I’m afraid Mister
Morgan startled me and I dropped the last few pieces.” Telaine
twisted another screw, then held the binoculars out to the Baron.
“Would you test them, milord?”

The Baron turned toward the window.
“Perfect,” he said. He laid them back on their pedestal. “Can I
tempt you to join us for dinner?”

She put on a sad but firm expression. “I’m
afraid I have another job back in town to return to. Maybe another
time?”

The Baron lifted her hand to his red lips.
“Certainly.” The air of distraction he’d worn earlier was gone.
What kind of problem would the fort have had for him to deal with?
Getting inside the fort would have to be her next priority. Those
shipments had to be somewhere.

She hadn’t been
lying about having a job in Longbourne. She stopped at the tavern
for dinner, then knocked on Mistress Richardson’s—Eleanor’s—door.
The little girl, Hope, answered, flinging herself around Telaine’s
knees.

“You’re
late
,” she accused. “I been
waiting all day.”

“Hope, I told you not to annoy Miss Bricker,”
said Eleanor. Her hands and face were red from washing, and she
pushed a strand of her hair out of her eyes. “She’s been watching
all day for you. I couldn’t stop her,” she said in a quiet
voice.

“I much prefer her embraces to the one I had
earlier,” Telaine said, then bit her tongue. Eleanor straightened
and gave Telaine a worried look. “The Baron?” she asked.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Telaine said.
“Hope, why don’t you show me the problem?”

Hope took her by the hand and dragged her
through the large front room in which Eleanor did laundry and up a
short flight of stairs that practically qualified as a ladder. She
led Telaine to the room she shared with her mother, went to her
trundle bed, and held up her rag doll. “She doesn’t talk,” she
announced, then gave the doll a two-armed hug that would have
crushed a real baby.

“Is she supposed to?”

Hope nodded. “She used to talk when Marie had
her. Then she stopped.”

“Can I hold her?” Hope nodded and handed the
doll over. Telaine felt it all over and found, in the head, a hard
yet still pliant knot. “I’m afraid this is going to take some
work,” she said. “And your ma will have to help because I can’t
sew.”

Hope screwed up her face. “How come you can’t
sew if you’re big?”

“Because I make Devices instead,” Telaine
lied. The truth was she’d always been awkward with a needle,
despite everything master seamstress Imogen North could do. The
discovery that she had a talent for Devisery had been a relief from
the fear that she was fumble-fingered, period.

“Let’s go downstairs,” she continued, and
Hope again put her small hand in hers. The gesture gave her a rush
of pleasure at being trusted by this small girl, who reminded her
so much of Jessamy when he’d been this age. He’d been mad after
Devices even then, and that passion had never gone away. How
relieved she’d been when he turned out to have the magical ability
to match the passion.

Telaine went to the broad, age-worn kitchen
table that had fed generations of Richardsons and pulled a
handkerchief out of her sleeve, which she spread across its scarred
top. “Do you want to watch? Only I have to cut your doll open. You
might not like that.”

Hope looked at her with the disdain only
small children can muster. “She’s not
alive
,” she said.

Telaine raised her eyebrows. “Well then, stay
and watch,” she said with amusement. She laid open her roll of
tools and took out her tin snips. They’d do as scissors. She cut
the stitches along the seam at the back of the doll’s head and
removed the padding and the little Device. It was a knot of wires
the size of a walnut, its round shape distorted, but Telaine
thought that was on purpose.

She poked at the threads of wire, moving them
to get a look at the interior. “Hah,” she said, finding a hinge. It
only looked like it was a ball of wire. She found a catch,
depressed it with a flattened rod the size of a penny nail, and it
popped open.

“This is easy to fix. You can come with me, I
think you’ll like this,” she said. She carried the opened Device
outside and around the back of the forge, feeling Garrett’s eyes on
her. It was a much nicer feeling than Morgan’s attentions, but she
still didn’t want to meet his gaze, knowing he’d again have
something to say about her safety with Morgan.

She crouched near the source, which had
drifted only a bit, said “Watch this” to Hope, held the Device like
a cracked nut in the center of the source, and pulled at the source
to make a loose end.

Hope’s eyes and mouth went round as the tiny
ball of silver inside the Device began to glow a pale purple. It
soon became bright enough to cast an ethereal glow over both their
faces. Telaine clicked the latch shut when she judged the motive
force had been imbued enough. Hope looked disappointed. “It has to
be closed if you want your doll to talk,” Telaine reminded her, and
the girl’s face cleared.

Back inside, Telaine repacked the Device in
the cloth head, then said, “Now she has to be sewn together. Your
ma can do that when she’s got a minute.”

“I have one now,” Eleanor said. She had a
needle and thread ready and re-stitched the seam in no time.

“I wish I could do that,” Telaine sighed.

“Not hard to learn,” Eleanor said. She handed
the doll to Hope.

“Hard to do, though, for me. You have no idea
how hard my aunt tried to make a needlewoman of me. Do you know how
to make her work?” she said to Hope.

Hope shook her head. Telaine took the doll,
gently, held it to her face, and said, “I love my baby.”

A tinny voice said, “
I love my
mommy!
”

Hope snatched the doll and ran away, up the
stairs. “Say thanks to Miss Bricker, Hope!”

“Thanks,” came a muffled voice, far above.
The two women chuckled.

“How much do I owe you for that?” Eleanor
asked.

Telaine shook her head. “I don’t charge
children. They remind me of my cousin, and I never made him pay.
Well, not in the traditional sense.”

“There’s a story there, I wager.”

Telaine grinned. Could she tell stories of
her royal family? It wasn’t like she had to name names or say
anything pompous like “When my cousin Prince Jessamy, seventh in
line for the throne…”

“My youngest cousin—you remember I went to
live with my aunt and uncle when I was young? Well, he was born
several years after that, so he thinks of me as his sister. Anyway,
my youngest cousin always wanted to be a Deviser, ever since he was
younger than Hope. And one day, when he was five or six, he stole
my tools and wrecked them. Some of them are delicate and easy to
break. I caught him banging away at this toy train he had, shouting
‘Device! Device! Device!’ I gather he wanted to make it move by
itself.” Eleanor laughed.

“Anyway, when I found out, I was furious.
Devisers’ kits are expensive. So I went into his room one day when
he was out playing, and I fixed a dozen toy soldiers to march on
their own, but light-sensitive, so they’d move only when it got
dark. So he’d hear something moving around, but when my aunt came
in, they’d stop.

“It was a horrible trick to play on a
five-year-old, but I was sixteen and at the time I thought it was
funny. Then the next day I explained what I’d done and told him if
he ever took my things again, I’d find something else of his to
ruin. Then I took the soldiers apart and showed him how the Device
worked. He’s been responsible ever since.”

“That’s both cruel and funny,” Eleanor said,
laughing again. “But I can see how it’d leave you feeling like you
owed him something.”

“So I pay it back to other children.”

“Well, I have something I
will
pay you
for, if you can do it.”

“What’s that?”

Eleanor furrowed her brow. “I don’t quite
know, but happen you can work it out if I tell you what I figure
on. See, Trey’s wedding, they’re having the shivaree down by the
lake. It’s where the spring festival is held, there’s a maypole and
such. But this being nearly autumn, and them not wanting to wait
until spring—”

She pulled a worried, annoyed face, and
Telaine nodded agreement, because it was common knowledge that Trey
and Blythe hadn’t exactly waited for their wedding vows to
consummate their union. “I wanted to do something to make it
pretty. It’s getting brown out there. And I was thinking, what
about tiny lights floating in the air? But happen that’s not
possible.”