Chapter Eight

Two Visits, One Familial and One Mercantile—

In Which Hatpins of a Special Nature are Purchased

Air World

The day before the Queen’s Birthday, Audrey sneaked off to see Grady.

Knowing her mother had a dressmaker’s appointment, she’d boldly claimed that the thank-you note she’d received from the Henderson sisters was actually a picnic invitation. Her mother had granted her permission to go. She’d had to take a footman with her, but Jem had never tattled on her the other times she’d detoured to Tier Four to visit her half brother.

“Oh, it’s you.” Grady sounded disappointed when he opened the door. He must have seen the family crest on the pedal car and hoped that their father had relented. He sagged against the doorframe, gray of face and apathetic.

A pang of pity and guilt struck Audrey. She felt desperately sorry for her part in the fiasco, but she still believed he would have fallen to his death otherwise. His naval career had been doomed from the beginning.

She pushed past him. “Here. I brought some foodstuffs to tide you over until Father relents.” She set the heavy basket down on the rickety table. She’d told Cook to pack a picnic luncheon for six people, knowing from experience there would be enough food for at least ten.

Grady mumbled an embarrassed thank you. His younger sister Mae immediately started unpacking the hamper and exclaiming over it. “A whole ham! This’ll feed us for a week! Ooh, look, jam tarts, my favorite!”

Audrey flushed. “It’s nothing,” she said. Her father ought to have provided better for his son.

“Cor, look at the pretty patterns on the plates. Bet we could sell them for a pretty penny down at the market,” Mae said excitedly. Her hair was even redder than Grady’s.

Grady closed his eyes and spoke through clenched teeth, “The plates belong to Lady Audrey. She’ll be taking the hamper back with ’er. I’m sorry,” he said to Audrey. “Mae’s a proper little merchant.”

“It’s all right. I’m sorry I didn’t come by sooner,” she said awkwardly. “I’ve been restricted to the house.”

Silence fell. Finally, Grady inclined his head. “Shall we talk upstairs?” The narrow row house didn’t possess a parlor, but one of the attic bedrooms was Grady’s by virtue of his being the only boy.

It was smaller than Audrey’s closet. They sat on the bed because the ceiling was too low to stand properly and there were no chairs. No wonder Grady hadn’t complained about the cramped bunks on board the flagship; he was used to bumping his head on the ceiling.

Grady screwed up his eyes, seeming to brace himself for bad news. “Has he said anything about me?”

Audrey shook her head, feeling miserably selfish. She’d been so wrapped up in her own disgrace and the mystery of The Phantom, she’d hadn’t lobbied on behalf of Grady as hard as she could have. “But that doesn’t mean much. I only see him at mealtimes, and my mother’s there…” She trailed off.

His face twisted. “And Lady Bethany hates me. I know.” He clunked his head against the wall and opened eyes haunted by despair. “What should I do? Ma’s washing don’t bring in enough money to feed us all. Nobody wants a fourteen-year-old apprentice. And I won’t have the young ’uns out selling flowers. Bad things happen to flower girls all the time,” he said fiercely. His speech, which he’d worked so hard to improve, was already slipping back into old dialect patterns. “Maybe I’ll join up with a pirate ship.”

“You’re afraid of heights.”

“A thief gang, then.”

“No,” Audrey said, alarmed. “Don’t do anything drastic. Wait. Let me talk to him. He’s busy right now preparing for the Queen’s Birthday, but after that, I’ll pin him down.” Her promises sounded like hot air to her own ears, but Grady’s shoulders relaxed.

“Thank you. You’re my favorite sister. O’ course it helps that you don’t steal my socks and make poppets out of ’em,” he joked.

Audrey smiled painfully. She pleated the blanket under her hand. Was this all he slept under? It seemed far too thin.

“I have some news,” she said. “I saw The Phantom again. He stole something from Father’s study and, um, talked to me.” She hesitated, but if she couldn’t tell Grady, then who could she tell? “I want to prove his existence to Father.”

“Capture him, you mean? I’d love to get my hands on the bugger,” Grady said darkly.

“So you believe me?” Audrey blurted. She’d feared that he thought her a liar, too.

“O’ course. You wouldn’t lie to me about something so important.” Grady smiled fleetingly. “So what’s the plan? If I help capture him, maybe it’ll get me back in Da’s good graces.”

“I sent him a message on the wind, asking him to meet me during the parade.”

Grady waited a heartbeat, then his red eyebrows shot up. “That’s it? That’s your plan?”

She grimaced. “Well, that and enlisting you. Between the two of us, we’ll figure something out. Will you help me?”

“I’m in,” he said firmly. “So long as you promise the plan doesn’t involve you wearing trousers again.”

Audrey stifled a small pang. “Deal.”

“Is it—? Why, yes, it is. Lady Audrey, how lovely to see you again.”

Audrey froze, then pasted on a smile and greeted Franklin’s friend. “Mr. Tennyson, what an unexpected surprise.” For just a second, she wondered if he was a fortune hunter who’d bribed a member of the staff to tell him her whereabouts, but, no, it had to be a coincidence. Everyone but Jem thought she was on a picnic at the Hendersons’, and even Jem hadn’t known she’d planned to stop here after visiting Grady.

“Please call me Piers,” he invited her with a warm smile. He wore a gray suit, bowler, and goggles on the blustery day.

“And you must call me Audrey.” Recalling her manners, she held out her gloved hand. He gripped it briefly, bowing over it as if they were in a ballroom and not standing on the street outside McNally’s Clockwork Emporium.

Piers glanced around. “Where’s your escort? Surely, you’re not traveling alone on this tier?”

“Jem is guarding the pedal car,” she said truthfully. She’d ordered him to stay outside, insisting she would only be a minute. The staff were very good at keeping mum about her clandestine visits to her brother’s family, but she didn’t want her purchase to become below-stairs gossip.

It wasn’t as if she were in any danger of being accosted. Though McNally’s wasn’t a top-tier establishment, they were two terraces higher than Donlon’s slums. Audrey had never done more than overfly the lowest tiers, but it was said both that the air was so thick with poisonous marsh gas, you couldn’t walk without an air filter—and that the inhabitants were so poor, they couldn’t afford filters. The thought made her shudder.

“Hmmm. In that case, good manners insist that I accompany you and keep you safe from all the dastardly villains and cutpurses hanging about,” Piers said, even though they were alone on the street. He placed her hand on his arm. “Unless you’re carrying a blunderbuss in your reticule?”

Jem had the blunderbuss. “What would you do if I said I am?” she asked.

“Apply to you for protection, of course. I don’t have a blunderbuss.”

A smile escaped her. She didn’t need an escort, but Piers was good company. And the below-stairs gossip would now center on Piers and speculations that she’d arranged the chance meeting instead of what she bought. “If you don’t have a blunderbuss, what good are you?”

His eyes twinkled. “I can be useful in other ways. Such as steering you around mud puddles.” He demonstrated. “And carrying hatboxes.”

She glanced askance at him. “I’m not planning to buy a hat.”

“What? No new hat for the Queen’s Birthday? What are you planning to do to celebrate?”

“Father will be busy with Fleet maneuvers, of course, though he’ll try to join us for supper. Mother and I will watch the parade from the Hendersons’ balcony; they’re close to the palace and have a top-notch view. Then a light supper at Guillarme’s and on to the Royal Ball. I’m not old enough to attend yet, but there’s a Children’s Ball held in the royal gardens. They always do it up with fanciful decorations. Last year, it was butterflies.”

Honestly, she would miss the Children’s Ball once she turned eighteen and was officially of marriageable age. From all reports, the Royal Ball was both very staid and a total crush.

Audrey stopped, aware that she was chattering. “And you? Do you have family plans?”

“Alas, my family will not be attending the festivities this year.”

Which could mean anything from a decline in fortunes to an illness in the family or a pregnancy. But it was rude to ask which. Audrey shoved down her curiosity.

“I’ll be on my own,” he continued lightly. “I’ll probably beg an invite off Franklin or another chum.”

Audrey made a mental note to ask the Henderson sisters to invite him. He was handsome and personable. Maybe he could loosen Franklin up.

They reached McNally’s Clockwork Emporium. Audrey studied the shop dubiously. The sign was gaily painted, and the gold scrollwork was pretty, but the window needed washing. She was suddenly glad Piers was here to squire her about.

The first two aisles were full of toys and amusements. Audrey instantly thought of Grady’s sister Mae. Her hand started to reach for an adorable windup doll, then withdrew. She only had twenty-five gills in her purse. And she was here on business.

The third aisle contained women’s gewgaws: brooches, hats, stylish goggles, parasols, and reticules with hidden compartments, ranging from quite clever to gaudy beyond belief. Piers picked up a large hat adorned with both peacock feathers and a miniature clock and plopped it on her head. “There. You look very fetching.”

Audrey removed it. “It’s hideous.”

“Yes, the hat is hideous. You, on the other hand, are fetching.” His voice had become husky.

Audrey blushed. The flirtation felt fun, but it also made her feel skittish because she’d barely thought about Piers after the garden party, obsessing over the kiss she’d shared with The Phantom instead. Did that make her a flirt?

She avoided Piers’s face and searched the shelves. Thankfully, she found what she was looking for at the end of the aisle.

“Hatpins of a Special Nature?” Piers read the box’s label. “Never lose a hatpin again.”

“I’m always losing my pins,” Audrey said truthfully. Piers trailed after her as she took the box up to the front counter and laid it down in front of the shopkeep. “I’ll take these.”

“Fifty gills.”

“Fifty?” Audrey squeaked. Fifty gills was three months’ allowance. She only had twenty-five.

The shopkeep studied her over the rims of his spectacles. “They come with a brooch and are of Siparese manufacture. They were invented by the Clockwork Earl himself and are correspondingly dear. Fifty gills.”

“For hatpins?” Piers interrupted. “Ridiculous. One can buy ten boxes for that price.”

“Not these hatpins,” the shopkeep put in, affronted. “I done told you the Clockwork Earl invented them. Why, these are the only set of hatpins a lady will ever need. The regular kind fall out or get tugged loose by the wind, but these will never get lost. Let me demonstrate.” He picked up the brooch and moved it farther down the counter.

The hatpins began to vibrate, then twitch. Small legs extruded from the tiny blue butterflies on the heads of the pins. Audrey watched in rapt fascination as the pins began to walk toward the box.

The shopkeep laid his hand flat on the counter, and the clockwork hatpin bugs gamely clambered over the back of his hand.

Once reunited with their “mama” brooch, the little legs smoothly folded away again.

“How clever!” Audrey exclaimed.

“Range is thirty feet,” the shopkeep boasted. “Fifty gills and cheap at the price.”

Piers raised an eyebrow. “More like ten feet maximum, and they wouldn’t be worth fifty gills even if they were made by the Clockwork Earl. Which these aren’t. See here.” He picked up the brooch and showed the underside to Audrey. “The initials R.N. prove these were made by Robert Norton, a clever Donlon copier with whom I happen to be acquainted.”

The shopkeep flushed red. “Miss, I can let them go for thirty-five gills. Any less and I’d be robbing myself.”

Audrey had taken the shopkeep in dislike. She turned to Piers. “Let’s go.” She lifted her chin, and they swept out of the shop together.

“Twenty-five gills!” the shopkeep shouted behind them.

Audrey started to turn back, but Piers squeezed her elbow. “Forget him. I really do know the copyist, Norton. I’m sure he’ll sell you a set of hatpins for half price.”

She barely knew Piers and shouldn’t go off with him. But she really wanted those hatpins, and it was still too early to return from her pretend “picnic.” She studied the grin on Piers’s face; he looked mischievous but not at all sly. She trusted him. “I’d love to.”

Jem stopped the pedal car in front of a slightly run-down townhouse on Tier Three. It shared walls with its neighbors but rose two stories high and had a glass cupola on top.

Piers jumped out and handed her down from the open carriage while Jem was busy setting the brake. “Shall we?”

Qualms struck. “Will your friend mind? It’s rather early to call without an invitation.”

Piers scoffed. “Norton doesn’t stand on ceremony. I’m not sure he even knows the meaning of the word. He’s an inventor—his mind is always occupied with his current project.” He rapped the knocker three times. “I should warn you, he’s terrible with names, so don’t feel slighted if he forgets yours. He often calls me Jack, who I gather used to be his assistant.”

Nobody answered, and Audrey sighed in disappointment. “Perhaps he isn’t home.”

“Norton has to be physically dragged away from his lab.” Piers opened the door and stepped into the vestibule. “Norton? It’s Piers Tennyson.”

“Just a minute.” A faint voice came from up the stairs.

“Like I said, he’s probably in his laboratory. I’ll go make sure he’s fit company.” Piers bounded up the stairs and out of sight.

While she waited, Audrey peered around: shabby carpet, bare walls, and the distinctive odor of pipe smoke. Her gaze was arrested by the sight of a dark-haired woman creeping down the stairs. Audrey’s first thought was that this must be Norton’s housekeeper—but the woman was carrying her shoes, and both her curly hair and her dress were in some disarray, as if she’d just rolled out of bed. Audrey flushed beet red in horror—was the woman a prostitute? But no, her clothes were respectable, those of, say, a dashing widow. A lover, then.

The woman saw Audrey and gave a little shrug of her shoulders at being caught. She put a finger to her lips for silence. Audrey nodded. She had no wish to embarrass Piers or Norton, and she was at fault for barging in.

The woman slipped on her shoes and out the door. Audrey noticed a vulgarly large, red ring on her left hand. It couldn’t be a real ruby. Glass, probably.

Muffled voices came from above, and then Piers reappeared. “Come join us. Watch out for the third step.”

Curiosity beat out propriety. Audrey lifted her skirts and climbed the narrow stairs, avoiding the splintery third step.

The whole second floor, which would normally have been bedrooms, was taken up by the laboratory. Gaping, Audrey made out workbenches with scattered tools, tables covered in pencil drawings and schematics, shelves full of half-completed projects, a brazier and soldering iron, bins and glass jars, and every conceivable container full of metal nuts and bolts and odds and ends. Tarps draped something bulky about the size of a pedal car at the far end of the room.

The copyist himself, Norton, was a tall, thin man in rolled-up shirtsleeves and a waistcoat. Aside from his lack of neckcloth, he bore no signs of having hastily risen from bed with his lover. He merely looked eccentric and untidy. Twine trailed from one pocket, and he wore complicated brass goggles.

Norton didn’t look up when Audrey entered the room, intent on tightening the screws of some project clamped to his workbench.

“Norton, you have a visitor. Let me introduce you.”

“I told you, I’m busy.”

“You’ll want to make time for this visitor.” Piers winked at her. “This is Lady Audrey, daughter of Admiral Harding. Ring any bells? Weren’t you just complaining you needed someone to put in a good word for you with the Fleet?”

Norton turned around at last.

Audrey coughed to cover a laugh. The goggles had magnified his left eye to twice the size of his right, and he was unshaven.

He bowed. “Pleased to meet you, Lady Audrey. Robert Norton at your service.” The words were perfunctory. He crossed his arms and directed a smug look at Piers. “As a matter of fact, I already landed that commission. I finished the piece for your mum…” He gestured to the tarp-covered object.

Piers’s mum? Audrey wondered. She’d thought he worked for his uncle. Perhaps his mother quietly helped out.

“…And I’ve started on a big project for the Fleet.” Norton puffed out his thin chest. “This one’s an original design, quite tricky, not some copy job.”

“The copy jobs pay the rent,” Piers soothed. “Audrey saw a demonstration of some of your hatpins and was quite impressed. I bet you improved the Clockwork Earl’s work.”

“Him?” Norton sniffed. “That’s not difficult. He sheds ideas like a dog does dandruff and doesn’t take the time to develop them properly.”

“Were the little legs your idea?” Audrey ventured.

“No, but I doubled their range to fifteen feet,” Norton said proudly.

“Splendid.” Audrey smiled at him.

“Do you happen to have any to purchase?” Piers asked. “Some other lady scooped the last pair out from under Lady Audrey’s nose,” he lied. He tipped Audrey a wink as Norton immediately produced a box.

Soon Audrey had her box. She paid twenty gills—the same price Norton apparently received from the shopkeep after a sale, so they were both happy.

“How about giving us a tour?” Piers asked once the transaction was completed. “What’s under the tarp?”

Norton’s expression turned sly. “Since Lady Audrey is the Admiral’s daughter, I’ll let you have a peek.” He swept the tarp off like a cape.

The object below perplexed Audrey. It had a pressure gauge like a steam engine but mostly resembled a large nozzle. What was it?

“This is just part of the Device, of course. Sections one through six have already been delivered. This is seven, and I’m working on eight. It’s too big to assemble here in the lab—we’d have to take down a wall to get it out.”

Audrey listened with interest as Norton described how he’d designed the pieces to interlock for smooth reassembly. He then showed them a soldering station and a lathe for making small parts. It was enormously clever, and Audrey stayed longer than she intended. The bong of a grandfather clock striking two startled her.

Piers seemed to come to the same realization. “Thanks, old chap,” he said heartily. “We’ll let you go back to work now.” He steered Audrey toward the stairs.

Out on the street, the breeze teased at her curls.

Piers was smiling, relaxed, as he escorted her over to the pedal car. “Norton can be an odd bird. He’s madly jealous of the Clockwork Earl. He keeps hoping Queen Winifrid will notice his work and bestow a title on him.”

“He seems very dedicated,” Audrey offered.

“Obsessed is more like it.” Piers shook his head ruefully. “Do you have more errands to run?” He looked hopeful.

“No,” she said with considerable regret. “I must head home before I’m missed.” Her fictitious picnic would be over by now.

Piers waved Jem off and helped Audrey up onto the carriage seat. His hand felt warm through the layer of her glove.

“Thank you for taking me with you,” she said. Any other boy would have decreed that the laboratory was no place for ladies.

“You’re welcome.” Piers plucked a single hatpin from her box and pocketed it. “A souvenir, so that I’ll always know when you’re close by.”

Her cheeks heated. He really was charming. Too bad he didn’t have a title.