Mission: Nutcracker

Chapter 9

9

Terminus, 18 December 1871

After taking care of the morning’s business, Devon joined Therese and Pierce for lunch in the informal dining room. He thought it silly to have a formal dining room that could seat two dozen at least and an informal one that could accommodate a more intimate party of ten or so. He certainly hadn’t thought about hosting any balls before the winter was over, but now that the marriage mart had opened to him, perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see who was interested enough to come.

Or, more likely, who wanted free food, drink, and an opportunity to show off.

Well, whatever their motivation, they’d be in his home, and he’d be working toward his legacy.

He was shaking his head at his cynicism when Therese touched his arm.

“What are you pondering with such a twist to your mouth, brother mine?” she teased. “You look like you’ve kissed a goat and found it tastes of grass.”

“Therese!” Pierce looked at her with an amused glitter in his eyes. “Where did you come up with that horrid expression?”

Therese laughed, and Devon relaxed at the sound. She must be feeling better. She wouldn’t be laughing if she wasn’t. But then, she’d seemed gayer since that morning, when he’d said a quick hello before leaving to talk to Fiona.

“Say,” he said and picked up his fork, “Layla Bollington cornered me when I got in yesterday. Do either of you know what she was doing here?”

A quick flush came to Therese’s cheeks, and she shook her head, but without meeting his gaze. “I wasn’t aware she’d been here.”

And Devon wasn’t aware his sister was a liar, and a poor one at that, but he elected not to confront her until he could do so when they were alone. Had she been entertaining the journalist? But to what end?

“No idea,” Pierce added. “Probably here to talk to us about the disaster that was the Tinkerer’s Masquerade Ball.” He shuddered. “Beastly automatons.”

Therese looked up. “Automatons? Did they have something to do with the clockwork you were looking at the other night?” She crossed her arms. “You can tell me. I’ve read the article in the paper about the ball, but it just mentioned cloaked men, not machines.”

“Yes.” Pierce described the scene in excited tones. “They invaded the ball and rounded up the tinkerers. Only a few escaped. Your brother and I helped the survivors and the servants.”

“With help,” Devon added, not wanting for him or Pierce to take credit they didn’t deserve. He might be called a coward, but he wouldn’t be called a liar.

“Right, with the useless fire and medical brigades. They didn’t want to help the Negroes.”

“And you said the automatons were beastly.” Therese’s mouth thinned to a line before she asked, “Were many hurt?”

“We don’t know.” Devon rotated his ankle, which throbbed at the very memory of the escape and the walking around after. “I should have asked Blair, but he seemed to be treating the thing as a kidnapping, not a murder, so perhaps the ones who didn’t escape were taken.”

“We can hope, at least.” Pierce dabbed at his upper lip, where sweat beaded. Devon hoped he wasn’t being taken by a fever.

“Are you all right, Cousin?” Devon asked.

“Just fine. I think perhaps I need to take a turn outside, cool off a bit. This house is less drafty than the townhouse, and I fear I’m still adjusting.” He stood and pushed back his chair. “Would you care to join me, Therese?”

She shook her head. “I’m going to lie down for a bit, clear my own head.” She stood, and Devon did likewise.

“I’ll walk you up.”

“No, no, stay here, dear brother. I fear my head is trying to develop an ache, so I’m going to go up as quickly as I can, and I don’t feel up for conversation.” She fled the room.

“Strange,” Pierce said.

“You think she’s acting strangely?” Devon gestured to Pierce’s napkin. “Since when do you have problems with the heat in the house? It’s barely adequate.”

Pierce shrugged. “She’s hardly spoken to me today.” He gestured to the door where Therese had just left. “I have a lot on my mind, so I’m going to go for a walk. Any chance you’d like to come along?”

“No, I have some thinking to do as well.”

“You’re not keeping anything from me, are you?” Pierce’s expression fell. “You are. I can tell.”

“We’ll go shooting later,” Devon promised. If he got invited on any hunting trips, he’d need to brush up his marksmanship, and that was something the two cousins had always enjoyed doing. It was also the one technical skill in which Devon outshone Pierce.

“Good.” Pierce smiled and stood. “I’ll see you later, then.”

Devon watched Pierce leave, then decided to go in the lab to take another look at the clockwork creature he’d found. And to not get poked by it again.

He found the door to the cellar locked, but his key opened it. Strange—they didn’t usually keep it locked. Perhaps Pierce was feeling protective of his work, although he never had before.

Light through the high windows, which the servants opened on dry days, allowed Devon to see to get down the stairs. He turned one of the lamps they’d had installed to low flame so he could make out the objects on the workbenches. While Pierce usually kept his workshop in some sort of order, today it appeared to be jumbled. It looked like someone had gone through and rifled for something. Had Pierce lost something? Or maybe Devon wasn’t remembering correctly.

He walked to the clockwork creature and was just reaching to light the table lamp when someone knocked into him. He hit the ground with an “Oof!” and tried to roll away from his robed attacker. The odors of sweat and something chemical wafted over him. Even if he’d had enough light to see the person’s face, Devon wouldn’t have been able to because the man punched Devon in the side where the clockwork had gotten him, sending a jolt of pain through his torso. He curled up and tried to breathe deeply. His attacker got to his feet and stood over him, and Devon found himself staring into the face of a nutcracker—just like the automatons.

He kicked the thing in the knee, or tried to, but it jumped over Devon’s foot. Then it grabbed something from the table and ran. Devon rolled to his knees, clutching his side, and unsteadily got to his feet. He tried to follow where he thought the mysterious attacker had gone but found nothing but a red brick basement wall. Then he returned to the workbench and groaned. The clockwork bug had gone missing. Of course. The kidnappers wouldn’t want anything that could be traced to them left out in the world at large. But how had they known Devon and Pierce had it? Did it send some sort of signal through the aether to its makers?

He grabbed the lamp from the table, lit it, and brought it to the wall where he thought his attacker had disappeared. Sure enough, streaks showed in the dust on the floor. He traced a crack in the mortar to find a vaguely door-shaped outline. Another secret passage. Would this house never cease to surprise him? Or dismay him? He hated the idea that someone could come and go as they pleased, and how many more were there?

And did Pierce know?

Devon tried pushing, tapping, and otherwise bruising and roughing his fingers on the bricks and mortar in an effort to open the secret door, but to no avail. With a sigh, he stepped back and decided to return to the puzzle later. He would also have to ask Pierce if anything else had gone missing from the workshop, but he suspected not. And he’d inquire whether Pierce had noticed anyone else on the grounds during his walk. Not that Pierce might have seen anything—Devon had no idea how far the passage went. It could come out in the middle of Terminus for all he knew. Or into the woods north of the house, which would be impossible to search. That was the more likely scenario—that the passage had been built so the inhabitants could escape during an invasion.

What in the blazes was going on in his house?

When Tessa brought Fiona the note saying the Lillet sisters would be delighted to receive her, Fiona quickly got ready. She then rushed out of her room and straight into Tessa, who’d just come up the stairs with a load of linens. She stepped back, but not before the pile shifted, and clean towels ended up strewn all over the floor.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Fiona bent to help the maid gather them. “I’ll help you wash them later.”

Tessa looked up, a grateful expression on her face. “Thank you, Miss, but I’ll do it. Keeping busy makes me not worry so much.”

Fiona smiled and squeezed the girl’s shoulder. “Me too. I find myself worrying about Papa every minute my mind is idle.”

“Do you think he’ll be all right?”

“I have to believe so. They wouldn’t have taken him to harm him, would they?”

“I hope not, Miss.”

“How is Mama holding up?” Fiona glanced over Tessa’s head as though her thoughts would summon her mother.

“She’s asleep, Miss. I think that’s how she keeps from worrying.”

And how her mother kept from doing anything helpful. Fiona stifled a sigh weighted with frustration—and guilt. She needed to be more understanding—if she had a husband whom she loved, she would definitely need to be distracted if he went missing. Or off to war like Connor had. It seemed that the household had snapped back into its old way of handling things while in crisis, which was to say, not well.

“I’m going to go out for a bit. Are you available to accompany me?”

Tessa looked down at the now dirty linens in her arms. “Not right now, Miss. Please don’t go. I can’t handle worrying about someone else.”

“Don’t worry about me, I’m not going far. Just over to the Lillet house. I want to check on Lucy, Posey, and their mother.”

“That’s right nice of you, Miss. I wish I could go with you. Their cook always has extra for…” She put a hand over her mouth.

“For visiting servants. I know.” Fiona sighed. “I wish we had more for us to eat, too. But at least we’re keeping our slim figures.”

“Yes, Miss. And I think Mister Meriweather noticed yours. He certainly gave you an interesting look when you came down the stairs yesterday.”

“Oh, stop.” Her cheeks bloomed with heat again. Stupid blood vessels. Her pale skin gave everything away.

“Maybe he’ll be the one to help us.”

“Or at least the one to find out where Papa went.” Fiona descended the stairs. She knew she shouldn’t go out on her own, but the importance of her errand outweighed her need for propriety. She grabbed her bonnet off the peg by the back door and her cloak from the hook beside it. “I won’t be gone long. Please don’t tell Mama. If she asks for me, please tell her I’m asleep after all of yesterday’s excitement. That should make her happy.”

“Yes, Miss.”

Walking into the chilly air made Fiona feel more herself. It seemed that the kidnappers had also taken the strange winter balminess, and now the world felt different. Or maybe that was just her fancy. Would it be possible to control weather if one could figure out a way to change the concentration of air molecules on a large scale? What sort of device could handle such a thing? And would aether have an application, being the substance light traveled through but apparently connected to so much more?

When Fiona arrived at the Lillet household, she found it in a stir. Whereas her own house had been silent as though her father’s death was a foregone conclusion, the Lillet girls had a map spread out on the dining room table, and they chattered away under the patient gaze of their mother. The maid showed Fiona in, and all three Lillet women surrounded her in an embrace.

“Oh, Fiona, what are we to do?” Lucy asked. “Our fathers have been taken somewhere into the wild.”

“You have some idea as to where they’ve gone?” Fiona asked. The map showed Terminus, but also the mountain range and lake north, and the flat areas to the south and west. The rolling hills to the east, blanketed with forest between Terminus and Athens, had been folded back to make room for the rest of the giant map to lie on the table. “And where did you get such an amazing map?” She hadn’t ever seen one on such a large scale.

“Father had it commissioned, but he wouldn’t say why,” Lucy said and tapped her lip with a pen.

Lucy’s sister Posey, who looked similar to her except blond, gently pulled the pen away. “You’re going to get ink on your collar. Stop that. And he said we’d learn when it was time.”

“Well, it’s time, at least I think so.” Lucy walked around to the other side of the map. “Now Fiona, do you remember what direction the airship was going when it left? We have somewhat of a debate going on. I think it was north. Posey said it looked more east to her. Mother says somewhere in the middle, but even the slightest miscalculation could make the difference of hundreds of miles.”

That was Lucy’s specialty—navigation calculations for airships and, on a smaller scale, clockwork messenger pigeons which were reliable, provided they were pointed in the exact right direction. Indeed, a push-pin over Terminus had several strings radiating out from it leading to other pins, some in the mountains, and some in other directions.

“Why did you not consider Athens a possibility?” Fiona asked. “The university may harbor a scientist clever enough to make the…” She shut her mouth. She couldn’t say it.

“The what, Fifi?” Lucy regarded Fiona shrewdly.

“The nutcracker men,” was the best Fiona could come up with.

“Right. The wind wasn’t strong enough that night for the balloon to get back to Athens, at least not with the weight it must have been carrying, and without having to refuel somewhere nearby. As for the direction, please help us to settle this debate. You’re the best observer of all of us.”

Fiona closed her eyes, and just remembering the sight of the dirigible carrying her father off made her throat close and her eyes sting. It had risen from its position on the roof, its balloon seemingly parallel with the line of the house. But had it been exactly parallel? The dark balloon against the dark sky had been difficult to make out, even with flames flickering underneath it to illuminate it.

Then it had made a quarter turn and headed into the night.

“It was a fifteen-degree turn from its original position,” Fiona said. “But it could have adjusted its trajectory once out of sight. They’re quite clever—surely they would have thought to mislead whoever may be watching. And there was a breeze that night, too, which they would have corrected for.” That Lucy hadn’t thought of those facts made Fiona’s hopes dissipate like steam on a warm day. They must be truly panicked over their father, which likely meant that Lucy hadn’t discovered anything.

“Oh.” Lucy and Posey’s faces fell. “That’s a good point.”

Lucy sighed and started pulling the pins up off the map, leaving tiny holes all over it. Fiona hoped their father would be so happy at their attempts to rescue him that he would forgive them for the damage.

“Where did you think it went?” Fiona asked. She saw the tears in Lucy’s eyes, and her own burned in response. If her friend hadn’t any better ideas than she…

“It must have gone into the mountains. That’s what I keep thinking. It would be harder to get to than the forested flatter areas west of town, which means it would make for a perfect hideout, and there are plenty of old mines.” Lucy’s shoulders slumped. “But to what end, I don’t know.”

“Do you know what your father was working on?” Fiona helped her friends to roll up the map. She winced whenever her fingers found a hole in the paper from their pins.

“No,” Posey piped up. Her voice was higher and thinner than her sister’s. “He was always very secretive about his projects. But he was excited about something recently, wasn’t he, Lulu?”

Lucy nodded. “Yes, quite. But he wouldn’t tell us no matter how much we begged.” She lowered her voice and glanced at her mother. “And I did look through his workshop last night after the ball but didn’t find anything.”

“That’s what I feared.” Fiona allowed her shoulders to slump.

“And what about your father?” Lucy asked.

Fiona sighed. “Same. I remembered our fathers meeting with Hollowell not too long before the party, like in the last week or so, and—oh!” She spied something on the shelf by the mantel. “How long have you had that?” She pointed to the small nutcracker doll. It looked like the one that had appeared and then vanished from her room.

Lucy picked it up and held it out to Fiona, who backed away. “What? It’s just Mama’s old doll. She brought it with her from Germany. It comes out every Christmas.”

Now that Fiona could see the doll closer, she noticed its scuffs and scratches. She’d only had the barest glimpse of the interloper in her room, but she thought she remembered it being brand new and in pristine condition. Or maybe she’d been mistaken altogether, and nothing had been there except the frightened workings of a young tinkerer’s mind. She’d heard madness was a risk of the profession when one spent too much time thinking about objects and not enough around people.

“Thank you, I don’t think that’s the one I remember.”

“From what?” Polly asked. “Do you have one, too?”

Fiona shook her head. “It’s nothing. Thank you for having me this afternoon, but I really should get going.” Since her friends didn’t know what their fathers had been working on, she needed to return home and compile her notes on what she did know. She took her leave of the Lillets, who were holding up much better than Mrs. Telfair, and walked into the afternoon sunshine, which had tilted toward fading. When she rounded the corner, a flash of white under a dark cloak caught her attention. A man crossed the street just in front of her, his white pants and black boots obvious under his billowing robe.

Fiona frowned. No one in their right mind would wear white pants on the streets of Terminus, especially not in the winter.

But the automatons had worn them, as had Lucy’s mother’s nutcracker. Could this be one of the kidnappers?

Fiona looked around, gathered her cloak, and followed the man in the white pants.