Aether Rising

Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

McPhee Townhouse, 12 March 1871

When the household took its daily afternoon rest, Claire snuck into the basement and what had been her father’s workshop. It still smelled of leather straps and brass mountings. She thought she caught a whiff of smoke from the furnace in the corner, which he’d modified to burn at high enough temperatures to mold the glass and other materials for his lenses. It hadn’t burned since his death, so she wondered if his ghost was around. She hoped so.

“I thought you had gone to Heaven or wherever you were going after you left me at Fort Daniels,” she said in case he was there. “I’m sorry I snapped at you on the stairs.” A few hours alone in her own room with reminders of her former life had cooled her temper. Of her entire family, he’d understood her best, had encouraged her in her academic pursuits even though it wasn’t considered ladylike to put on a leather apron and make things. Or—heaven forbid!—study men’s subjects like mathematics and chemistry.

Claire shook her head. When she’d become a neuroticist, proving that it was possible to go from being a patient in an asylum to someone who helps others avoid such horrible places, she knew he’d be thrilled and had hoped her mother would be proud. But when Claire had returned from Europe to find her father dead and her mother in the clutches of her evil aunt, she had given up hope of being accepted by her family. And now the two friends who had supported her and who had admired her for her brain were both imprisoned. She was, too, but with fine china and plenty of substances available to numb her. Not that she would do that to her brain. She wouldn’t take the coward’s way out as her mother had.

“And now I get to pretend I’m a good girl and have a nice little tea with Louisa Cobb,” she muttered and sat on one of the benches by the long wooden table. Someone had cleared it off, and a fine dust filmed it, but Claire remembered when it had been piled high with the clutter of invention. The whole had been chaotic but the individual pieces fascinating. She’d taken what she’d learned at her father’s bench and had helped Patrick O’Connell make the aether weapon that ended the War Between the States.

She didn’t want to claim the words out loud, but they raced through her mind anyway: Is this my penance, the price for helping to build the weapon that took all those lives, fried those boys where they stood?

She touched the small ruby ring she refused to remove. “If it is, I accept it and can only pray for their souls.” Then she remembered the aftermath of the battle, how she and Patrick had been kidnapped by the rebels and had been imprisoned by them until Chadwick snuck on to the base and rescued them. Both of them had been so brave, but what had it gotten them in the end?

A sob erupted from her stomach, breaking through the cool, professional neuroticist persona she’d clung to in order to continue to seem sane around her family. She covered her mouth, but they kept coming, the sobs of the rage and frustration and despair she’d felt at the core of her soul. Claire wouldn’t give Eliza the satisfaction of expressing her misery in front of her, to let on that she’d won.

It seemed an unfair penance, but she could accept there were young women who’d cried when they’d heard what happened to their brothers and lovers on the field.

“But if we must be apart, please at least let them be safe,” she murmured.

A gust of cold air caused the dust to swirl off the table, and Claire coughed and choked as she stood and backed away from it. Ash flecked and flew to join the shape, which was of a young man in a rebel uniform.

“Who are you?” Claire asked through a series of coughs and sneezes as her nose and throat tried to clear the mucous from her crying and the disturbed dust.

The young man spread his hands and put them together, bowing to her. He didn’t speak so much as whispered in her mind, “Patience.” And then he was gone.

Eliza’s voice scraped Claire’s ears from upstairs. “Claire? Where are you? It’s almost time for tea, and your mother and I want to speak with you.”

Claire sighed and ascended the stairs. She found her aunt and mother in the dining room, where tea was staged to be served in the parlor. Someone had fixed her favorite cucumber and watercress sandwiches, but the sight of them turned her stomach. Eliza shooed her back from the table.

“Ugh, where were you? Your dress is filthy, and you’re covered in dust.”

“I was in Father’s workshop.” She shrugged. “You should really have someone dust down there. It’s not healthy even if no one goes in it.”

Claire’s mother looked away and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “It’s been so difficult to manage the house since Allan died.”

“Now see what you’ve done?” Eliza sighed with an exaggerated exhale. “You claim to be a doctor of the mind, but you keep upsetting your mother.”

Claire wanted to upend the chicken salad sandwich plate and have the satisfaction of seeing the slimy filling dripping from Eliza’s skirts, but she refrained. As long as Chadwick was alive, there was a chance they’d find each other again. They had before, even against all probability, but it wouldn’t happen if she was locked in an asylum. Eliza didn’t know that Claire could sense what she felt, and if there was any concern for Melanie, it was overshadowed by Eliza’s need to look and feel important.

Claire folded her hands in front of her and with her most demure expression, asked, “Did you have something to say to me? I need to get cleaned up before Miss Cobb arrives.”

“Yes, have a seat, but not too near the food.” Eliza reached for a plate, then drew her hands back. She pursed her lips and rang for a maid. “Take the plates back into the kitchen for now. We’ll serve from there.” The girl did as she was asked without looking at Claire, but Claire felt her curiosity and a pang of satisfaction at Claire standing up to Eliza.

Eliza, on the other hand, inhaled, and Claire sensed the weight of something ominous about to happen.

“We’ve discussed your current situation, my dear,” Melanie said.

Claire guessed the discussion had actually consisted of Eliza commanding and Melanie drinking laudanum-laced tea and nodding, but she resisted the urge to point that out.

“We just wanted you to know what you’re getting into, to help you proceed with your eyes open.”

Now Claire’s hands balled into fists, and she covered her right hand with her left so they wouldn’t shake. Her heart raced, and a little cloud of pain gathered at her right temple. She breathed against the building anxiety, a reminder of when she struggled with hypnotic blocks that caused physical pain whenever she was reminded of the past and events around her accident.

This feels like the conversation Mama and Father had with me the night Chadwick proposed the first time.

“What do you mean?” Claire asked, an echo of her younger self, but less hopeful.

“I received a note earlier today from Parnaby Cobb asking my assistance. He wants me to use my connections to find a suitable husband for Louisa.” Eliza’s self-satisfied grin made Claire look down, the sense of doom gathering like a thundercloud in her stomach. “I am very well-connected,” Eliza continued, “and I feel I have several prospects for Miss Cobb. Then it occurred to me, assuming I can find someone who will overlook that you’ve been engaged to a n***o, I could do the same for you.”

Claire looked up. She had no doubt her aunt had had plans for her before Cobb’s request. “I’m still engaged, Aunt. I’m not looking for another husband. Bigamy is illegal. Mother? You gave me permission to marry Chadwick all those years ago.”

Melanie looked up from the handkerchief she twisted in her fingers. “That was a different time, Claire. We both agree it would be best for you to give up those girlish dreams and settle for someone with a good name who can take care of you should your hysteria return.”

“And don’t forget it’s illegal for a white woman to marry a n***o,” Eliza said. “The fact that you still speak of it means you’re delusional. Back when Radcliffe was an army doctor and needed in the war, that was one thing. The governor was more open to granting exceptions then. Now that the war is over, it’s important for society to return to normal.”

“Normal ain’t right,” Claire said, and she couldn’t help the imitation of some of the rebel prisoners she’d worked with. “And Chadwick and I are war heroes.”

“Patrick O’Connell is the war hero.” Eliza stamped the statement as true with a jerk of her chin. “He’s the one who managed the device that won the war. You merely gave him your father’s knowledge, which he turned into something usable, and Chadwick stayed out of your way. It’s the only intelligent thing he’s done.”

“He risked everything to rescue me and Patrick.” But Claire knew protest was futile. The press, not wanting to grant the title of hero to a n***o, had ignored that story, and she suspected Eliza would have twisted it to her advantage even if it had gotten out. And she hadn’t missed Melanie’s wince at Eliza’s dismissal of Allen McPhee’s knowledge of lenses and what materials make the best ones for different kinds of light.

Eliza hadn’t approved of Melanie’s choice of husband, either. That made Claire doubly frustrated.

“It doesn’t matter what he did or didn’t do.” Eliza’s tone had been dripped in condescension and rolled in contempt, and Claire struggled not to react. “What matters is that he is a n***o, and you are a young woman from a good family who can make an advantageous match and be well-cared for into your old age.” She cut her eyes at Melanie, who sipped her tea, her eyes already taking on a glazed look. Claire wanted her mother to stand up to her aunt, to tell her she didn’t regret her love match to the poor tinkerer.

“And what about Patrick?” Claire asked, and she didn’t try to hide her bitterness. “Is he suitable?” If she could manage to meet with him, she could possibly get him to give a message to Radcliffe. Or even escape.

“Good heavens, no!” Eliza waved her hand in front of her face as if she smelled something offensive. “He’s Irish, Claire. And poor. Now go get cleaned up. Louisa will be here at any moment. Perhaps she can talk some sense into you.”

Once again, Claire encountered her father’s ghost in the hallway, and he frowned toward the dining room.

“If you’d like to do some real haunting, I have a good candidate for you,” she muttered. “You could drive her mad, you know. I’m sure she has sufficient guilt.”

He shook his head with the “you know better than that” look she remembered so well, and her cheeks burned. She shouldn’t use her knowledge of minds and what breaks them to harm anyone, but if she were ever to cross that line, she knew who’d be her first target.

Chadwick, wherever you are, be safe and come back to me.

“You want to do what?” Colin looked at Henry with an expression that could go either into a smile at Henry’s jesting or shock at what he proposed.

“I want to ride out to where the others lost track of the carriage carrying Radcliffe.” Henry sat at the table with a cup of strong tea that might have been laced with a little laudanum to take the edge off the throbbing in his leg. It hadn’t reacted well to his jaunt in the alley.

“You can’t ride with that leg. You’ll open the wound again.”

“Then it’s time to bring out the wearable automaton, let it do the work.” Henry thought he sounded reasonable, but Colin shook his head.

“It’s not ready yet. It’ll tear you apart if something goes wrong. Lou’s still figuring out the balance.”

Of course Henry knew Colin was right, but he would have to leave in a couple of hours to meet Violet and Hobbes, and he wanted—needed—to have good news to report. Otherwise he was sure he’d be given a scone laced with something that would kill him that night in his sleep. Or perhaps the Americans weren’t so subtle. This was the Deep South, after all, and no one would think anything of a man getting shot or trampled on a deserted road.

“I don’t care if it tears me apart.” Henry tried to sound as patient as possible to keep his rising panic under control. Control, that was the problem. Since he’d arrived in Terminus and met this crew, he’d felt like he was barely in charge of events, especially once he’d gotten word of Radcliffe’s and McPhee’s kidnappings. Even in Paris with the threat of Prussian bombs at any moment, he’d had the calm of only being in charge of himself. And he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do—almost, until Paul Farrell had slipped through his fingers when the theatre lights had gone out.

Paul had been shot, and Parnaby Cobb had whisked him away and escaped.

“Look, I made a mistake. I should never have agreed to allow Paul Farrell to go free in exchange for Chadwick Radcliffe. That’s why I need to go rescue Radcliffe myself. Then I won’t be beholden to the Pythagoreans.”

“And I’m telling you that you can’t, not hurt like you are. Lou and Richard are back out there looking for where he’s being kept. You need to trust them.”

Henry slumped back and drummed his fingers on the table, ignoring Colin’s exasperated sigh. Yes, he was acting like a child. He could go out on his own, risk further injury, but there was a lot of countryside around the city, and he only had the barest of directions. If Colin knew more detail, he wasn’t telling.

With the wearable automaton, Henry could cover a lot of ground and break into any prison. He knew where they kept the device—in a warehouse next to the building they resided in. He stood, and Colin covered the kitchen in two strides to help him when his leg gave a piercing throb and Henry sank to the chair, his teeth locked so he wouldn’t scream in agony.

“You need another poultice and then to lie down. Stop being a daft stubborn i***t. I’m going to have to get a doctor if your leg gets any worse.”

Henry wanted to say something rude, but a soft knock on the kitchen door interrupted him.

“What?” he snapped, his voice raw with the pain.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, gentleman.” A dark man with tired gray eyes entered. “But did I hear that someone needs a doctor?”