The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Box Set

by Kara Jorgensen

  “That I have. If you would like my expertise, Lady Dorset, then I would be happy to give it, especially since throwing a soirée was my idea.”

  “It will be far from a soirée. Mr. Talbot—”

  “Please call me Nadir.”

  “Nadir, when you stopped by, you mentioned that your parents throw parties in their vineyard in Alexandria. What are they like?”

  A smile crept across his face as the garden faded into the Egyptian night. Insects chirped all around, hidden in the rows of vines, but as the musicians picked up their bows and flutes, they were downed beneath strings of notes and the clatter of conversation, the tink of wine glasses.

  “The servants would hang colored jars with candles on the fence posts surrounding the vineyard, where they would shine like a thousand oversized jewels. Between the fields, there would be a series of chandelier-lit tents where the guests would sample my parents’ favorite new vintage and dance to an orchestra that would play European and Egyptian melodies. Waiters would filter through the crowd with canapés and grapes. Of course, all of this would be done at night when the air was cool and crisp and smelled faintly of fruit and wood.”

  “It sounds magical.”

  He nodded, his gaze finally returning to the shabby garden with a lurch, as if he had not expected it to be there. “It was.”

  “Are both of your parents from Egypt?”

  “Yes, well, my father likes to tell people that he is half-English and half-Egyptian, like that means something to them. Even if he was, he would only be the bastard son of some faceless Englishman named Talbot. Leona, on the other hand, really is half-English, and for the most part, she passes.”

  “Passes?”

  “They assume she is merely a swarthy Englishwoman, and I’m glad for it.” When the noblewoman still looked puzzled, he continued, “Anyone can see I’m not English. My father made certain we had a British surname and only let me speak English, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m obviously not from here even if I was born in Dorset. You would be surprised how quickly you can be expelled from some of the best schools in the country when you misbehave and are not British. No amount of eloquence or money or friends can change the fact that you are not one of them.”

  Hadley sighed. She had expected Nadir to become upset or impassioned by the sudden turn in the conversation, but he simply sat across the table from her, rolling a glass bead between his fingers as if they were discussing the most mundane of subjects. Is that how it felt to deal with inequity for so long? To have the hatred dull to the expected sting of a switch? Maybe that was what Eilian meant when he railed against the empire’s mistreatment of its colonies.

  “To a lesser extent, I know how you feel. But what about your friends? I’m sure they don’t feel that way about you.”

  “I don’t know what they truly think, and I don’t think I want to. My aesthete friends call me exotic.” He shook his head, pursing his lips in thought. “Animals or clothing are exotic. I tend to lose my appeal when they realize I’m much more like them than they first realized. It’s funny. They would pay a king’s ransom for a mummy or a chair with my ancestor’s face on it, but I’m worth much less than any of their friends, if it ever came down to it.”

  “I can’t imagine that to be true. There’s no reason to discount you. You’re successful and charming. Look at the books you have written. People love them.”

  “Perhaps, but I wouldn’t want to see what would happen if I was put in a situation where I needed them.” He spread his hands across the tabletop and leaned closer. “Enough of that, I have monopolized your time on my woes long enough. Let’s discuss the party. When is it?”

  “I was hoping to have it maybe a week and a half or so from now.”

  “We can work with that. You will need to get the invitations out as soon as possible and contact musicians and the florist. I assume you aren’t picking flowers from the orangery.”

  “No, definitely not. Can I get all of that in Folkesbury, apart from the musicians?”

  Nadir crinkled his nose in disgust. “The nearest florist is in Poole, which is where I would suggest you get everything. It isn’t London, but it will do.”

  “I can’t ride my velocipede to Poole, can I?”

  “Not unless it has an engine. Luckily for you, your ladyship, I brought my steamer.”

  ***

  Quietly pulling the door shut behind him, Nadir listened in the stillness for any sign of Leona or Argus in the dining room or parlor. He grabbed hold of the banister and staggered up the stairs, trying to avoid the squeaky boards. At the top, he froze as the clock struck ten, filling the small house with its rhythmic clamor. Lurching the last few feet to his bedroom door, he slipped in and hoped that the whining hinge was drowned beneath the clock’s gonging. He couldn’t bear to speak to Leona. After their conversation that afternoon, she would surely think that he had spent the entire day and part of the evening with Lady Dorset even though they had parted company hours earlier.

  His head swam as he pulled off his coat and threw it across the bed. He had gone for a walk along the shore after their outing to clear his head. In Poole, they had picked out flowers and stationary and visited the market. While Lady Dorset seemed to finally relax once he steered her toward what he and his friends would have chosen, most of which she dismissed for her own choice, he couldn’t stop thinking of the vineyard in Alexandria.

  What he hadn’t told her was that the party he remembered was nearly twenty years ago. He had escaped from his governess’s ghost stories and run down the candle-lit lane to find his parents. He hadn’t thought of Egypt in years. After spending most of his life in England, the thought of being in the abysmal heat was more than he could bear, yet nostalgia made him long to return. No amount of wave-watching or walking could chase away the idea. What was the point in traveling there? It had never been his home. His parents lived in England, his publisher was here, his house was here, his life was here. After downing half a bottle of wine and something brown that tasted like lamp oil at the pub, he concluded that the only Egyptian paradise that would ever welcome him existed in one of his books.

  Pulling off his shoes, he turned them over to let the sand trickle out into a tiny dune beside his bed. As he unbuttoned his waistcoat, the door creaked open, but he ignored the voluptuous figure behind him with her hand on her hip.

  “Where have you been? I thought you would have been back for dinner.”

  “The countess and I went to Poole to order supplies for her party. She wanted me to thank you again for letting her borrow your address book,” he replied without meeting Leona’s narrowed gaze. “Oh, that reminds me, I have new plants for the garden in the back of the steamer. You really shouldn’t let them go to seed like that.”

  “You reek of liquor.”

  “So? I went to the pub. I’m allowed to go where I bloody well please, Leona.” Nadir turned to find her scowling at him, her lips nearly invisible. “What do you want?”

  She clinked a china cup onto his desk, sprinkling droplets onto the pages of his manuscript. “I came to bring you this. I should have dumped it on your head. Good night, Nadir.”

  Without another word, she slammed the door behind her. Nadir rolled his eyes and sank into the stiff seat of his desk chair. He carefully soaked up the drips of tea with his blotter before turning his attention to the words beneath them. Nadir skimmed the scene he had written the night before and readied his pen to continue. If he was to write a chase, he would need to at least be somewhat sober. Downing the tea in two gulps, he penned his heroine’s clandestine escape from the king’s harem by feigning death, but as she was about to be nearly caught, he yawned and rubbed his eyes. Nadir’s breath came in languorous puffs. His mind wandered and the ink seeped from his pen where it lingered on the parchment. He leaned back, stretching his neck and arms to fend off the fatigue. Maybe he had misjudged the potency of the wine. Closing his eyes, his body loosened and the pen dropped from his hand.

/>   ***

  Something shuffled in the darkness, thumping up the steps and across the loose boards. Nadir’s body jolted upright in the chair at the sound of a door slamming nearby. He blinked, the pain of the noise echoing through his skull. Looking over his shoulder, he found that his door was closed and no one else was there. He rubbed his eyes and checked his desk clock. Three hours had passed.

  Cracking his stiff back and neck, he collapsed onto his bed and lay facedown in his pillow, too tired to turn off the lamp. As he waited for sleep to overtake him again, a sharp inhalation broke the still air followed by the wet tremor of a sob. Thoughts of his books, Lady Dorset, and Leona’s fall tumbled together as he was pulled under.

  But why was the harem girl crying?

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Lieutenant Colonel

  Party preparation was in full swing. Everywhere Eilian turned, he found maids scrubbing or polishing, noisily clanging their brushes against metal buckets. Scooping up his notebook, he crossed the bare halls. The carpet runners had been stripped away to be beaten out back while the statues and paintings had been smothered with white cloths. In a way, the house appeared to be regressing, returning to the entropic state they found it in, save for the spiders, yet there was nothing left for him to do. Hadley stood like a general on a domestic battlefield—directing staff maneuvers and ordering supplies—and he expected no less from her. After all, she had run a business practically on her own for years and built her line of toys into something sought by rich and poor alike, so a party should have been an easy feat. Still, he hoped there would have been a place for him. He didn’t mind menial tasks, and during the first few days of preparation, he cleaned the library from top to bottom, washing the shelves’ glass panes before oiling and polishing the books within. He had even smoothed things over with Mrs. Negi who was in a black mood after discovering she would be cooking for several hundred alongside the spare kitchen help from his mother’s home in Grosvenor Square.

  Now on the sixth day, he was no longer needed. Keeping his head down, he made his way to the parlor and was relieved to find the room empty. The sofa and chairs were cloaked with sheets, but standing in the corner just far enough away from the wall to catch the light filtering through the mullioned windows was what appeared to be a pot of dirt. After being insulted and derided by Nash, Eilian returned home determined to collect his own silphium seeds. His professional integrity wouldn’t allow him to send the flowers or seeds from the original plant to London, but he didn’t feel the slightest pang of guilt as he harvested a handful of seeds, several of which he dried out on the windowsill while the rest went into the empty pot. Picking up the watering can, he checked if any green had broken the surface. If he could grow his own silphium plant, then maybe it was possible that the species could be revived again and he could send it out for analysis. Part of him wondered what the consequences of his discovery would be, but if the Romans used it for hundreds of years, then surely it could only benefit society.

  His eyes trailed to the wall beside the fireplace. With its intricate scrollwork, massive mirror of Venetian glass, and busy wallpaper, the faint outline of the study door was barely visible. Pushing on the edge of the plaster, a faint click sounded behind it and the door swung open. Every surface was coated in a layer of dust, except for the tabletop which Eilian had cleaned when he discovered the room and the blank space against the wall where the brass telescope had once been. It was a relief to know that the maids hadn’t yet discovered the hidden cubby. Eilian slipped inside, leaving the door open far enough to let in air and light while still being able to be quickly shut if someone entered the main parlor.

  Opening his notebook, he separated his notes from the stack of letters he had yet to open. Most were nothing more than updates about his late-father’s shipping company or bills from the various merchants Hadley procured for the party. A smile spread across his lips but rapidly faded to a grimace as he withdrew a letter from the mechanic and saw the figure it would cost to fix the steamer. It would be ready to be picked up in town at his earliest convenience. Hope bloomed in Eilian’s chest. Maybe they could return to London soon. He deflated with a sigh. No matter how much he wished to return to the city, they would remain in Dorset until after the party and probably a week or two more. He never imagined London to be a place he would want to return, but being trapped in Folkesbury made him realize how much he missed his home and even the familiar garden paths of Grosvenor Square and Greenwich. There was smog and noise and frippery, but there was more variety in London than any city he had ever visited. Now that he and Hadley were married, he would be tied to England due to her businesses and his duties, yet he found he was looking forward to staying in Greenwich for part of the year. During the offseason, they would travel to the Near East or around Europe, and when she had to build her inventory, he would stay to help her or work on his mechano-archaeology research. For once there would be balance in his life.

  Eilian put aside the bills to be taken care of later. At the bottom of the pile was a letter from his mother. He considered sticking it in the back of his notebook, but what if she was writing to tell them she could no longer spare her staff? Reading the letter, his eyes slowed as he reached the body of the missive. A tremor passed through his hand. He let the letter fall and rubbed his brow.

  The announcement has not yet been made public, but Dylan stopped by the yesterday to tell me some wonderful news: Constance is with child! The baby will be born sometime in December if all goes well, and in the meantime, your brother and his wife have settled in a lovely flat near Grosvenor Square, close enough that I can visit my grandchild whenever I please. Nothing could be better, except perhaps a second grandchild in the near future.

  Eilian groaned and closed his eyes. He knew what his mother meant. His chest tightened at the thought. Dylan already had a life of his own and punctually met their mother’s expectations. He was happy for his brother, truly he was—Dylan and Constance would surely shower their child with love—but what he craved was freedom, not children. Even though he happened to be the elder brother, Eilian felt as if he was not much more than a child himself. Starting a family seemed so far off that he and Hadley hadn’t even discussed it. When speaking of future plans like traveling or expanding her business, children were never mentioned.

  A ripple of fear gurgled through his gut. If he truly loved his wife, how could he willing put her in mortal danger? Maybe Patrick was rubbing off on him, but he was afraid. If all goes well. So much could go wrong, and he couldn’t bear the thought of no longer waking up beside her or hearing her brisk step through the halls just to fill an obligation.

  Rubbing the back of his neck with his prosthetic hand, something cold slithered across his neck and down his chest. Eilian rose and tugged his shirt from his trousers only to have his long silver chain snake out. The signet ring bounced off the chain and across the floorboards before skidding under the desk. Frowning, he stuffed his shirt back in and dropped to his knees. The ring glittered in the far corner. He reached for it while keeping his head against the desk’s front, but his fingers barely brushed its cool surface. Getting down on all fours, he crawled under the dusty desk.

  “Now, I’ve got you,” he whispered, his fingers finally closing around the ring, but as he raised his gaze, he bumped his head in surprise. Lining the back wall were three dozen journals. No two were the same in size, color, and level of wear, but on each spine a white numeral had been carefully painted. His elbow ached as he leaned on his prosthesis to pull out the first two volumes. Shimmying out from under the table, he dusted his knees and placed the books on the desk along with the chain and ring. Eilian threaded the chain through it again, but as he reached the clasp, he realized the links around it had been torn open. There was no way around it. With a sigh, he slid the ring above his wedding band, flexing his fingers until it rested comfortably below the joint.

  Pulling the study door a little closer, he inspected the stack of books. The first
journal was barely more than a hand-length long, small enough to easily tuck into a breast pocket. He turned it over in his hand, noting the spatters of dried dirt on the edges of the pages and the degraded condition of the stitches that bound the spine. The ink on the inside cover was smeared and stained with water, but through it Eilian could make out:

  If found, please forward to Brasshurst Hall, Folkesbury, Dorset, England. Property of Lieutenant Colonel Laurence Sorrell—

  The battalion number that followed had been washed away long ago. Eilian’s eyes trailed to the portrait of the young man seated against a boulder. So this was Laurence Sorrell. Carefully cracking the pages apart, he found that most of the journal cataloged the daily happenings of the Napoleonic War: the condition of the men; their surroundings, which were often drawn in detail along the edges of pages only to intrude upon the words; the things he missed most on the battlefield.

  January 2nd, 1809

  Starving. Can’t wait to have real food. Cottage pie, perhaps...or pheasant.

  He chuckled to himself at the short entry, which was surrounded by drawings of bread and what looked like a cauldron over a fire. Things hadn’t changed much. Glancing over more complaints and half-decipherable battle maneuvers, he stopped when the pages suddenly appeared free of drawings and mud. Laurence’s handwriting no longer seemed scribbled in haste. Ink pooled at the ends of his words as if he sat deliberating whether to commit them to paper. He could picture the curly-haired soldier wrapped in a blanket penning the entry by candlelight. The night would have been punctuated by boom of cannons and rifles in the distance, and the air would have tasted of sulphorous smoke.

  March 14th, 1809

  Gabriella has written to tell me that my father is dead and I am expected to return home at once. Why? Why should I abandon my men to return to a man who will be long dead and buried by the time I reach English shores? The letter itself was sent nearly a month ago. For a month I had no knowledge that I was now the earl, but I should make haste. I will leave when I am good and ready. My purpose is here. No one in Dorset needs me as much as my men do now.