Airborne - The Hanover Restoration

by Blair Bancroft

  Hold your head high, Minta, and board the blasted thing! There he was again. Josiah Galsworthy, inventor extraordinaire.

  Fine. And if my petticoats caught in the mechanism, pulling me to the floor, to be run over by this self-propelled demon . . .?

  Coward! This time the jeer was my own. I seated myself, tucking in my skirts as best I could.

  “I am going to push the 3 button,” Drummond said, indicating a series of numbers on the panel beneath the hand-bar. “That will take you to the baron’s workroom. It’s doubtful he’ll hear you knock, so just open the door and walk in. When you want to return, press 1. That will take you to the kitchen where you’ll find Mrs. Biddle, the housekeeper, who will show you to your room. Is that clear, Miss? To return, press 1.”

  My throat had closed up, so I nodded. Inventions were not new to me, but the suspicion there was a more creative inventor than my father definitely was. I didn’t like it.

  Drummond pressed the button. I gasped, clutched the hand-hold as if it were twenty feet to the floor instead of a twenty inches. I held my breath all the way down the long, dank corridor, expelling it only when I couldn’t hold it any longer. The incredible machine actually turned a corner, the track moving it in a wide circle near the outer walls.

  At the end of this shorter corridor, a stone wall loomed. With the single rail running straight into it.

  Idiot, stop shaking! It’s the same as the wall outside. A swinging door painted to look like rocks.

  I gripped the hand-bar so hard my finger joints ached. Believe, believe!

  I was nearly nose to the wall when the rocky illusion gave way, two wooden doors opening soundlessly to let me though. My temper flared. What kind of diabolical welcome was this? A test, perhaps, to see if I could survive in a place that was getting more odd by the moment?

  Another stone-walled corridor stretched before me. But this time, half-way down the long expanse, my vehicle slowed to a stop. Scowling, I studied the door to my right. Unadorned oak, blackened by age, and as solid as the rocks around it.

  Behind it, Julian Stonegrave, Baron Rochefort, who thought this . . . this—words failed me—was the proper way to welcome his ward to Stonegrave Abbey!

  I dismounted. I straightened my clothing and squared my shoulders. If I were a dragon, I’d be breathing fire.

  No matter Drummond’s advice, I knocked. I was, after all, surprisingly well instructed in the niceties in spite of my haphazard upbringing. Papa had occasionally remembered that I was a girl.

  No answer. Not exactly a surprise. Gingerly, I opened the door and peered inside, now well aware that Stonegrave Abbey held multiple surprises. Though thoroughly angry and unwilling to be impressed, my eyes widened.

  I’d read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and, believe me, this could have been his laboratory. What might once have been the Abbey’s refectory had been expanded by knocking out walls, leaving only strategic supporting columns. The floor had been dug down, leaving a cavernous space so packed with workbenches, tools, machines, and parts of machines that I had difficulty finding any sign of human occupation. Machines hummed, chugged, puffed, and groaned. Steel rods surged, high, low, overhead, moving back and forth, in and out, each in its own special rhythm. And you wouldn’t believe the jokes I’d overheard about that!

  Gaslights flickered, augmented by narrow high windows on two sides of the huge space, but still I saw nothing but stone walls, wooden benches, and incomprehensible machinery. Maybe . . . there. I caught a glimpse of a light brighter than the gaslights, flaring from behind a thick stone column. Descending the four shallow steps to the roughly cobbled floor, I made my way toward the light, being careful to keep my skirts tight about me so they wouldn’t be snagged as I eased my way past moving parts.

  Oh. Dear. God! I should have listened to that weak little voice that told me not to get off the train. A monster loomed before me, a giant with a cylindrical metal head, its back bent over a strip of metal. Two strips? In the maw of what looked like no glove I had ever seen before, it held a length of hose that spit out a continuous stream of red-hot fire onto the metal strips.

  I. Would. Not. Run. I would stand my ground and figure this out.

  But it wasn’t easy. The monster’s head was a good two feet tall, the only openings, two slits where eyes should be. No mouth. Merciful heavens!

  I must have made a noise that could be heard above the hiss of the flame, or else the monster finished what it was doing and looked up. Garbled sounds issued from beneath the metal. The huge gloves were tossed aside, human hands reached upward, quickly unfastening buckles on the side of the metal cylinder. What I could now see was an oversized bucket plunked down on a worktable, and I found myself gazing at a rough-about-the-edges gentleman, not a day over thirty. His dark hair was as damp and mussed as one would expect after being encased in metal and warmed by an open flame. Sweat beaded on his brow, his eyes were charcoal dark, and several days’ growth of beard stained his jaws. He wore a leather apron over what appeared to be canvas worker’s pants and a rough-woven blue shirt. One of the baron’s assistants, perhaps?

  Anger. Keep the anger. Don’t let him see your fear.

  I took a deep breath. “I am looking for Lord Rochefort,” I said. “Can you tell me where I might find him.”

  He looked me over. So openly and so thoroughly I longed to slap his all-too-bold face. How dare he?

  He smiled, his mouth crinkling up at the corners, a gleam of amusement lighting his dark eyes. “So you’re the girl who wants to fly.” He shook his head, obviously stifling a laugh. “Welcome to Stonegrave Abbey, Miss Galsworthy. Let me assure you, you’ve come to the right place.”

  Chapter 2

  I realized my mouth was agape and clamped by jaw shut with an audible snap. Stonegrave Abbey may have met my expectations of gloom, but nothing else made sense. Miniature railways, a single-seat transporter that functioned without any obvious means of propulsion. A Scots steward hundreds of miles from Scotland, and now a metal-headed monster who spoke with a cultured accent. Spoke familiarly, as if he were—

  “Did your father not tell you about me?”

  Tell me about an apprentice in an underground workroom? Why should he?

  Unless . . .

  I could feel the blood draining from my face, along with my Galsworthy arrogance, leaving me pale and shaken. Nothing more than a London miss very far from home.

  “Better grab her, Guv. The mort’s about to ’it the floor.”

  Drat the corset that wouldn’t let me breathe! And drat Papa for dying and thrusting me, unprepared, into this mechanical madhouse.

  My monster was a big man, even without the metal cylinder wrapped round his head. He swung me up onto an ancient deal table as easily as if I were a child. “Water, Matt,” he snapped. “Now!” The skinny lad of sixteen or so who had appeared out of nowhere and had the unmitigated gall to call me a “mort” went scampering off.

  “Please accept my apologies, Miss Galsworthy,” the big man said. “Josiah was always a tad absent-minded, but that he didn’t tell you about the Abbey or its occupants astonishes me. Let us begin again.” He proffered a bow. “I am Rochefort.”

  The skinny lad returned, offering me water in what appeared to be a canning jar. I accepted it gratefully, using the time while I swallowed the best water I’ve ever tasted in my life to readjust my thinking, discarding preconceived notions, substituting new doubts for old.

  I set the glass down on the table beside me and regarded the two men with what I hoped was aplomb. They could not have been more of a contrast to each other, the man so large and dark, the boy so thin and light. The boy’s short, straw-colored hair was badly cut, jutting out in every direction, seemingly with a will of its own, but his bright blue eyes were sharp, his gaze penetrating. From his accent, a child of London. Like me.

  Not quite. He was a child of the streets; I, the sheltered product of London’s West End. Not that Papa had a title, but there were more than a few on the f
amily tree.

  “I beg your pardon, my lord,” I said. “I am not usually so missish.”

  “Fortunately,” he returned easily, “Josiah was not so close-mouthed with me. From what he told me, I have no fear you will soon adjust to our . . . ah–somewhat uncommon ways.” He glanced at the boy. “Allow me to introduce Matt Black. Matt is my assistant, my journeyman, if you will. He has a true gift for anything mechanical. Make your bow, Matt.”

  Matt’s blond head swept down all the way to his stomach before he stepped back, obviously embarrassed, fixing his gaze on his scuffed, lace-up boots. Good. I wasn’t the only sufferer among us.

  “M’lord! M’lord!” The shout came from the far corner of the vast room. I swung my head around in time to see a man in workman’s clothing take the steps down from the outside door two at a time, then run toward us, nimbly dodging clanking machinery. “Fire in the stables, m’lord. Fire!”

  My guardian wasted no words. “Matt, take Miss Galsworthy to the Mono, send her to Mrs. Biddle, then join me.” The last words were tossed over his shoulder as he ran for the door.

  I was already off the table, standing on feet that were no longer wobbly. I wanted to run after him, see what was happening, but Matt Black took me firmly by the arm and walked me toward the odd device called the Mono. I had no right to protest. This was not yet my home, but I vowed not to be shut out again. For I was beginning to suspect Stonegrave Abbey might actually welcome a female who had inherited more than a surname from her father.

  Matt made no secret of being in hurry, his thoughts clearly on whatever was happening in the stables. Before I had time to adjust my voluminous skirts, he punched the “1” button, and I was off, gliding away in what must be a circular route, as I was moving forward into space I had not traveled before. If I dared look back, I was certain Matt would be gone, running to catch up to Baron Rochefort. My guardian. My highly eccentric guardian. My much-too-young guardian. Whatever was Papa thinking?

  Papa, you devil!

  No, no, he couldn’t have planned . . .

  There must be a Lady Rochefort. Had to be. My up-bringing might have been a trifle unusual, but in addition to learning about mechanical marvels, I’d been given the education of a young lady of good family. I knew quite well I could not reside in a single gentleman’s home without the chaperonage of a female of equal, or better, standing in society.

  Another one of those heart-stopping swinging doors jogged my thoughts back to the here and now. I was creeping through the stone cellars of an ancient abbey on something called a Mono, on my way—hopefully—to a housekeeper named Mrs. Biddle. Who would presumably take me to my room, which would be above ground, perhaps with a view of the Abbey’s well-scythed lawns and, if I were lucky, the woods the little train had traversed.

  I would be able to unpack my trunk, surround myself with familiar things, have time to remind myself I was Araminta Galsworthy of London, daughter of Josiah Galsworthy, master inventor. Heiress to a comfortable fortune. Budding inventor—though that last was a tight-kept secret. Ladies simply did not do things like that.

  But Lord Rochefort knew.

  And didn’t seem to mind.

  I smiled.

  A delicious scent wafted down the long, dark corridor stretching out in front of me. Food. Cooking food. Dear God, thank you! I’d begun to think I was destined to forever wander the underground corridors of the Abbey.

  As the kitchen smells grew stronger, the corridor brightened with gaslights every twenty feet instead of forty. Civilization. People. I pictured a housekeeper like our Mrs. Jenkins in London—graying hair surrounding a face as round as her body, lips always ripe for a cheery smile, even when she was supervising the clean-up of one of Papa’s less successful experiments.

  The Mono ground to a halt outside the open door of a brightly lit room. The kitchen at last! I dismounted, straightened my bonnet and skirts, tilted up my chin—

  “You’ll roast in Hell. Mark my words, Evangeline Biddle, you’ll roast in Hell!”

  “And you’ll dry up and blow away like the prudish old spinster you are, Hannah Biddle, loving your Bible more than people!”

  “And why should I not?” the first voice roared, “when people are born in sin, live in sin, die in sin? And my own sister worse than most. It’s a witch you are, Evangeline Biddle, and naught but Hell awaits.”

  Biddle. There must be two Biddles. Neither of a jolly, comforting nature. I closed my eyes for a moment, wondering what more the day could bring. But I had run our household in London since I was twelve. The Biddles were staff. This I could handle.

  Squaring my shoulders, I swept into the room as if I’d entered it a hundred times before.

  Everything stopped. Tableaus had gone out of fashion, but this must have been what they looked like. Four people frozen in place—two kitchen maids with frightened faces and two women of imposing stature staring at me as if I’d materialized out of a magician’s cloud of smoke. One of the older women, a long wooden spoon in her hand, was poised over a large pot on the stove. Her dark brown hair was confined in a bun at the nape of her neck tight enough to exaggerate every frowning line on her face. Her gown, of severe cut, was as puritan gray as the streaks in her hair.

  The other woman was of a different cut altogether. Her chestnut brown hair was stylishly dressed around the strikingly attractive features of a woman not much older than my guardian. Her face was unmarked by frown lines, but her high cheekbones and pursed mouth gave her an arrogant cast not quite compatible with the role of housekeeper. Yet she had to be the Mrs. Biddle my guardian spoke of, for the other woman was obviously the cook.

  “Mrs. Biddle?” I said.

  “Miss Galsworthy.” She dropped a curtsey so slight it bordered on insolence. “I fear you have caught us at our worst. My apologies. May I introduce my sister, Hannah? A master cook is our Hannah, but of an evangelical bent. You may as well know from the outset that she and I quarrel continually. As much a part of the Abbey as his lordship’s tinkerings.”

  “She’s a witch,” Hannah Biddle declared, pointing the long wooden spoon straight at her sister’s heart.

  Evangeline Biddle proffered a smile that would have frozen the bones of most young misses. “My sister considers anyone not of her faith a spawn of the devil,” she declared. “Ignore her maunderings. I do.”

  I offered poor Hannah Biddle a sympathetic smile. I suspected she meant well. I wasn’t so certain about her sister. “I should like to see my room,” I said more forcefully than I had intended. It was, after all, my first experience dealing with a witch. Alleged witch.

  “Of course, Miss Galsworthy. Please follow me.” With a clink of her chatelaine keys, the younger Mrs. Biddle turned toward an archway in the far corner of the kitchen.

  In case you’re not aware of the tradition, housekeepers are always given the title of “Mrs,” whether married or not. I suspect it’s because on our tight little island “Miss” implies a young, bubble-headed female or an eccentric, cat-keeping spinster. Being married, even falsely, gives a cachet of responsibility, wisdom, and common sense. Unfair? Absurd? Of course it is, but that is the world I live in. A female must have a “Mrs.” before her name for anyone to take her seriously.

  Mrs. Biddle, the alleged witch, swept before me like the prow of a ship parting stormy seas, leaving me to trail in her wake. Evangeline Biddle did not like me, did not want me here. Every move, from the set of her shoulders to her tone of voice when she spoke to me, screamed, “Enemy!”

  I didn’t have time to consider why. We were now in a corridor outside the kitchen and the housekeeper was stopped before what looked like a black, wrought-iron gate set into the wall. When she was certain I was giving her my full attention, she pulled the gate to one side, enjoying my surprise as the metal folded in on itself, like a collapsing fan. Who cared about a hostile housekeeper? Stonegrave Abbey was becoming more fascinating by the moment.

  The room behind the wall was small, no more than four f
eet square, but I didn’t hesitate when Mrs. Biddle indicated I should step inside. She followed me in, then pulled the collapsing metal gate back into place. At such close proximity to the housekeeper’s hostility, a shiver shook my spine.

  She pressed a button remarkably similar to the ones on the Mono. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, suddenly, with a creak and a groan, our tiny room shimmied into life. Ah, as I suspected, a lifting device! Slowly, slowly, we ascended. I glanced at Mrs. Biddle, who seemed disappointed that I wasn’t crying, screaming, or demanding to be let out.

  “Quite wonderful,” I announced coolly. “Is Lord Rochefort responsible for all these remarkable machines?”

  “He is a great man.” The temperature in our enclosed space dropped a few more degrees.

  A faint light broke through the witch’s animosity. Evidently, her devotion to my guardian went beyond the expected loyalty of a housekeeper. But how could that account for her disliking me on sight?

  The lift machine ground to a halt, shimmied, and settled into place. Mrs. Biddle slid back the gate. Once again, I trailed her down a long corridor, but what a difference! We were now in a light, airy world I recognized. To my left, the corridor was walled with evenly spaced windows set deep into the sandstone, revealing a courtyard below, with a fountain in the center and leading to it, symmetrical pathways criss-crossing well-tended flower beds. A lovely sheltered place that won my heart on sight. Our “garden” in London was scarcely the size of the stone-paved circle around the fountain below.

  The Abbey’s interior walls were of painted plaster, eggshell with a trim of leaf green. A fine display of family portraits and occasional landscapes marked the spaces between the bedchamber doors. I wanted to take a closer look, but Mrs. Biddle moved ahead of me like Elbert with a good head of steam. At the far end of the corridor she paused at last, swinging open a door before standing aside to let me enter first.

  I stepped over the threshold and came to an abrupt halt, eyes wide, lips firmed to keep them from betraying my astonishment. It was a corner room, more than twice the size of my bedchamber in London. The bed covering, draperies, and upholstery glowed in the waning afternoon sun, displaying my favorite shades of blue and green. The summer bedhangings were pale blue gauze, embroidered in white. A French rococo dressing table, a marquetry writing desk, a chaise longue, two comfortably upholstered chairs, a tallboy with ceramic basin and pitcher (and undoubtedly a chamber pot hidden in the cupboard below) completed the furnishings. Except for the rug. I gazed down at a blue and white Oriental carpet, so finely woven my boots did not sink into its depths.