Gears of Brass

by Jordan Elizabeth

  “Here.” Robert slapped the folder onto his desk. “Question everyone in the village to see what they know about these people. One gardener, one cook, one governess, one butler, one seamstress, and three maids.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Robert ground his teeth. He should ask her, but who knew what answer she would spout off. Never in her life had she given him a direct reply to anything. She was supposed to be the perfect princess to stand at his side and smile at the people. Instead, she had that melancholy look of someone tortured, and the things she said…

  “Having a nice birthday?” he’d asked the last time he’d visited. He’d brought the cameramen along, so they could prove what a doting uncle he was.

  “It is another day that I am alive.” She’d curtsied to the cottage behind her.

  To the cottage, not to him. It was something her mother would’ve done.

  Robert found himself heading back to the playroom. He took the key ring from his belt, unlocked the door, and was greeted by a musty smell emanating from the room. The porcelain dolls on the wall seemed to stare at him with their wide, glass eyes, cursing him for what he’d done to his sister.

  “Jane?” He held his breath, waiting for a breathy reply, but no ghost appeared.

  Tick, tick, tick. Her dollhouse clocks still ticked off the time.

  He walked around it and crouched.

  And frowned.

  The Ainsley doll had moved from the doorway to the bedroom, sitting on the canopy bed beside the Jane doll. The mother doll had vanished altogether.

  The father doll lay in his bed and the Robert doll stood over it clutching a knife. The balcony doors had opened as did the balcony doors to the Robert doll’s bedroom next door.

  Robert whipped his head around the playroom. “Hello? Who’s there?” He’d locked the door behind him. No one should’ve been able to get into the room to move the mechanical dolls. “Jane!” His shout barked back at him.

  Ainsley—had she done it? He moved the Robert doll to his own bed and made a mental note to lock that door. He ran through the mansion to the second floor and burst into his private parlor.

  His niece sat at the round, mahogany table nibbling a slice of crisped bread spread with garlic butter. She lifted her gaze and smiled, butter slick across her lips. “Hello, Uncle.”

  His private maid turned from the drink cart to curtsy to him. “Good evening, sir. I was preparing some hot chocolate for our guest.”

  “Has she been here all along?” He pointed at Ainsley. She bit into a fresh slice of bread and chewed with her mouth closed.

  The maid gulped. “Yes, sir. She bathed as you requested. I saw her dressed and we’ve been here ever since. The only time she left my sight was in the water closet, and I made certain to never step away from the door.”

  Not Ainsley, then. “Stand up, girl.”

  She wiped her hands and mouth on a linen napkin before she stood, pushing in her chair, and curtsied. The maid had found her a white dress somewhere. The lace collar reached her throat, a pink cameo fastened at the base. The sleeves ended in V’s over her middle fingers. She had a green cincher laced around her waist. For her age, she should’ve had a longer skirt since the hem only reached her knees, but she was tall like that father of hers. No one would call scandal over a handful of inches. The white kid-leather ankle boots looked proper enough.

  He almost laughed. Scandal should’ve been one of his last worries. “Do you know the cottage is gone?”

  She held his gaze. “You had it built on a cliff beside the ocean. There is forest around it.”

  Blast her. “It burned to the ground.”

  The maid gasped, but Ainsley remained stiff. “That is unfortunate.”

  “Did you leave when it was burning? Is that how you got here?” How could she remain so impassive? “Did you burn it?”

  “I am not allowed near fire.”

  “Listen to me, girl. This isn’t funny.”

  “I never said it was.”

  Wretch. “I’ll be questioning every transportation service in the city. They’ll find out how you got here.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find out.”

  He would get a rise from her. “You know I’m the governor.”

  “Yes. You have been since Grandfather died.”

  Had her emerald eyes gleamed for the merest second? “Do you know how he died?” His mind flashed back to the dollhouse.

  “A tragedy,” the maid murmured.

  “Someone sneaked into his room in the night,” Ainsley replied in a monotone. “The villain used the balconies and a toy dagger your father had given you.”

  “It wasn’t a toy. I was eighteen.” Why did he feel such a need to prove himself to the girl?

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “Lynn,” he snapped at the maid, “put Ainsley to bed in my sitting room on the settee. She is never to be out of your sight.” He glowered at his niece. Other people shrank from his gaze, but her shoulders straightened. “You can’t return to the cottage. I’ll find you schooling here and somewhere to stay. You’re fourteen. I was going to wait until you were older for a betrothal, but it must be time for that now. That’s all you’re good for, making connections. Who knows what those will be because of your father.”

  “Grandfather approved of him.”

  Robert stepped backward. “Who told you that?” Few knew that. His father had never spoken about family matters to the public.

  That unreadable stare answered him.

  Jane had been so pleased with her airship captain. He’d overlooked that hindrance of her deformed foot and promised her a sea of riches. In that year during the wedding plans, Robert’s father had met his end and Robert had forbidden the match. Jane had to marry someone befitting who would assist Robert’s standing.

  She’d gone against those wishes.

  “I have work,” Robert grumbled. An image of the dollhouse refused to leave his mind. Had Jane’s ghost or her magic whispered in Ainsley’s ears?

  He dreamt of his sister.

  She stood over him, holding his doll.

  This doll doesn’t belong,” Jane said.

  Robert slapped her away, but something pinned him to the stone floor. He realized one of her clock keys protruded into his stomach. Laughing, Jane turned it, her face cast in shadow.

  “You’ll do as I say,” she chortled. “Everyone does what I say.”

  He jerked awake, sweat soaking his nightshirt. He kicked off his sheet and fumbled with the gas lamp. Firelight spread over the bare walls. No Jane. His legs shook as he staggered into the hallway with his lamp, heading down toward the playroom. Jane’s giggle drew him there, but he couldn’t place it anywhere besides in his mind.

  “Jane?” No reply.

  He opened the playroom door and strode to the dollhouse, holding the gas lamp overhead.

  The father doll had vanished like the mother. Ainsley and Jane still lay on the bed, and he pictured them as two little girls, giggling late into the night. Jane had a friend once, an ambassador’s daughter, and they’d done that before she’d moved.

  A new toy rested beside the dollhouse, a mechanical airship the size of his head with a songbird painted on the side. Captain Michaels, Jane’s beau, had decorated his ship like that in her honor.

  A new doll with Captain Michael’s brown hair lay beneath the airship, which someone had rested on its side. The Robert doll stood beside it with a miniature wrench tied to his hand by a string.

  No one had ever linked that. Fresh perspiration dotted Robert’s face. He snatched the airship and captain doll, stuffing them into the window seat amongst teddy bears.

  “Jane? Are you there?”

  Silence. The dollhouse had stopped ticking. Maybe now that it was silent, her magic would be gone, used up.

  In the morning, Robert returned, his hands trembling and slick. Someone had placed a porcelain bowl of water beside the house. The Robert doll stood on the edge and the Jane doll lay at the bottom of th
e liquid.

  Jane, if it was her ghost, had sacrificed her doll to the water. The metal wouldn’t work after getting wet, he wagered.

  The clocks in the dollhouse ticked again.

  Ainsley allowed Lynn, her uncle’s maid, to straighten the high collar on her new dress, brown with black stripes. She didn’t care how she looked, but Lynn glowed as if she was a mother hen.

  “You’ll eat lunch with the other students.” Lynn smoothed her hair, already braided and pinned around her head like a crown. “I’m sure it will be something you’ll like, but if not, I’ll make you whatever you want when you get home.”

  Ainsley blinked away tears. The servants at the cottage had never cared that much. “Thank you. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.”

  The city buzzed by. One security guard stood on the cement sidewalk, the other waiting in the doorway to accompany her through the private school, but Lynn had followed Ainsley up the front steps.

  “My children went to the public school, but I’m sure this is just as pleasant. Your mother attended here. Did you know that? Your uncle, too.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  Lynn kissed her cheek. “Wink at the boys, won’t you?”

  “I will.” Ainsley kissed the woman’s rouged cheek before following the guard into the building. The heels of her ankle boots clicked against the marble floor. Brick walls lined the hallway.

  Her uncle had stressed that she needed to be on her best behavior, so the young men would find her beautiful and enchanting. He’d ordered the dress and black corset, the matching leather boots, and her fingerless gloves to make her look more like a young woman rather than an exile—she inserted the exile part herself. After she made a positive impression, he would approach the fathers to start seeing which match would be most advantageous.

  The secretary in the main office escorted Ainsley and the security guard to a classroom on the third floor.

  “The principal will have lunch with you,” the secretary prattled. “It’s wonderful to have you here, Miss Pendleton.”

  “Miss Michaels,” Ainsley corrected. “My parents were married, ma’am.”

  “Oh.” The secretary glanced at the guard before clearing her throat. Ainsley wondered what her uncle had told people.

  The teacher, Miss Otterbein, wore a green corset over a beige dress as the other teachers Ainsley spotted through doors had on. Her black hair fastened into a chignon and her spectacles hung down her nose.

  “Welcome, Miss Pendleton. Let me introduce you to the class.”

  “My name is Miss Michaels, ma’am.”

  “Of course, Miss Pendleton.”

  Ainsley sighed. The class sat at tables around the room, a mixture of boys and girls. Her uncle had explained that he’d pushed for co-ed classes, so she could meet the males of the city’s society.

  “Class.” Miss Otterbein clapped her hands for attention. “This is Miss Ainsley Pendleton, Governor Pendleton’s niece. She’s moved in with him for the time being and will attend this school for the year.”

  “I’m Ainsley Michaels.” She curtsied. “My parents were married and I keep my father’s surname.”

  A girl in the back of the room tittered. Ainsley kept her face smooth when she felt a frown coming on. Judging by the striped outfits worn by the other five girls, her uncle had purchased the school uniform rather than just a dowdy getup for her. The ten boys wore the same brown and black pattern, but in the form of a suit.

  “Miss Pendleton, I asked your uncle to have you bring in something personal to share with the class and better introduce yourself. Were you able to do that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ainsley opened the leather satchel of books her uncle had provided and removed a photograph mounted on cardboard. Since all of her belongings had been lost, her uncle had brought the picture from his office.

  “You don’t want to seem weird and I don’t want to look as if I can’t listen,” he’d grumbled.

  “This is everyone who lived at the cottage with me.” Ainsley held up the photograph. “These are the three maids. This is our seamstress.” She pointed to the woman sitting down. “Here we have the gardener. He’d holding a shovel.” When she finished, the class clapped, so she curtsied.

  “We’ll be starting with chemistry this morning.” Miss Otterbein led Ainsley to the empty table in the back. “Have you worked with simple chemicals before?”

  “My uncle never allowed me to learn the sciences.” Ainsley slid into the metal chair with the velvet cushion. “My tutor only knew languages and mathematics.”

  “I’m sure you’ll enjoy this, then.”

  Robert’s breath lodged in his throat as the mechanical horses pulling his coach halted in front of the private school. Black smoke with hints of green poured through the third floor windows. Students and teachers crowded around the sidewalk and the sirens of fire brigade vehicles whirred in the distance.

  Robert leaped out and jogged toward the school’s entrance, so his vehicle could make way for the brigade.

  The principal stormed toward him, dragging Ainsley by the arm. That cursed emotionless expression captured her face.

  “Miss Pendleton will not be allowed back.” Color soaked through the elderly man’s complexion.

  “Miss Michaels,” Ainsley said.

  “What exactly did you do?” Robert gaped. He’d seen his friends expelled when he’d attended, but they’d gotten five warnings.

  “Told me she’d never taken chemistry before, that’s what.” Miss Otterbein pushed through the crowd. “She knew exactly what chemicals to mix to make skunk smoke. She built a bomb.”

  Not quite a bomb. “It was an accident. She’s never been allowed chemistry.” Jane had liked that subject far too much.

  “She told me she did it on purpose,” Miss Otterbein exclaimed. “Tell your uncle what you said, Miss Pendleton.”

  Ainsley dragged her eyes to the teacher before returning her gaze to Robert, that cold green stare. “I explained to Miss Otterbein why some chemicals react with others and what causes skunk smoke. She didn’t seem to understand what I’d done.”

  “How did you understand?” The whole incident was unseemly and uncalled for. Why couldn’t Ainsley have behaved?

  She blinked. “It is simple chemistry, Uncle.”

  The media would love to snap photographs and write about the disaster in the newspapers. He seized her arm and dragged her around the school toward where his driver would be waiting, the security guard at their heels. He wouldn’t have known enough about chemistry to stop her.

  Robert shoved her into the coach. “Do you think any man will want you for a daughter-in-law now? You’ll fill his house with skunk smoke.”

  Ainsley rested her bag at her feet and smoothed her skirt over her legs.

  “Where did you get all the chemicals? I doubt half of them were even available in the classroom.”

  Ainsley stared out the window in the coach door.

  “I can’t marry you off now. You realize that? Do you expect to be a spinster? I won’t allow you to be an outcast like your mother. She was a disgrace that couldn’t be tolerated.”

  Ainsley whispered, “I know.”

  “Sir,” the courier said, “we only found the seamstress.”

  Robert rubbed his forehead. He’d banished Ainsley to his rooms, but he still had other appointments before he could decide what to do with her. “What?”

  “The cottage’s seamstress. The innkeeper found her in the woods. She seems to have hurt her leg in the fire.”

  “You only found the seamstress?” Robert racked his brain for a name. She didn’t have a family if he recalled, and arthritis plagued her hip, but she sewed well. She didn’t speak and stared at the ground. Demure and quiet.

  “She said it started in the kitchen. A common accident, sir.”

  “I assume she didn’t know how my niece arrived here.”

  “She never saw Miss Pendleton except at fitting time. Mostly the governess had her worki
ng on linens.”

  Robert sighed. “I’ll talk to her later. Tomorrow.” Why couldn’t it have been the governess the village innkeeper found?

  Robert finished his meetings and locked himself into his office. She would have to be taken care of. Chemicals would make that look easy now. The whole world knew she liked to play with them in chemistry.

  Lynn would organize a set of rooms for her in the mansion. He would hire a sciences tutor and get her a chemistry set in a closet.

  The purple lights in the sky outside the window indicated twilight. Lynn would be feeding her, fussing over her. Lynn liked to fuss. It made her an excellent maid. Nothing was out of order. Lynn would miss Ainsley.

  He wouldn’t.

  Robert stalked to the playroom, half-expecting to see Jane seated beside the dollhouse with her walker, clicking her tongue in tune with the clocks.

  A picture rested on the window seat. Frowning, he picked it up. How had the picture he’d given Ainsley to show the school appeared there? Lynn knew better than to leave his niece alone, and the elderly woman wouldn’t want to, anyway, not when she had a child to fawn over.

  He tapped each person in the photograph with his finger. The governess, who promised to rule with an actual ruler. The maid who promised to steal anything Ainsley loved.

  A gentle noise drew his attention to the dollhouse. His doll lay in the room of miniature dollhouses his father had constructed for Jane. The Jane and Ainsley dolls stood on the actual playroom floor, their hands touching as if they were leaving.

  Something metallic clicked by the toy box.

  Ainsley emerged from it, holding a pistol, the barrel aimed at his heart. Her hands didn’t waver as though her mother’s magic had created a statue of her.

  “Do you understand the magic yet?” she asked.

  “You… you shouldn’t be here.” He stepped back until his legs bumped the window seat. It had to be Jane’s ghost or his imagination.