The Case of the Perilous Palace (The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency, Book 4)

by Jordan Stratford

  “I begin first thing tomorrow morning. But the promise of my new employment has allowed my family to better their circumstances.” Charles had paused just for a heartbeat, and Mary was reminded that much misfortune had befallen the Dickens family (though of course they had never spoken of it). She was gladdened to hear of the improvement in their lot.

  “Well, we’re delighted to have you as neighbors,” said Jane, bobbing past Charles’s shoulder to catch glimpses of his family. Mary caught herself looking at her sister in a way not altogether kind, and led the three of them a foot farther out of the doorway to allow workmen to pass by.

  “You’ll be seeing even less of me, despite that, I imagine,” said Charles. “The solicitors Ellis and Blackmore of Gray’s Inn expect much of their clerks. I expect long hours, as I have much to learn.”

  “You’re clever,” comforted Mary. “I’m certain you shall have all things sorted in no time.”

  “ ‘No time,’ I’m afraid, Miss Mary, is the matter at hand. As much as I would dearly love to continue to lend assistance in…clandestine matters,” he said, meaning the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency, “I fear I won’t be at liberty—”

  “Of course,” said Mary. “We understand. And we’re delighted for you; I’m sure all of us are. Truth be told, I am not certain there will be any more…clandestine undertakings.”

  “The adventure is up at last, eh?” said Charles.

  “For me, at least,” said Jane. “It’s all been a bit much, to be honest.”

  “I still hold hope,” Mary added, “but with Lady Ada’s grandmother in residence, it seems rather unlikely.”

  “Well, Miss Jane, Miss Mary, I must be getting back to my duties with respect to moving in. Please do send my regards and apologies to Lady Ada.”

  “I shall, if I can,” said Mary. “Though I’m not sure how, and I am sure no apologies are needed. All the same.” And she returned Charles’s nod as he ducked between the comings and goings of movers and siblings to find himself once more on the steps of the Polygon.

  Mary and Jane waited for a similar break in traffic, and headed back upstairs to warm themselves, arm in arm.

  So that, thought Mary, was that.

  Ada was rereading yesterday’s newspaper. There was nothing, it seemed, she had missed the first time, although she did take note again that the circus was in London for Christmas, a fact her sister might appreciate, if Ada could find a way of letting her know. (Allegra had long harbored a desire to join the circus, and she did have fairly impressive tumbling skills—though Ada would never tell her as much.) There was a picture of circus animals in cages being winched down from ship to dockside. She dropped the grey sheets without folding them, and looked up at the raw and ragged hole she had made in her bedroom wall.

  If there are bell-rope cables in the walls, she thought, why not use the cable-and-pulley system for other things? Opening doors, or bringing up trays of food, or coal, for that matter. She found herself sketching again.

  The shapes she was drawing grew more fantastical and even sprouted wings. This was Ada’s latest obsession—wings, flying, and how she might do it. She was reminded of an etching of an ancient animal that swooped about the skies above Devon some thousands of thousands of years ago. A flying dinosaur. A print of the etching was down on a table in her basement laboratory, far out of reach. She could almost see it in her mind’s eye.

  The design, and of course she thought of it as a design, of the creature’s wings seemed perfect. More understandable even than a bird’s wing, just skin stretched over thin bones, like bats’ wings, like ribbed sails…

  But no train of thought could stay on its rails for very long when she was cooped up like this against her will. How could her room, her sanctuary, so quickly come to feel like a prison? Ada had seen a prison, and a hospital as bad as a prison, and they were not the same as her current situation, she had to admit.

  But in one sense, it was the same. No matter how grand the room, a prison is still a prison.

  The bell-rope cables in the wall trembled, shedding a halo of plaster dust. The ceiling creaked. There followed an impossible combination of sounds, footsteps on the roof, a skittering of tools, the creak of ropes…and the chopping of axes.

  Impossible, she thought. Yet unmistakable.

  Ada shot to her door, not caring about the ever-watchful footman. She bolted past him before he could even react, and leapt to the far end of the corridor, to a set of stairs at which she threw herself in a more or less upwardly direction.

  At the landing to the attic, two footmen stood stiffly before the firmly closed door. Ada grabbed the sides of their breeches and tried to pry the servants apart, to no avail. The chopping sounds above her were maddeningly louder, and behind her were the precise footsteps of her grandmother, accompanied by the excited wheezing of Charlemagne, the pug, who was happy to be carried upstairs and wondered if there would be some sort of treat at the end, or perhaps someone new to rub snot on.

  Ada was unable to stand it. She turned and fired herself like a torpedo down one set of stairs, past Gran and an assortment of servants who dared not reach out to stop her.

  Even the foreboding presence of Mr. Franklin at the door did nothing to dissuade her. The very tall butler allowed Ada to escape the house. She shot down the front steps and into the road, where she turned to look up, up, up to the gabled roof of the Byron house in Marylebone.

  Two footmen swayed perilously, clinging to ropes with one hand while holding hatchets in the other, chopping away at an entirely different set of ropes: those keeping her precious hot-air balloon secured to the top of the house. With each strike, Ada swore she could smell the jute dust of strong nautical rope whisper like perfume on the wind. Like a goodbye.

  Ada’s tears were hot on her cold cheeks, her rage fighting with the December chill. She ought to be there, up there on the roof and in the basket of her balloon, repelling the attackers like the pirates they were. She wanted a cannon to fire at them. She wanted a fire poker to thrust at them and parry their axes. She wanted the perfect argument, the most gleaming and glorious logical proof to make them change their minds and cease the ceaseless chopping, chopping, chopping that seemed to hack at her ribs and into her very heart.

  She held her breath.

  Then the last tendrils of rope failed beneath the hatchets’ iron, and the balloon lifted and lurched and lolled gently, ever so gently, away from her house.

  Her safety, her refuge. Her balloon. Gone.

  And with it her new steam engine, a gift from Peebs. And in the basket were notes, some diagrams of an invention Ada was working on, and also a diary that Ada knew contained the initial fragments of a story Mary was working on. Perhaps even Allegra’s snick knife was up in there: Ada had no current inventory of the gondola’s contents, and felt a failure beneath the weight of this fact alone.

  Every flavor of revenge surged through her blood. A list of those who had wronged her, and most of all, the one who had betrayed her, who had ordered these sliding, reluctant footmen up to the roof with their evil hatchets.

  Sister to Viscount Wentworth; wife to Sir Ralph Milbanke, baronet; and mother of Anne Isabella Noel Byron, Ada’s mother. It was Ada’s own grandmother, the Honorable Lady Judith Noel. Gran. Betrayer.

  Ada was astonished to discover how much she could resent and despise a member of her own family.

  Ada’s brain recited every recipe for every explosion, the physics of every hurling trebuchet or catapult, the distances between the geographies of the farthest ports of call to which a Gran-sized crate might be shipped, Borneo or…

  * * *

  All of her rage and revenge was interrupted, not surprisingly, by carriage traffic. Ada actually was surprised, but oughtn’t to have been, as she was standing in the middle of the road.

  She turned toward the horses, not caring if s
he was to be trampled. She was a volcano, her blood was lava, and she pitied anyone who dared run her over—not that she pitied them much.

  But the carriage stopped. It was the cleanest anything Ada had seen in her life. No common mud dare spatter it; it was a carriage with that degree of importance. A hinged stairway unfolded.

  The footman who descended was dressed in velvet livery so heavy that Ada estimated it must equal the weight of a decent dining table. Regardless, the servant carried himself with the elegance of a dancer, and popped off the stair to the street as though the last seven or eight years of his life had involved nothing but rehearsing such a pop. Passing Ada and addressing himself to Mr. Franklin, who stood at the door to her house, the footman announced with a clear, strong bell of a voice: “The Baroness Lehzen, governess to Her Royal Highness the Princess.”

  And then a woman emerged, of ordinary appearance despite her grand entrance and the quality of her clothes. She steadied herself with a hand on the carriage (she waved away the assistance of the footman) and looked directly at the distraught, disheveled, tear-stained girl in the street.

  “Lady Ada, I presume,” said the baroness.

  Precisely twenty-four minutes later, Ada, at the upward-shushing hand of her grandmother, rose from the couch as the Baroness Lehzen rose to go.

  Gran remained in the doorway, still not sure if she should be pleased, or proud, or horrified.

  “Well?” Gran asked once Mr. Franklin had seen out their auspicious guest.

  “Well what?” Ada replied.

  “You failed to indicate to the baroness that you would of course offer your assistance in her confidential matter, though I must say she does play her cards close, that one.”

  “She wasn’t playing cards,” said Ada distantly. She was reviewing her last conversation, unsure if she had all the important bits. Unsure if she had any bits, really. The baroness had turned out to be so well-mannered and polite that she barely seemed to say anything at all. And with Gran haunting the doorframe like that, constantly gesturing for Ada to smooth her gown or improve her posture, Ada was unable to concentrate on what had in fact been said, if anything.

  “Surely,” Gran tried again, “you could have made your offer of assistance plain.”

  “No.”

  “Good heavens, child, what on earth do you mean by ‘no’ in this instance? It is inconceivable.”

  “Isn’t. I can conceive of it. No. Not helping,” came Ada’s terse reply.

  “Of course you are helping. Whyever would you not?”

  “You,” said Ada. “Because of you.”

  “Young Ada, now is not the time to be petulant.” Gran looked at the sulking girl across the room and explained, “ ‘Petulant’ means—”

  “Insolent. Irritable. Uncooperative. From the Latin petere, to attack.” Ada’s eyebrows were a threat.

  “Very well, then,” said Gran. “Have you any idea to whom you were just speaking? Why, even your cousin Medora Leigh—”

  “Medora?” Ada asked.

  “Libby,” Gran said with disdain.

  “Ah,” said Ada.

  “Medora Leigh has attended the princess. Many times I’ve heard.” Gran sniffed. “From that side of the family. But you, Ada. Did you think how beneficial such a relationship might be to your family, to our standing?”

  Ada didn’t think her grandmother needed to be standing. In fact, she rather wished the old woman would sit down.

  “That,” Gran persevered, “was the Baroness Johanna Clara Louise Lehzen, governess to Her Royal Highness the Princess Alexandrina Victoria.”

  “I have no idea who that is. They is. Are. And even less of an idea of what they want. But I do know you want me to help, and that means I won’t.”

  “You have no choice in the matter, girl. On that I must insist.”

  “You insist?” Ada began. “You forbade it just this morning.”

  “Pish,” said Gran, flapping a handkerchief that seemed to have magically appeared for the purposes of flapping.

  “ ‘Unsuitable,’ you said.”

  “But this is different,” Gran protested. “This is royalty.”

  “You have driven all my friends away…”

  Gran flapped her handkerchief some more.

  “…and you murdered my balloon, twenty-eight minutes ago.”

  “That contraption?” Gran’s voice rose. “It heralded your demise, child, or worse—scandal. It is my duty to protect you and this family from the latter, at least, if it is within my power to do so. I shall not regret the execution of my duties.”

  “You shall regret the execution of my balloon,” said Ada through gritted teeth. “And don’t pish me,” she added, because she was sure Gran was about to.

  “All right,” said Gran, crossing the room and finally taking a seat. “What do you want?”

  A terrible shadow crossed Ada’s face, full of purpose and quiet rage. “I want my balloon back.”

  “Impossible,” answered Gran.

  And it was impossible. Even if Ada had an accurate weight of the steam engine and the coal and the balloon itself and the temperature of the air inside it, she still wouldn’t know the wind direction or altitude of possible air currents. She had no way of knowing which way her balloon might possibly have blown, except vaguely north. Ish. Yes, Ada acknowledged. Actually impossible.

  “Then I want Mary back. And Peebs and Anna and everybody.”

  “Ada, you are to be in the presence of the princess. Your Mary is hardly of suitable breeding—”

  “She is not a horse. She is my friend. And without her I can’t help your baroness,” said Ada, her frustration growing. “I can’t help anybody.”

  Gran found Ada’s frustration contagious. “Oh, honestly—”

  “Bell rope.” Ada pointed.

  Gran was taken aback. “What on earth…?”

  “Bell rope,” Ada repeated. “Inside the walls of this house is a”—Ada laced her fingers together—“lattice, a network of cables and pulleys. You pull the rope, the cable moves, and it rings a bell on a board belowstairs, in the servants’ hall.”

  Gran blinked, attempting to understand.

  “You’ve cut the bell ropes. I can do the bits in the walls, the tricky bits, that get results. But there’s no velvet rope to pull. That’s Mary. Nobody else wants to stick their arm in a spooky hole in the wall. I don’t mind, but everyone else seems to. No, they want a rope. A nice, soft velvet rope, and Mary is the softest rope in the world.”

  Gran gave Ada a moment to compose herself.

  “Very well,” Gran answered. “I shall call for the return of your…compatriots. But are you certain about the maid? I can’t abide—”

  “Anna too,” Ada insisted.

  “Very well,” repeated Gran.

  “And you go,” said Ada, with an edge of cruelty she herself didn’t like.

  “Go?”

  “You murdered my balloon. I want you to go away. Then I’ll speak to your princess.”

  “She is very much your princess as well, Ada,” Gran said softly. “And I shall reluctantly concede. Upon the completion of your assistance to Her Highness, and to Baroness Lehzen, I shall withdraw to Kirkby Mallory.” Gran paused. “And your mother may do with you as she will.”

  Gran rose to leave, and turned with a final word.

  “Savor this victory, child, for no doubt its flavor shall turn to bitterness soon enough.”

  Over Gran’s shoulder, a small pug could be seen, cheerfully scooching its bottom along the carpet.

  Mary had become used to the company of her sister in the brief carriage rides between the Polygon and Marylebone, so it felt odd to be once more alone on the journey as the coach jerked and bounced and creaked and rattled over the noisy streets of London to some of the smoother and qui
eter streets of London.

  But she had not yet gotten used to the lurching feeling of being welcomed, then denied, then welcomed to Ada’s magnificent home across from Regent’s Park. There was always a hint of nervousness upon her arrival—would today be a new case, promising adventure? A quiet day of studies in the library? Or another humiliating day of rejection and exile, with someone banishing her from the Byron house forever?

  Forever never seemed to last, though, she was beginning to realize. For just that morning one of the new footmen had appeared at the door of Mary’s apartment building bearing a note in the hand of Anna, Ada’s recently dismissed (and clearly now re-missed) maid, asking her to come to the Byron house at one.

  Mary had grown accustomed to the stately home, with its familiar lion’s-head knocker, and the tall, ever-silent Mr. Franklin in attendance. But she had never seen the likes of the gleaming carriage that rested outside of Ada’s house. Magnificently clad footmen waited expectantly. Even the horses, with their white ostrich-feathered headdresses, were the finest creatures she had ever seen. She wound her way around them, wanting to touch their velvet noses (the horses’, not the footmen’s) through her gloved fingers, but she dared not. Everything about the carriage seemed pristine and distant. Untouchable, even though it was inches from her hand.

  The door opened, and there was Mr. Franklin, as expected. Ada, looking terribly serious as she often did, trotted down the stairs to the carriage as though it were any old coach and not the marvel Mary saw. Ada’s expression turned cheerful as she saw Mary, who was moved to hug her friend. She did not, as Ada was not terribly good at being hugged, but Mary held the embrace in her heart just the same.

  In the doorway, Anna’s capped head popped out behind Mr. Franklin, and she waved a hurried hello before darting in again. Mary smiled. Everything was back in place. Although…Mary sensed something was missing, but couldn’t think quite what.