Rebel Mechanics

by Shanna Swendson

  That was nice to hear, but it wasn’t what I’d asked. I repeated to Alec, “What part was true? How many girls have you wooed into your cause?”

  “You’re the only one,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him.

  “Normally, that’s my job, but you seemed more like Alec’s type,” Colin put in. “You’d like someone studious and clever.”

  “I think I still might have been interested in you,” Alec said, not quite looking at me. “But I might not have been so forward about it.”

  Colin laughed. “Which means he might have worked up the nerve to talk to you by Christmas.” The glare Alec gave him said he didn’t think that was funny.

  I wasn’t laughing either. “You didn’t have to pretend. You didn’t have to lie to me. You all lie so easily, how am I to know what’s true? It’s fitting that your headquarters are in a theater because you do seem to enjoy your performances. What is the cause, really?”

  “Liberty,” Alec said softly, but his tone grew more intense as he continued. “We want our freedom. We don’t want to depend on magpies for everything. We don’t want to have to beg for whatever crumbs they allow to trickle down to us.”

  “But how can your cause be just if you have to lie about it to recruit people or to make your points? How do I know I can believe what you’re telling me now?”

  “You’ll have to take our word for it, Verity,” Alec said with a shrug. “I won’t lie to you anymore, I promise you.”

  “How can I believe that?” I firmly set my water glass on the table and stalked away.

  I heard footsteps rushing up behind me, and soon Alec stood in front of me. “You’re just going to walk out of here? You said you believed in the cause, but now you’re giving it up because you got your feelings hurt? I thought you were better than that.”

  “No, you didn’t, or you wouldn’t have felt you needed to lie to me and trick me to get me on your side.” I’d said it in anger, but the truth of my own words stung me as I stepped around him and headed down the stairs without a backward glance.

  IN WHICH THE CITY FALLS UNDER A SHADOW

  As I walked away from the theater, part of me wanted to turn back, even if just to prove to Alec that I was better than he thought, that I was fully committed to the cause. But I couldn’t, not now. I knew I’d act more like a girl who’d had her heart broken than like a revolutionary, and I refused to let him see me cry.

  Besides, there were other ways to further the cause. In fact, I’d just run an errand for Henry that I was sure was related to the rebellion, and I could continue to share intelligence without being friends with the Mechanics.

  I must have been glaring so furiously as I approached the barricade that the British soldiers were intimidated, for they took a wary step back and allowed me to head uptown without asking for my credentials. I hailed the first magical cab I found, gave the driver the Lyndons’ address, and settled back in the seat.

  Alone at last, I could no longer hold back my tears. I let them fall with the hope that I would be through crying by the time I got home. Although I was angry at my false friends, I was most angry at myself for being naïve enough to fall into their trap. They had made me feel special and important, so I hadn’t allowed myself to doubt them. I had always thought of myself as the clever girl who knew all the answers because I’d read so many books, and yet I’d been a simple fool.

  But the worst blow was learning that Alec didn’t care for me the way I’d cared for him. He might have liked me once he got to know me, but I’d always been first and foremost a tool. If I hadn’t been useful to him, he’d never have given me a second thought. I should have known better than to think a mousy, unworldly governess would attract a brilliant rebel. He probably laughed about me with his short-skirted rebel friends.

  When the cab passed the lower boundary of the park, I began scrubbing at my face with my handkerchief, and I took several deep breaths to get myself under control before I reached the Lyndon home. I might even have managed to hide my distress if Henry hadn’t met me in the foyer. “Did you—” he started to say, but then he took a look at me and asked gently, “Ver—Miss Newton, is something the matter?”

  “No, nothing,” I said, tears threatening to form anew at his concern. “I’m merely somewhat fatigued. I never knew having a gown made would be so exhausting.”

  He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “You were able to carry out the errand? And you weren’t in danger while doing so?”

  “That went perfectly well.”

  “I thank you again for your assistance. You didn’t have any trouble getting past the barricade?”

  “It was hardly a barricade. They were only checking people heading uptown. The streets were strangely quiet, though, like everyone was expecting trouble.”

  “That’s probably wise of them.”

  “Do you think it will be bad?”

  “I don’t know, but something’s bound to happen.” In an instant, he changed back into the vague, absentminded young nobleman he usually played, and I noticed Mrs. Talbot approaching. “Flora’s about to burst from curiosity about your gown,” he said, “but I’ve told her she must wait until dinner. You need time to rest.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  He drifted off in the direction of his study, and Mrs. Talbot said, “If you’ve got Flora’s ribbon, I’ll take it.” As I handed over the package, she frowned at me. “You do look fatigued, my dear. I’ll have some tea sent to your room.”

  I waited until the tea had arrived and the housemaid had left before I allowed myself to lower my guard and cry again. These tears, though, were more from anger than from heartache. I yanked open the nightstand drawer, grabbed Alec’s handkerchief, and wished I had a fire I could hurl it into. The magically powered central heating offered few opportunities for destruction.

  Then I took Lizzie’s notebook and the Mechanics’ insignia from their hiding place. I wished I could destroy those, too, but I had to admit that the Mechanics had opened my eyes. I’d seen the injustices of British rule and the inequities among colonial citizens. I was a better person for having seen all that, and I did still want to fight for freedom. I would merely have to find another way.

  * * *

  On Saturday morning, I took Rollo and Olive for a walk in the park since I had nothing better to do on my free day and didn’t want to be alone. Flora declined, waving Elinor’s latest book as though she planned to spend the day reading it, but she didn’t fool anyone. “Why didn’t Uncle Henry come walking with us?” Olive asked as we entered the park.

  “He went out,” Rollo answered. “He said something about finding some beetle before it was gone for the winter. He and his scientist friends went to the country to look for it.”

  “Why couldn’t we go to the country?” Olive asked. “We never get to go to the country with Uncle Henry.”

  I knew that was because “finding some beetle” probably really meant “committing banditry,” and that was hardly an activity Henry could share with the children.

  We reached the area where Alec had whisked me away from danger. It had become a habit for me to notice the spot whenever I was in the park, but now instead of the warm glow the memory once elicited, I felt a lump in my throat and a knot in my stomach from the knowledge that it hadn’t been real.

  I felt a pressure on my fingers and looked down to find Olive holding my hand. “You look sad, Miss Newton,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Olive, I was merely thinking about something.”

  “Something sad?”

  “Only a little.”

  Rollo, who’d wandered ahead, came running back to us. “Look! Look what’s coming!”

  “What is it, Rollo?” I asked.

  “Come see!”

  When we rounded the bend in the path and faced directly toward downtown, a vast object became visible in the sky. It was as though the moon had come down to hover just above the earth—that is, if the moon were shaped like a cigar. The lar
gest airship I’d ever seen was flying over the city. It was several times as large as the ships that had brought the soldiers from Governor’s Island, and the Mechanics’ electric airship would have been a mere speck against it.

  “I bet that’s the Hercules, over from England,” Rollo said, bouncing on his toes with excitement. “It’s the biggest military airship ever made. Can we go see it up close, Miss Newton? Please? I’m sure Uncle Henry wouldn’t mind. It’s not a school day, and he encourages my mechanical interests.”

  “I don’t think we’ll have to go anywhere to see it,” I said, craning my neck. “It appears to be heading straight for us.” The sight of the giant airship blocking out the sky was awe-inspiring. The Mechanics had nothing that could match that.

  We were now in the shadow cast by the giant ship. Unlike the rebels’ Liberty with its open basket, this ship had a closed gondola flush against the bottom of the balloon. It was flying so low that I could see windows in the cabin and people at those windows. Rollo jumped up and down and waved, and someone in the ship waved back.

  Rollo grabbed my hand and tugged. “Can we go up to Belvedere Castle to look at it? Please? They’ve got a telescope in the tower, and we could see it so much better from there.”

  “It would be long gone by the time we got there,” I said. The ship moved very quickly for something that massive.

  “Then let’s go home. I’ve got binoculars. I could watch it out the window.”

  “I don’t want to go home,” Olive said. “I want to walk in the park, not look at some ugly airship.”

  “Olive, you can walk in the park at any time,” Rollo coaxed. “If we go home, then maybe we could come back out with a picnic for tea after the ship is gone.”

  Olive turned to me. “May we have a tea picnic? Please?”

  “I will see what the cook can put together for us.”

  Rollo raced ahead, and I was just as eager to get home, but for a different reason. That ship made me nervous. It was an ominous cloud over our heads, forcibly reminding us of British domination, and it had brought with it soldiers to subdue the rebelling colonials. Its arrival was not a happy occasion.

  The ship was so large that Rollo had plenty of time to observe it with binoculars from the schoolroom window. I half listened to him rattling off statistics about the ship while I supervised Olive’s piano practice. His mechanical interests reminded me of Alec, and I couldn’t think of Alec without a pang. I wondered what he was doing—and whether he was wondering about me. Probably not, I decided.

  When the ship was gone at last, I collected our picnic basket from the kitchen and we headed out to the park again. I stopped by the family parlor to invite Flora to join us but, as I expected, she declined the invitation. “Eating out of doors doesn’t sound very sanitary,” she said with a haughty sniff.

  “What’s sanitary?” Olive asked.

  “It means clean—the kind of clean that keeps you from getting sick,” I explained as we went down the stairs.

  “Will eating outside make us sick?”

  “Only if you drop your cakes in the dirt and eat them anyway,” Rollo said.

  “I won’t drop my cakes. You’ll drop yours.”

  “Then I’ll eat yours.”

  “Miss Newton won’t let you.”

  I was so busy trying to stop the argument that I didn’t notice Lord Henry entering the house until he was upon us. He wore sporting attire and his face was pink, either from the sun or the wind, or possibly from exertion, as he appeared quite out of breath. One of his sleeves had a small rip in it, just above the elbow, and the cuff of one of his trouser legs was dirty and damp.

  “Uncle!” Olive called out, forgetting her spat with her brother. “We’re going on a picnic in the park! You can come with us!”

  “I believe I would like that very much, if you don’t mind my company.” He addressed that last part to me, and I thought I detected a note of desperation in his tone.

  “There’s plenty of tea and cakes for all,” I said.

  “That’s if Olive doesn’t drop hers in the dirt,” Rollo said with a laugh.

  “I won’t!”

  “Children!” Henry warned. He turned to me and held out his hand. “If you will allow me, Miss Newton.” I handed him the picnic basket, and then he held his other arm out to me. I hesitated before taking it. He should have escorted Olive, as she was the ranking lady present and I was merely an employee, but Olive seemed perfectly content hanging on to my other hand.

  Henry selected a picnic site near one of the main paths, where we were quite visible, and though I’d never seen him socialize much, he made a point of waving and speaking to almost everyone who passed. I suspected he was establishing an alibi—making enough show of his presence that anyone who was asked would remember him having been in the park that afternoon. I bit my tongue to keep from smiling at the thought.

  While I poured tea from a flask and passed out cakes, Rollo told his uncle in exhaustive detail about the airship. Henry looked as alarmed by the news as I felt. “Where do you think it will dock?” Rollo asked.

  “I doubt it will stay. It will unload the troops and return to England, perhaps making a stop in the south for cotton.”

  “Do you think Grandfather could get me a tour of it while it’s here?”

  I nearly choked on the sip of tea I’d just taken. If I could get on that ship, it would be the perfect opportunity to gain useful intelligence, and I knew if I was with Rollo, I’d get all the technical specifications. “I’m sure it would be very educational,” I said mildly. “And it’s not an opportunity that comes along often.”

  Henry nodded to Rollo. “I’ll send a message to your grandfather and see if he can arrange anything. It will depend on how long the ship stays.”

  Rollo put his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the sky, then said, “It’s coming back!”

  “It may have left some troops north of the city to guard the major roads and railroads,” Henry said, taking his handkerchief out of his pocket, lifting his hat, and wiping his forehead. He looked ill, with beads of sweat forming on his upper lip and his skin a pale, grayish color. He went even paler when a pair of policemen on patrol appeared, and his sigh of relief when they passed was audible.

  While Rollo watched the approaching airship, Henry rose to take a turn around that area of the park, stopping to talk to several people he knew. I couldn’t help but muse upon what he was so anxious about. When he returned to us, I asked, “Did you find your beetle?”

  “My beetle?”

  “The one in the country that’s about to go away for the winter.”

  “Oh, that beetle. Yes, we found a rather extensive colony of them, but I’m afraid that will be the last we’ll see of them for a while.”

  “Winter must not be a good season for entomology,” I said sympathetically.

  “Oh, there’s always work to be done,” he said. “Cataloging, sketching, that sort of thing.” He looked up, and when I heard the catch in his breath, I turned to see what had alarmed him. A group of uniformed British soldiers was approaching. Henry abruptly leaned over to study the ground beside our picnic blanket. “Will you look at that? What an interesting specimen.” He took a pad and pencil from his coat pocket and began sketching. He didn’t look up from the notebook until the soldiers had passed.

  I wished I dared tell him I knew his secret. I thought it must be exhausting maintaining his façade, and I hoped for his sake that he really did have some interest in insects, or surely he must go mad having to learn enough to convincingly feign an obsession. He took off his hat with a trembling hand and set it aside as he leaned over his sketchbook, his unruly hair falling across his forehead.

  “Uncle! Draw me!” Olive cried out.

  Henry gave her a shaky smile. “It’s been a long time since I’ve drawn something that only had two legs, but I’ll try. Don’t be alarmed if I give you wings, though.”

  She giggled and leaned against me. Rollo barely noticed the
rest of us as he watched the airship come closer on its way downtown. A shadow fell on us as it passed overhead, and I shivered. When I glanced down from the sky, I found myself looking directly into Henry’s eyes. He looked as pained as I felt, but then he forced a smile and turned his notebook around to show us what he’d done.

  “Does this meet with your approval, my lady?” he asked Olive. He’d drawn not only Olive, but also Rollo and me, and although it was a quick pencil sketch, it seemed very lifelike, capturing Olive’s wide-eyed innocence and Rollo’s fascination with something that lay beyond the edge of the page. I looked prettier than I was accustomed to seeing myself in the mirror. The loose wisps of hair around my face looked like winsome tendrils instead of untidiness, and he’d drawn me with a mysterious smile that made me wonder what I’d been thinking.

  “Oh! Can I have it?” Olive asked.

  “May you have it,” I automatically corrected even as I stared at the sketch and wondered if that was how he saw me.

  “Yes, you may, but wait until we get home before I take it out of the book, so it won’t get crumpled,” Henry said. He glanced at me. “Did it meet with your approval, Miss Newton?”

  I couldn’t look him in the eye because I knew I’d blush furiously. “You’re wasting your talent drawing bugs. That’s quite good.”

  “A proper young nobleman can’t do something so common as take commissions or have a gallery show.”

  “But I’m sure the young ladies in your circle would love to have their portraits drawn. It would give you an excuse to spend time with them.”

  “Why do you think I started drawing bugs?” he asked dryly. “I’m much better at those than people. See?” He flipped a page in his notebook to show me a series of studies of dragonflies. These were more precise than his hasty sketch of us. As he flipped to another page, I glimpsed a drawing of a girl with her hair hanging loose around her shoulders, but he quickly moved past that to show me some finely detailed drawings of ants. Who could the girl be, I wondered, and then I despised myself for the surge of jealousy I felt. I had no claim to him, no hope with him. I hadn’t even realized I felt that strongly for him, but the fact that I wanted to rip that portrait out of his sketchbook and rend it to pieces told me I must. Suddenly, our easy camaraderie seemed strained, at least on my part, and I couldn’t think of anything to say to him that didn’t sound foolish. Oh, but this was most inconvenient.