Cold Stone and Ivy (3 page)

“Perhaps it’s not so bad up here after all, Mum,” she said, looking at her mother in the seat across. “We’ll be staying in Lasingstoke Hall where Christien’s brother lives. He’s a baron, you know. Sebastien Laurent St. John Lord de Lacey, Seventh Baron of Lasingstoke.”

The carriage rattled as its wheels dug into then out of a rut in the road and it shook her in her seat. No cobblestones here. Just dirt.

Her mother said nothing, merely blinked her unseeing eyes. Ivy went on.

“It’s an old, old,
old
family, and Sebastien sits in the House of Lords. When I marry Christien, we’ll be related to the
Mad
Lord of Lasingstoke . . .”

She smiled to herself. Now that was a story worth writing. Christien rarely spoke of his brother save to say that he was strange and that he spent much of his time at Lonsdale Abbey, the very sanitarium to which she was taking her mother. He was a frequent target of the London tabloids, and rumours concerning him abounded
.
He had a metal skull. He ran with wild horses. He died as a child and now talked to the dead. Christien had worked very hard to avoid notoriety, but his brother, it seemed, was another story entirely.

And Ivy so loved her stories.

She sighed and sank back onto the coach seat. This was not what she wanted, traveling north with her mother and brother, not the story she would have written. But then again, she was only a girl in the Empire of Steam. Her father still ordered her entire life, and soon Christien would step into those shoes. It seemed the entire world rolled along on that particular road, and she wondered if there was ever a woman who managed to live free of someone else’s reins.

At every stop along their journey, people were oh-so-curious to see the old woman who lived like the dead and the novelist who was to marry the brother of the Mad Lord of Lasingstoke. She shook her head, dreading the sound of her life, boiled down like potatoes into one bleak sentence. Christien had assured her it wouldn’t be so bad, but scandal, he told her, fed on lesser things.

With such bleakness in her future, her heart was aching for just a taste of scandal.

There was a rap on the trap from above, and she looked up to see a fearsome old face, smiling down at her from the dickey. Castlewaite, the coachman, was a wiry man with thin hair, a whirring copper eyepiece, and an appalling lack of teeth.

“Lasingstoke ’all, miss.”

Her heart thudded in her chest, and she sat up to peer out the window. It was twilight and the fading sun was making everything hazy and dim.

“There, Ivy!” Davis shouted from the dickey. “Up there!”

She pressed her nose against the glass, making out a flash of sandstone in the distance.

“It’s huge, Ivy!”

“Aye, Master Davis,” she heard the coachman say. “She’s grand.”

She didn’t realize it, but she was holding her breath as Lasingstoke Hall played hide and seek between the trees.

“There,” her brother cried. “Can you see it?”

She could make out the sandstone walls with high towers at the corners. At one end, stacks billowed with smoke, promising modern conveniences. Lasingstoke Hall was a French castle in the northern heart of England, but then again, “de Lacey” was a very old French name with history dating back to the time of William the Iron Conqueror. Christien was proud of his French heritage, although she knew he took a ribbing from his friends. Penny Dreadful’s adversaries were frequently French and this had become a source of animated debate in the Savage home. Ivy insisted it was because the
Industrial Republic of France
was the archrival of the Empire of Steam. Davis insisted it was because of Christien’s Parisian tailors and preference for cabernet.

No—tall, regal, and very French, Lasingstoke Hall was not at all the gothic ghost house of her imagination.

They had all but lost the sun as the coach finally rattled to a halt at the great arched doors of the Hall.

She could hear the stomp and crunch as Davis sprang from the rig and onto the gravel. She growled silently to herself. Skirts were wicked terrible for jumping, so she sat waiting for Castlewaite to open the door. She took his hand and stepped out, breathing deeply the smell of wet grass and horses, dying roses and coal. Gaslight poured from lamps under the arches and she looked up, dwarfed by the sheer enormity of the place.

Lasingstoke Hall, Seat of the Barony of Lasingstoke, Lancashire.

She had to admit she was impressed, and had reached in for her mother when suddenly, the coach was surrounded by dogs—six large dogs barking and laughing and bumping around her legs, threatening to tip her to the ground. A voice bellowed out from the Hall.

“Get away, ye louts! Leave ’em be! Off now! Off! Away wit’ ye!”

The dogs bounded off as a woman with a broom appeared under the high stone doorway. She froze at the sight of the coach.

“Castlewaite?”
she hollered.

“Aye, Cookie,” he called back. “We’ve guests!”

She was short, stout, and scowling, with auburn hair pulled back in a tight knot, and she stared for a long moment before turning back to the doorway.

“Guests!”
she hollered
. “Here! Now!”

Soon, people rushed outside to stand at attention in the darkness. Servants, Ivy realized. Her father was not a wealthy man. They’d never been able to afford a housekeeper, let alone staff. She had only imagined this sort of life. She’d only written about it in Penny’s adventures.

A small figure bobbed as it rolled under the doorway, gaslight reflecting from its metal surface. It was an automaton, and she smiled to herself. Perhaps there was a story or two at Lasingstoke, after all.

As the bags began disappearing with the servants into the Hall, Castlewaite moved over to the woman, speaking softly and wringing the cap in his hands.

“’E did
wot?”
she growled. “Good Lord. As if we ’aven’t enowt t’do ’round ’ere . . .”

Her eyes were sharp, like stones set in plaster, and she turned them first on Davis, then their mother, and finally Ivy.

“Savage. What sort o’ name is tha’?”

“Welsh, ma’am,” said Ivy, and she curtsied.

“The name’s Cookie. Ah s’pose ye’ll be wantin’ supper, then?”

“We will indeed,” grinned Davis. “What’s on the menu?”

“Davis, hush!” Ivy swallowed. “We don’t need much, ma’am.”

“How ye ’spect t’ run a Great House if ye don’t eat, child?”

“I—”

“No wonder Mister Christien sent ye up ’ere. Honestly, Ah don’t ’ave much to work with. There’s nothin’ to ye. Bony as a skinned cat.”

“I—”

“Pork roast on Friday, with carrots and steamed sponge.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “There might be sommat left, if the blasted dogs ’aven’t got it all. Coom this way, then . . .”

And she turned and marched into the house. A girl with ginger hair and freckles smiled, curtsied, and scurried in after her.

Castlewaite turned.

“Tha’s Cookie, miss.”

“Ah said, this way!”

Davis laughed out loud, but Ivy could find nothing amusing in it at all. She took a deep breath and followed, hoping that back in London, Christien was having a better first meeting then she.

IT WAS FRIDAY
night and at the Whitechapel Library, noted author A.C. Doyle was reading the first chapter of his latest novel to the applause of delighted listeners. In a very different library in another part of London, Christien Jeremie St. John de Lacey had a headache and was trying very hard not to breathe.

Gas masks sat in a jumbled pile on a table by the fire, with the Pea Soup out in force tonight. London’s toxic fog was a bane to city life, causing all good gentlemen to don masks for fear of infection. He remembered the first time he and the boys had dissected a cadaver to find the green slime coating the lungs. Some people lived for years with little impediment; others it killed within a fortnight. Tonight, smoke from pipes, cigars, and cigarettes was creating an equally toxic environment as it billowed under the library doors.

With a sigh, he popped a headache tablet onto his tongue and turned to study his face in the mirror. It was pointless to fuss, he knew, for his appearance mattered little to the group that was assembled behind the doors in the Club’s Meeting Room. They did not care a whit for how well a suit fell from his shoulders or whether his burns were long, squared, or fashionably scruffy. They cared not whether he was a physician studying under Dr. Thomas Bond, had several thousand a year in allowance, or was brother to a baron, although he knew they’d have preferred his brother to him. In point of fact, they weren’t interested in him at all, save for his pedigree. It was a rare group of men who didn’t hear the name “de Lacey” and shudder.

No, he was here simply because he was his father’s son and his brother had refused.

The halls of the Pall Mall rooms were lined in dark woods, gold-gilt paintings, and busts of famous alumni. It was a fine location for the Club, sandwiched between other gentlemen a organizations like the Reform Club, the Jockey Club, the Carleton, and the Athenaeum. It was a club for notable intellects and men of vision, and he had been sponsored by the very best of these. It was an honour, it was a milestone, and he dreaded the thought of being here.

And so he watched the smoke billow and creep under the doors, when suddenly, they swung open and his mentor stepped into the library. Of medium height and well-nourished, Dr. John Williams cut a formidable figure with his silver hair, intelligent eyes, and an absence of burns or beard or moustache. Christien had always thought he needed something, for he had a very grim mouth.

“Are you ready, boy?” Williams asked. “They are an eager bunch. I can assure you that you have nothing to fear from them.”

“I know that, sir,” said Christien. “But I’m not certain I’m ready. Not for this.”

The surgeon raised a brow.

“We’ve talked about this, Remy. If you want to make anything of yourself in London, this is the place to do it.”

“I know that, sir, but my brother will surely kill me if he finds out.”

“Tosh. You are embracing your heritage in joining this band of extraordinary gentlemen. Your father was a key player and you are honouring his legacy. Surely your brother cannot object.”

“You’ve obviously never met him, sir.”

“I have not, no.” Williams smiled, but without his eyes, smoothed the stiff lines of Christien’s shoulders. “Regardless, your father would be proud. He was the very best of us. Have you brought the locket?”

Christien reached up to his collar, slipped a pendant out from the cravat and over his head. As it dangled from its chain, he held it up to the gaslight.

It was a clockwork locket, fashioned from brass, copper, silver, and gold, each tiny gear a different metal, spinning in connected but opposing directions like a watch. It was housed in a polished glass globe, again with brass, copper, silver, and gold circlets ringing the globe. At the bottom apex, a pin.

It pulsed with a strange, sweet light, like a heartbeat. Like a song.

“That . . .” breathed Williams, “ . . . is exquisite. Does it work?”

“I don’t know, sir. Bastien holds the key.”

“And Sebastien won’t join? You’re certain of this?”

“Yes, sir.” Christien slipped the locket back over his head, leaving it to swing across his waist-coated chest. “He’s convinced the Club was responsible for our father’s death. I believe he’d like nothing better than to see it disbanded and all its members shot in the head.”

The surgeon grunted.

“And you, Remy? Is that what you think?”

Christien’s heart thudded once.

“The Club was important to my father,” he said carefully. “I think I need to find out why.”

“Hmm. Well said, boy. You are a clever one. The Club is Britain’s best and brightest hope for the future, more important than ironclads or airships. Your father believed this with all his heart, as did Prince Albert, God rest his soul. As do Bertie and Eddy. You are in good company now,
royal
company. In fact . . .” Williams fished in his pocket, pulled out three small brass rings. He plucked one out, held it up to the light. “Eddy wants you to have this.”

Prince Albert Victor, grandson to Victoria and second in line to the throne of the Empire, known as Eddy to friends and family.

“But why?”

“You don’t know?”

“I have never seen it before tonight.”

“Fascinating,” said Williams, and he shrugged. “A mere trinket, then. Think of it as a token of your initiation.”

The young physician stared for a moment before slipping it on the little finger of his left hand. At that moment, the locket sprang to life, sending colours flashing across their faces. It chose the oddest times to activate, this little pendant, sometimes spinning, sometimes silent. Still, he had to admit it was a very strange, sweet device.

Suddenly, the Meeting Room echoed with thunderous applause and the doors swung open, smoke billowing out like a toxic fog. Christien felt his heart quicken in his chest.