Rebel Mechanics (5 page)

I was exhausted, but I didn't feel it was an invitation I could refuse. “I would like that very much.”

She took my hand and dragged me into the hall. “The schoolroom is here,” she said, taking me across to a room overlooking the street. It was well equipped with books, a globe, some scientific apparatus, a desk, an easel, and an upright piano. “Uncle bought most of these things. He said our schoolroom before was woefully inadequate.” She sounded like she must be mimicking her uncle without necessarily understanding the meaning.

Then she pulled me back across the hall to another bedroom, decorated in pink and white. “This is my room. We're neighbors. If I have nightmares, you will hear me.”

“Do you often have nightmares?”

“Only sometimes. I dream about the airship crash that killed Papa. Uncle says it's only my imagination, since I wasn't there and don't know what it looked like for real, and my imagination probably makes it look even worse.” She sounded out the word “imagination” slowly, making sure she got it right. “If I cry out, you will come to me, won't you?” she pleaded.

“I will,” I assured her. “I sometimes have nightmares myself.”

She pressed my hand and said earnestly, “If you cry out, I'll come to you.”

She pointed out Rollo's and Flora's rooms, then led me downstairs to the library, which was something out of my wildest book-loving dreams. “There aren't many books in here I can read yet,” Olive said. “My books are all in the schoolroom, but Uncle says that someday this will be my favorite room in the whole house.” I got the impression that whatever Uncle said was accepted as gospel by Olive.

“Yes, I imagine it will be, if I do my job properly,” I said. It was already my favorite room. My fingers itched to run along all those spines and see what wonders I might discover.

I reluctantly let Olive lead me out of the library to tour the rest of the mansion. We saw the dining room being set for dinner, the drawing room used for formal occasions, and many more rooms whose purpose I couldn't keep straight in my head. All of them were splendidly furnished and filled with artwork worthy of a museum. I could hardly believe that I would be living in a place like this. And to think I'd started the day terrified of what my future might hold.

Along the way, we passed a closed door. “That's Uncle's study,” Olive informed me. “We're not allowed in there. The maids can't even go in there. Not that they want to. They don't like all those bugs. There's even a giant hairy spider.” She said it with enough relish that I doubted she shared the maids' fears. “He has many valuable specimens, and some of them are so fragile that opening the door the wrong way disturbs them.” She recited this as though it had been repeated to her many times. I wondered how many dragonfly wings had crumbled to dust because of Olive bursting in on her uncle.

When we returned to my room, Mrs. Talbot was there instructing a pair of footmen where to place my trunk. “Run along, Olive,” she said when she saw us. “Give Miss Newton a chance to rest.”

“Thank you for the tour, Olive,” I said. She waved goodbye as she ran to her room.

“Would you like one of the maids to help you unpack?” Mrs. Talbot asked.

“No, thank you. I don't have much.”

She dismissed the footmen, then said, “If you don't mind, I thought I should go over what you can expect tomorrow.”

“Of course.” I gestured her toward the chair and sat across from her on the edge of the bed.

“In the morning, you'll escort Rollo to school, leaving in time to arrive at nine. Olive usually goes along for the walk. You'll have lessons with Olive until lunchtime, after which the music teacher and drawing master arrive. The drawing master works with one girl while the music teacher works with the other, and then they switch. You'll be free during those lessons until it's time for you to meet Rollo at school.”

“Surely Rollo is old enough to walk to and from school on his own,” I said.

From her reaction, I might have thought I'd suggested that he run off to sea as a cabin boy on a pirate ship. “Oh no, that would not do at all. The children must be chaperoned at all times in public.”

“Are they in danger?” I asked breathlessly, thinking I would do little good as a bodyguard.

“Not that kind of danger.” She sighed. “Young people being what they are, we must take great caution that no unsuitable alliances or flirtations form.”

“Are you worried about Rollo meeting shopgirls?”

She frowned. “You must not know the ways of the magisters. To keep the magical blood pure, they must not mix with the nonmagical.”

My heart racing and a knot forming in my stomach, I asked, “What happens if a magister does…” I trailed off, searching for a euphemism, then settled for the one she'd used: “… mix with a nonmagical person?”

She looked even more horrified at that thought than she had when I suggested Rollo could walk to school on his own. Pressing her hand against her chest as if to quiet her heart, she said, “That would be unspeakable—an abomination!”

My stays seemed to constrict drastically around my chest, cutting off my breathing. There was a roaring in my ears, and my vision swam. It had never occurred to me that my very existence might be considered an abomination.

 

IN WHICH MY POSITION BECOMES UNEXPECTEDLY PRECARIOUS

Mrs. Talbot must have continued speaking, but I heard nothing over the roaring in my ears until she grasped my hand. “Miss Newton!” she said firmly enough to snap me out of my fugue. “You've gone absolutely ashen. Should I get the smelling salts?”

I came back to my senses enough to wave her away. “No, no, I'm quite all right. I'm afraid the events of the day caught up with me all at once.” I gave her a smile that felt weak, shaky, and entirely unconvincing. “Please forgive me.”

She patted my hand reassuringly. “You should rest until dinner, and I'll see to it that Olive leaves you alone.” She slipped out of the room, easing the door shut behind her.

As soon as she left, I clasped my hands over my mouth to stifle a pained whimper, lest Olive hear my cry. I'd discovered I had magical abilities when I was about Olive's age and tried to will a rosebud to open into a flower the way the magical princess in my storybook did, imagining a full blossom and channeling the power from the ether—and it worked. I tried other magical tricks I'd read about in fairy tales, like making feathers fly, conjuring balls of light, and sending scattered buttons into a jar, and I could do all of them. I had never seen anyone else in my family do these things, so I had kept it a secret.

A fanciful child with my head full of stories, I decided I was a princess in exile being kept safely in a secret hiding place until the time came for me to restore my kingdom. That seemed to explain so much about my family. My father was stern and remote with me, the way he wasn't with my siblings when they visited, because he wasn't really my father. He was my tutor, doing his duty to prepare me to one day rule my kingdom wisely. My mother must have been my nurse—in the stories, nurses always seemed to develop motherly feelings toward their charges.

When I was old enough to learn about biology, I discerned the likely truth. Although I had powers no one else in the family had and was very unlike my sister and brothers, I could see traces of my mother in myself. We had the same roundish face, wide-set eyes, and stubborn chin. It seemed as though my mother had been unfaithful to her husband with some magister, and I was the result. That explained my family even better than my princess fantasy—the large age gap between me and my siblings, the chilly distance between my parents, and the way my father was barely able to stand the sight of me when he wasn't teaching me.

I'd read many novels about nonmagical governesses falling in love with and eventually marrying their magister employers, and then there were all the fairy stories about nonmagical girls captivating magister princes. None of these had mentioned that such relationships were forbidden, even though that would have made far more interesting reading. Although I knew better than to think that novels were an accurate reflection of reality, I felt betrayed. Someone who read as much as I did shouldn't have been caught so unawares. But there had been few magisters at Yale because most of them went to England for their education, so I had learned everything I knew about them from novels, which I now realized had left out a critical fact. I had to wonder if these books perhaps reflected a magister fantasy about breaking with convention.

To think I'd worried that Lord Henry was secretly a bandit who knew I'd witnessed his crime when my real danger was that he might discover I was a magical half-breed. I wondered what would become of me if I were discovered, but there was no innocent way to ask. I told myself that I had nothing to fear as long as I exhibited no sign of having magical powers. I'd spent a lifetime keeping that secret, so it was second nature for me.

*   *   *

Lord Henry proved to be in earnest about dinner being informal. He and the children wore the same clothing they'd worn earlier. Olive greeted me as though she hadn't seen me for days, and Rollo stood politely until I was seated. Flora wore a distracted look similar to her uncle's, though I doubted she was thinking about insects. As soon as the soup had been served, Rollo blurted, “Uncle Henry, did you hear about the steam engine on Fifth Avenue today? I saw it out the window.”

I nearly dropped my spoon in my soup. Could he have seen me alighting from the bus? No, it had let me off several blocks away.

“Really?” Lord Henry asked.

“Yes! It was like a big horse with wheels,” Rollo excitedly described it with his hands waving, “but all in metal, and it chugged great puffs of smoke. Do you think steam power might replace magic?”

“I don't know,” his uncle said. “I doubt we magisters would use steam for power, but it might replace horses.”

“This was better than horses,” Rollo enthused. “And it had a loud whistle.”

“Our carriage has a bell,” Olive said. “That's better than a whistle. It goes
ding
,
ding
,
ding
.”

“The whistle's louder,” her brother argued.

“Louder isn't better.”

“Yes, it is!”

“It's definitely not better at the dinner table,” Lord Henry put in with a grin as he flicked his nephew on the ear. If my interview earlier had felt like a child's game, now I felt like I was sitting at a nursery table while the real adults were elsewhere.

“I wonder if they'll come back again,” Rollo said. “I want to ride that bus. It must be exciting.” I bit the inside of my lip to keep myself from smiling at the memory. It
had
been exciting.

“The Rebel Mechanics are treasonous,” Lord Henry said mildly, but with an air of wistfulness, as though he was saying what a guardian should, even though he was just as interested as Rollo. “They're not the sort you should be associating with.”

“I heard they're also experimenting with electricity,” Rollo said, undaunted, as the footmen cleared the soup course and brought out the roast.

“Do you think it will be too cool tomorrow for my pink chiffon?” Flora asked, apparently not having heard a word of the conversation. “Or I could wear the lavender. I should call on the Merriweathers, and Jocelyn Merriweather looks awful in lavender, even though it's her favorite color. I look so much better in it than she does, so if we're both wearing lavender, it will be as though I've insulted her without saying a word.” She smiled to herself. “Yes, I will definitely wear the lavender.”

Lord Henry turned to her in dismay. “This is how you talk about your friends? I'd hate to be your enemy.”

She heaved a deep sigh. “Honestly, Henry, I don't understand how anyone could be so socially inept. She's not
really
my friend. She's merely someone I call upon.”

“If you don't like her, why do you call on her?” Rollo asked.

“Paying calls is a duty, not a pleasure.” She directed her gaze heavenward, as though trying to conjure a halo of martyrdom around herself.

Lord Henry and Rollo both snorted with laughter, and Olive quickly joined in, imitating them. “Then I wonder what you'd do if I were to forbid you paying calls. You'd sulk for a week,” Lord Henry said. “You'd run out of gossip entirely, and you couldn't show off your gowns.”

Her eyes widened in panic. “You're not going to forbid me, are you?”

“Do it, Uncle Henry!” Rollo urged. Olive merely giggled.

Lord Henry's eyes twinkled, but he schooled his features into a stern expression—with visible effort—and said, “You may pay no calls.”

“Henry, you wouldn't!” Flora yelped, throwing her napkin on the table and rising from her seat as her brother and sister sputtered with laughter.

Before Flora could complete her dramatic exit, Lord Henry grinned and said, “Tomorrow, that is. I'll be teaching you magic in the afternoon, after your music and drawing lessons.”

“He got you there, Flora,” Rollo chortled.

Flora flounced back to her seat. “That wasn't at all fair, Henry. You're
supposed
to be the adult in this house.” Then she added hesitantly, “I may still pay calls on other days?”

“If I am not teaching you magic, you may,” Lord Henry said. “But only if you want to.”

I watched this entire exchange with fascination. I'd never had such conversations at dinner with my family, not only because my father never would have allowed it but also because all my siblings had left home before I left the nursery table to dine with the adults. Was this the way families without shameful secrets were? Behind the bickering, I got a sense of deep affection among the Lyndons, and I felt a pang of envy.