Лорен Уиллиг - The Garden Intrigue

The crate was open. The lid was propped up against one side. Straw littered the floor. Three lanterns had been lit, set out in a semicircle on the floor. There were bits of metal and tubing scattered about, like a child’s toys left out after play.

In the middle of it sat Emma, her legs tucked up underneath her as she consulted a grimy scrap of paper, muttering to herself as she reached for a piece of metal tubing, thought better of it, and put it back again.

“But if that goes here…”

She had shoved her hair back behind her ears, heedless of the fashionable bandeau that was supposed to be serving that function, causing chunks of hair to bump up at odd angles. There was a smudge of dirt or grease on one cheek and straw clinging to her dress.

“Right,” she said to herself. “It must be that other tube.…”

She scooted herself forward, adding more straw to the collection on her hem, jiggered herself up on her knees, and leaned all the way over, stretching out as far as she could to reach an errant piece of tubing that had strayed to the end of the circle. Her fingers wriggled towards the tube.

And there she froze.

She was, Augustus realized, staring at his boots. Her gaze traveled up past the tassels of his boots, to his thighs, and up to his shirt.

“Oh,” she said, and did a very quick scramble back, hand by hand, to her original position, popping up flushed and disheveled in something closer to a sitting position. “Hello! You’ve come back.”

Augustus kicked the door shut behind him. “You were right,” he said.

“I found someone to help me with the lid,” said Emma.

She heaved herself up off the floor, tripping on the end of her own skirt and trying not to careen into a pile of packing straw. Lifting her hands to shove her hair back behind her ears, Emma found that her bandeau had twisted itself halfway around, listing drunkenly to the side, with her hair all bunched up underneath. There was something grimy on the back of her hand, and, oh, Lord, was that straw on her skirt?

Emma backed out of the circle of lantern light, trusting to the dark to hide her burning cheeks and disheveled appearance. Not that it mattered. It was only Augustus, after all. Still, one didn’t like to be seen looking like a complete slattern—even if one was.

Emma gave a hasty tug to her bodice. “One of the nice footmen came by,” she babbled, “and pried out the nails for me. It took no time at all.”

“Good for you.” Augustus tossed the crowbar to one side, where it connected with the side of Miss Gwen’s pirate ship before clattering to the floor.

The sound echoed through the narrow room.

He wasn’t still annoyed about their little spat, was he? She might have been out of line, but they had promised each other honesty.

Honesty within limits.

“Thank you for bringing the crowbar,” Emma said hastily, her voice tinny in the dusty silence. “That was very…nice of you.”

Augustus didn’t look nice right now; he looked dangerous. He looked like the sort of man one wouldn’t want to run into in a dark theatre. Tension surrounded him like the sky before a storm, just waiting the right moment to crackle into lightning.

He prowled into the room, the lamplight picking out the shadows created by the folds in his shirt, dwelling lovingly on the hollows of collarbone, cheekbone, jaw. Among the coiled ropes and scattered props, his loose shirt and tight breeches gave him a piratical look. He only needed a gold ring in one ear and he would fit right in with Miss Gwen and her crew of merry marauders.

“I’m sorry to have sent you off on a wild goose chase,” Emma volunteered.

Augustus propped one booted foot on the lid of a faux treasure chest from which spilled gold-painted pieces of eight and ersatz ropes of pearls. His long hair curled around his face. “Does it count as a wild goose chase when it bears fowl? Foul fowl but fowl still.”

“I beg your pardon?” Fair might be foul and foul fair, but Emma didn’t have any inclination to hover through the fog and filthy air to try to figure out what he was saying.

“You were right.”

“That does happen from time to time. About what? The end of the masque? I told you and told you—”

Augustus kicked aside the treasure chest. Coins and chains rattled. “About Miss Wooliston.”

“Oh,” Emma said weakly. Of all the things she had anticipated, that wasn’t one of them. “How do—”

“I have it from the horse’s mouth. So to speak.”

As she met his eyes, Emma felt a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach. It was one thing to inflict her opinion upon him, quite another to have him act on it.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “You didn’t—”

“Just now. In the garden. She wanted none of me. You were right.”

Emma wished he would stop saying that. The more he repeated it, the more she felt as though she were to blame. She had anticipated this, but she hadn’t wished it on him, not really.

There were times when it was less than pleasant to be able to say I told you so.

Emma bit down on her lip. “I am sorry.”

Augustus prowled forward, stepping neatly over a coil of rope and a discarded cutlass. “Why should you be?” His voice was as cold and hard as the fragments of metal at Emma’s feet. “My folly isn’t your concern.”

“It’s never foolish to care for someone.”

Augustus gave her a look that could turn Pompeii to ash. “Don’t ply me with platitudes,” he said. “Didn’t we promise honesty? You were honest before. Don’t hold back now.”

Emma swallowed hard. “What happened?”

“What do you think?”

“She does care for you, you know,” Emma said earnestly. “As much as she cares for anyone. It’s not you, really, it isn’t. She’s just not…romantically inclined.”

Augustus nudged at a bit of tubing with his toe, sending it rattling across the floor. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Then why had he brought it up?

All right. If he didn’t want to talk about it, they didn’t have to talk about it, even though Emma wondered, with the sort of sick curiosity that drove people to attend public executions, what exactly had been said and unsaid.

“Then we can talk about something else,” she said cheerfully. “What do you think of your room in the house? You’re in one of the older servant quarters, aren’t you? There isn’t really space for everyone, even with the new additions. Just think what it will be like tomorrow when everyone else arrives!”

Without responding, Augustus strolled inexorably forward into the circle she had made for herself. The lanterns lit his face from below, casting a demonic light across his cheekbones, creating the illusion of flame in the folds of his shirt, where the light reflected red. His eyes glittered in the lantern light.

“It’s your turn,” Emma said breathlessly. “To not talk about something.”

“Tell me about your new machine.”

“Uh…” For all that she had spent the past half hour playing with pieces, Emma suddenly felt unprepared and untried.

It had something to do with the way he was staring at her, eyes never wavering, moving steadily forward, like a jungle cat approaching its prey. For all the length of his limbs, he was a graceful man; he scarcely made a sound as he prowled towards her, stepping unerringly over the obstacles scattered in his path.

She backed up a bit, glancing around at the pieces lying about on the floor. “It’s not one machine but four, all interconnected. I’ve been trying to sort out which is which.”

“Four? I thought Mr. Fulton was sending you a wave machine.” There was something hypnotic about those slow, steady movements, the fixed intensity of his eyes.

Emma backed up again. “Well, there is the wave machine, but Mr. Fulton wanted to try something new, so he, well, he made it more complicated. Ours doesn’t just do waves; it does waves, wind, thunder, and lightning.” She looked ruefully down at the debris on the floor. “At least, it will, when I figure out how to put it together.”

Augustus struck a pose, parodying Hamlet. “What a piece of work is this! The power to control the elements, all in one easy box. Once you needed witchcraft to conjure storms. Now all we need is—” Leaning down, Augustus hefted a curious circle made of brass, with curved protrusions. He frowned down at it. “What is this? It looks like a late medieval instrument of torture.”

That, at least, Emma could answer. “It’s part of an air pump.” She took the brass wheel from him, holding it up so that the lamplight slid along the curved surfaces. “It’s designed to create the illusion of wind. There are four of those circles. They sit in a frame like an artist’s easel, with a string hanging down. If we pull the string, the blades will spin, creating a rush of air.”

“Hmm.” Abandoning the air pump, Augustus prowled the circumference of the circle of lanterns, examining the detritus from Mr. Fulton’s box. Bending, he seized on another piece, a cylindrical metal drum covered with canvas. “And this?”

“That’s a drum covered with canvas,” Emma said helpfully.

Straightening, Augustus gave her a look. “That much,” he said, “I could divine on my own.”

At least he had sounded a bit more like his old self there, not the languid, versifying figure he showed to the public, but the sarcastic, short-tempered, cranky self he showed to her.

Adele was right. She really did have execrable taste in men.

“The drum is for thunder,” Emma explained. She peered around the floor. “There should be a hammer here somewhere.”

“Like this?”

“Exactly like that.” Emma nodded emphatically. “You attach the hammer to the clamp on the side of the drum and when it strikes the canvas, it creates a sound like thunder. You’ll see. It sounds surprisingly convincing.”

“Not exactly sophisticated.”

“It is,” said Emma triumphantly, “when linked to the lightning machine!”

“The lightning machine?”

“That’s the genius of it. Or it will be,” she said. “According to Mr. Fulton’s instructions, if we link the machines together the right way, the flash created by the lightning machine will be immediately followed by the rumble of thunder and a gust of wind, just like in a real storm.”

Emma dropped to her knees and began hunting around on the ground, her fingers touching and discarding various shapes. “See this?”

“The one that looks like a pistol?” Augustus leaned over her, taking advantage of his longer reach. His shadow fell across the floor in front of her, blending with her shadow to create a strange composite creature, a fantastical heraldic beast.

A beast with two backs? Emma found herself blushing, grateful for the darkness and her bowed head.

Scooping it up, he dangled it in front of her. If she stood, she would bump up against him. Emma stayed where she was, crouched on the floor like a child.

“I suppose it does look like a firearm,” she said, adding unnecessarily, “I haven’t had much to do with pistols.”

“No. I hadn’t thought you had.” The pistol-like object was whisked away.

What was that supposed to mean?

“Well, at least you don’t think I spent my entire childhood fighting off savages.” Emma pushed against the planks of the floor, levering herself up to her feet. She dusted her hands off against her dress. “You’d be amazed by the number of people who have asked me what it feels like to be scalped.”

Augustus smiled politely but didn’t take the bait. He turned over the pistol-like object in his hands. “Show me how this works.”

Emma did her best to recall Mr. Fulton’s instructions. “According to Mr. Fulton, the concept is similar to that of flame-throwing, only, in this case, the gunpowder in the pan, when struck by the hammer, creates the spark and the momentum that propels the flame.”

“So it creates a flare.”

“Yes.”

“With gunpowder.”

Emma looked at the mechanism in his hands. “I don’t really understand it,” she confessed, “but I can put the pieces together the right way and hope for the best.”