Byron's Child (8 page)

Would she ever see Mom and Dad again?

Don’t be silly, she told herself sharply. Feeling sorry for herself would get her nowhere. She decided to read for a while to take her mind off her worries. Dinah, who had unpacked for her, had put the biography of Ada Byron beside her bed. Now there was someone with real problems.

It was not as easy as reaching out to turn on the bedside lamp. She had blown out her candle hours ago. There was a box of lucifers on the dressing table, with the little bottle of oil of vitriol needed to ignite them. And that, according to Giles, was concentrated sulfuric acid. Not something to be messed with in the dark. Nor did she think she could strike a spark with the tinderbox in the dark.

Emily had said that a lamp was always left burning on the landing. Shivering, Jodie slipped out of bed and felt for her slippers and wrapper. Carrying the unlit candle in its holder, she tiptoed out of her chamber. Yes, there was the lamp, turned down low, with a jar of spills beside it.

There was also a line of light under the door of Giles’s chamber. Talking to Giles would be even better than reading. Jodie tapped on the door.

“Come in.” His voice was tired and abstracted.

She opened the door, stepped in, closed it softly behind her. The room was chilly, the fire of banked sea-coal barely flickering. In a brown velvet dressing gown, Giles was sitting at a small table, his inevitable sheaf of papers before him. He continued to write for a moment before he looked up.

“What is it, Jodie?”

“I can’t sleep. I thought we could talk for a while.” She saw that his eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue. “But I won’t disturb you, I’ll just sit quietly. Can I get into your bed? My feet are cold.”

“No, you cannot.” He spoke quietly but with determination. “You must be mad. What if someone has heard you moving about, seen you come in here? I know we are supposed to be half-brother and -sister, but considering what Charles has told me of the scandal flying about his friend Byron, that would be no protection for you whatsoever.”

“Charlotte and Emily would not tell tales.”

“No, but it would distress them. The servants would most certainly gossip, and Roland would throw us out on our ears.”

“Oh, all right.” Jodie felt disconsolate but knew she sounded petulant. “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to get my theories in order for Dr. Brown tomorrow.”

“Damn Dr. Brown. Can’t you think of anyone else?” Tears pricking her eyelids, she turned and flung out of the room, scarcely remembering to move quietly. All she wanted was a bit of comfort, and all he could think of was his damned physics. And Dr. Brown.

Determinedly she blinked the tears away and lit her candle from the lamp with a spill. More than ever she needed the distraction of a good book.

Ada Byron’s life absorbed her: the bright, sickly child, growing up with only her dogs and her horse for affection; the bitter, self-righteous mother, often absent, exacting love as well as obedience from the daughter who feared her; the mysterious, never-revealed portrait of the father behind its velvet curtain, and the volumes of his poetry, proudly displayed but never to be read.

Lady Byron’s friends had dinned into Ada that she owed an unpayable debt to her suffering mother, that the slightest disobedience might be the cause of Annabella’s death. Instead, it was her famous and infamous father who died, in exile, when Ada was eight, his last words not of the fight he had led for Greek independence but of his little daughter, long lost to him.

Then Ada at seventeen, in London for her first Season, met Charles Babbage, mathematician and brilliant inventor. Jodie fell asleep over a description of his Analytical Engine.

~ ~ ~

“Have you ever heard of Charles Babbage?” she asked Giles at breakfast, her pique long forgotten. Only Emily was present; Roland insisted that Charlotte break her fast in bed and this morning had joined her in their chamber.

“Babbage? Yes, of course. His Difference Engine is—will be in the Science Museum in Kensington, still in working order. If he’d ever completed his Analytical Engine it would have been the first real computer. Good lord, is that the Ada you keep talking about? I didn’t think her name was Byron, though.”

“She marries Lord Lovelace, but I haven’t reached that part of the book yet.”

“Ada Lovelace? That’s it. There’s a computer language named after her, an international standard for certain applications. She’s generally regarded as the first computer programmer. She foresaw all sorts of possibilities that Babbage’s mechanical machine probably would never have been able to carry out, even if he’d had the support to finish building it.”

“She really was—will be brilliant then? She certainly intended to make her mark, though she wasn’t sure if it would be in math or music. She wanted to equal her father’s fame.”

“You mean Lord Byron?” asked Emily. “He really is famous in the future?”

“For his poetry, mostly, but he’s also going to inspire half of Europe to throw the Turks out of Greece,” Jodie explained. “I suppose in a way it’s just as well he has to leave England.”

“I find it difficult to imagine him as a hero when all the world considers him a villain. It is a very odd feeling to hear all this before it happens.”

Giles apologized. “It’s not fair of us to talk about it in your presence. I’m amazed at how you have adjusted to our peculiar circumstances. We’d have been well and truly stuck without your help.”

Jodie nodded agreement as Emily blushed. At that moment Charlotte came in, her round, pretty face blooming under a delightful bonnet of blue velvet with an artfully curled ostrich feather dyed to match.

“What, still at table? I am ready to go out. Emily, I have received a note from my sister. She is in town; do you care to go with me to see her? Jodie, Cousin Giles, we can take you up in the barouche as far as Lady Bestor’s house, or Potter shall call a hackney if you prefer. Then, later this afternoon, Roland means to introduce you to his club, Giles, while we ladies make some absolutely essential purchases.”

Her blue eyes sparkled at the prospect. Nor was Jodie averse to exploring the shops of the greatest city in the world. Not only was shopping fun, she pointed out to Emily as they went up to put on their bonnets, but it must surely be classified as a popular pastime, qualifying as a research topic.

“If not the most popular,” Emily agreed.

Hurrying into her borrowed pelisse, Jodie ran downstairs to where Giles was waiting in the hall and whispered, “I’m sorry I was unreasonable last night.”

“I’m sorry I snapped.” He gave her a quick, entirely brotherly hug. “Tell me, how can I get out of going with Roland to his club this afternoon?”

Jodie considered. “It is something of an honour to be invited, I collect. Roland may be shockingly offended if you do not go, at least this once.”

“You’re the historian.” He pulled a face. “My father put me up for the Liberal Club, but I never could stand the fusty old place.”

She grinned. “If you are expecting a fusty old place, I suspect you may be pleasantly surprised.”

Charlotte emerged from Roland’s study and Emily pattered down the stairs. They went out to the barouche.

It was only a few blocks to Lady Bestor’s address in Dover Street. Jodie drank in the sights on the way. She would persuade Giles to walk home, she decided, so as to investigate further. They drove round Berkeley Square and there was Gunter’s, at the sign of the Pineapple, just as she had seen it described in a dozen books. Though the second day of March was a bit chilly for eating an ice, Jodie was determined to pay the famous confectioner a visit. All in the name of research, of course.

The barouche set them down at the door of Lady Bestor’s little house. Giles knocked. Standing on the step, Jodie wondered if they were on a wild goose chase. Dr. Brown’s letter had been totally noncommittal. She might not want to help—but then she need not have answered at all and they could never have found her. Perhaps she would be unable to help, another victim of an irreversible accident. Who was Lady Bestor? What was Lord Font’s part in all this?

Jodie clung to Giles’s arm as they waited for the front door to open.

Chapter Seven

A footman opened the door. Giles gave their names and he and Jodie were ushered into a narrow hall, decorated on one side with a hunting tapestry and on the other with a family portrait overflowing with children.

“Her ladyship is expecting you.” The footman opened another door. “Mr. and Miss Faringdale, my lady.”

There were three people in the drawing room: an ancient lady, thin and twisted with rheumatism, sitting on a sofa; a tall, blond gentleman, standing by the window; and an elegant woman in her late twenties, with reddish-brown ringlets and green eyes, who stepped forward to greet them.

“Good heavens, it really is you, Dr. Faringdale.” Her accent was pure New England. “Or is it ‘my lord?’” She stopped in confusion.

“Plain mister here, Dr. Brown—Mrs. Brown. Or better just Giles. This is…my half-sister, Judith.”

Jodie stared, also confused, then dropped a hurried curtsy. There was a moment of silence.

“Well?” said the old lady.

Mrs. Brown started. “Allow me to present you to Lady Bestor. And this is Harry—Lord Font.”

The tall gentleman bowed. Jodie curtsied again, feeling increasingly silly, then turned back to Mrs. Brown.

“You’re Cassandra? The physicist? Excuse me, it’s ridiculous but I pictured you in a white coat like scientists wear on tele…Oh!” She glanced in alarm at the other two strangers.

The old crone winked at her. “Not to worry, missie, I know all there is to know.” Her sharp eyes turned to Lord Font. “Or all I need to know, at least. Well, Harry, now I’ve satisfied my curiosity I’ll leave you in peace.” She reached for her cane. “Help me up.”

Lord Font reached her in one long stride, and laid his hand on her frail shoulder. “Do not stir, Aunt Tavie. We shall entertain our guests in the dining parlour. Please come this way, Miss Judith, Mr. Faringdale.”

We, Jodie noted, following him, our guests. And that was a monstrous intimate look he gave Mrs. Brown as he seated her at the long oak table.

She was beautiful. God send she was spoken for.

They exchanged stories. Mrs. Brown had also come to the past by accident. With the aid of her calculator and a competent assistant in Lord Font, she had returned home before deciding that the nineteenth century was more to her taste.

Giles sat back with a sigh of relief. “You have a calculator, then, and the calculations already done. All we have to do is plug in the figures for a slightly different time and place.”

Mrs. Brown and Lord Font exchanged glances. “I fear not,” said the latter. “Cassandra destroyed everything.”

In the deathly hush, the cry of a hawker in the street was plain: “Hot, hot, hot—pudding hot!”

“The Flying Pieman,” said Lord Font irrelevantly.

At any other time Jodie would have been intrigued. Now all she could do was say in horrified tones, “Destroyed? Everything? But why?”

Mrs. Brown shrugged her shoulders. “Harry hasn’t much faith in the law of Conservation of Reality. We were afraid they might be found and used to alter the time stream.”

“I have to agree with Lord Font,” Giles said unwillingly. “I’m sorry, Dr. Brown, but I just don’t think it can account for more than minor changes. It’s our bad luck that we arrived after you got rid of the calculator. Still, at least you have a theory that you know works. I take it you are willing to help us?”

“Of course,” came instant affirmation from both.

At once Giles became businesslike. He untied the roll of papers he had set before him on the table and shuffled  through them. “I have drawn up designs for a slide rule cursor. If we can have it made, it will greatly help in redoing your calculations. I’d like you to check my drawings.”

“I don’t know anything about slide rules,” Mrs. Brown confessed. “I was brought up with calculators. But Harry used his slide rule to check all my figures.”

Lord Font pulled Giles’s papers towards him as Giles grinned crookedly at Jodie and said, “You see the advantages of an old-fashioned education.”

That was the last notice anyone took of her. Lord Font went to fetch his slide rule, and the two twentieth-century physicists began a discussion of twentieth-century physics that might as well have been in Greek for all Jodie understood. In fact, some of it seemed to be in Greek. She heard talk of tau-space and epsilon-something-else and when they spoke of pi it was not the Flying Pieman they meant.

Pi r squared, thought Jodie idly. The circumference of a circle. No, probably the area. It was as bad as volts and watts and ohms, which they seemed to have moved on to now.

“Oh’m goin’ ‘ohm,” she said experimentally.

“See you later,” said Giles. “But look, Cassandra, if you consider…”

Jodie did not stay for the end of his sentence. She found a certain satisfaction in flouncing from the room. You couldn’t flounce in pants.

The footman brought her pelisse, a dark-chocolate velvet coat lined with white sarsnet and luxuriously trimmed with ermine. Like her gown, also borrowed from Emily, it fitted close over the bodice then fell from a high waist to her ankles. Her feet were snug in her own boots, bought two hundred years hence with English weather in mind. To hell with Giles. It would be better on her own because she could stop and look at anything that caught her eye.

“The gentleman…?“ suggested the footman with an anxious air.

“He will be here for some time yet.”

“A hackney, madam?”

“No, I shall walk, thank you.”

Shrugging, the man opened the door for her.

Jodie set off in a mood of thorough disgruntlement. How could she have been so stupid as to suppose that Giles would not be attracted to that woman only because he did not picture her dancing the night away? She was beautiful, to be sure, but it was her mind he admired. She was a colleague, his equal in the esoteric realms of subatomic particles where the music of the spheres played for dancing quarks and neutrinos.

Pleased with the image, Jodie began to take an interest in her surroundings. This was her field of expertise, and when she reached home again she would be an unequalled expert on daily life in the Regency period. She beamed at a passing couple. The gentleman smiled back; his companion scowled and hurried him onward.