Clockwork Captive (3 page)

“How long have you been here?” he asked, stepping back.

“Three years nearly.”

“You won’t see a fourth,” he vowed. “I promise.”

Pounding came at the door. He turned from her as it opened.

“Time is up, Mr. ‘owell, unless you ‘ave the coin to go h’again.”

He pulled his shoulder blades together and puffed out his chest. “I’d like a word, Mrs. Teagarden.”

 
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CHAPTER TWO

Brace followed the proprietress down the front stairs and into the parlor. The storm had swept in a trio of bushy-bearded men who were muttering at one end of the line of portraits.

“Best idea I ever ‘ad,” said the lady, satisfied by the traffic. “The men knows what they’re getting but the girls ‘ave a bit of rest between gents instead of entertaining them down here.”

“I’ve never seen anything like the medallions,” Brace said, far more interested in those than in the portraits.

She grinned, showing missing molars in the back of her mouth. “I had a protector when I was younger. An inventor. When he tired of me I asked for the clockworks instead of a little ‘ouse.” She waved her arm around. “This came from my last protector.”

“You had a most successful career.” He found it difficult to see faded beauty underneath the paint, but it must have been there once.

“Specialties like mine come dear,” she said with a wink. “There’s still men who ask after me, but I’m a creature of business now, as you can see.”

He had no doubt of that, given her ruinous prices. “Speaking of business, I find myself quite enamored of Liza. I’d like to set her up for myself alone. Might I buy her contract?”

The old whore brayed. “Not for anything less than two ‘undred.”

Brace felt a bubble of panic lurch between his heart and his lungs. Was she mad? “Come now, my good woman. Let us be serious. She tells me she’s been with you nearly three years. The bloom is off the rose.”

“But she’s a specialist, like me. We don’t get used up so quick.”

“She’s covered with scars,” he countered.

Mrs. Teagarden frowned. “I’ll have to take a look.”

“I could pay you fifty,” he said, after quickly calculating how many friends he might be able to borrow from. He didn’t want her investigating, he wanted a deal now.

“I might consider one hundred,” she said with a sigh.

Brace doubted he could bring the lady lower than that, and yet he could live for a year on that much money, and no one he knew had so much to lend. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“You can see her as h’often as you like, as long as you ‘ave the coin. If you come this early, I’ll make sure you have ‘er first,” Mrs. Teagarden promised. “I think that’s a fair bargain.”

Clearly his net worth had been calculated and found wanting. Unfortunate that the old whore had such an accurate meter, but after all, men were her business.

“I’ll be wanting a discount for frequent business,” he warned. How would he ever borrow, beg, steal so much? But he’d need to visit Celeste again to reassure her, and soon.

“I take care of my customers,” she promised.

One of the bearded men cleared his throat. Brace nodded to Mrs. Teagarden and took his leave, noting the tall, bulky man dressed in coarse wool lurking in the shadow of the stairs in the entryway. Had he been there when Brace entered? He couldn’t be sure, but clearly the girls were guarded as well as enslaved by the clockwork.

He returned to his rooms and tried to fall asleep, but Celeste’s perfect face, strong fingers and scars tossed in his brain through the night while the heavy rain assaulted his ears in an irregular pattern.

*****

The next day was Saturday, only a half day on his stool at the law office. He fidgeted it away then sidled up to his friend, the senior clerk, as they left. Five pounds was all the man had available. He wandered through a greengrocer’s, two old school chums’ flats, even his uncle’s house on Cavendish Square. The most he could raise was thirty pounds. Not surprised by this amount, he decided to write a letter to his grandfather, who might remember the Flaherty family from the old days and feel inclined to assist. But he would write the letter tonight, after he visited one last friend in Camden Town.

Jonathan Seton lived in the last of a faltering row of houses with a discouragingly filthy front step. The bricks were stained as if painters had been testing dabs of color on the surfaces for years. A little community of inventors, they shared a distain for blown-out windows and heavy smells, as well as gardens littered with machinery and metal bits, though a tool would never be found uncared for around these parts, especially as most of them had been handcrafted by the inhabitants.

As Brace climbed the step, he saw something fly from a second-floor window next door. He cupped his hand over his eyes to filter out weak winter sun rays and saw what appeared to be a metal dragonfly circle the yard and fly back through the window again. It gave him an idea. Could he somehow fight technology with technology?

He rapped the door knocker against the door for a couple of minutes, but wasn’t surprised to receive no answer. Jonathan mostly lived in his workshop out back. Brace went around to the alley and opened the sagging gate. He heard loud banging from the shed at the south-west corner, a freshly-painted building better maintained than the main house, and knew his friend was home.

When he opened the door, he saw the man in shirtsleeves, waistcoat and leather apron, leaning over a table while he pounded at a silver disk.

Brace stepped forward with a sigh. “Burned through your trousers again, Johnny?”

Jonathan shook his head like a wet dog, then went still for a moment before turning. His saturnine features lifted in the always surprisingly angelic smile. “Brace! What brings you by?”

“Doom and disaster,” he said, wishing he’d brought a bottle of something with him.

“My specialties. You wouldn’t make your way out here without them.” He held up the silver oval with a gloved hand. “What do you think?”

“What is it?”

“A pendant, I think.” He frowned at the shape. “A chap I know wanted to mount an old Greek coin on silver for his wife.”

“Glad to see you are profitably employed.” Maybe Jonathan would have a good supply of money to loan him.

Jonathan picked up an irregular-shaped piece of gold and tossed it at Brace. “See?”

Brace stared at the small image of a stern woman with curled hair and a battle helmet on the old coin. “Athena?”

“You bet. That, old chum, is more than a thousand years old.”

He handed it back. “Wish I had a few of those in a drawer somewhere.”

“Maybe your grandfather does in an attic somewhere at the Park. They are quite small. Some were minted in Gaul. Not so far away.”

“Must be worth a fortune,” Brace mused. Jonathan had a point. Plenty of trunks moldered in the attics of his family estate, but he doubted his grandfather’s much younger second wife would allow him to abscond with any treasures he discovered.

“A small one. Why? Are you in need of a fortune?”

“I met an old friend last night,” Brace said. “And I need one hundred pounds to get her out of some trouble.

“Her, eh? What’s she done?”

“Not her, her father. Now he’s up and died, leaving her in a dreadful mess.”

“Fathers will do that. So you are here in hopes that I can cough up a few of the queen’s coins for you?”

“If you have them.”

“I do not. Put all my ready cash into silver. I’ll get paid when the pendant is done, but no sooner.”

Brace sat down on an old cane chair and sighed. “You were my last hope. I’m short seventy pounds.”

Jonathan whistled. “Anything you can pawn?”

“Not a thing, except my father’s old watch and my mother would have my head if I did that.”

“It’s not worth seventy.”

“No. Say, what do you know about clockwork?”

Jonathan snorted and placed the coin back into a velvet-lined box, then closed the lid. “What don’t I know? I apprenticed in a clockmaker’s shop in Switzerland for two years.”

“I thought you made talking heads or some such nonsense there.”

“Not until my last few months there. I repaired many a clock at the start.”

Brace put his elbows on his thighs and his chin on his hands. “Can you keep a secret for your entire life?”

Jonathan raised a finely cut eyebrow. “You know I can.”

“Her name is Celeste Flaherty.”

“Who is she to you?”

“A childhood friend. She had a profligate father but her family was as good as mine. You know, younger son of a middle son, distantly related to some baronet or other, the occasional knighting in the family.”

“Right.”

“I lost track of her, as one does, when her family moved into London, just about the time I was discovering the fairer sex. I had no idea what had become of her. Hadn’t thought of her in years, though she was the daily playmate of my youth.”

“But you found her again.”

“In a brothel, no less.”

“Oh, dear.” Jonathan wetted his lower lip with his tongue and pulled a long, low table away from the wall. He balanced one boot on the wood surface.

Brace winced at the sight. “That pose leaves nothing to the imagination. Can’t you find a pair of trousers?”

Jonathan turned, offering Brace the hint of hairy ass curves under his shirt. “Ah, I have just the thing.” He rustled in what looked like a pile of rags in one corner, then came up with a frayed pair of wool trousers. When he had them buttoned up he spun around. “Fetching, eh?”

“Ghastly.”

“I am not the young dandy you are,” Jonathan said, his nose in the air. “At least they cover the necessary. Back to your Miss Flaherty.”

“Too right. I chose her from a portrait wall. That’s what this place does, offer their young ladies via portrait. I meant to gamble with friends but it caught my eye and the next thing you know I’d paid for an hour. It wasn’t until after that she told me her real name and I recognized her. It had been nearly a decade.”

“After?” Jonathan chuckled. “You rogue. No reason you’d have known her.”

Brace didn’t find the situation very humorous. “She’s trapped. Not at all the practiced whore, even after nearly three years. They have some sort of clockwork mechanism literally pierced to her throat. It sets off an alarm if she tries to leave.”

“How does it work?”

He shrugged. “The proprietress has a key. If it isn’t wound the alarm gets louder and louder, depending on how much time is set.”

Jonathan’s fingers fluttered, as if he played with imaginary gears. “Did you try to make a deal with her?”

“The proprietress said it would cost me one hundred pounds to buy Celeste’s contract.”

“A nasty business.”

“Any ideas? It would take me years to come up with the money.”

Jonathan scratched his nose. “You feel it completely necessary to help her?”

“There isn’t anyone else. She was a sweet girl. This shouldn’t have happened. Not at all her fault.”

“If you pay for time with her, and can get the infernal device off her body, could you escape from her chamber?”

Brace considered this. “The window has iron bars outside. I checked. We’d have to leave the room and get out either through the door, past the enormous brute who waits by the stairs, or from the top of the house, over the roofs.”

“Without the alarm at her neck sounding. Tell me about this clockwork. Perhaps we can disable it.”

“It’s a brass case with some kind of pin at the pack pierced through her flesh in two places. There’s also an iron chain choker around her neck.”

“Tell me about the clockwork.”

Brace closed his eyes. “Iron, I think, nothing fine. Heavy and durable.”

“You say the clock hands are iron?”

“I think so. They certainly aren’t silver or gold. It didn’t look delicate or decorative at all.”

Jonathan leaned over and patted his knee. “There you go. That’s the answer.”

“What is?”

The corners of Jonathan’s thin mouth rose. “Magnets. With a powerful magnet, you can disrupt the hands, turning the clockwork off, as it were. Simple enough.”

“Really?”

“You wouldn’t even need to be in the room to do it. We could take an iron cylinder, wrap some wire around it, copper might be the least expensive, then attach the ends to one of Mr. Bunsen’s cells and there you go. A magnet.” Jonathan pulled his boot from the stool, went to one of his workbenches and fiddled for a few minutes.

Brace got up and stepped over so he could watch his friend encircling a few inches of iron with brass wire. Jonathan left the ends dangling. Then, he pulled a large cylinder to himself and attached the wires to either end.

Immediately, all the metal fragments on the table slid toward the foul-smelling cylinder. Jonathan quickly disconnected one end and grinned. “That will stop your friend’s clock.”