Rebel Mechanics (29 page)

Elinor was right, he was a good dancer. We made one circuit of the floor before he spoke. “I know how we could move the machines,” he murmured into my ear, nearly throwing me off rhythm.

“How?” I whispered.

“Magic. But I can't do it alone. I'll need help. I've begun notifying my gang.” His breath was warm on my cheek, and I was glad we both wore gloves because my palms felt clammy.

“I'll have a difficult enough time getting them to accept
you
. They
really
don't like magisters.”

“I'll go alone with you at first, and then once we've persuaded them, I'll bring in the others.”

“You're very optimistic.”

“It's only logical. They can either accept my help or lose their machines and lose the revolution before it can go anywhere.” He grinned at me, his eyes twinkling behind his spectacles. “Besides, I have every faith in your persuasive abilities. If they won't listen to reason, you can hit them in the head with your bag.”

I feared that people would get entirely the wrong impression from us murmuring to each other. He was so much taller than I that it was obvious he was bending to whisper in my ear. “People are giving us odd looks,” I said. “Is it proper for you to dance with your governess?”

“They're probably wondering who this mysterious beauty is. They may not realize you're the governess.”

“I wasn't announced when we entered.”

“No one pays attention to that. We all know each other already.” The song ended, and we applauded the orchestra. Then he took my hand and bowed over it. “Thank you for the dance, Miss Newton.” Still holding my hand, he led me back to Flora.

“Now that you and Miss Newton have had your dance, do you think Grandfather would mind terribly if we left, even if it is barely midnight?” she asked.

“I think he'll understand.” He released my hand and extended his hand to help Flora rise. The three of us made our way around the room toward the governor, where Henry and Flora thanked him for the evening and I, not sure what I was supposed to do, gave him a slight curtsy.

When we stepped outside, the view of the city wasn't nearly as serene as it had been when we arrived. There was a glowing red spot in the distance that had to have been made by either dozens of fires or one huge inferno. Henry glanced over his shoulder at me, a look of dismay on his face. The ride home was as quiet as the ride to the ball had been, but I felt like the quiet had an underlying tension to it.

As we entered the house, Flora said, “I'll send Jenkins to you in a moment to help you undress, Miss Newton.”

As she swept up the stairs, Henry leaned over and whispered in my ear, “My study, as soon as the maid is gone. Dress for action.” I nodded before following Flora up the stairs.

Although I would have preferred to undress myself, I did need assistance with the many tiny buttons and layers of garments. Miss Jenkins started to undo my hair, but I stopped her. I'd be there all night if she had to find and remove all those pins. “It's so beautiful, I'd like to keep it this way a little longer,” I said.

“I'll help you into your nightgown.”

“I'm perfectly capable of dressing myself for bed. I do it every night. You should get to bed. It's very late.”

“Thank you, miss,” she said. When she was gone, I put on a simple day dress, stuck a hat on my head as well as I could over the elaborate arrangement of curls, and tiptoed to Henry's study in my stocking feet with my coat over my arm and my boots in my hand.

He must have been listening for me, for he opened the door before I could knock and hustled me inside. He was dressed in sporting clothes, like he wore when he went out in search of bugs. “We should wait until we're certain the house has settled down for the night,” he whispered.

“We don't have much time.”

“It's just past one. I can get us downtown quickly, but we don't want to make Mrs. Talbot suspicious. I think she's a spy for the governor.”

“Does he suspect you?”

“I'm not sure. I think—I hope—that he merely put her in place to report on how I'm doing as guardian. The housekeeper who'd worked for Robert suddenly got an excellent position elsewhere, and His Grace was so kind as to send someone who came highly recommended so I wouldn't have to bother hiring anyone when I had so many other responsibilities.” His sarcastic tone told me how thrilled he'd been about that.

“And you would have looked more suspicious if you'd rejected her.”

“Exactly. I felt that if I could fool her, that would only strengthen my cover. I don't know that she cares about politics or has the slightest inkling of my criminal behavior, but she would report it if she knew I was sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night with the governess.”

He doused the single magical lamp in the room with a wave of his hand, and we waited in darkness and silence, straining our ears for any sign of life. “I think that's everyone in bed now,” he breathed. I nodded, and then he helped me put on my coat, put on his own overcoat, picked up his shoes, and eased the door open. We tiptoed down the stairs, then he led me to the rear of the house, into the kitchen and out the back door.

We stopped to put on our shoes, then ran across the small back yard to the carriage house, where he opened a side door and gestured me inside. The family carriage was in there, along with a small, sporty roadster. “It's a relic of my bachelor days,” Henry whispered.

“Aren't you still a bachelor?” I asked.

“Can one truly be a bachelor while bringing up three children? I know I certainly can't live like one.” He gave a wistful sigh. “Alas, my wild bachelor days ended when I was barely twenty-one.”

“You're a bandit,” I reminded him. “I think you manage your share of wildness.”

He didn't comment on that, saying instead, “The trick will be to get it out of the carriage house without waking the driver, who lives above.”

“That should be good practice for spiriting steam engines out of the city.”

“Very good point, Verity.” He studied the carriage house door, rubbing his hands together thoughtfully. “First, I think a noise-dampening spell on the door.” He placed his hands on the door, and it slid silently aside. He returned to the roadster, helped me into the passenger seat, then ran his hands along the vehicle, from front to back. Taking his seat behind the steering wheel, he brought the engine to life, and the roadster crept forward, the only sound the slight crunch of gravel. Once we were outside, he stopped to close the carriage house door, and then we were off into the alley and onto the side street.

Instead of heading to Fifth Avenue, he went a few blocks east, to an area that was less restricted. Traffic was light at this time of night, but it wasn't gone entirely, even with a curfew and martial law. The city was too busy to ever stop completely.

Once we'd blended into the flow of traffic, Henry asked, his eyes still on the road, “If you've known who I was all along, why didn't you ever report me?”

“Positions aren't that easy to come by, and having my employer in prison would have hurt my prospects. I have nowhere to go if I fail here. And then I learned what you do with your loot.” I couldn't quite bring myself to tell him that I liked him too much to turn him in. “But why do you take such risks, especially when you're responsible for children? Are you that committed to revolution?”

He turned onto another street, and I thought he would avoid the question until he finally said, “It started because I was bored. I know it sounds terribly gauche to complain about having too much privilege, but if you're clever and ambitious, being the younger son of a nobleman isn't fun. It would be unheard of to have a career or trade, and yet there's not even the work of maintaining the family estate because that's the eldest son's job.”

“Train robbery was the only other option?”

“We don't just rob trains.”

“Yes, sometimes there are boats.”

He turned to look at me. “How could you know?”

“I'm a spy. I know a great many things.”

Henry slowed the roadster as we approached a military checkpoint. “This should be interesting,” he muttered.

“Could we go around it?”

“There's probably something blocking every street heading downtown.”

“Your name should get you through it.”

“Only if you want everyone thinking I've eloped with the nonmagister governess.” He turned to me with a grin. “That would get both of us in trouble. I have an idea, though.”

He stopped when the soldiers flagged him down, but before they could speak to him, I felt a wave of magic. The soldiers went still, like the couriers at the fort had, and Henry sent the roadster flying down the street. He took a few turns so that we were no longer visible from the checkpoint, and then he leaned back against the driver's seat, letting out a pent-up breath.

“There was a gang of us in school, all of us in similar positions,” he then said, continuing his story as though there had been no interruption. “We'd heard of the rebel groups, and to us revolution sounded like a good idea, mostly because if the social order was upset enough, we might get the chance to do something with our lives. We came up with the idea of stealing from the government to finance the revolution, and when we finished school and came home, we decided to see if all our intricately laid plans would work. When they did, we kept doing it. We talked of revolution and made enough connections with the rebel movement to anonymously send money to them, but we mostly did it for fun.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Several years.”

“And no one ever suspected?”

“That was part of the fun, acting in such a way that we would be the last people anyone would suspect of being the Masked Bandits.”

“You did that very well. You almost fooled me. But didn't your family notice that you'd changed? Surely you weren't always the absentminded entomologist.”

“I went off to England for boarding school when I was eight and stayed for university. I only came home for holidays, so they barely saw me for nearly ten years. Lily was the one who would have noticed a difference, but she died while I was gone. After her death, I'm not sure Robert would have noticed if I'd returned acting like a circus clown. The children were too young to remember me from before.”

“Why bugs?”

“I'd always been interested in them. I'm not saying that if I had my choice of careers, I would have studied bugs, but I like them well enough that it wasn't too painful to spend so much time talking about them. The charade was easier before Robert died. Then I only had to play the obsessed amateur scientist in public. When I moved in with the children, in a house full of staff, I had to begin living the lie.”

He saw a police carriage ahead and turned the corner. “We're getting close now, aren't we?”

“You know the old theater on Eighth, just east of Broadway?”

“That's it? You're sure?”

“I've been there several times.”

He gave me a sidelong glance, then said, “Your charity project a couple of weeks ago—you were on the Battery when the troops fired on the children, weren't you? That was why you were so shaken when you got home.” It was a statement of fact, not a question.

I nodded, even though he was focused on the road and wouldn't see. “Yes. We were acting on information I overheard when I was at the governor's house for that dinner party. The rebels decided to counteract the governor's show of force and prevent a confrontation by having children there. I don't think anyone counted on the soldiers being so spooked that they'd fire on the children.”

“That was what made the difference,” he said softly. “I'd been playing at revolution before, paying lip service to the cause. But that changed things. I don't want my brother's children growing up in a world where that could happen.”

“You almost got caught last weekend, though.”

“We got reckless, and one of my friends paid the price. We're having to rethink our strategy now that the authorities know magisters might be involved.” With a shaky smile, he added, “And you withheld information from the authorities for me.” He stopped the roadster on the side of a residential street. After a long, serious look at me, he said, “To be honest, I initially hired you because I thought it wise to keep you under my power. You'd be dependent on me for a job and think twice about turning me in if you did figure it out.”

“You were right.”

He smiled again. “But I also liked your spirit. You were the first person to fight back, in all the robberies we'd done. I had no idea how wise a decision hiring you would turn out to be.”

He got out of the roadster and came around to my side to help me out. “I doubt we can get much farther on the road. The barricades will be much tighter. We'll have to figure out a way to get there on foot.”

“Leave that to me,” I said, taking his hand to lead him. We reached Fourteenth Street and crossed it, then I looked for a familiar door and hoped it would be unlocked. If it wasn't, I had plenty of hairpins. But it opened, and we made our way through the basement, which was even darker at night—that is, until Henry lit our way magically. He doused his light when we reached the yard. The next door wasn't locked, either, and soon we were within the rebels' zone.

There were sounds of fighting and the flicker of flames in the distance, closer to the university, but this area seemed to be relatively peaceful. Then we rounded a corner and saw a group of British soldiers approaching. Henry pulled me into a doorway, where we hid in the shadows as the soldiers banged on a door across the street and shouted. When there was no response, they kicked the door in and rushed inside. While they were in the building, we left our hiding place and ran. We saw several more groups of soldiers making a systematic search of the area. They were coming uncomfortably close to the theater.