The Transference Engine (34 page)

I sighed in relief. Miss Ada and Lord William had progressed to finger brushing as he relieved her of an empty wineglass. Time to return to Mr. Babbage and
my
purpose tonight. Sir Drew would have to wait until later, presuming he didn't grow impatient with me and make a liaison with the soprano.

“The Difference Engine and its ability to calculate and print accurate logarithmic tables will be a tremendous boon to navigation . . .” Sir Drew said idly.

“I cannot make the Difference Engine work,” Babbage finally admitted in a tone so quiet I had to strain to hear him.

“Miss Ada found the errors in the mathematics this afternoon. She can make it work,” I jumped into the conversation as if I'd never left.

Babbage's eyes widened with hope. Sir Drew's mouth quirked up in an affectation of boredom. I'd have believed his expression if I didn't see the sparkle of amusement in his eyes.

“Then Miss Ada must go over my designs for the Analytical Machine this very evening,” Babbage insisted, taking a step toward the lady with his sheaf of papers held before him like a talisman. (Somehow he'd gathered up the stray papers without toppling over.) He wobbled a bit as he stepped. Sir Drew easily guided him back to the wall.

“Not tonight.” I checked over my shoulder. Our hostess rang a little crystal bell to gain the attention of her audience. Ada and Lord William made their way back to their chairs, looking expectantly toward the countess. Lady Byron and her Furies hovered on the fringes of the crowd around the princess and her mother. They'd be mightily disappointed when all the chairs in the first and second rows filled with higher ranking guests.

That would put them in the third row with Miss Ada. I couldn't have that.

“Mr. Babbage,” I said firmly, gathering my courage. “Will you allow me to oversee the building of the Difference Engine, thus freeing you to design other projects?”

He dragged his gaze away from Ada and back to me.

“You have the funding. I have some knowledge of things mechanical.” I also had access to some talented Romany traders who could make
anything
work. “Miss Ada has corrected the problems in the early design. Let me help you with this, and when it is done and working, your investors will throw money at you for a machine that stores and retrieves information—like the cards some libraries are adopting.”

Oh, yes, I had plans for the little café Ada's solicitor negotiated to purchase. “The properties of light and refraction seem to be ideal for such a machine.” I didn't know that for certain, but the distortion of images by the thick window panes of the café had given me an idea. The swirls of coffee seemed to confirm them when I looked after supper.

“Light? Prisms?” His gaze turned inward for a long moment.

I wanted to shake him back into his senses so I could take my proper place beside Ada and Lord William, edging out Lady Byron and the Furies. The way Lord William tilted his head toward my girl, listening attentively—probably to a dissertation on ratios, algebra, and abstract calculations well beyond me—I hoped the eighth Baron King would have the courtesy to call upon us tomorrow, and reserve the first dance at the first ball of the Season.

Babbage came out of his reverie and stared at the papers in his hand. “Light and prism. Yes. That is the solution. May I call upon Miss Ada tomorrow to go over my calculations?”

“Will you give me the supervision of the Difference Engine?”

Sir Drew frowned at me.

“Yes, yes, do with it what you can. I no longer have the time . . .” Mr. Charles Babbage wandered back out the way he'd come, still stinking of drink but no longer drunk.

As I turned to take my seat, Sir Drew offered me his arm in escort. That surprised me. Polite society expected him to take a mistress, but never to identify her in public. He endangered my reputation by such a gesture, and thus my ability to protect Miss Ada . . .

A commotion at the doorway, loud voices of protest and shuffling bodies, halted everyone in their tracks. The Countess Kirkenwood ceased her introduction of the next aria in mid-sentence. All eyes turned toward the towering white-and-gilt double doors at the entrance to the room as they slammed open, banging and reverberating against the walls. The sight of one hundred bodies whirling in protest at the disturbance nearly sent my vision spiraling into the darkness of a vision.

Sir Drew dug his fingers into the flesh of my forearm. That slight pain jolted my eyes back to reality. I had no time to lose myself. He knew Madame Magdala well enough to realize the consequences of losing me to a trance.

The sight of a slight young man with old-fashioned flowing locks, a silk shirt open at the collar with lavish sleeves barely contained by a loose black cloak with three caplets around the shoulders, high riding boots splattered with mud, and eyes wild and unfocused would have dragged me out of the vision just as easily. The intruder dressed in a style of nearly twenty years ago, more romantic than practical.

The exact same fashion favored by Lord Byron.

I think I groaned. Couldn't these idiots at least keep up with the times?

The interloper carried a flintlock pistol in one hand and a clay pot, stoppered with cork and a braided wick, in the other. I'd seen those vessels before. Filled with gunpowder and sharp bits of metal, Lord Byron had favored them for making loud noises and wide craters.

The painted clay looked vaguely Greek. A poor imitation. Of course it looked Greek. The disillusioned young men who worshipped Byron and his poetry had to imitate all of his preferences and his vices.

How many lives would he willingly take in his quest to resurrect Lord Byron?

“Give me the girl!” the interloper demanded, waving his gun toward every young lady in the crowd.

Princess Victoria screamed. Her mother screamed louder, and shriller. A bevy of men hastened to stand between their future queen and the madman. Lord William among them.

My girl stood alone and unprotected in her shimmering dress.

The madman zeroed in on her. In five long strides he closed the distance and held the gun to her temple.

“No.” I tried to scream, but no sound emerged. Electricity created the glowing afterimages. The electricity relied on the flow of sparks jumping from one bead to the next. The Byron imitator could use those sparks to ignite his jug of Greek death.

A new screech pierced the air. Lady Byron. I knew it of old. More strident and attention gathering than the princess, or her mother. She fainted, followed by more yelling and chaos from her Furies.

They were of no consequence in this business. I stalked toward Miss Ada with determination, eyes burning with hatred and fear.

The gun turned on me.

“You! You caused the death of my lord!”

Single-minded bastard. I hadn't heard that accusation before.

“You destroyed the machine that would have kept him alive.” Oh, that.

As long as he kept the weapon trained on me and away from my girl. But he had his gun arm wrapped around her neck, tightening in a crushing reflex. The other arm still cradled the little clay pot, the more dangerous weapon.

I sensed movement at the edges of the room while the madman looked only at me. “We need this woman to save my lord before his soul withers to nothing!”

“His soul was a withered mass of ugliness long before he died,” I snarled.

“He was a genius. His poetry lifted so many to the heavens. He saved my soul,” the man countered.

Sir Drew and Lord William edged closer now that they knew the princess was safe. Safe only as long as the idiot did not ignite the wick in his bomb.

“His actions damaged more people,” I said. As long as I could keep him talking, we could close in on him.

“Don't come any closer, or I will blow up all of you!”

I paused.

So did Sir Drew.

But Lord William, bless his brave heart and gallant soul, was to the man's off side and obscured from view by Miss Ada's elaborate gauze turban complete with bobbing feathers.

Never had the fashion looked less ridiculous than at that moment.

“I'm taking the girl. She's the only one who can rebuild the machine.” The wild-eyed fanatic urged his captive forward. She dug in her heels.

His hand slipped to her sleeve. A spark jumped from the dress. He jerked back, shaking his shocked hand in disbelief.

He still held the Greek jug.

“She can't rebuild the transference engine without me, and I refuse to ever allow such a machine to be built again,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Then I'll take you both. I'll do whatever I have to in order to revive Lord Byron.” He pushed again, his arm tightening around Ada's throat—carefully away from the dress—while the gun pointed right between my eyes.

Something stirred in Ada's eyes. Gone the blind panic of a moment ago. Gone the meekness hammered into her by her mother. What emerged was the strong woman I had raised with skills to defend herself.

She stomped on her captor's foot with her soft shoes. The thin soles with only an inch of heel barely changed the man's attention. But the elbow to his gut did.

He doubled over, coughing, carrying Miss Ada with him. Her skirts brushed his face as they tumbled to the ground.

He screamed as much in outrage from the electrical shock as pain.

The gun exploded.

I felt a whoosh of air past my ear before I heard the flash of gunpowder.

More cautious guests hit the floor, arms over their vulnerable heads.

Every detail jumped into perfect clarity.

Sir Drew and Lord William rushed forward. Not before the electricity in the glass necklace sparked repeatedly in random directions. One bit of fire landed on the wick.

With visions of the entire house burning to cinders flashing before my eyes, I lunged for the clay pot. Sir Drew grabbed the necklace, breaking the filaments that bound the strands together as well as the chain of sparks leaping from one to the other. Lord William wrenched the gun away from the madman.

The sizzling wick had nearly reached the lip of the pot. Too close for me to grab.

But I had my trusty hatpin. I stabbed the wick and flicked it free as the flamelet tried to sink into the pot. Angrily I ground the spark to ash beneath my heel.

Only then did I breathe.

“It's not fair!” wailed the young man. Suddenly he looked very young and vulnerable with one arm pinned high against his back by Sir Drew. “It's not fair that
she
should live and the poet king cannot. We have to find a way to restore him to a body. The world dies more each day without his genius.” He lapsed into sobs that demanded pity.

I had none for him or his kind. “While I live, I will fight every one of you fanatics to the death to prevent the insanity of Lord Byron from returning. He was a murdering necromancer, for heaven's sake,” I hissed, making certain the young man heard me, but no one outside our immediate quartet.

My focus expanded, barely noting the screaming guests and fainting ladies. I saw only that my girl was safe, shuddering with huge sobs. She reached for me instinctively. I'd been her primary companion for ten years. More a mother to her than the lady who claimed the title.

Lady Byron beat me in the race to hold the girl upright while Sir Drew and Lord William wrestled the wild-eyed poet to the ground. As if in slow motion other gentlemen joined them in restraining the sobbing lout. Heavily built men in house livery appeared to remove the garbage and turn him over to the authorities.

I had no choice but to follow Lady Byron, her Furies, and my Miss Ada. Lord William and Sir Drew remained behind.

“No one is to be admitted, Carrick!” Lady Byron informed the butler as the doorbell rang for the fifth time the next morning. I was surprised she'd left her bed. Probably sensing that the world would come to her today in search of gossip about the night before. She'd thrown herself upon the lounge in the second parlor with a damp cloth over her eyes. I'd seen nothing of the Furies.

Miss Ada had roused herself, her adventures forgotten, in the face of some new mathematical challenge or scientific paper to write. She still bore a few bruises on her throat where the glass beads had pressed tightly before Drew broke the strand. She ignored them easily.

But I had been watching the front of the house for one particular caller. I yanked the door open wide two hand widths before Carrick could reach for the latch. “Welcome, Lord William.”

We exchanged pleasantries in the front hall. I took his hat and thrust it at Carrick before the senior servant could protest.

“I've come to return Miss Ada's necklace.” He held out the strand of beads, all jumbled together, some still on their string, others not. The pendant bead still had a bit of copper wire protruding from the bottom of one ray of the starburst.

“Thank you, my lord,” Miss Ada said from the stairway. She descended gracefully, despite a furious Mrs. Carr protesting behind her. She embodied the reason we called Lady Byron's companions Furies. They were rarely less than furious in the presence of a man.