Born of Treasure (Treasure Chronicles Book 2) (38 page)

he doll raised her leg, the gears grinding, and upset the balance of her metal body. She toppled against the wooden floor of her house, but her other leg lifted in the same movement, more gears grinding.

Jane sighed, scooping the doll up while it attempted to walk, the gears moving slower until the five-inch creation lay still in her palm. The scent of lavender wafted from the doll’s purple silk dress. Jane had used her best skills to sew the tiniest stitches along the full skirt and bodice.

Sunlight from the playroom window bathed the dollhouse and made the doll’s yellow curls glow. Jane had used some of her own hair; it had to be a perfect replica. So far it was, since it couldn’t walk.

Humming, she set the Jane doll on the miniature canopy bed and sat back on her knees to frown at the dollhouse her father had built. Three towers, two fireplaces, a working lift, and clocks that ticked off the time in every room.

“Jane Pendleton!” Her brother stomped into the room, his hands curled into fists and his nostrils flared. Brass chains fastened around the ankles of his boots jangled with each stomp.

“What?” She widened her eyes to look innocent, although her heartbeat sped up.

“Why aren’t you at Father’s business meeting?” He spoke slowly as though she were a simpleton as well as an invalid.

“Because I’m not the governor. He is.” Jane folded her hands in her lap.
Neither are you, Robert.
She picked at the wide, pink sash that contrasted with the crisp whiteness of her dress. If Robert hadn’t insisted, she could go without a corset. Instead, the contraption bit into her ribs and constricted her lungs. She couldn’t bend over as far as she needed to when she tinkered at her workbench.

“You’re twelve. Why are you still in this nursery? Father needs to be proud of us. We represent him.”

She swept her gaze across the room with the pale blue walls and floor-to-ceiling shelves covered in old toys she and her father were working on converting into machines. The eighteen-inch doll with the scarlet silk dress could cry whenever someone walked by it, and the soldier could fire a cotton ball from his musket. “If Father asks me to go, then I’ll go.” She could’ve pointed out that Robert was only fifteen and giving himself airs, but then he might break something in the room. Last time she’d contradicted him, he’d smashed her easel—the one she’d designed to hand her paints when she verbally asked for them.

“He shouldn’t need to ask.” Robert folded his arms. His polished cufflinks winked on the sleeves of his white shirt and matching buttons lined the front of his velveteen vest. “The government is more important than toys. Mother never cared and look at what happened to her.”

Jane stiffened. “She was poisoned.” Leave it to her brother to make their mother’s death a flippant rebuke.

“Exactly.”

How could her brother be so callous? No one had found the culprit. Every time Jane wandered the hallways, she studied each person she passed, wondering if he or she had been the one to do it. Someday, she would find the culprit, and she would invent something that would torture that man or woman until they felt the same sorrow she did.

The clocks in the dollhouse chimed in unison. The one over the playroom’s door chimed a second after.

“What’s all that racket?” Robert scowled at the dollhouse.

“Noontime.” He would never leave unless she did something to annoy him or accompanied him back to their father’s meeting. “Want to see what I designed last night?” Jane lifted a doll from the attic where her father had constructed miniature trunks that opened and shut.

She fit the clock key into the doll’s back and wound it until the gears clicked. Pulling the key away, the doll’s arms moved up and down.

“See?” Jane smiled at her brother. “Amazing, isn’t it? I’m working on making a doll walk next. I told Father we should find a way to make the dolls mimic us, so that whatever we do, they do. He said that would take magic, though.”

Robert pursed his lips.

“I’m making the dolls look like us,” Jane continued. That would be certain to bore him. “I have a doll for you and a doll for Father. That doll has a suit on. The doll in the ball gown is Mother. The one on the bed is me and this one will be my daughter.”

“You don’t have a daughter.”

“I will someday. I’ll name her Ainsley.”

“Don’t you know you have to use names approved by the government?” Robert lunged forward faster than she could react and snatched the doll from her hand. Jane grabbed the sloped roof of the dollhouse to pull herself up, leaning against it. The walker her father had made for her lay behind her. She should’ve kept it closer, but she hadn’t expected her brother to roar into the room.

“Give her back,” Jane squeaked. Pain lashed up her right leg as it did whenever she tried to stand on it without assistance. Her father had built the dollhouse to be her height when she was nine, so she had to bend forward, the corset stabbing into her budding breasts.

“You should want an honor medal, not a doll.” Robert threw the delicate toy at the door. It struck the wood and fell, one arm snapping off. He lifted his foot to kick the house.

“Stop!” Jane lifted her arms without thinking and fell sideways, wincing as her leg hurt fiercer. That stupid defect that left her foot misshapen, twisted, unable to be used.

Robert stepped back, smirking. “No wonder Father doesn’t push for you to be at these meetings. The governor should be perfect. He doesn’t want you.” Laughing, Robert marched out the door while Jane’s shoulders shook with sobs, tears burning her eyes.

Her brother slammed the playroom door and the doll lifted her remaining arm with a grinding of her gears.

Metal scraped against metal. The glass in the windowpanes shook. Chimes tinkled outside as the wind blew. The glass shook harder before it lifted. A leg slid through the opening, then a hip, and a body. A fourteen-year-old girl hung by one hand as she pulled down the disused window and dropped to the floor.

“Oomph.” She lost her balance as she waved her arms and tumbled onto her bottom. The exclamation bounced off the walls, the one to the right made of stone and windows, the other wood and doors. Gray paint peeled, and she wondered what color it might’ve been once. The windows sat high toward the ceiling, offering in the dull light of a cloudy evening. The gas lamps on the wall remained dark, cold.

She stood to brush dust off her black breeches. The hallway remained empty, but an intruder alarm would have sounded farther in the mansion, and someone would come soon.

Her bronze-colored flats with the contrasting silver-colored toes slapped against a wooden floor coated with grime. No one must’ve been in the hallway for twenty-four years, just as they’d told her.

The door across from her had a pineapple cutout in the center. Not that one. She headed right, passing a birdcage cutout, a whistle cutout, and stopped at the door with the songbird cutout. It could’ve been a raven if she tipped her head just so. Crouching, she pulled the lock pick kit from her slack’s pocket and fiddled with the catch until the gears clicked. She turned the knob and stepped inside, leaving the door ajar.

Dust motes floated in the air, visible by the light from the two windows in the far wall. A mechanical rocking horse rested in the corner by a miniature steam train set on a table. Toys covered the shelves, all colors dimmed by fading and dust, as though a rainbow had weathered.

A dollhouse rested in the center of the room on an ornate carpet. She walked across the floor to kneel behind it, that side left open for hands to play in the rooms. More dust coated the furniture and dolls. She found the male doll in the suit and sat him at the long table in the downstairs meeting room. The little girl doll with the yellow curls slept in the bed. That one could stay.

She set the little boy doll in the kitchen and took a glass bottle, no bigger than her littlest fingernail, from her pocket. The bottle went on the table next to him; a red
X
had been painted on the side of the bottle. The mother doll in the ball gown lay at the boy’s feet, one arm spread overhead.

The Ainsley doll went in the open doorway.

The girl walked to the shelves and located the silver music box. Opening it, she took out the clock key. She had to blow on the hole in the side of the dollhouse before the key would fit, then she turned it once, twice, thrice—it took fifteen tries before the gears clicked.

The clocks in the dollhouse turned.

“State yourself!” A man stepped into the doorway. He wore a black shirt and matching pants, his shoes as shiny as polished silverware.

The girl stood up from behind the dollhouse and lifted her hands to show she held no weapon.