“The inspector locked up the ballroom again when your plan failed. There should be no one inside, but it is wise to be careful.”
“What is the point of all this?” she asked wearily.
Sir Alistair straightened. “The point, my dear, is that the scientific brilliance of Sir Alistair Granville will finally be revealed to the world.”
She refrained from telling him what she thought of that. He turned a latch and slid the door sideways. The ballroom opened before them. After they stepped inside and Sir Alistair had closed the door behind them, Ivy saw that from this side the portal appeared to be part of the wall, covered in silk and encased in elaborate woodwork.
An eerie sense of abandonment cloaked the equipment ranged throughout the room. From the mantel of the nearest fireplace Sir Alistair took a lucifer match, held it to his lantern, and then set about lighting the wall sconces. The brightness only intensified the unsettling hush of the room, creating a sense that the scientists had deserted their dreams. Ivy felt more alone and helpless than ever.
Sir Alistair walked to where Mr. Scott had earlier instructed the footmen to deposit Simon’s giant electromagnets. The crates had been forced open, the contents thoroughly examined by the constables.
“Set them up,” he told her.
She gazed in alarm at the octagonal magnets with their maze of ridges. “They’re quite heavy.”
“You’ll manage. You do know the configuration, don’t you?”
“I saw it only once, but . . . I believe I remember....” Her teeth caught at her lip. If only she knew a way to configure the magnets as a weapon to use against this man. Then again, perhaps she didn’t need to. “Do you know what these magnets do?”
“Lady Gwendolyn was most helpful in her description of Simon’s project. What does he call it?”
“Electroportation.”
“Ah, yes.” He nodded. “I know he never succeeded in controlling the power levels well enough to make the process predictable and safe. As a scientist, he is innovative but limited. But with this”—he tapped the barrel of his gun against the box in her hands—“I will achieve what he never could. And the world, my dear, will watch and marvel.”
She shook her head in disgust. “Once again, you are stealing another man’s work. Borrowing his brilliance to compensate for what you simply do not possess.”
His features contorting, he swung his gun high as if to strike her. Ivy braced for a blow that never came. When she opened her eyes, he appeared to have regained his composure. “Everything he is, he is because of me. Don’t you understand? I took him under my wing and introduced him to the very principles on which he based the whole of his research. He owes me this. He owes me—”
“His life?” Oh, she knew she shouldn’t goad him, but his self-delusions roused an outrage she could not contain.
Lips pinched and nostrils flaring, he gestured at the magnets standing inside the first of the crates. “Get to work and be quick about it. We don’t want to keep the consortium waiting a moment longer than is necessary.”
Ivy erected the first set of three magnets on their metal stands close to the generator. She worked until her back ached, her shoulders throbbed, and her legs and arms shuddered from the overbearing weight of the equipment. Sir Alistair instructed her to set up the second three magnets across the room, near the ballroom doors—a much farther distance than in Simon’s laboratory.
Could someone be electroported across such an expanse?
When all was ready, Sir Alistair retrieved the wooden box that held the queen’s stone. Placing it on a demonstration table, he flipped open the lid. His chin jerked upward as if an invisible blow had struck him. He backed up a foot or two. “At my command, you are to take the stone and insert it between the generator’s coils.”
Ivy moved closer to the open box. The charge she had felt through the wood now flowed freely through the air, sparking little pinpricks on the exposed skin of her face and hands. When she stood over the stone, the current crawled down her back, her legs, between her breasts. She felt woozy, breathless, and braced her feet firmly on the floor as she leaned to scoop the stone into her palms.
The instant she wedged it between the coils, a waft of energy shoved her backward. Tiny bolts of lightning danced among the coils. The pistons began to thrust up and down and the center beam seesawed. A red-hot glow traveled along the connecting wires, and soon the first of the magnets began to hum.
The noise grew to a roar that filled the room. The chandeliers clinked; the paintings on the walls vibrated off their hooks and crashed to the floor; plaster crumbled in snowy drifts from the carved ceiling. Ivy ducked her head and pressed her hands to her ears, but she could not quell the awful pounding of her heart, pummeled again and again against her ribs in rhythm with the driving currents.
Simon’s generator had never done
this
before.
“Sir Alistair, we must turn it off. It’s too dangerous.”
As if he hadn’t heard her, he stood with his chin raised and his eyes half closed, his lips stretched in a grin that terrified her in its mad exuberance. The revolver had sagged in his grip, and Ivy started in his direction with an impulsive, desperate hope of dislodging it. He returned to his senses and swung the gun toward her.
“They will come now,” he shouted above the din. “They will hear the uproar and come. We had better be ready for them.”
He’d no sooner spoken than the ballroom doors rattled and burst inward. Ivy whirled to see Inspector Scott, his fellow constables, and the startled members of the consortium filling the doorway and packing the hallway.
“What is the meaning of this?” The inspector’s demand could barely be heard, but Ivy read the query on his gaping lips.
“Gentlemen,” Sir Alistair bellowed back, “for your own safety I must entreat you to venture no farther. But watch as my assistant and I astound you with a feat of science never before imagined.”
With that, Sir Alistair strode to Ivy, gripped her arm, and dragged her toward the first set of electromagnets.
“This way.” Simon led Lord Barensforth down the spiraling stone steps. As a boy visiting here many years ago, he’d been strictly forbidden to venture into the manor’s honeycomb of medieval passages, and so of course he had. He knew every secret crevice of the old monastery, where the monks had hidden in times of war, and where they had concealed their treasures from unscrupulous barons and covetous monarchs.
If Alistair had forced Ivy into one of those crevices, it could take days to find her. But Barensforth had heard the man specifically mention the ballroom, which only made sense. If Alistair sought recompense for the perceived wrongs done him by the scientific community, where better than the place they had gathered to celebrate their collective victories?
If he’d had any doubts, the clamor rising from inside the ballroom dispelled them. At the landing, he pressed himself to the door that, from the other side, was all but invisible. The wood vibrated against his ear and his flattened palms. The sensation traveled through him until the hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
Beside him, Barensforth set a hand on the door, then snatched it away. “What in bloody hell is that?”
“My generator . . . and the power of Her Majesty’s stone.” He slid the door open an inch and put an eye to the gap. “Galileo’s teeth!”
Inside, Ivy dug in her heels as Alistair attempted to pull her into the energy that streamed between the electromagnets. Even from where he stood, Simon perceived the intensified force of the current, a power even he had never dreamed of harnessing. Such power would kill. Of that he had no doubt.
There was no time to plan, no room for stealth. Fear and nausea roiled through him until the edges of his vision swam in a sickening haze. If Ivy so much as touched the energy stream, it might instantly tear her apart.
Thrusting caution aside, he slid the door all the way open and bolted into the room. He sensed rather than saw Barensforth fall in beside him. Engaged in their struggle, neither Alistair nor Ivy saw them coming. Alistair pressed the revolver’s barrel to Ivy’s side, and Simon’s heart all but burst from his chest.
At the opposite end of the ballroom, Inspector Scott and several of his constables spilled through the doors but jolted to a collective halt, the men colliding with a force that threatened to topple them as a whole.
Scott must have seen the weapon, must have calculated the danger to Ivy should he and his men continue their stampede. Now they stood in a confused jumble and exchanged glances, some covering their ears with their hands, others pressing their palms over their hearts. All were experiencing the effects of the electromagnetic flow.
Simon, too, halted and swung out an arm to hinder Barensforth’s progress. They had one and
only
one weapon at their disposal: surprise. And a single opportunity to use it. If Alistair was to see them, he might fire his weapon or shove Ivy into the current.
Like the calm at the eye of a storm, instinct and the logical progression of what he must do overrode Simon’s rampant terror of losing Ivy. If he wished to save her, he must think and act rationally, with nothing less than scientific precision.
He motioned for Barensforth to circle behind the generator. Then he himself picked his way cautiously in front of it, having to duck beneath the sizzling wires connecting the apparatus to the magnets. The current seized control of his heartbeat and each breath he drew, forcing both into an unnatural, painful rhythm. The energy heaved at him from all directions, until remaining upright became an exhausting feat of strength. Ivy and Alistair were now only a few feet away. Simon heard her pleading attempts to reason with her captor. Alistair’s laughter rose above the clamor as he continued to push her closer to the magnets.
The bastard faced Simon now and should have seen him, but he was so intent on his goal that he saw nothing but Ivy and the surging, sparking energy. Simon was no more than a foot or two from losing her, from watching her beautiful body disintegrate and scatter into a million particles of matter.
Deliberately, he stepped between her and the stream. Sir Alistair gave her a forceful shove; in the same instant, he saw Simon, and shock registered on his features. Simon opened his arms, caught Ivy, and hurled her with every shred of strength he possessed into Barensforth’s waiting hands. Without hesitation the earl dragged her away, though with an arm reaching toward Simon and her face filled with agony, she resisted her brother-in-law as vigorously as she had resisted Alistair.
Hot fury flashed in Alistair’s eyes before instantly cooling. His mouth pulled to a feral grin. “It doesn’t matter to me who electroports.”
Head down and arms outflung, Alistair charged. Simon parried with his own arms to deflect the blow, but Alistair nonetheless caught his shoulder. The force sent him stumbling backward. The roar of the current filled his ears and his skull, and a thousand needles dug into his left shoulder. The pain burgeoned, becoming like burning dagger points tearing at skin and muscle and bone. Not wounding, but destroying.
The energy spread, seared, took control of his physical self. His vision darkened and blurred. Ivy’s screams faded to a muted hum. He felt himself dying, disintegrating. . . .
Only one sensation remained: that of his fingers fisted around some part of Alistair. Simon could not have said which part it was. He only knew he had purchase on the man. In a burst of effort he used the leverage to yank Alistair closer. The wafting energy enveloped them both and thrust them in a vortex that reversed their positions.
Relief flowed like cascading spring water through Simon’s body the instant he no longer touched the charged stream. Pain gripped him, but the devastating effects of the current eased. His vision cleared. Caught off-balance in front of him, Alistair let out a roar, flailed his arms wide, and staggered backward. . . .
The current caught him and ripped across his back, arching his body like a bow. Simon’s left arm hung limply, but he reached out with his right and tried to catch the floundering man. The air snapped, and the current lifted Alistair off his feet. An exploding burst of light thrust Simon to his knees. When he looked up, a terrified Alistair stretched out a hand. His mouth opened on a silent scream, and then he dissipated into a glittering swarm of light.
A blast shook the room, wrenching Ivy out of Aidan’s arms and tossing her off her feet. As she went down, she saw Simon blown back from the force of the energy. He fell to his knees and Alistair . . . Alistair reached out and then—
He was gone. Simply . . . gone.
She smacked the floor hard, her knees and hands and elbows reverberating from the impact. Still, she didn’t waste a moment but shook away her disorientation and scrambled to her feet, half crawling the first few steps until she managed to swing upright. As she hurried to Simon, she spared only the briefest glance across the room to where Sir Alistair should have reappeared within the second configuration of magnets. Nothing happened. She reached Simon and sank beside him.
“My love.” Anything more she might have uttered was lost in a sob. He stirred the instant her hands closed on his shoulders. A rumbling groan escaped him, and Ivy whisked her hands away. “Aidan, a doctor. He needs a doctor immediately.”
Aidan relayed the command in a shout that carried over the din of the generator. Then he came up behind her. “Ivy, we have to stop this thing before it takes the house down around us.”
She shot a look up at the machinery, vibrating dangerously. The pistons were pumping so furiously they appeared about to fly off their housing. Aidan moved to the wires that connected the power source to the magnets.
“Aidan, don’t!” she shouted. “They’re too hot to touch.” She started to rise.
Simon caught her wrist. “My shoulder . . . gone . . . ?”