Shadow of the War Machine (The Secret Order) (6 page)

Looking down at the smudged and torn pages, I wondered if he had kept the ones I had sent in return. I had written stacks and stacks of letters filled with all the little things that I needed to share. I didn’t know if the day would come when I would run out of words and we could sit silently side by side knowing all there was to know about one another. I didn’t imagine such a thing was possible.

It seemed such a luxury. I let out a deep sigh. I wasn’t sure if we would ever find a way to be together so often that we ran out of words. We had very different goals. I only hoped whatever it was that linked the two of us was strong enough to keep us anchored.

Without Will, I felt adrift, but with every day that went by, my own life continued on. I wished that we could be together, but wishes and dreams make poor bricks for building. I wondered if time would eventually draw us completely apart.

A knock sounded at the shop door.

I clutched the letters to my chest as my blood rushed in my ears. I was alone. The lock was damaged and my alarms disabled.

The knock fell harder, beating against the wood with a grim insistence. The person knocking wanted in, and badly.

The pistol Will had given to me for protection lay uselessly within my workshop. If I retrieved it, I would have to pass into the gallery of the toy shop and closer to danger.

The iron poker lay against the fireplace. I grasped it, plotting where I should strike, the head or knee.

Knock, knock, knock.

I fervently prayed for the knocks to fall silent as I clasped the poker so tightly, my fingers felt numb.

“Meg! For the love of Pete, are you in there?” a voice called with a distinct Scottish brogue.

“Oh my goodness.” I dropped the poker to the floor and ran into the gallery as fast as I could. I couldn’t open the door fast enough. My fingers were shaking.

As I flung open the door, swirls of snowflakes danced about and landed on a familiar black tam. There at the threshold, in the swirling snow, a young man stood in a thick black coat. He seemed larger and stronger than the last time
I had seen him. His work gave him a hale glow and, even in winter, a swarthy look to his tanned skin. The snow clung to the dark hair curling behind his ears, as if it wished to whisper to him a secret.

“Will!” I held on to the door, barely containing the urge to throw myself into his arms. “Whatever are you doing here? And at this time of night?”

“I’m standing at your door freezing.”

I opened the door slightly wider, then hesitated. I looked behind me. The house was empty. I didn’t have a chaperone. If we were caught together, we’d be forced to marry, and either Will would have to give up his position at the Foundry or I would have to give up my apprenticeship. “Come in quickly. Before you are seen.”

I grabbed him by his coat and pulled him inside. He slammed the door and pulled me against him into his warm embrace.

Finally in that moment, like the greatest of Christmas miracles, all the fear and darkness fell away and for that moment in his arms, I felt safe.

He held me tight, cradling my head against his warm chest. The velvet of his doublet felt soft on my cheek. “Why did you leave Oliver’s?” he asked. “You aren’t safe here alone.”

“How did you come to be here?” He was still wearing the uniform of the Foundry. Dressed all in black, from the tam at his head to his high stockings, the only color in his otherwise traditional Scottish attire was his MacDonald plaid kilt. He must have come straight from the ship, but I hadn’t realized it had arrived already. The Foundry workers weren’t due in London until the oath.

“I had some time and took the train. Oliver wanted me here for the reveal of his latest Amusement and asked Gordon to release me early. Lucinda wrote that David had volunteered to collect me, but when I arrived at the station, no one was there.” Will looked around the shop and scowled at the mess. He bent and lifted a tin soldier from the floor.

I had always assumed that “seeing red” was nothing more than a turn of phrase, until that very moment. “David was supposed to collect you?”

That bastard!

“When I realized no one was coming for me, I took a cab. But when I arrived at the town house, Lady Briony informed me that you had left for here. What happened?” He looked around the ravaged gallery.

“David proposed,” I confessed, though a second later I realized he was probably asking what had happened to the shop.

Will straightened, and I felt the chill of the air on the back of my neck. “Should I be offering my felicitations?” His voice was cautious, but more reasoned than I had ever heard him when it came to David.

“Only to Lucinda and Oliver. They are expecting a child. I turned David down.” I twisted my fingers. “It was quite humiliating, actually.”

His shoulders softened. He looked at me. I couldn’t read his expression. I knew he had to be pleased that I had refused David, but that wasn’t what I saw when I looked at him. There was something much starker, much more serious in his face.

“I hope that you didn’t refuse him for me,” he said. “I adore you, Meg, but if you have any affection for him at all, he is clearly the better match for you. He can give you things I simply cannot.”

“Stop this.” My voice sounded sharp even to my own ears. My heart was too raw. “I cannot bear when you attempt to convince me of your terrible little worth. For your information I would not marry David, even if I had never met you, especially not after what he did tonight. And I would not marry him if he were as rich as Midas.”

“He’s richer,” Will mumbled.

I reached out and touched Will’s cheek, turning his face to mine. “And he can be as foolish. He believes me to be something I’m not, and I refuse to conform myself to his ideal. I couldn’t live with myself if I did.” I took a deep breath. “I have my own means, and I’m quite content with them.”

I leaned in toward him and brushed my own kiss across his warm lips. “I am content,” I whispered.

Will reached out and cupped my cheek, then leaned in and brushed the softest kiss across my forehead. I felt myself melting as surely as the snow clinging to his hair.

“Your means are in a disturbing state of disrepair,” he commented. “What happened
here
?”

“The man in the clockwork mask paid a visit. I wasn’t at home at the time. He left his calling card.” I sighed as I looked at the ruins. “At least he didn’t burn the place down.”

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Will whispered with a strain in his voice.

“I’m not safe. That is the problem.” I pulled away from him and gathered the matches so I could light the rest of the lamps. At least we didn’t have to remain in the cold and the dark. “I won’t ever be safe so long as I’m hunted.”

Will let his gaze drop to the floor, then looked up with
the steady resolve I had always admired in him. “I’ll start a fire, and we can set the shop right.”

“Thank you for your help,” I said, hoping he could feel the depth of my sincerity.

“I’m very glad to give it.” We both set to work. I took a lamp upstairs and changed back into a simple dress I could work in. By the time I came down the stairs, Will had a cheerful fire roaring in the fireplace, with a kettle of tea on the cast-iron stove in the kitchen.

He had gathered up the letters and was leafing through them.

“You kept these?” His deep brown eyes looked up at me in both confusion and wonder. “They say nothing of importance.”

“I disagree.” I took the stack of letters and crossed the room to where the ribbon still lay on the floor. I tied the bundle and returned it to its place on the small table near the fire.

The corners of Will’s lips tipped up in a slight smile. He rolled up his sleeves as we entered the gallery.

We set to work. It took us most of the night, but as we restored things to order, I told about finding the
Méduse
. He listened intently as I recounted everything I had seen in the
ledger and the possibility that the man in the mask would be traveling across the Atlantic in a matter of weeks. I confessed that my lack of resources disheartened me, but there really wasn’t much evidence that could prove my grandfather was in France.

He could still be anywhere. We only knew that the man in the mask frequently traveled to France, but I couldn’t tell if he was traveling beyond to the rest of Europe.

“I don’t know what I should do,” I said as I set the remainder of the cloth dolls on their shelf.

Will looked up from repairing one of my alarm balls. “You’re right. We need to know more.”

“We?”

He tossed the ball to me, and I caught it and put it into my pocket. “You pulled me into this entire mess nearly a year ago. You think I don’t wish to see the end of it?” he asked.

“I thought you were more clever than that.”

“Not nearly clever enough, it seems.”

I shook my head in bemusement. “I’m not willing to take a risk on so little information,” I said, looking around at the clean and restored gallery. “It would be foolish.”

“Then we need more information.” He bent over and inspected the lock on the door, then searched through my box
of tools. “This all started when you found a letter from your grandfather in Rathford’s workshop.”

I felt a chill run down my neck. “Yes, what of it?”

He looked up at me, and the light caught in his dark eyes. “Perhaps it is time for us to return.”

“
DEAR LORD, WHY DIDN
’
T I
think of that?” I asked.

“Because I’m the clever one.” Will flipped a hammer into the air and caught it again by the handle. “You’re good friends with Rathford’s heir, aren’t you?”

Lord Rathford had been our former employer and an Amusementist. He had surreptitiously invented a powerful and extremely dangerous invention, and then manipulated both Will and me into opening the locks that my grandfather had used to keep him from finishing his abomination and destroying the fabric of time itself. Rathford had been the last person to contact my grandfather. Rathford must have known something.

After Lord Rathford’s death, his estate had been inherited by one of my fellow apprentices.

“I can write Peter a letter. He wouldn’t have any objections to our searching the workshop.” It felt as if a heavy weight had been suddenly lifted from my chest.

“No, Peter would not.” Will’s expression took on a roguish quality, which was accentuated by the ruggedness that suited him so well in Scotland. I felt the tremor of excitement deep in my middle. He was a very attractive man, and I was completely alone with him. I had to remember to keep a wary eye on my baser nature. I now knew how impetuous it could be.

Will hammered at the door, realigning the broken latch. Then he set to work on the frame. “Peter’s mother might have some objections to your spending time in a secret workshop alone with an unmarried Scot and her son.”

“That’s a very good point. We can’t do much confined to the parlor while under the eye of a chaperone.” Peter’s family was forced to endure a lot of scrutiny from the Order and needed to maintain the strictest propriety to avoid scandal. “I’ll still write him. He’ll know the best way around his mother. Would you deliver the letter to him on your way to Oliver’s town house?”

“Of course.”

I took a sheet of paper out of my counting desk and penned a quick letter explaining the situation to Peter, then sealed it and handed it to Will. He tucked it into his sporran.

I stood before Will, unsure of what to do with myself. Now that the house was in order, the impropriety of being alone with him had suddenly come into stark relief.

“You should be going,” I mumbled. The wind outside made the house creak. I didn’t want him to go, but he had already stayed most of the night, and if anyone saw him leave the shop in the morning, I would be ruined.

Instead he took my hand and led me back to the restored parlor, where hot tea waited on the table.

“We’ve been working all night. Let’s just take a moment,” he murmured as he took a seat.

I found myself watching his lips. I’d be too tempted.

Far too tempted.

He reached out and touched my arm above the elbow. His fingers slid down the length of my forearm until they wrapped gently around my hand. He drew me in, and I was helpless to resist.

“You can trust me, you know.” He curled his warm fingers under my tender palm and placed a chivalrous kiss on the back of my hand.

“I fear I can’t trust myself,” I whispered. “I’m not ready for this.”

Will’s gaze turned up beneath the dark fringe of his thick lashes. We seemed to breathe as one being, slow heavy breaths that carried the weight of the longing between us. “I understand.”

He pulled me forward and onto the seat. I curled my body into his and rested my head over the beating of his heart. He held me and stroked my arm as we watched the fire dance in the hearth.

If only we could stay this way forever. I had never felt so filled with contentment. Will began humming a tune. The sound resonated through his body as I kept my head close to his heart. Eventually he sang. It was the same melancholy tune he had sung to the horses when I’d entered the carriage house a year ago.

I wanted to marry this man. I wanted a million nights like this without having to push him away, but it wasn’t our time. Not yet. Four long years where I served as an apprentice stood between us, and I wasn’t so naïve to think our lives couldn’t change in that time. As I listened to him sing, four years seemed such a terrible long time to wait.

I didn’t know at what point I succumbed to my exhaustion
and lost myself in restless dreams of heather and mountains, fire and the forge. They were misty images, fleeting through my mind. Men’s good-natured laughter, dizzying folds of plaid.

When I finally regained a sense of my own body, I found myself lost in a heavy fog. The metallic clang of gears turning surrounded me. A man strode toward me through the mist.

At first I didn’t know who it was, but he had a regal presence and proud, wide shoulders. He wore a naval captain’s coat that reminded me of the one I had taken from an automaton on a clockwork ship. As he emerged from the haze, I recognized him at once.