The Earl of Brass (The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Book 1) (9 page)

Harold and the New Corset

The sewing machine whirled as Hadley passed her makeshift corset under the needle for what felt like the hundredth time. The pattern had come from her mother’s trunk in the attic, but she hoped her design would eliminate the pinched waist and merely flatten her entire form. For two days she had ripped out the boning dozens of times, repositioning it until it finally nipped her curves in at the right point. Mid-stitch she took her foot off the peddle. She could have sworn she heard something, but assuming it was Adam, she went back to work with her head down. The window in the alleyway rattled, but Hadley didn’t notice until finally a waving, gloved hand bounced up and down in the high window. Donning her dressing gown, she unlocked the work room’s side door as Eliza Hawthorne strolled in. Her cousin pulled off her gloves with a flourish, but her eyes widened as they roamed over Hadley’s choice of outfit.

“Do you always sew in your union suit?” she asked with a laugh as she brushed the dust from her skirts and carefully lowered herself onto the chair at Hadley’s old work bench.

“I’m working on a corset, and I had to keep trying it on to make sure it was working properly. After a while, just staying in my unmentionables was easier than disrobing every fifteen minutes.” She hung her silk robe back on the coat rack and handed the corset to Eliza. “Help me get this thing on. I’m going to dislocate my shoulder if I do it by myself again.”

With one hand, Hadley held the corset tight to her chest as she used the other to tuck the sides up to her armpits. Mrs. Hawthorne had never seen a corset of such design. Rather than having hooks and eyes in the front and lacing all down the back, the entire corset was one solid piece of material with tight lacing at the top third of her back and snaps running down below. She clicked the bottom portion in place before pulling the laces as tight as she possibly could without knocking the younger woman off balance.

“What is this for anyway?” Eliza asked, stepping back from her cousin’s form. “It has flattened you like a board.”

Hadley’s face flushed with delight. “Finally! You can’t imagine how frustrating I find sewing with a machine. Automata clothes are so much easier to do by hand.” She made her way over to the mirror and tested bending over and squatting down. The girdle held, and the padded cotton fabric allowed her to flex more than her normal corset. “You remember how horrible the Harbuckles were when they found out I was a woman? Well, I decided to bend to society a little. If they don’t want a female doing a man’s job, then they will get a man. Close your eyes for a minute.”

With a slight roll of her eyes, she turned around to face the other wall. “I can’t imagine this is going to work, Had. Your features are too feminine.”

“You may call me Harold,” she answered in a husky voice.

When Eliza turned, she was greeted by a thin boy with a gaunt face and clothes that were too large for his frame. Gone were Hadley’s freckles and long, henna hair, which had disappeared beneath a layer of ceramic dust and a newsboy cap. The only thing that was blatantly her own were her blue eyes, which, despite the coating on her cheeks, still shone with her familiar bright determination.

“I’m impressed. You may want to pick a less burly voice as you’re much too skinny for it, but otherwise, you look the part. I spoke to Lord Sorrell yesterday. At a dinner party the other day, he had a particularly bad experience with his old prosthesis, but when I suggested the Fenice Brothers could make him a better fitting, more functional one, he nearly drove down here that afternoon. You better finish your corset today because he would like it very much if you could go to his estate tomorrow to have a consultation with him. He is pressed for time and would like it before he leaves for a trip in a few months.”

She stifled the urge to smile prematurely. “You told him about the surgical aspect?”

“No, I thought I would leave that to you. You are a lot more persuasive than I am, and I know I would just go into the gory details and make the blood drain from his face. He would like you there sometime in the afternoon. Even though I didn’t tell him everything, I’m fairly confident he will agree to it. He seems rather desperate, and that really is not like him.”

***

Hadley paused before the mirror by the front door. She had taken great pains to look as boyish as possible, even applying extra powder to her eyebrows to make them appear fuller and rounder. After confirming she was aesthetically ready to set out, she transferred the contents of her carpet bag into one of George’s old satchels. As she reached the last few items in her bag, her hand brushed against the cold steel of her derringer pocket pistol. She had bought it around the time of Jack the Ripper’s killing spree for protection, and even though she never ventured into
those
neighborhoods, a young woman could never be too careful. Staring down at it, she thought about leaving it home in the bag, but instead, she opened her shirt and stuffed it between her flattened breasts for safe-keeping. When Hadley stepped out into the street, she paused, expecting someone to notice her or call her out for being a fraud, but no one noticed. The passersby of London’s streets continued on.

***

As the hired steamer rattled through the Greenwich greenery, Hadley pored over George’s notes once again. She couldn’t afford to miss anything when she delivered her speech about the experimental arm. Over the hill appeared a small, Gothic manor house built of weather-beaten stone and framed with Cathedral-like spires and mullioned windows. Immediately she recognized the house, but she could recall very little of the inhabitants or what she had done during her original visit. Taking a deep breath as she walked to the front door, she once more prepared for her consultation. It was imperative that she not use her own name during the introductions and deepen her voice. Within moments of ringing the bell, a young-faced but white-haired butler with a pair of pince-nez glasses nestled on his narrow nose opened the door. He never asked her for her card or spoke to her mechanically as many other servants had, but instead, with an air of casual civility, he led her into the parlor to allow her to start setting up.

Laying the drop cloth on the nearest table, she carefully placed her jars of Vaseline and plaster of Paris on it to keep them from staining the viscount’s furniture. Hadley reached into the bottom of the satchel, but as she drew out her notebook, the scraps containing George’s notes fluttered from its binding. With a sigh, she bent down to grab the parchment. One piece landed under the side-table, but as she strained to reach it, she heard the sickening pop of twelve snaps blowing open across her back. She clutched her arms around her middle, but the back of the corset tented under her shirt, making it appear as if she had sprouted wings.

“Lord Sorrell will be down momentarily. Is there anything you require?” the butler asked as he stepped back into the parlor.

Hadley straightened up, keeping her back toward the wall and her hand around the two edges of the fabric. “May I use your lavatory?”

“Of course, sir.”

As he led her through the corridors, she kept her back against the wall. After the butler had disappeared back down the hall, Hadley ducked inside the bathroom and whipped off her vest and shirt. The tightly laced top was all that kept the corset over her breasts as the back shamelessly flapped apart to reveal her pale, freckled flesh. Spinning around, she tried to catch both edges and pull them back together, but the moment she closed the first snap, the doorknob squealed behind her. Without thinking, she reached into her corset and pointed the stubby-nosed gun at the startled young man standing in the doorway. He was wiping a wet napkin against a curry stain on his shirt when he finally brought his eyes to the stranger in his bathroom.

“Whoa!” he cried, raising up his arms in defense and dropping the cloth.

“You saw nothing, you petty servant,” she growled, clicking back the hammer of the derringer while still clutching her girdle with her free hand. “If you tell Lord Sorrell what you saw, I swear I will make your life a living hell.”

“I think there has been a mistake.”

No explanation was necessary as her eyes trailed to his right arm, which terminated at the elbow. The inventor stared at him mouth agape as the tiny gun nearly fell out of her hand. “I am so sorry,” she stammered as she tried to grab her shirt without letting go of the corset. “Please don’t call the authorities. I will leave.”

As she moved toward the door, Eilian Sorrell stepped in front of her with his arms crossed. “If I’m not mistaken, you are the craftsman who is supposed to be fitting me for a new arm?”

Hadley nodded quickly, knocking loose her cap and spilling her henna braid down her back. For a moment, she lingered with her head bowed. That was it. She botched it again, ruined George’s business for probably the final time.

“Well, then you had better get dressed. Patrick will help you, but don’t bother with the pretenses this time.”

The viscount disappeared into the hall only to be replaced by the white-haired butler. He quickly snapped the back of her corset closed before leaving her to finish getting dressed by herself. A nauseating wave of relief and disappoint passed over her as she stared down at her gun.
I could have killed him
, she thought before stuffing it into her pocket. When she came back into the parlor, her drop cloth had been laid out and a wooden chair stood in the middle of it.

“I hope you don’t mind me setting up for you. I wanted to show you that I really do intend for you to stay and do the consultation.” He grasped the top button of his shirt. “Shall I?”

She swallowed hard. “Sir, if you’re doing this to be polite, please don’t pretend to go through with it just for civility’s sake. I will leave.”

“If I say it, I mean it. I don’t put on airs. While I don’t particularly like having a gun drawn on me, I do understand that I startled you, which caused you to act in self-defense.”

“But— but I’m a woman. Does that not bother you?”

“Not particularly,” Lord Sorrell replied as he unbuttoned his shirt with one hand and sat down. “I have been told to be something I’m not my whole life, so I’m not one to force others into molds they don’t belong. Are you doing measurements or the cast first?”

“Measurements.”

Hadley quickly collected herself, ignoring the viscount’s bare chest as she methodically measured his left arm from his fingers to his shoulder before taking the circumference every few inches. Moving to his other side, she eyed the rough, sinewy texture of his shortened arm but hesitated to touch it. The dark pink scars engulfed the entire stump and climbed across his chest to his septum until they gradually disappeared on his neck. Hacked off limbs from battle wounds or due to infections were commonplace, but burns were a rarity, especially when few were able to survive without debilitating results. She drew the measuring tape around it, feeling how oddly pliable his marred skin was. Touching the bottom of the stump, she confirmed his elbow had been neatly disarticulated. As Eilian Sorrell quietly cooperated with her shifting his arm and plastering him up to the shoulder, Hadley studied his face and recognized the unmistakable look of defeat in his grey eyes. The craftswoman never would have realized that the vivacious young adventurer her cousin and James Hawthorne always spoke about was the same somber gentleman she saw before her.

“What made you want to get a more functional prosthesis, sir?” she asked as she stepped back from the hardening plaster with chalky, white hands.

“I had bought a vanity prosthesis from your brother, but since I was sized for it, I think my arm has changed shape. I was at a dinner party last week and had a mishap where it fell off quite suddenly. It was also chafing my arm when I wore it for any length of time.”

“I’m very sorry about that. How often do you wear it?”

He sighed softly. “I thought I would wear it often, but it’s so uncomfortable that I have only worn it a handful of times. I do it more for my family than for me.”

Hadley stepped back until they were looking each other in the eye. “I hope you do not think I’m overstepping my bounds by saying this, but if you’re doing this to please them, it’s not worth it. I make these for people who need something to function in place of the limb they have lost, but if you are getting on fine without it, then you don’t need one.”

Nodding, he hesitantly replied, “There is another issue that is more pressing. Since I had the amputation, I have had hideous pains running from my shoulder down to where my palm would have been, and it has gotten progressively worse. I thought if I had a prosthesis I could flex, it would stop.”

“Most of the claw prostheses I create don’t open and close in a natural fashion. They are all controlled by external springs and levers.” As she cut the plaster, his features darkened dispiritedly. She couldn’t stand to see him that way. “There— there is an experimental prosthesis you may be interested in. It’s rather radical as it involves surgery to insert an artificial bone into your arm and place gold rods into your nerves, but if it works, you will be able to open and close the hand as well as raise and lower your forearm. If it does not work, we will probably have to go back in and remove it.”