The Girl in the Steel Corset

Page 29

At last, after almost a quarter hour’s walking, they found the spot. Sam recognized it before the others did. There was nothing special about it—just a small stretch along the length of a tunnel where they were laying track for a new underground train line. But he remembered that small stone section of Roman wall that had been uncovered, darkened by centuries of dirt piled on top of it. He had stared at it as his blood soaked into the ground, and the automaton fell not far away. He remembered wondering if Heaven was as pretty as that little bit of painting on that Roman wall.
He stood there, as they began to search for clues, letting his hand torch drift lazily over the area. He was looking for blood, but there was none there, thank God. It had all been cleaned up, or lost in the daily buildup of dirt. How many workmen had tracked through that crimson stain, spreading little fragments of him wherever their boots walked?
“Keep your eye out for tunnels that don’t look like they should be here,” Griffin told them, “or rubble that might conceal an exit. It won’t be easy to find. The Machinist’s too smart for that.”
The Machinist. Five minutes alone with that bounder would do so much to improve his mood.
Epiphanies seemed to follow him everywhere lately, which was why it struck him as so terribly appropriate that the light of his torch should land upon a large heap of stone piled against the wall closest him. It didn’t feel right. Something about it looked off.
He walked over to the debris, his heart still pounding out its anxious jig. He switched his torch to his left hand and began pulling away stone with his augmented right. Within a few seconds, he’d removed enough of the large pieces to feel a draft. The torch revealed a passage beyond—approximately six feet wide and eight feet high.
“I found it,” he called over his shoulder as he resumed his clearing with renewed vigor. It made him proud to have discovered this before anyone else, made him feel useful again because he hadn’t felt useful in quite some time.
Finley was the first one to his side and between the two of them they had the passage completely cleared by the time the other three joined them. Once again Griffin took point—always the leader, always in charge.
Finley was behind him, followed by Jasper, Emily and then Sam. Emily was farther back so she wouldn’t get hurt if a fight broke out, or be in the way if Jasper needed to take a shot. Sam brought up the rear in case they were attacked from behind. It was the way they’d always done it, except now Griff had Finley to watch his back—or stick a knife in it. He still wasn’t sure which one he thought her most likely to do.
They walked for a long time, single file, through the corridor of stone and dirt. It wasn’t so narrow that he felt confined, but it was still relatively cramped. They were underground, in a secret tunnel with no light and no ready means of escape.
How was Griffin? he wondered. His friend had always been better at mastering his fears than Sam had. Someday Sam would be able to look at an automaton without thinking it might be the one to kill him.
Finally, after what felt like forever, they came to a stop. The passageway was nothing more than a dead end.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Emily remarked, the beam from her hand torch traveling the dirt walls. “Why dig a tunnel to nowhere?”
Griffin pointed his light at the back wall. From where he stood, Sam could see holes in the earth as though something had been driven into it. He lifted his torch at the same time Griffin did, both of them shining light up that wall to the rough ceiling above.
“I think that’s a hatch,” Sam said, noticing a slight incision in the stone. Those punctures in the dirt wall had been from someone—or something—climbing. “Finley, climb up on my shoulders and see if you can lift it.”
The girl looked at him as though she didn’t trust him. He sighed. “Fine, come here and let me climb up on yours. We can’t be sure what’s up there, but I can be fairly certain that, whatever it is, you and I stand the best chance of surviving it.”
“Fair enough,” she replied. She managed to squeeze past Jasper and Emily to get to him. The two of them flattened themselves against the wall so she could get by. There wasn’t enough room for Sam to squat down, so he bent as far as he could and she climbed onto him using the wall for leverage. She was crouched on his shoulders as he slowly stood. The panel made a groaning sound as she lifted it, raining down dirt upon Sam’s head. He coughed.
“I’m beneath a carpet or something,” Finley told them. “I can’t see…”
There was a soft thump—the sound of a rug being tossed back—and then, “Oh, my God.”
“What is it?” Griffin demanded.
Sam tried to look up, but Finley blocked much of his view. He could see part of her face, however, as wherever she had popped up was well lit.
“Griffin King, is that you?” called an imperious female voice.
Griffin swore—very softly. “It is, ma’am.” Then he pushed his way back to where Sam was.
“Come up here this instant,” called the woman. “And, you, girl, get out of that hole.”
“Be right there!” Griffin called back, agitation and mortification raising his voice an octave. “Sam,” he hissed, “I need to get up there.”
“Climb on up,” Sam offered. Finley had done as she was told, so Griffin had a clear path.
Griffin climbed agilely onto Sam’s shoulders and quickly pulled himself up through the hole.
Sam heard him talking, but his voice was low and he couldn’t hear if he called the woman by name or not. He didn’t hear anything at all until Griffin called down to the rest of them. “Sam, Jasper, Emily? Please come up.”
Sam was beginning to feel like a stepstool, but he kept his mouth shut as he helped Emily, then Jasper up to the world above. Then, he managed to climb up a bit using the rocks jutting out of the wall to propel him a few feet up until he could get a hand on either side of the hole and pull himself up.
He emerged in a large sitting room, so richly appointed it made Greythorne House look like a humble cottage. Finley, Jasper and Emily stood huddled together, staring openmouthed at Griffin, who was talking to an elderly woman dressed in black.
Brushing dirt from his coat, Sam ignored the wild-eyed looks the other three gave him. Surely a house like this had enough staff to clean up a little dirt?
“And who is this young man?” the old lady demanded.
Sam opened his mouth to reply, but froze when he saw just who the old woman was.
“May I present Sam Morgan, Your Highness,” Griffin said.
Bloody hell. It was Queen Victoria. They’d just burrowed their way into Buckingham Palace.
“I can’t believe I met the queen!” Emily gushed on the walk from the palace to where they’d left their velocycles.
“I would have liked to meet her when I didn’t have dirt in my hair,” Finley remarked. The horror of popping up into the queen’s parlor like some kind of rodent was a humiliation she would carry with her for the rest of her days.
Still, it had been pretty amazing to meet the woman who ruled the entire British Empire. She had thought Victoria would be taller.
Griffin had been quiet during their walk. Her highness had offered them a carriage, but Griffin declined the generous offer, saying they had already imposed upon the queen enough.
Of course they’d been forced to tell her how they got there. You didn’t discover a secret passage into someone’s palace and not tell them everything you knew about it. Lord, Victoria could have tossed them all in gaol if she’d so chose. So Griffin had told her how they’d found the passage and what they were doing in the tunnels to begin with. The queen was very concerned, to put it lightly, especially when Griffin told her that now that they had found the passage, he was convinced it had been The Machinist who stole her hairbrush from the museum. He also asked the staff to alert him if they discovered anything missing, but in a place that size, who would notice?
By the time they left, workmen had already begun work on closing up the hole and repairing the floor. Finley didn’t doubt that the tunnel would be sealed by tomorrow. That was good—The Machinist would lose his way into the palace.
Now, after talking so much to the queen, Griffin was subdued, his brow furrowed as he walked, hands deep in the pockets of his long, gray greatcoat. It was a little stained from their adventure, but nothing a skilled maid couldn’t conquer. She couldn’t help but wonder what it was that had his mind so occupied.
She fell back to walk with him, leaving the other three talking about the palace. They were so amazed by what had just happened that none of them seemed to remember the tension between them. Sam actually laughed at something Jasper said! And of course, Emily walked between the two of them—a kitten between two toms.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
Griffin glanced at her, as though surprised to see her beside him. “Something I’d rather not contemplate, but has taken hold of my mind and will not let go.”
In their brief acquaintance, she had never heard him speak with such gravity. Whatever plagued him, it also disturbed him very deeply.
She would have pushed further if they hadn’t arrived where they’d left the velocycles. She started hers and followed the rest of them back to Mayfair. The streets were busy with aristocrats heading to Hyde Park as they did every day at five o’clock to see and be seen. They rode horses there, or drove horse-drawn carriages. It was a place to be leisurely. Modern vehicles moved too fast, and the whole point of the outing was to show yourself off.
Griffin never did such things, but then he wasn’t like any other peer of the realm she’d ever met. Why didn’t he go to parties and balls like other young men his age? From what she had heard of him—and seen for herself—he wasn’t much for society at all. Wasn’t he expected to be out and about? Someday he’d marry a woman worthy of becoming his duchess and have a family of his own. And then she, Emily, Sam and Jasper would be out on the street.
Lord, what maudlin thoughts! They served no purpose, so she pushed them to the back of her mind. She’d go off and get married herself eventually, so what did it matter? It didn’t matter at all, and she certainly wasn’t upset about it. It wasn’t like Griffin could ever marry her. That was a joke!
By the time they arrived back at the mansion, she’d put all thoughts of Griffin and marriage out of her head. Lady Marsden had returned from Devon and wanted them all in the study. They went to her immediately, not even bothering to clean up first.
The elegant lady was waiting for them, pacing the length of the carpet, the silver chains running from ear to nose gleaming in the late-afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows. She took one look at the lot of them and her mouth fell open.
“Whatever happened to the lot of you?” she asked. She had a way of always sounding put out, even when she wasn’t.
Griffin explained what had happened. His aunt didn’t seem to know whether to be horrified or amused at their barging in on the queen. It didn’t take long for her expression to turn grim, however, when Griffin told her that he suspected The Machinist had dug the tunnel.
“But why would he take the figure from Tussaud’s?” Sam asked. “He was right there in the palace. He could have taken anything he wanted.”
“It would be difficult to do that without being noticed,” Finley told him. “You can’t just shove a gown under your shirt or in your pocket. He might have been brazen enough to walk right into the palace, but he was careful not to get caught.”
“He would be very careful not to be noticed,” Lady Marsden agreed. “Because if he were, it would be highly likely Victoria would recognize him.”
Griffin’s head jerked up. He stared at his aunt—they all did. “You know who he is?”
“I believe so. Your steward described him to me, and it fits other accounts I’ve heard, but your steward mentioned one thing no else did. The Machinist has a metal hand. He lost his in a professional accident years ago—an accident I believed he blamed on your father, Griffin.”
Griffin’s eyes narrowed. “So he did know my father.”
“He was part of the expedition,” his aunt replied, holding out a photograph to him. “Leonardo Garibaldi. He was one of my brother’s closest friends—and the only member of the expedition to have died whose body was never found. Obviously that was because he never actually died.”
Finley peered at the photograph over Griffin’s shoulder. There were his parents, looking beautiful and happy, along with several other people, one of whom she recognized as her father. Was it foolish of her to feel sad at the sight of him even though she’d never known him?
Her gaze fell upon Garibaldi. Beside her she thought she heard Sam gasp, but before she could turn her attention to him, Lady Marsden began talking again. “Garibaldi was the one who wanted to go public with the Organites. He thought they could change the world. He was furious when Victoria told them to keep it a secret. She thought there was too much potential for evil if mankind got its hands on something so miraculous.”
“She was right,” Griffin agreed. “It would be awful, especially now that we know the Organites are responsible for all of our special abilities. But Garibaldi already knows what they’re capable of, especially their remarkable ability to replicate human tissue.”
Everyone was staring at him now. “What have you discovered?” Lady Marsden demanded.
Griffin glanced at Emily. “It was Emily who discovered it, really. She saw what the Organites could do when she rebuilt Sam’s arm. And recently we saw how the Organites have become part of Sam’s physiology. If Garibaldi had samples of a person’s skin or hair, he could conceivably construct a copy of that person. A doppelganger—at least, in the flesh. He would have to build some kind of skeleton to support it—like an automaton.”