"The wings,” Woodrow said. He took a deep breath. “The wings. We ca-ca-ca ... could change them, ca-ca-couldn't we? Here.” He pointed. “And over there. Ma-ma-ma-make those joints ma-ma-metal. Hinges and ... screws ... sa-so they would fold up and ... down. Then if you only ... took out one window..."
"Yes!” Merlin cried. “I can do that!” She leaped up and smothered Woodrow in a hug. “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much! You're the smartest person I ever, ever met!"
Ransom was preparing to declare that a window would be removed at Mount Falcon over his dead body when Woodrow emerged from Merlin's embrace. The boy was scarlet with confusion and pride.
"My pleasure, Miss Lambourne,” Woodrow said, without a single trip over a “p” or an “m."
He didn't even seem to notice the lack of stutter. But Ransom did. With a sigh, the master of Mount Falcon consigned one of its century-old Vanbrugh windows to an ignoble fate.
Merlin rushed back to her writing table, grabbing up the pen and dragging out diagrams and notes from the piles of vellum scattered across the floor. She muttered to herself, making little moans and occasional lamentations, such as: “This will throw me back a month,” or “Blast, blast, I can't cut the skeleton there ... but wait! Could I possibly ... no—it won't work. It would never stand the strain. It will have to be in the third quarter ... Mr. Peale! Mr. Peale, where is that Johnson book on integral calculus? Page two hundred and twenty, I believe it was ... Oh, do hurry—we have no time, no time at all!” Mr. Peale, with profuse apologies to Blythe, promptly went back to work. Ransom's sister stood looking after her admirer, holding the teacup he had handed her, the corners of her mouth turned down in little white pinches.
"Does he desert you so easily, darlin'?” Quin sauntered up and took the teacup from her hand. He lifted her fingers to his lips. “I find his priorities baffling."
The pinches at Blythe's mouth grew deeper and whiter as a pink flush suffused her face. When Quin lingered with his lips brushing her skin, she snatched her hand away. “I shall not stand for your continued impudence."
"Forgive me, Your Ladyship.” Quin bowed contritely. “I can't seem to help meself."
"Nonsense,” Blythe said. She turned away.
"Let's go on the cat's seat now, Uncle Demmie!” Augusta clutched Ransom's hand and pulled. Aurelia abandoned her impromptu game of skittles with Jaqueline and added her pleas. Ransom allowed himself to be drawn back toward the workbench, but his attention was divided between Merlin and the secretary, who had decided to take his leave and was already speaking to Blythe.
Augusta dropped Ransom's hand. She skipped to the end of the bench and bent over. The secretary was moving toward them when the floor lurched beneath Ransom's feet. He grabbed at the nearest thing, a dangling rope, and felt it go taut beneath his fingers. At the same time, an unfamiliar creaking clank began a rapid rhythm.
He looked down. His jaw clenched in alarm. The six square feet of planking on which he and the twins and the bench rested had begun to rise from the rest of the floor.
Chapter 10
It was pride and the secretary's amused gaze that prevented Ransom from stepping off when stepping was still possible. He gripped the rope, expecting the contraption to grind to a halt. It did not. His feet passed the level of the secretary's generous paunch. Now, Ransom thought, watching the other man's feet appear to grow closer together as his perspective changed. Step down now.
His body tensed. It did not obey him.
He only held the rope harder. A sweep of canvas and catgut entered the top of his peripheral vision and began to pass smoothly downward, growing larger as the tools and papers and scraps of canvas on the floor grew smaller. Now, he thought again, and again his feet did not move.
His boots topped the secretary's head.
"Jolly clever device, eh?” the politician cried. “I believe I'll stay long enough for a ride myself, Damerell."
Ransom wanted to swallow, but not even his throat would obey him. The twins sat still on the far end of the bench, making little whimpers of pleasure and excitement. He noticed with growing panic that their weight was not enough to counterbalance his, and the square platform tilted alarmingly toward his corner. Everyone in the room was looking up, resembling a group of foreshortened mushrooms with faces oddly white in the gloom beneath the flying machine.
A festoon of rope and wing glided down the side of Ransom's field of vision. He saw his reflection passing in the huge mirror above the mantel, a stranger in a dark coat and neat cravat, looking utterly poised and nonchalant as he leaned against the tautened rope. In the mirror, the tilt of the platform looked to be a few inches, no more. To Ransom it felt like a sickening incline.
"Isn't it fun, Uncle?” one of the twins asked, her voice dim through the pounding of blood in his ears.
Ransom could not look toward them. He tried to move his head and found his muscles paralyzed. The edge of the wing passed him. The upper surface of the canvas spread out to view in a downward, dizzying pitch.
His hand slipped a fraction, slick with sweat. A jolt of terror went from his stomach to his brain. He could no longer look down. His body seemed to have passed from his control, he stared at the far wall as the frescoed murals on it slipped downward. His lips were stiff, but behind them his thoughts clamored a silent prayer. Oh God dearest God deliver me I'm going to fall I'm going to fall I don't want to fall oh God oh God let me down let me down let me down.
Something large and shapeless swam into view, descending more rapidly than the rest of the surroundings. For an instant it seemed to Ransom the thing would smash into their fragile perch, and then it passed smoothly in front of his eyes, looking like a giant moth wrapped in a spider's silk and dangling by a dark thread. Belatedly, his mind recognized the limbless torso of a statue that had toppled off its garden perch in the last hard frost of winter. The thing was bound in a net of hemp and hung from a rack of pulleys: the counterweight to his treacherous elevator.
He could see the ceiling now, looming down like a huge umbrella, its mythic figures in grotesquely strained perspective.
"Is this high enough, Uncle Demmie?” a twin asked. “Should we stop?"
He could not even make his tongue move to answer that, though his mind screamed, Yes yes yes!
"No, no!” cried the other twin. “Let's go higher! Miss Merlin never let us go this far."
"All right. We're not even to the tip of the wing yet."
One of the little girls stood up. The platform trembled and began to swing. A low sound came out of Ransom's throat, a violent, wordless, animal sound.
"Hullo, Miss Merlin!” one of the girls called. Her voice made a thin echo above the creaking mechanism. “Hullo, Woodrow—do you see how high we are?"
On top of Ransom's own dread was the added terror that the twins might slip off. When the one who had stood up—he could not turn to see which—moved again, Ransom managed a frantic snarl. “Sit down! Sit down and don't get up!"
"Yes, sir."
From the corner of his eye, he saw the movement of pastel skirls. There was a thump, and the platform dipped and swayed like a living thing.
Oh God oh God oh God let me down.
He kept his eyes on the painted wall, moving slowly past in a pendulous swing. The ceiling began to curve down to meet the vertical. He looked at the paint, at the colors, at the brushwork and cracks in the plaster that he had never seen and never wanted to see.
Get me down please God please get me down.
The mechanism creaked to a slow halt. Silence filled the hall. The platform began a sluggish spin.
Damn damn damn damn God damn I can't take this I can't stand it I can't I can't I can't oh God.
He heard voices below. There was a thump and a load crash, and the boards beneath his feet jumped. He clung to the rope. Blackness threatened around the edges of his vision.
The creaking began again. The platform dropped from under him ... caught ... and dropped again.
R
ansom lost himself then. His heart simply stopped, along with his mind. The blackness turned to nothing, the soft moaning sounds in his ears went dumb. There was only one thing: there was the rope, and he held on to it. He held on to it for his life and his soul and all the saints in Heaven and the demons in Hell. He held on to it until his fingers went numb and then began to burn. He held on to it while he died, seventy-seven separate deaths, each time the platform jerked and dropped, and jerked and dropped, until a voice somewhere just below his right ear was saying, “So how did you like it, Damerell? Quite a sight from up there, eh?"
It felt as if Ransom were opening his eyes, except that they already seemed to be open. The veil of terror slowly dissolved, leaving him able to see again. He found himself a foot away from Shelby, who was wiping perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief, his other hand still resting on the wheel and crank where an equally-winded Quin was lashing a rope securely.
Blythe and Jaqueline and Woodrow and the secretary were all looking at Ransom with expectant smiles. A little further away, Merlin and Mr. Peale still bent together over work on their equations.
"Isn't it wonderful, Uncle Demmie? The cat's seat?” Augusta demanded. “Miss Merlin built it, all by herself! She said we should take you up on it. She said we should be sneaky, and if we ever could get you to try it, you would see why she wants to fly."
Ransom amazed himself. He was not trembling. He was not weak in the knees as he shouldered Quin aside and strode toward Merlin. His hands didn't shake. His anger seemed to have wiped out the fear, but in the end his body betrayed him. He opened his mouth to speak, and the only sound that came out was, “D—"
He stopped. His throat worked. To his horror, he could tell that the curse was not going to emerge as a single word, but as a maimed caricature of a word, a stammering collection of nonsense sound like the rising babble of hysteria inside him.
For an instant he was not himself but someone else. Someone who stuttered.
Another instant and that long-forgotten boy was gone, shoved down the deep well of history by adult pride and adult ruthlessness. Ransom drew his lips back in a grimace as he looked at Merlin's pale cheeks and the weariness etched around her long lashes and gray eyes.
"Enough,” he said, the word as clear as winter ice. “No more of this folly. You're driving yourself to exhaustion. I won't permit it. I won't stand by and watch you make yourself ill over nonsense. It's time you abandoned your absurd ideas and grew up. You are going to learn how to go on in the world, Miss Lambourne.” He turned, sweeping the room with a freezing gaze. “The ballroom is locked and barred from this instant. To everyone."
Without waiting for a response he strode out the door and down the long series of corridors and into his own room. He threw the door closed behind him and went into the dressing room, grabbing a porcelain basin from the wash stand.
He put one hand out to the wall. His legs gave way. He sank to his knees and bent over the basin and was very, very sick.
Merlin did not take Ransom's ultimatum seriously. No one came to banish them all from the ballroom after Ransom left. He had been angry with her, that was all, his temper aroused and then dissipated in intimidation and threats, as it always was.
She worked until three that morning, and rose again at six, but after breakfast there was no sign of Ransom in the Great Hall. Merlin paused until she realized she was looking out the window for him. Then she frowned and hurried down the corridors to the ballroom.
She found it locked.
The footman standing outside the door bowed to her, his wig a light-colored blob in the early morning gloom.
"His Grace wishes to see you, Miss Lambourne."
"It's locked,” she said.
He looked at her impassively.
"Do open it."
"Forgive me, Miss Lambourne. I am under a specific injunction from His Grace not to do so."
Merlin stared at him while her heart slid slowly to her toes.
"In his study, Miss Lambourne,” the footman prompted. “Immediately."
She had a moment of wild rebellious courage, in which the scientific merits of the various possibilities of storming, burning, blasting, or beating down the door passed through her mind. As she paused, the broad-shouldered footman looked down at her with his eyebrows lifted in a faint but unyielding smile.
She saw where she stood in the order of things.
With a deep, shaky breath, she turned away. She went down the corridor a distance, then stopped, turned, and went back. “Excuse me,” she said to the footman in a small voice. “But could you point out the way?"
He escorted her, walking ahead down the long archways and around the many turns. At Ransom's study the servant did not pause for permission to enter, but simply opened the door and announced her.
Ransom stood up from his desk. He glanced at a chair, which was enough to make the footman draw it forward for Merlin. The servant seated her, and then—apparently under the order of another ducal blink—disappeared silently from the room. Ransom rested against the desk, his arms crossed, looking down at her.
Merlin hunched her shoulders. She felt like one of the twins called down for disorder.
"Good morning,” he said in a voice that strained a little too hard for pleasantry.
She looked up at him. He was very tall. She had a sudden urge to press herself against his immaculate shirt-front and cry.
Instead, she said, “It isn't a good morning at all."
His thick brows lowered slightly. Merlin felt as if she had not seen him for years. He looked different. Not quite so typically self-assured and overbearing, but edgy and somehow more dangerous—like a hawk threatened into challenge. The line of his jaw was taut, his yellow-green eyes dark and dilated.
"I'm sorry you feel that way,” he said.
Merlin thrust out her lower lip.
"I understand you've nearly finished with work on the speaking box."
"Yes, Mr. Duke,” she said, with what she hoped was killing formality. “I shall be able to go home soon."
"How long?"
"Soon. Another week, perhaps."
"You might have been done a week past, if you had concentrated on that alone."
She said nothing, surprised and a little hurt by this unfamiliar abruptness.
Even more harshly, he said, “My mother and her crystal ball claim you're not increasing."
Merlin blinked. “Increasing what?"
"The number of my offspring."
"Offspring!"
"Yes.” He looked away from her, out the window. His fingers tapped a hard rhythm on the edge of the desk. “Children, you know. I believe we discussed this."
"We did?"
He closed his eyes briefly and opened them again. “Since you've been here at Mount Falcon ... have you been quite on schedule?"
"I've tried.” She was astonished and pleased at this unexpected show of interest. “But no matter how hard I work, Mr. Pemminey seems to stay ahead."
He looked at her dryly. “Will the wonders of nature never cease? I meant, you mooncalf, have you had your monthly cycle?"
Merlin searched her brain for what he could be talking about. “Oh,” she said at last. “Do you mean my menses?"
"If you wish to put it in good blunt Latin ... yes. Will you answer my question?"
She nodded. “Just after I arrived."
There was a change in his face, far too subtle to be interpreted. He nodded. “That's some solace, I suppose."
Merlin could not imagine why. She started to tell him that the event occurred with monotonous regularity and was really nothing to be especially pleased about, but he had turned away and was rifling among some papers on the desk.
He held up a sheet. “Here's another schedule,” he said. “Your new one."
Merlin took the offered paper. As she read through the list of lessons in riding, deportment, and conversation, her jaw grew slack and her eyebrows drew down. “I can't possibly do all this!” she
cried. “I don't have time!"
"I can't agree with that objection. As you see, the times have been carefully calculated by Mr. Collett. You should have ample periods of rest and digestion. It's rather an improvement on your present agenda, I think."
"But my flying machine! That isn't provided for anywhere!"
He toyed with a pen. “You see how many hours there are in a day when one dispenses with frivolities. There is no need for you to work yourself into a decline, you know."
"Ransom!” she wailed.
He lifted his eyelashes, giving her a look as chilly and green-gold as a hunting falcon's. “The ballroom is locked."
"It's not fair! It's not fair! You promised I could work on my flying machine, as long as I built the new speaking box, too."
"I never made any such bargain."
"You did."
"No—"
"Oh, that is a foul lie, Mr. Duke! You said I could test my wing design here. You said there was no end of open lawn and steady winds."
He pursed his lips. “I did not understand all the ramifications at the time."
"A promise is a promise."
He made a sudden move, catching her arm and pulling her up out of the chair. “And a life is a life. I'm not so jealous of my honor that I'll jeopardize your silly neck on account of it. I made you a promise, you say? Well, I'm breaking it."
She stared up at him. Her arm hurt where his fingers dug into her sleeve. One of the buttons on his coat pressed into her skin. “Just like that? I thought that was all you cared about—your honor."
"Think again, my girl. Expedience is my maxim. I've spent my life in politics, remember?"
She tried to wriggle away from him. “And that gives you leave to go back on your word?"
"A time-honored tradition among politicians.” His mouth angled in a caustic smile. He held her without effort, in spite of her straggle. “The means be damned; it's the ends I care for. If a lie will save some stupid commander from wasting half his troops in a harebrained tilt at honor, you may be sure I'll tell it, and tell it well. I need your speaking box because I think it will save British lives, and I want you here so I can protect yours.” His grip on her tightened. “If I made a promise in order to effect those goals, it wouldn't be very bright of me to stick with the promise and throw away the goals, would it? I want the speaking box, Merlin, and I want you safe."