toward the house. She didn’t have much time. The automaton would eventually make its way back, and if her estimation of Lord Vincent’s secrecy and intelligence was even half of what it should be, the metal would sense her from a distance.
She was strong and fast, but a bullet could kill her just as easily as it killed anyone else.
Speed gave her momentum and she leaped up at the house, fingers clutching at the top of a window casing. Toes and fingers dug in as she pulled herself up. Was she getting stronger? She felt even stronger than she had before punching that idiot governess.
That silly part of her that worried too much was not going to be happy about that, but
There was a slight popping noise as the latch broke, bits of it hitting the floor. The window swung open and she pulled herself over the sill just as the automaton approached far below.
As a precaution, she closed the window once more. It gaped slightly without its latch, but as far as she was concerned that wasn’t her dilemma.
She was in a bedroom. As she surveyed her surroundings in the dark, with nothing but moonlight and her keen eyesight to guide her, she saw that she was in what must have been the late countess’s bedchamber. Either the earl had never closed the room up after she died, or he was in the midst of preparing it for his new bride.
She picked a brush up from the vanity. Auburn hair clung to some of the bristles, answering her question. He had never closed the room up after his last wife’s death.
Did he plan to move Phoebe in here without changing a thing? Or would he put her elsewhere, so this room might remain a museum of sorts? Whichever he chose, it was still…creepy. Marrying a girl who looked that much like your dead wife was just unsettling. Surely society thought the same way? But no one would dare tell an earl that he was clearly on the short list for Bedlam, the lunatic asylum.
Flesh prickling with goose bumps, Finley made for the door. She couldn’t stay in this room any longer, cryptlike as it was. Why, her overactive mind could almost imagine the husk of the former Lady Vincent beneath the bedcovers.
Her heart was pounding as she slipped out into the corridor. It was dark and quiet here—not a mechanized servant to be seen, nor a human one. The only light was what peeked from beneath a door at the end of the hall.
Finley crept toward that light, wincing when the floorboards creaked beneath her feet. She froze, scarcely daring to breathe. Nothing. No metal guards, no weapons flying out of the walls, no trip wires designed to maim or kill. Lord Vincent put all of his energy into keeping people out of his house rather than taking precautions against a stranger romancing the inside—thankfully.
At the end of the corridor, she crouched down and put her eye to the keyhole.
She needn’t have worried, she soon realized. This wasn’t a bedroom—or at least it wasn’t anymore. It might have been at one time, but now it appeared to be a laboratory of some sort. Lord Vincent stood with his back to her—fully clothed. He seemed to be fiddling with some sort of cabinet with a glass top. She couldn’t quite see it all because he was in the way.
The room was brightly lit, and the odor seeping from underneath the door smelled vaguely of chemicals and smoke, and was moist with steam. Jars and beakers sat on shelves and workbenches. Strange tools that looked like things a dentist or surgeon might use hung ominously from hooks in the walls. If it wasn’t so clean and bright, she might think she was spying on Dr. Frankenstein himself.
Lord Vincent was probably building a new automaton, or working on one of his inventions. She’d been foolish to be overly suspicious of him. At worst he was an eccentric, dirty old man eager to marry someone almost a third his age.
Finley was just about to move away from the door and go home, when Lord Vincent moved away from the cabinet. Sitting on top of the wooden base was a large glass tank filled with a viscous pink liquid. Coils of wires ran from various apparatus and switches into the tank, bobbing as whatever it was they were attached to moved—or rather
Finley barely covered her mouth in time. Swallowing her cry, she rocked back on her heels, gripping the wall for support as prickles of heat swarmed her mind. She did not shock or surprise easily, especially not when the weaker side of herself was asleep, but what she had seen horrified her.
She peeked through the keyhole again despite her better judgment. She had to know if her eyes had deceived her. Her heart hammered as she turned her attention to the tank.
It was still. The wires leading into it did not move, nor did the jellylike contents. There was nothing bobbing like an apple in a barrel of water, only stillness—like a jar of jam.
Could she have imagined it? She wondered as she rose to her feet. Her limbs trembled and her heart continued its throbbing rhythm, even as she doubted her own eyes.
The sound of footsteps grew louder on the other side of the door, spurring her into motion. She had barely ducked into the eerie bedroom at the end of the hall when she heard the door of the laboratory open. Through the crack, she spied Lord Vincent walking down the polished floor toward that room. Whirling on her heel, she raced toward the window and squeezed out onto the ledge, closing the glass behind her. She quickly climbed down to the grass and sprinted toward the wall, narrowly avoiding the patrol automaton.
The vision of that tank haunted her all the way back to Lord and Lady Morton’s, and continued to plague her as she lay in bed, wishing for a fast and dreamless sleep. She could not forget the image no matter how hard she tried. Not for the first time she doubted her own sanity, because she couldn’t have seen what she thought she had seen. But still…
She had seen something similar in an anatomy book Silas had in the store, and though the thought made her stomach churn, she could have sworn that what she had seen in the tank at Lord Vincent’s was a human brain.
Chapter Six
The bright light of day made everything so much clearer.
When Finley woke up the next morning, mortified that the other part of herself had taken over and broken into Lord Vincent’s home, she told herself of course there hadn’t been a brain in that tank. It had only looked like one—not that she had any experience with brain examination. It had probably been something his lordship was working on—something machine related, and not human at all.
That was what she told herself, and part of her believed it enough to decide not to give it any more thought. Even when she went down to breakfast and found herself alone with Lady Morton, she said nothing.
“You look tired this morning, Finley, my dear,” the lady commented, her tone sincerely concerned. “Are you quite all right?”
“I’m fine, thank you. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
Lady Morton concentrated on spreading jam on her toast and did not look at Finley. “I thought I heard you come in quite late last night.”
Finley froze. “I… I went for a walk in the garden. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
“You didn’t. I thought perhaps you might have gone out.” Now she raised her pointed, and somewhat unsettling gaze.
Frowning, Finley could only stare back. Was she correct in suspecting that her ladyship had hoped she had gone somewhere, or was the woman merely trying to control her anger? It was difficult to tell, but a little voice in her head—a voice she recognized as her “other” self, urged her to trust her instinct. Against her better judgment, she listened to the voice.
“Where do you suppose I might have gotten myself off to? Had I gone out, that is.”
