“I don’t say things I don’t mean, Katharine Tulman. And my answer was yes, wasn’t it?”
I nodded. It had been.
“And what about you? Can you live with what you’ve chosen?”
“Oh, yes. I just won’t take tea in London. Or Paris either. I’ll just have to go to America for it.” I’d made him smile, I could feel it from the way his chin moved on my head. “I’ll be the young woman who always takes her steamer trunk to tea. But I’ll need a bigger trunk, I think. Uncle Tully only just fits now.”
“That’s so. If you’d get room for a workbench in there, you might make a world traveler of him yet.”
“We could go to Rome, to see the ruins.”
“Or the pyramids,” Lane suggested.
“India.”
“Boating down the Amazon.”
“With my trunk in one end of the canoe.”
He laughed, a low rumble in his chest; I felt it vibrating through my own. I wanted to tell him that it was a mess at home, that there had been so much to rebuild and repair, that we were overextended, and that without Mr. Babcock I was afraid I would mishandle all of it. That I would not go to Mr. Babcock’s funeral, to avoid causing a spectacle. That I didn’t know exactly how we were going to hide Uncle Tully, that we might need to hide him for the rest of his years, and that we couldn’t continue to deceive Mrs. Cooper. She was going to be so angry, deservedly so, and would Mr. Cooper really keep our secret? I wanted to tell him that I could not stop thinking of that child in the asylum with his silent play, and that I was afraid Aunt Alice’s legal advice might accidentally be too good. I wanted to tell him that he was descended from the bloodline of two different emperors.
But then Lane said, “Katharine, tell me more about Mr. Tully’s electricity.”
I loved the way he said my name. I said, “It really is the most amazing thing. He makes the electricity fly right through the air. You can’t see it, but you know it must be there, because … well, because the bell rings.”
“Katharine,” Lane said, “I think I’ll just go belowdecks and talk to Mr. Tully about his box.”
He kissed the top of my head, and I immediately missed his warmth as he moved away, disappearing through the door to the cabins below. The wind whipped the ribbons of my hat, overwhelming the noise of the engines. I was alone on the deck, but I wasn’t alone at all. I turned my face to the sea and looked toward home.
Author's note
Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the man who became Napoleon III, was born in 1808 to Louis Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon I, and Hortense de Beauharnais Bonaparte, who was Napoleon I’s stepdaughter. After two attempts in his early life to recapture the rule of France, one of which resulted in exile to London and the other in life imprisonment (from which he escaped), Charles-Louis was rumored to have left at least two sons behind him in England when he was elected president of France in 1848. By December 1852, Charles-Louis had dissolved the French Parliament and proclaimed himself Napoleon III, emperor of France, just as Napoleon I had crowned himself emperor forty-eight years earlier.
The uncertainty created by Napoleon III’s coronation fueled a French and British race to naval supremacy, even as the two countries allied themselves against Russia in the Crimean War. The war began as a dispute over influence in the declining Ottoman Empire, quickly becoming a full-scale conflict known for its gross tactical miscalculations, one of the most famous being chronicled in Tennyson’s poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” But it was also the first “modern” war, with the use of steam-powered ships, floating ironclad batteries, railways, and also daily documentation for the public newspapers by telegraph and photography. Florence Nightingale began using modern nursing techniques on the Crimean battlefields, where more men died of disease than of their wounds. The British-French alliance declared victory in 1856. In 1859, the French launched the first steam- powered, ironclad ship,
With the advent of steam-powered ironclads also came the race for the ability to destroy them. British engineer Robert Whitehead was the first to design a swimming, clockwork torpedo “fish,” the earliest plans of which show a section marked “secret chamber,” where the gyroscope was housed. But it wasn’t until the addition of a pendulum in 1868 that the fish became a reliable weapon. Filled with the new and volatile nitrocellulose, or “guncotton,” Whitehead’s torpedo could swim a straight line, holding its depth beneath the water to stealthily blow a hole in an ironclad ship. The first torpedoes were purchased by Britain’s Royal Navy in 1870, filling the vacuum of power created by the invincible ironclads. The way the balance of power was maintained and naval battles were fought changed forever, not only for Britain and France, but for the world.
Acknowledgments
When I considered the acknowledgments for my debut novel it was very clear to me that no author writes a book alone. Now that I’ve completed my second novel, I realize just as clearly that no one publishes a book alone. Thank you, Scholastic Press. What an incredible team I’ve had behind me! Not only have you come together to make an amazing book, you’ve done your very best to turn this writer into an author and make me a part of your publishing family. Seriously, why are you people so nice?
For Lisa Sandell, my lovely, encouraging, gracious, and so very patient editor and friend: You’ve opened your office, your heart, and your home. Thank you for believing that I could do this!
For Sheila Marie Everett, my publicist: Everything’s better where you are!
For Elizabeth Starr Baer, Bess Braswell, Emma Brockaway, Jody Corbett, Antonio Gonzalez, Candace Greene, Emily Heddleson, Stacy Lellos, David Levithan, John Mason, Emily Morrow, Elizabeth Parisi, Lizette Serrano, Tracy van Straaten, Jennifer Ung, the fabulous Scholastic sales team, and all the people that have had a hand in getting both the book and myself where we’re going: many thanks. And also everyone in Book Clubs, Book Fairs, and the Foreign Rights department: I know you guys do a lot more than I will ever know. Thank you for being my champions.
For Kelly Sonnack, my agent: You know the combination of intelligence, savvy, humor, beauty, and being so darn good at your job is unfair to the rest of us, right?
For the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Midsouth Region: If the journey to publication is an upward climb, you gave me a ladder.
All my love and thanks to my writing partners, who continue to teach and hone me: Genetta Adair, Amy Eytchison, Rachel Griffith, Howard Shirley, Angelika Stegmann, Courtney Stevens, and Jessica Young. I would be nowhere without you. And also for Ruta Sepetys, who always manages to show me the way to being a better author and a better person: Thank you for blazing the trail!
For all my family: Your love, support, and enthusiasm have meant so much to me!
For my grandmother Betty Hill: Your resume has been forwarded to the publicity department. Please watch for that, Sheila Marie.
For Christopher, Stephen, and Elizabeth: You guys would be horrified by all the motherly bragging I do about you while I’m on the road. Sorry about that. I probably won’t stop, though.
And for Philip, who has happily done more research, drawn more schematics, become my personal Internet cyber-stalker as well as a minor expert in the business of publishing, and who has dropped me off at more
