Glass and Steele 01 - The Watchmaker's Daughter by C.J. Archer

Author:C.J. Archer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: C.J. Archer

Mr. Glass, Duke, Willie and Cyclops went out after breakfast, and it had nothing to do with finding Mr. Mirth, so I was informed. They wouldn't tell me where they were going, but I suspected it concerned the intruder Willie had shot at.

I spent the morning getting to know Miss Glass better as two charwomen worked in the other rooms. Indeed, I found her eager to discuss her family, and it took little prompting from me to discover her father had been just as horrid as her older brother. The free-spirited and kind-hearted Harry, the youngest of three siblings, had left the country as soon as he reached his majority.

"He asked me to go with him," she said with a sad smile. "He pleaded with me, in fact. Mama had passed by that time, and Harry was everything to me. I gave it some serious thought, but decided to remain here. Having his spinster sister trail along would have stifled him. He needed to be free more than he needed to breathe. Father and Richard had been so cruel, always telling him he was worthless. As the younger brother, he inherited nothing and had to find his own way in the world. Father wanted him to become a lawyer, but working in an office would have slowly killed Harry's spirit. So he escaped and never came back."

"Was your father angry?"

"Terribly. He flew into a rage after he discovered Harry had left. I was the only one he told, you see, and I kept the secret until after his ship departed."

"Where did Harry go?"

"Everywhere. He traveled to exotic lands—Egypt, Turkey, Russia, all over the Orient, Canada and America. He had a small annuity from our mother that funded his travels. She left him this house too, but he never let it out. He may have worked, but his letters never mentioned such things."

Perhaps because he knew his sister thought “such things” vulgar. "He met his wife in America?"

"Charlotte." She folded her hands over her lap where one of Harry's letters lay open. They'd been delivered to the house, along with her belongings, the previous evening. "He adored her. I could tell from his writing that he thought the world of her. But he never wrote about her family and friends. It seems Richard had one of those Pinkerton detectives find out more, but he didn't confide what he'd learned to me. All I knew was that he considered her beneath us."

I didn't remind her that Lord Rycroft accused Charlotte's family of being criminals or mention that my own investigation confirmed it. Nor did I tell her that both Harry and Matthew had probably joined in with the Johnsons’ criminal ways. How else could Harry and Charlotte have funded their travels? How else could they have afforded a good education for Matthew? For he was certainly a well-bred, intelligent man.

"Matthew was born nine months after they married." She picked up the letter in her lap and smiled as she scanned the page. "This one was sent from Zurich.

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