The Inventor's Secret by Andrea Cremer

Author:Andrea Cremer [Cremer, Andrea]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780698149175
Google: tWwsqVRrTbMC
Amazon: 0399159622
Publisher: Philomel Books
Published: 2014-04-22T07:00:00+00:00

16.

MUCH LATER, AFTER Mrs. Blake had retrieved Charlotte from the parlor and had the other housemaids draw Charlotte what proved to be a rather marvelous bath, Meg shooed Mrs. Blake’s girls away with the pronouncement that only she would be needed to assist Charlotte in dressing for the evening. Charlotte had presumed they would be dining with Lady Winter, but Meg informed her that they would be going out.

“Is Lady Winter unhappy that we’re here?” Charlotte asked Meg.

“I doubt Lady Winter remembers that we arrived today,” Meg said as she buttoned Charlotte’s gown.

“She’s ill, isn’t she?” Charlotte met Meg’s gaze in the mirror.

Meg nodded. “Admiral Winter is rarely at home, and over the years, Lady Winter has developed a nervous constitution and is given to bouts of melancholia.”

Nerves and sadness? Charlotte couldn’t put together how that diagnosis could explain Lady Winter’s strange behavior—excepting the fit of weeping.

Noting Charlotte’s furrowed brow, Meg added, “She treats her maladies with liberal doses of laudanum. Jack told Ashley that his mother has been unable to tolerate even a day without several glasses of laudanum-laced sherry for several years now.”

“Oh,” Charlotte said, twisting her fingers as Meg fetched a jacket to pair with Charlotte’s gown. “Why does Admiral Winter stay away from home for so long? Doesn’t he care that it makes his wife so miserable?”

“It seems he married for duty, not love,” Meg answered. “He prefers to spend his life serving the Empire in the company of his fellow officers and has little interest in overseeing his household.”

“But he has two children,” Charlotte protested.

Meg helped Charlotte into a spencer of pale green silk. “And he cared enough to ensure that his sons attended the best military academies and received officer commissions befitting their stations when they finished school. That was as far as Admiral Winter’s penchant for fatherhood extended.”

Jack must despise his father, Charlotte thought. But of course he does. Why else would he betray the very thing his father loves to a fault, to the demise of his own family?

Shrugging away those somber thoughts, Charlotte asked Meg, “Where are we going tonight?”

“To see about Grave,” Meg answered.

A jolt of anticipation coursed through Charlotte. A clandestine expedition into the city, no matter the danger, held much more appeal than staying within this house full of sorrowful phantoms.

After Charlotte was sufficiently dressed and coiffed, she and Meg descended the mansion’s grand staircase to meet Ash, Grave, and Jack in the foyer. Jack still wore military dress, but had donned a fresh uniform. Ash and Grave had similarly exchanged their rumpled travel clothes for crisp, starched servants’ garb.

Jack didn’t bother with formal greetings, instead saying, “We’ll take the trolley to the Market Platform and board the Great Wheel there. It will be a good hour before we reach the Commons.”

“Isn’t there a faster way to reach the ground?” Ash complained.

“Not without drawing attention to ourselves,” Jack answered, heading for the door. “You have to remember that residents of the Floating City are meant to be unfettered by the harried life of a worker.

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