The Lovelocks of London: The Collection

Chapter 1

One

“Harry!”

In the room she called her own, the one she had begged her father for when he had built this house, the young woman muttered to herself, dipped her quill into the inkpot, and bent over her paper.

Much like the woman, the room was tall and narrow.

And rather odd. It was wedged in among the extra bedchambers and had only one window and one door.

There was one key to the lock on the door, a key Harry wore on a chain around her neck.

No other people—not her sisters, not her stepmother, and certainly no maids—were ever allowed into the room.

Years ago, when she was very young, from time to time, her father would ask permission to enter her room. He would sit at the far end, in the one chair at the one table in front of the one window, and look at her scratchings on the papers.

“It’s the calculus, Papa. Do you see how clever it is?”

He would sigh and rub his eyes behind his spectacles and smile.

“I see how clever you are, my darling girl. It’s well beyond the mind of this old banker. I have spent far too much of my life thinking in shillings and pounds to start thinking now in—what did you call it?—the calculus.”

Then he would stand and pat the top of her head and tell her to be sure to obey her stepmother and be a nice, agreeable girl.

“Harry!”

The young woman muttered to herself more loudly, dipping her pen with increasing ferocity, splattering ink onto her sleeve, filling her paper with symbols.

She had a new lemma, a sub-theorem, in mind to send to Dean Haddington of Cambridge.

It might be a fresh start on the conjecture.

The idea held a great deal of promise—if she could just get it down on paper.

The banging on the door started.

“Harriet Lovelock, you come out of there this instant!”

Mrs. Catherine Lovelock, née Catherine Cooke of the London stage, originally Kate Cooksey of the West Midlands, stood in the passage, fuming.

She still dressed in the lavender of half mourning even though her beloved had died over four years ago, and one of her tiny lavender boots peeped out from under her lavender skirt as she kicked the door while simultaneously rapping with her knuckles.

She took a deep breath, filled her lungs, and used the voice that had once reached the back row of the Theatre-Royal, Drury Lane.

“Harriet-you-come-out-this-inst—”

The door suddenly opened, and Catherine, using all the skills of balance and grace she could muster, managed to keep herself from falling forwards despite having put a great deal of vigor behind each of her raps and kicks on the door.

Her ungainly stepdaughter stood in the doorway, her light-brown hair wild with tendrils, ink smudge on her face.

“I do my best, but since an instant is an infinitesimal amount of time, no matter how fast I go, I can’t possibly come to the door in an instant.

” Harriet, or Harry, as she was better known to her family, frowned as she stepped out of the room and turned and locked the door behind her.

“On the other hand, it is very satisfying to know I disprove Zeno’s paradox every time I cross my room to open the door.

” Harry put her chain with the key on it back around her neck.

Catherine looked up into her stepdaughter’s hazel eyes, sure she must be mocking her, but, as always, Harry was in dead earnest. Catherine’s fury melted into anxiety.

Oh, what was she going to do with this peculiar, pale beanstalk of a girl?

Catherine stood on her tiptoes and started scrubbing at the ink blotch on Harry’s face with her lavender handkerchief.

“Harry, Harry, Harry,” she scolded. “You have to get dressed for Lady Huxley’s ball. Your hair is a fright, and your face has more ink on it than a newspaper. Didn’t you notice the time?”

Harry took the handkerchief from her stepmother and began scrubbing at her own cheek with one hand, while absently patting her hair with the other.

“I noticed it was getting darker, and that made me think about the spinning of the globe and why we don’t get flung off into the sky as the Earth turns. And when I couldn’t see anymore, I lit a candle.”

“Did you blow out the candle?”

“Yes,” Harry scoffed. She looked down at the once delicately tinted handkerchief.

“I’m afraid this is now quite ruined.” She handed the handkerchief back to her stepmother.

“No. I don’t know. Let me—” She quickly opened the door with her key and darted into the room.

“No, no, Mama Katie, I didn’t put out the candle in my room.

” She reappeared and locked the door again. “But now I have.”

Catherine took her stepdaughter by the elbow—and what an exceedingly bony elbow it was, did the girl never eat?—and bustled Harry through the passage and down the winding staircase to her bedchamber, where Harry’s lady’s maid Smythe stood waiting.

There would be time tomorrow for remonstrances about the dangers of using candles in her room, where no one could check if Harry had remembered to snuff a flame.

However, just now, time was short, and Catherine mustn’t mention that since time was one of Harry’s hobbyhorses and could lead to a disquisition on the structure and meaning of time and, yes, there was no time for that.

“We shan’t have ti—” Catherine caught herself and started again, more loudly and firmly.

“We shan’t have a bath. But we must get your face very clean since you won’t wear powder.

It’s good your hair curls on its own as the tongs have not been heated.

And have you eaten anything today? I’ve had Smythe lay out your green gown, but now that I see it, I am thinking it should be one of your white gowns.

You’ve become much too sallow for the green.

Arabella is in white, too, so you will be a pair.

If only you would wear a bit of rouge. And I want to see you smile at this ball, Harry, and have fun. ”

Harriet violently kicked off her slippers and turned towards her stepmother.

“I will smile,” she forced the corners of her lips up in an insincere and horrible rictus of a grin, “but I can’t promise to have fun.”