Chapter 7
Nic lay awake well into the small hours, unable to stop reliving that kiss.
Eventually he fell into a doze, only for Dashiell to follow him into his dreams. There, he berated Nic for falling out of the hayloft and missing his vowsmithing exams, complaints that began to emerge in the grating voice of an automaton—an automaton that chased him clanking through the night.
Nic woke in a sweat when the automaton became Dashiell and pushed him down the stairs.
Nic glanced at the clock beside Avery’s covered cage—a mechanical echo capable of trilling the time when wound up.
It was not yet seven, but preferring not to return to his dreams, Nic pulled himself out of bed.
Wine would help. Or perhaps seeking some answers about the automaton in the style wing followed by wine.
“Good morning, lovely,” he said as he pulled the cover off Avery’s cage.
“Morning,” she chirped back, bending her head to nip at her feathers. “Good morning.”
Not that it was a good morning. Every inch of Nic’s skin felt too tight, traced through with the ghosts of touches he couldn’t stop thinking about. Yet to start thinking about them would take him right back to that wall, Dashiell’s weight against him, hot and hungry.
God, he needed a strong drink. Or two, he decided, as he stepped into his dressing room to be assailed with the increasingly familiar weight of loss.
Ringing for Rowerre would bring only a random assortment of footmen to his aid—men who could help him dress and even organise his wardrobe, but who were not Rowerre.
As Nic dressed, he wished he’d had the chance to tell the man just how much his care had meant.
Carrying that weight with him, Nic let himself out of his rooms. A glance along the passage to where he’d seen the ghost revealed only threadbare carpet and empty air, but as he made his way toward the style wing, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching him all the same.
“Oh! Lord Monterris!”
Nic jumped as Lady Radlay appeared, straightening up from where she’d been leaning near the style-wing stairs.
“Lady Radlay,” he said, his heartbeat a rapid drumming in his chest. “What are you doing here?”
“She’s my lookout,” Leaf said, stepping around the corner. “I’ve been trying to pick the lock but it’s harder than I expected.”
“Pick the lock?” Nic looked from Leaf’s innocent expression to Millie Radlay’s profile as she turned away, trying not to laugh. “It’s not a little early for exploring run-down rooms?”
“Oh, Serrals are accursedly early risers, I’m afraid. Besides, I could ask you the same thing. Or do you just happen to be strolling this way with something heavy and key-like in your pocket?”
“I need to see that automaton again,” Nic said. “I need to find out where it came from and how it works.”
Leaf’s eyes widened. “You want to see that thing again?”
“That thing was wearing the ruined waistcoat I asked Rowerre to get rid of.” Nic glanced at Lady Radlay, whose intent gaze had fixed on the side of his face. “That’s a long story, but yes. I’m going to find the automaton.”
“Potentially murderous automaton,” Leaf corrected. “I had better come with you.”
“Leaf!” Lady Radlay cried, before glancing along the passage and lowering her voice to add, “You said you just found dilapidated rooms yesterday.”
Leaf took her cousin’s hand. “And so we did. I am merely teasing. We won’t be long, and no one is likely to come looking for us, but if they do—”
“You are going to owe me for this.” Lady Radlay pouted. “Playing watch while you go off adventuring with Lord Monterris is going to get very dull very fast.”
“You’re an angel, truly.” Leaf kissed her cheek and spun away as Millie glared. “And I promise I’ll make it up to you. Like next time you need me to cover for a visit to Mr. Tem—”
“Leaf!”
Millie’s cheeks reddened and she looked meaningfully Nic’s way, but Leaf just waved a hand. “Oh, don’t mind him, he’s practically family already,” she said, hooking her arm through Nic’s and pulling him toward the style-wing door.
“I’m also really quite hard of hearing, I promise,” he threw over his shoulder to a still furiously blushing Lady Radlay. Once Leaf had dragged him around the corner, he added, “Your poor cousin, my lady, you quite mortified her.”
“Oh no,” Leaf said, holding out her hand for the key.
“It is impossible to mortify Millie. She will tell me off later for risking secrets in front of you, though. Here.” Having unlocked the door, she handed back the key and bent to pick up the lantern and candelabra she’d left on the floor.
“But you won’t tell Aunt Theresa, so Millie needn’t worry. ”
“She said yesterday they don’t get along,” Nic said as they once again stepped into air that managed to be both damp and dusty at the same time, leaving a chalky taste on the tongue.
He wasn’t sure bringing Leaf along was wise considering what answers he’d come to find, but doubted he could change her mind.
“Oh, they hate each other,” Leaf said, far more cheerfully than the words ought to have allowed. “It’s a long story, but the short version is that Millie is Uncle Ricard’s daughter with his first wife, Caroline Wivenwood. Have you heard of the Wivenwoods?”
Nic shook his head as they made their way through the shabby antechamber.
“No? Well, Sir Bertram Wivenwood—Millie’s grandfather, you know—fell into such disgrace that his knighthood was revoked by the king.
Uncle Ricard was lucky the marriage contract had been so carefully smithed that he wasn’t drawn into it.
You see, once Lady Caroline was no longer the daughter of Sir Bertram Wivenwood, it was automatically annulled.
Millie was only a baby, but Aunt Theresa has always disliked her, saying she brings shame to the family through her mother, and other such nonsense.
Really, I think my aunt is just jealous because Uncle Ricard adores her, but I dare not say so. ”
“Poor Millie. And to have been widowed so young too.”
“Exactly so! You’d think my aunt could show more compassion, but no.” Leaf sniffed. “Don’t tell anyone I told you, though. They all hate when it gets brought up. Here, take the lantern; my arms are getting tired carrying these.”
He took the lantern but gave the candelabra a stern look. “Why do you even have that?”
“In case I need to whack anything.”
Clearly seeing nothing amiss with this statement, Leaf strode on ahead, eyes darting from shadow to shadow.
Nothing had changed since the day before.
Dust still blanketed every surface, turning already faded furniture a ghostly grey in the morning light, and the tang of mildew hung in the air.
While the rest of the Court had possessed the silence of a house not yet awake, here the silence befitted a slowly decaying tomb.
They made straight for their destination, yet even with her heavy candelabra in hand, Leaf slowed as she approached the room where they’d first found the automaton.
It was empty.
The door it had chased them through lay flat on the floor, and Nic stepped over it as they retraced their escape route. There the open window from which they’d leapt, there the pile of broken-up automata parts in the corner, but of the walking, talking automaton there was no sign.
“I’m not sure if I’m more relieved or terrified,” Leaf said.
A shiver ran through Nic’s skin. He’d hoped they would find it, hoped to find it had walked into the wall and run itself down so he could prove to himself it was just a machine.
“Nic?” She touched his arm.
“I told you I walked out into the garden the other night,” he said.
“But I didn’t tell you why. I wasn’t just escaping the party; I thought I saw an automaton of sorts, so I followed it.
I saw it again last night. A white, featureless face and a body of shadows—shadows like the ones that spilled from the automaton yesterday. Heavy and oily.”
This time Leaf shivered. “Well, that’s extremely creepy. You think it was the same automaton?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t speak either time.”
“Oh, do you think it could be that Faceless Man that Master Everel told us about?”
“I suppose it could have been. Since I’ve never seen a ghost, I don’t really know what one is meant to look like.”
“Ghostly, I should think.”
Nic gave her a look. “That doesn’t help as much as you think it does. Come on, let’s check the other rooms just in case.”
A thorough search of the upper style wing achieved nothing beyond giving Nic a fine covering of dust and an appetite for his breakfast. Thankfully, they were late enough to the breakfast parlour that Nic was spared the torment of having to sit down and politely drink tea with Dashiell, but the very knowledge that he remained in the house made him yearn for something stronger to drink.
The absent automaton wasn’t helping either, nor the possibility that Rowerre had been deliberately pushed down the stairs.
All in all it had been a very inauspicious start to a lock-in.
Unfortunately for Nic’s desire to drink, the duke had planned some entertainments for his guests.
That day it was to be a tour of the house and grounds, or rather a tour of the parts of it His Grace deemed worth showing.
Unable to cry off, Nic could only hope to glean some answers about ghosts and automata as they went.
Failing that, walking around the Court might at least distract him from endlessly reliving the moment Dashiell had pushed him against the wall.