A School for Unusual Girls (35 page)

We approached the gates of the Iron Crown stronghold cautiously. Unlike the soldier manning the lighthouse, these guards took their task seriously. They moved from their positions against the wall and with muskets in hand, they blocked our entry to the gate. They looked straight over my head and addressed the captain, “
Que voulez-vous ici?
What do you want,
monsieur
?”

I marched forward and thrust the sealed letter at the one who'd done the talking. “I have an important note for Lady Daneska,
la comtesse Valdikauf
. Urgent.
Comprenez-vous?
” My hand shook as I held it out to him.

He snorted, and looked down his nose at me as if I was no more than a street urchin begging for sous, but he finally took it. “
Prendre du recul
. Step back!”

His companion pushed us into the street with his musket. The man with my letter hurried through the gate and locked it.

We stood there peering through the bars. Waiting. At the far end of the courtyard, Maya sat on a bench near a service door, plucking chickens. She was careful not to look directly at us.

Sebastian was only a few meters away. Any minute I might see him. I fought to keep my hands still and at my sides, so they wouldn't betray my anxiety. When Daneska came out to us, I wanted to appear competent and earnest, not worried and panicked. I glimpsed movement in an upper window overlooking the courtyard. It had to be her. She would be gauging my demeanor, noting who accompanied me, taking her time, making me wait, showing me she had all the control of this situation.

I took a deep breath and stood as tall and confidently as I could. In the end, Daneska did not trouble herself to come out. The guard returned with my note. I did not wait for privacy. I opened it right then and read the words she had scrawled across the bottom. I clenched my teeth and glared at the window where I knew she was watching and chuckling.

BRING YOUR RECIPE AND COME BACK TONIGHT AT SIX.

Six o'clock. With that faint promise, we returned to the inn.

I didn't know how I could bear the hours until we would see him. Every plodding minute stretched forever in front of me. I stared listlessly at the sketch of the new Da Vinci wings. My mind felt like useless sludge.

“Stop dawdling.” Miss Stranje rapped my boggy head with her knuckles. “We can't begin cutting the silk until you finish the design. Do you intend to let fear and worry drown you? Are you going to leave him there to die?”

“No,” I gasped.

“Then breathe.” She poked me in the back, making me sit up straighter. “And get on with it.”

Vowing to salvage each lost second, I went to work with renewed intensity. Drawing each line with increased hope. Inking away my anxiety with each measurement. As I envisioned how to make the steering mechanism work, my confidence grew. We
would
get him out.

Jane and I made miniature versions of different wing styles out of parchment and tested them. I'd never before met anyone as good at mathematics as I am. Together we calculated the angle of descent, and designed a simple sling to carry two people instead of one.

We laid out the silk and cut it according to my measurements. Sera, Jane, and Miss Stranje went to work stitching, while Tess and I measured and cut the baleen. I had just finished marking for another cut when the clock chimed five-thirty.

Captain Grey appeared in the doorway. “Time to go.”

 

Twenty-three

TROUBLING DISTRACTIONS

The streets were nearly deserted at that hour. Shops had closed. The working poor had already finished their meager meal. The rich were indoors, dressing for evening, while their servants were busy preparing sumptuous dinners to be eaten late. The air smelled of onion soup, potatoes, and roasting meat. Talk drifted from the houses. Laughter rumbled from the taverns. But the three of us walked in worried silence until the white walls of the Iron Crown stronghold loomed before us.

Captain Grey pressed a steadying hand on my shoulder. “Don't give in too easily. She'll suspect something if you do.”

I clutched the formula in my pocket. The wrong formula. The one that would develop on its own in twelve hours. It would look right at first, and that might buy us time. The men in the Order of the Iron Crown wanted more from him than this formula, at the very least they would want the names of Sebastian's men and where they were posted. We reasoned that Daneska and her cohorts would keep him alive long enough to make certain she got an ink from me that worked. Hopefully, we would have him out tomorrow before they discovered that this one didn't.

The guard, who had been so rude to me earlier that morning, came forward and spoke to us in passable English. “Halt there. Wait.”

“
Reculez
,” the other man barked at Captain Grey and Mr. Digby. We backed up some but not much. Captain Grey stood directly behind me.

I waited, but my heart thrashed like a hooked fish and threatened to leap into my throat and suffocate me. I saw Maya sitting across the courtyard, shelling peas beside the cook. I wished I could hear her calming voice, but the guard noticed me staring in their direction and shouted for them to go inside. They scurried through the servant's door, but not before Maya subtly indicated the side of the villa where they were holding Sebastian. She glanced up as if looking at the exact room. Which meant Sera was right; they were holding him on the third floor.

Daneska emerged from the house, looking relaxed and elegant. She smiled pleasantly and greeted me as if we were friends. “How very gracious of you to stop by, Miss Fitzwilliam. I trust you brought your recipe?”

I held up the folded paper. “First, I must see that Lord Wyatt is well.”

“But, of course.” She motioned for me to come closer and peer into the courtyard.

A guard shoved Sebastian out of the side door. He staggered forward, his hands tied behind him like a man bound for the gallows. Captain Grey sucked in a ragged breath. A scream caught in my throat. My stomach reeled.

Sebastian's eyes. His beautiful eyes. Beaten until they were only dark slits in bulging scarlet welts. And his lips …

“No, no, no,” I choked.

Unbidden, I felt them on mine. But now they were bruised, split, and swollen, seeping blood down his chin. His cheeks. The fine smooth skin was now a mass of red and purple lumps. I couldn't breathe. Had I not caught the captain's arm, my knees would've buckled.

Sebastian wore the same torn shirt he'd had on in London, covered in dried blood, gaping open to the cold. They hadn't tended the raw angry cut on his chest. To the contrary, as he stumbled closer I saw fresh lash marks crisscrossed it.

Bile scorched furiously up my throat. I heaved in a bitter gagging breath. Unable to stop myself, I gasped, “Sebastian!”

He blinked, as if the dying afternoon sun was too bright, and tilted his head, straining to see who had uttered his name. He lurched forward the minute he recognized me. “No! Georgie, don't—”

The guard struck the back of Sebastian's head with the butt of his rifle. I shrieked, as he collapsed facedown on the grass.

He lay there, not moving, his hair a mass of dark curls, matted with his blood. I ached to run to him, to smooth them back, to hold his head on my lap and beg his forgiveness. Dear God in heaven, he would not be here if I hadn't blundered.

I grabbed the bars of the gate. “What have you done to him?”

“I?” Her hand fluttered to her décolletage. “
I
have done nothing.”

The guard roused Sebastian. Yanking him up by the arm, he hauled him back into the house. I didn't even realize I was crying until Daneska clucked her tongue. “Dry your tears,
mon cher
. He knew the risks of this business. The recipe,
s'il vous plaît
.”

I could not stop tears from running down my cheeks. But now, they burned with anger. “You will release him.”

“Not until after I test the recipe.”

“How long?” I held the formula back. “When will you let him go?”

“Soon.” She shrugged. “These things take time. I must find a chemist. We are very busy at the moment. We have
important
guests to attend to, and the Lord Mayor has invited all of the nobility to welcome the Bourbon
King
back to France.” She cocked her chin, making much of the fact that she was nobility and I was not.

“Yes, yes, you are a countess, so you must attend the royal affair. I don't care about any of that. When will you let him go?” I demanded, slapping the formula against the bars of the gate and withdrawing it.

“I make no promises.” She stepped back, arms crossed. “You have seen he is alive. If you want him to remain so, you will give me the recipe. Choose.”

As if I had a choice. It was a lie. Like everything else about her. The immaculate deception. I had no choice. None. Lady Daneska held all the cards. I was merely a beggar in her world. So, I slid the paper to her and begged, “Please, Daneska.”

She snatched her prize and walked away without a word.

I began to tremble. Captain Grey took me by the shoulders and urged me away from the gate. We had walked to the end of the street before I could speak without quivering to pieces. “She'll never let him go.”

“We knew that,” he said, still supporting my shoulders. “Which is why you must get him out tomorrow.”

I do not recall walking the half mile back to the Blue Lion.
Numb
. I felt numb.

I could scarcely even feel my own feet. If I allowed myself to feel, if I reflected at all upon the bleakness of our situation, or the agony Sebastian must be suffering, I would crumble.

This cold mechanical determination was the only way I could attend to the work that needed doing that night. I worked with such steely focus I may as well have been made of iron fittings and steel gears. One goal throbbed in my consciousness.
Get Sebastian out
.

After we finished building the wings, Jane and I practiced assembling and disassembling them. The parts had to be compact enough that we could bring them into the lighthouse hidden under our cloaks, and yet easy enough to take apart quickly and hide after we landed. Miss Stranje timed us. “Faster,” she ordered, until we had the disassembly down to under a minute. “Better. Now do it again.”

We discussed every detail of the plan. Jane and I would be disguised as housemaids. Miss Stranje made us practice how to behave like a proper servant, and what to say if we were noticed in the hallway. Tess would dress seductively in order to distract the guards, if needed, as we flew into the courtyard. We needed to lure the soldier guarding the watchtower to the other side of the building so that he would not notice when a gigantic bird took off from the observation balcony. Miss Stranje insisted she must be the one to do this job. “I couldn't possibly send one of you girls to do that sort of job. It would be highly inappropriate. You are far too young and innocent for such things.”

The captain turned sharp at that, broke off his hushed discussion with Mr. Digby and two other men, and marched across the room to our table. “A word, Miss Stranje. If you please.”

They retired to a dark corner and engaged in a heated discussion. “Very well,” she huffed at the end of it. “I'll use a sleeping potion. But we are running decidedly low on the stuff. Not only that, but now I must stop in at a bake shop to find something suitable to put it in.”

“Eminently preferable to the alternative.”

She sniffed. “I do hope you appreciate that at this rate, my girls and I will be putting half of Calais to sleep.” She returned to us looking miffed, but the corner of her mouth twitched as if she was secretly pleased.

We continued planning. Every detail considered, reconsidered, laid out, and practiced until I thought I would go mad.

Jane insisted on teaching me how to pick a lock. “In case something should happen to me. One never knows.”

I thought I was past feeling until that moment. Remembering that Jane, too, would be in danger because of me made the lump in my chest grow even heavier. My fingers turned stiff and clumsy. One of her tools clattered to the floor.

It turns out that picking a lock is more of an art than a simple mechanical process. When I failed yet again, Jane sighed. “I don't understand it. The inn's locks are fairly simple. At Stranje House we practice with dozens of more complex locks.”

If I could have taken the lock apart and seen the mechanism, I might've had more success. But it was late, and I hung by a frayed thread. I handed back her tools. “Perhaps I will learn there. For now, you must simply promise to not let anything happen to you.”

Miss Stranje pulled me aside and handed me a small vial of laudanum. “You may need this if he is in too injured to move without his crying out. Give him a few drops.”

She also showed us how to wrap a strap under his arms so we could lower him by rope. It would not be comfortable.

On my way to bed I stopped in the hallway and stared at the bottle in my hand. Suddenly I was unable to escape thinking of his pain. I remembered his poor bruised eyes. His beaten cheeks. His lips swollen, and split … I sagged against the wall and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to banish the image. I must focus on only one thought.
Get him out
.

I couldn't sleep that night. I kept going over our plan in my head. Something niggled at me.

Distractions
.

We had planned how to divert the guard's attention at the lighthouse, and a diversion for when Jane and I landed. Indeed, we had a misdirection prepared for every aspect of our mission to get in the villa. But what if we needed a distraction once we got inside the stronghold? I worried it wouldn't be enough to simply pretend we were innocent housemaids.

In the early hours before dawn, an idea roused me to action. I slipped out of bed, dressed, and went down to our private parlor to work.