The Earl of Brass (The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Book 1) (7 page)

Upon seeing her son’s clenched features and bowed head, his mother rushed over to his side, but he raised his hand to stop her from touching him. “Dear, what is the matter? Should we call Dr. Hawthorne?”

He shook his head and slowly straightened to his full height with a sharp intake of breath. “It’s a side effect of the amputation. My nerves act up, especially when I wear this thing.” He gestured to the prosthetic arm. “It will pass, but, Mother, must I wear it tomorrow? I would be so much more comfortable without it.”

“I know you don’t like it, but I still insist that you wear it. It’s so life-like and you spent so much on it that it would be a shame not to wear it, and I fear without it, our guests may be troubled by… your condition. I didn’t even notice you had it on during dinner. It made you look like your old self.” She smiled warmly and lightly patted his shoulder. “Maybe you should turn in early tonight, dear. Rest is always good for nerves.”

Eilian stared into his mother’s soft features before turning to the others, but none of them could see the hurt permeating every fiber of his body. To them, they were simply doing what was best for everyone whether it harmed him or not. Under his breath, he bid them good night and hurried off to his room where he would finally be left alone.

***

Patrick discreetly slipped from the servants’ hall and traced his way through the familiar hallways until he reached Eilian’s room. The footman who had served the Sorrells tea and after-dinner refreshments had told him that his master had gone to bed. Because the bell in his room was never pulled, he had no idea his boss had ever left the drawing room. Eilian Sorrell was rather self-sufficient, but usually at night, he at least had him hang up his clothing. He lightly knocked before opening the door in case he was asleep. His jacket, vest, and shirt were slung over the chair in the corner, but Eilian was sitting on his bed, staring out the window with his prosthesis half-dangling from what remained of his arm.

“Sir, do you need any help getting dressed for bed? You didn’t ring for me.” As he watched his master’s body stiffly twitch and then relax, he knew something was amiss. “Sir, are you all right?”

He turned to his butler with smoke and ember eyes as he wiped the heel of his hand across his cheek. “My mother thinks I’m repulsive now. She acts like my arm is some sort of sideshow spectacle.”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean it that way.”

“She said her guests would be disturbed if I dared to not wear this stupid arm. Does she think I want to be this way? That I like it?”

“I think, like all mothers, she only wants to protect you.” Patrick gathered up the clothing strewn around the room, giving Eilian a chance to pull himself together. “She doesn’t want others to speak ill of you, and she probably believes your prosthesis will provide enough normalcy to keep them quiet. I’m sure it’s hard for her to see you hurt and know there’s nothing she can do to fix it.”

“So making me miserable and trying to find me a wife is her way of fixing me?”

The butler loosened the upper strap that still encumbered his friend’s arm and soundlessly placed the prosthesis on the dresser. “As misguided as her attempts are, your mother only wants you to be happy. Shall I put your dressings on before you go to bed?”

With a sniff and a sigh, the young man nodded and raised the stump to allow the butler to carry out their nightly ritual. Across his shoulder and on the gnarled flesh of his arm were sore, chafed stripes from the tight straps of the artificial arm. As Patrick applied the petroleum jelly to the old burns, he could make out the glaringly fresh scars normalcy was leaving on his master.

Unfinished Projects

The wooden stool squeaked as Hadley strained to reach the last volume on the top shelf of George’s workshop bookcase. Thus far most of the books had been old ledgers dating back to when their father had run the business. She had decided to go through all of them to make sure that while George was sick and after he passed, all the prostheses had been completed and paid for. Hadley returned to Adam’s desk and flipped to the last written page.
Eilian Sorrell, the Viscount Sorrell, prosthetic right forearm
was the first and only entry in the ledger. Her heart sank knowing he hadn’t lived long enough to see the project to completion, but she resolutely crossed out the name as the bill had been paid months ago. As she picked the book up to return it back to the shelf, the tome leapt from her hands, landing splayed on the floor and sending scraps of parchment down the hall. Thinking they were receipts, she quickly scooped them into a pile without even a glance until she reached the last one. An arm that terminated at the elbow but was mechanized was drawn in her brother’s familiar hand.

As she studied the schematic more closely, her quiet nostalgia turned to keen interest. Hadley’s mind raced as she rapidly laid all the slips of paper on Adam’s desk, trying to see the connections between her brother’s scattered ideas. He had made calculations, notes on anatomy, results from his experiments with various metals, and a list of problems he had not yet worked out. It was something she had always thought was out of reach, something they would never be able to create, but there it was in nearly full fruition with only a few dots left to connect.
Why did he not tell me about this?
As she reached the last unread scrap, she realized he had hit a dead-end. His handwriting shifted from strong to spidery and light with droplets of ink blotted throughout. It was clear to her that he had given up on the project when his consumption had worsened. A pang of grief bloomed in her chest as she understood that he may have known he would never complete the project, which was why he abandoned it without mentioning it to anyone. With one last look at the list of obstacles, she gathered up the bits of paper, stuffed them into her carpet bag, and ran out to the street to hail a steamer. She knew exactly who could help her.

“To Wimpole Street, please!” she called as she climbed aboard before the driver could help her up. The moment the steamer reached the top of the cobblestone street, she paid the driver and darted out onto the pavement. Wimpole Street was busy as usual, crawling with patients visiting physicians’ offices and doctors as they made their way back to their practices after having lunch at clubs or restaurants. Hadley hopped into the street to avoid being detained by a particularly feeble old woman being led by her daughter. It still amazed her how quickly the adoption of the steamer in place of horses helped to sanitize London’s streets. From a distance, she recognized number thirty-six with its Doric columns and severe black door. At the porch, her brisk progress came to a halt as she reached for the doorknocker but recoiled upon grasping a brass mandible. The grim little skull grinned back at her as she firmly gripped him by the teeth and banged on the door with his gonial angles. Eliza Hawthorne hesitantly opened the door, peering around the side to see if it was another lost patient, but was pleasantly surprised to see her younger cousin standing at her door.

“Your new doorknocker is quite ghastly, Cousin Eliza.”

“I know. I was growing tired of having to explain to people that they were at the wrong house. Now, the skull gives them pause, and they check the house number again before going next door. James may be a doctor, but his patients do not come to the door anymore.”

“Well, he’s a perfect addition to your house then, quite fitting for the Coroner to the Queen,” she replied with a smile as she followed Eliza into the conservatory and settled in at the iron table.

“Don’t even mention that woman,” Eliza groaned as she stepped into the kitchen to fetch the whining tea kettle from the stove. “We had to cancel our holiday in Egypt because of her. My poor husband can’t take a holiday, and I can’t even use the medical license
I
earned. You would think she would use her position to help the rest of us women, but she’s just like the rest of them.” With a deflating sigh, she smoothed back her dark orange hair and cleared her throat. “What a horrible host I’m being. I really must have more people over. I’m becoming terribly out of practice. So what brings you by for a visit? Adam told me you were swamped with toy orders.”

“I was. I only finished the last one yesterday, but I came because I found this.”

Hadley meticulously laid out the scraps of paper into a semi-cohesive train of thought before revealing George’s drawing. She watched Eliza’s light green eyes run over each line, her focus sharpening with every revelation of his design. Suddenly, she covered her mouth, stifling a gasp. It was the reaction Hadley had been waiting for.

“George did it,” she cried. “I can’t believe he figured it out.”

Hadley reached for the list of problems. “So it all makes sense to you then?”

“Yes, an electric arm with this design is looking increasingly plausible. Porcelain would greatly reduce friction in the joint, and it doesn’t react poorly with the body like some materials do. I don’t know much about titanium though.”

“I think George picked it for the forearm because, according to his notes,” she picked up the scribbles on his experiments and continued, “it doesn’t corrode when in contact with body fluids and it’s incredibly strong yet very light. His drawing shows the titanium tube as hollow to allow wires to run through it to the hand’s mechanisms and to keep it extra light. What do you think about using gold wires conducting nerve impulses?”

Eliza Hawthorne thought for a moment. “I think it’s a wise choice. It has the best ability to conduct electricity while still not being rejected by the body like copper or silver would. You would need a lot of tiny wires and pins in the radial nerve to gather enough electricity to flip the switch that closes the hand. Explain the circuit to me. As you know, you’re the one who deals with mechanisms. I can only really help with the biological aspects.”

“The circuit is powered by a battery that would be placed on the side of the prosthesis.” Hadley traced the loop of electricity with the tip of her finger. “The wires would be copper and would travel from the switch where the gold wires from the nerves would control the fingers closing. The copper wires would then continue to the motor, which powers the closing mechanism. All of the copper portion would be contained within the titanium bone to prevent it from reacting with the body fluids. The gold conduits would be threaded into the porcelain through small channels and into the tube.”

The older woman laughed softly between sips of tea. “This is brilliant, Hadley, absolutely brilliant. You
need
to do this. You could show everyone we can make great strides that need to be taken seriously. Adam told me what happened at the Harbuckles’ house, and that would never happen again if you could prove yourself with something like this.”

A smile spread across Hadley’s flushing lips. Oh, how wonderful it would be to be taken seriously without question. “There are a few problems though. This is just a prosthetic forearm. I don’t know how to make it stable. His drawings and notes indicate that he wanted to utilize the remaining muscles and tendons left in the upper arm to anchor the prosthesis and allow some muscle control, but he never figured out how to anchor them to the actual materials.”

“I will be right back. I have an idea.”

Eliza disappeared up the stairs to her husband’s study before returning with
Gray’s Anatomy
tucked under her arm. She thumbed through the book, stopping on the anatomy of the arm, before tracing the muscles from their origin to their insertion points. With a frown, she flipped to a picture of the leg musculature. A smile crossed her lips as she looked back at the arm diagram again. It could work.

“I think I have a solution for you. The ends of the muscles, in my opinion, cannot be bound to the materials being used to create the prosthesis, but if you were able to get the Achilles’ tendons from a fresh corpse, you could use them to create a capsule around the elbow joint and form an anchoring point for the muscles to attach to. Tendons don’t really need a strong blood supply to survive, so they would be the perfect material to use. Natural yet strong.”

“How am I supposed to get tendons from a corpse? I’m not a resurrectionist.”

She drew closer to her cousin’s ear and whispered, “Surely James could arrange a donor once you have a client. These things need to be fresh.”

“While it’s ingenious, it’s still quite a grisly thought. Waiting for a man to drop dead only to pick him over for scrap parts sounds so— so crooked.”

Eliza chuckled. “James is accustomed to searching through scraps, and it’s not like the dead man is going to need it. Hadley, I think the tendons will aid in supporting the prosthesis, but the muscles that remain in the upper arm may have atrophied over time from a lack of use. Do you have any idea as to how we could counteract this?”

“That was one of George’s concerns as well. The weight of the titanium bone could be an issue because we don’t want it to pull the tendons and muscles out, but if I built some sort of external brace around the joint, I could install springs and thick rubber bands to aid in supporting the arm. I think the brace would be beneficial since the prosthesis is designed to be able to carry the weight of an object, which may not be insubstantial.” She gingerly picked up the drawing again, smiling at her brother’s ghostly writing. As she read the tiny notations and pictured him explaining to her each detail and nuance of his design, she could hear his voice again. “I wish I had his talent, Eliza. George taught me everything, and I just wish I could be as good as he was.”

Eliza patted her cousin’s hand as she watched the corners of her blue eyes sink with melancholy. “You are, and one day you will be even better. You’re still young and have years of learning ahead of you. If I found this, it would have taken me hours if not days to decipher what all these calculations and cryptic little scribbles meant, yet you instantly knew what he intended to make. You know what they say, the student surpasses the master, and you had a very good master to learn from, my dear.”

The tainted London rain dripped down the glass of the conservatory, casting a green tint over the medicinal plants blossoming in their balmy terrariums, unaware of the sickening vapors and hazards that lay only a pane of glass away. Hadley looked around the house in the gloom. James Hawthorne’s cabinets of medical curiosities in the parlor suddenly resembled fodder for tawdry Whitechapel sideshows. The progression of skulls from conception to old age that lined the mantle reminded her of relics from the Italian catacombs she had heard so much about when Eliza had visited them years ago with her father. A house that was ordinarily so full of life had contracted the pallor of death the moment the city had grown cold. As a shudder swept through her, Eliza flipped on the gas-lamps, and the funereal trappings melted away.

“I have one problem,” Hadley began gravely. “To begin this project, I need someone who is willing to submit themselves to experimentation. I cannot have the titanium bone or elbow joint cast without knowing the client’s size. I have been rejected once recently for a normal prosthesis. How am I supposed to find someone willing to buy something so radical from me? I mean, they have to go through surgery. I don’t even know if
I
would be willing to do something like that, and I am the one who is making it.”

“I think I know someone who may be willing to be your test subject.”

“Really? They are missing their forearm?”

She nodded as she drew a pad of paper and a pencil from the sideboard and scribbled down a name and address. “He was one of your brother’s clients. He is in London and will probably call on us tomorrow or the next day. I will see if he is willing, and if he is, I will send him to you.”

Hadley Fenice stared down at the name in disbelief. Out of all the people her brother worked with, why was
his
name always the one to appear?