Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School, #1)(46)

Vieve’s green eyes lit up with pleasure at seeing the [at li mechanimal. “May I?”

“Of course. Here you are.” Sophronia picked up Bumbersnoot and presented him to the young boy.

The lad examined the creature closely, popping open various hatches and spending a good deal of time studying the tiny steam engine inside Bumbersnoot’s stomach. “Incredible. Such intricacy. But he needs to be serviced, I think. Has he been squeaking at all?”

“As a matter of fact, he has.”

Vieve nodded. “I’ll come by tomorrow, when everyone is groundside, with some oil and bits of kit. Give him a spiffing up.”

“That’s very kind.” Sophronia wasn’t certain how she felt about a nine-year-old taking apart her pet, but she wasn’t about to turn down the offer, either. If Bumbersnoot needed a look-see, Vieve was the closest she had to an expert.

“It’d be a pleasure. He’s quite the little beauty, isn’t he?”

Bumbersnoot had a long, sausagelike body, and while he was mostly bronze, it was clear he had some brass and iron parts, so that he was rather a patchwork. Fond of him though she was, “little beauty” was not a phrase Sophronia would have used to describe him. “If you say so.”

Vieve put Bumbersnoot back on the bed and doffed his hat. “Until tomorrow, then, miss?” Such an odd child.





“Until tomorrow. Shall I show you out?” Sophronia fell back on her recent training in how to dismiss a gentleman caller without rancor.


“I think I can manage on my own.” With which the boy left through the parlor, doffing his hat to the girls as he did so.

Dimity appeared in the doorway, glaring at her. “Who on earth is that? Or should I say, who in the clouds is that?”

“Vieve.”

“So I gathered, but Sophronia, you never told me you had befriended Professor Lefoux’s eccentric niece!”

“Niece?”





ON THE IMPORTANCE OF PROPER DRESS


Vieve was as good as her word. Her word. Sophronia still could not quite believe it. It seemed that Professor Lefoux’s nine-year-old niece liked to dress as a boy and fraternize with sooties. And that apparently Professor Lefoux let her!

“What-ho, Miss Sophronia,” said the girl, standing at the door and clutching a chubby reticule before her.

“Good evening, Miss Genevieve,” replied Sophronia formally. “Won’t you come in?”

Vieve didn’t look at all embarrassed at being found out. “So you know, do you?”

“Why on earth would you want to go about as a boy?”

“Boys have it far more jolly.” Vieve gave one of her dimpled grins. “I assure you, I find female dress fascinating. I simply prefer not to wear it myself. It’s very confining.”

Sophronia looked her guest up and down. This evening the girl was wearing her customary cap paired with an oversized man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a brown vest, and brown jodhp ^at l girurs. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t entirely trust your judgment in matters of appearance.”

Vieve laughed.

“There is your patient.” Sophronia pointed to Bumbersnoot, who had taken advantage of the absence of Sophronia’s fellow denizens to lounge in the parlor under the tea table in a position of prominence he wasn’t normally permitted.

Vieve dumped the contents of her reticule onto the top of the tea table. Her kit appeared to be mainly mechanic’s tools and a few unlabeled glass bottles with corks. The girl coaxed Bumbersnoot out from under the table, sat down on the settee, and lifted him into her lap.

“Can I do anything to help?”

“Don’t think so. I take it you got caught climbing during shutdown and that’s why they banned you from attending the play?”

“I didn’t get caught; someone saw me and told.”

“That’s not on!” Vieve tipped the mechanimal upside down, opened up his stomach, and began tinkering and poking about with a sort of long squiggly stick made of iron. She picked up one of her little bottles, uncorked it, and poured a drop of some dark, viscous liquid down the stick so it went directly where she wanted it to. Vieve really was remarkably adept for a nine-year-old.

“So you’re Professor Lefoux’s niece?”

“That’s what she tells me.”

Sophronia sat back on the settee and tried to look casual. “Know anything about this prototype?”

“Now, miss, why would you think that?”

“You like mechanics and inventions, and so far as I can gather, the prototype is both.”

The girl looked up and smiled, looking far more her age than when she was concentrating on Bumbersnoot. “It’s for a special communication machine.”

“A what?”

“Ever since the telegraph failed, stymied by the aether currents, they’ve been working on this new idea for communication over long distances—one station to another. Unfortunately, there seems to be some difficulty making them transmit back and forth. The researchers at the Royal Society in London came up with a new prototype to fix this. They made two: one for London, and one to come here, to Bunson’s.”

“Why Bunson’s?”

“Well, that’s where the other communication machine is located, of course. Anyway, something happened to that prototype.”