The Strange Case of Finley Jayne (Steampunk Chronicles 0.5)(15)
She needn’t have worried, she soon realized. This wasn’t a bedroom—or at least it wasn’t anymore. It might have been at one time, but now it appeared to be a laboratory of some sort. Lord Vincent stood with his back to her—fully clothed. He seemed to be fiddling with some sort of cabinet with a glass top. She couldn’t quite see it all because he was in the way.
The room was brightly lit, and the odor seeping from underneath the door smelled vaguely of chemicals and smoke, and was moist with steam. Jars and beakers sat on shelves and workbenches. Strange tools that looked like things a dentist or surgeon might use hung ominously from hooks in the walls. If it wasn’t so clean and bright, she might think she was spying on Dr. Frankenstein himself.
Lord Vincent was probably building a new automaton, or working on one of his inventions. She’d been foolish to be overly suspicious of him. At worst he was an eccentric, dirty old man eager to marry someone almost a third his age.
Finley was just about to move away from the door and go home, when Lord Vincent moved away from the cabinet. Sitting on top of the wooden base was a large glass tank filled with a viscous pink liquid. Coils of wires ran from various apparatus and switches into the tank, bobbing as whatever it was they were attached to moved—or rather twitched—in the fluid. The movement brought the thing flush against the glass….
Finley barely covered her mouth in time. Swallowing her cry, she rocked back on her heels, gripping the wall for support as prickles of heat swarmed her mind. She did not shock or surprise easily, especially not when the weaker side of herself was asleep, but what she had seen horrified her.
She peeked through the keyhole again despite her better judgment. She had to know if her eyes had deceived her. Her heart hammered as she turned her attention to the tank.
It was still. The wires leading into it did not move, nor did the jellylike contents. There was nothing bobbing like an apple in a barrel of water, only stillness—like a jar of jam.
Could she have imagined it? She wondered as she rose to her feet. Her limbs trembled and her heart continued its throbbing rhythm, even as she doubted her own eyes.
The sound of footsteps grew louder on the other side of the door, spurring her into motion. She had barely ducked into the eerie bedroom at the end of the hall when she heard the door of the laboratory open. Through the crack, she spied Lord Vincent walking down the polished floor toward that room. Whirling on her heel, she raced toward the window and squeezed out onto the ledge, closing the glass behind her. She quickly climbed down to the grass and sprinted toward the wall, narrowly avoiding the patrol automaton.
The vision of that tank haunted her all the way back to Lord and Lady Morton’s, and continued to plague her as she lay in bed, wishing for a fast and dreamless sleep. She could not forget the image no matter how hard she tried. Not for the first time she doubted her own sanity, because she couldn’t have seen what she thought she had seen. But still…
She had seen something similar in an anatomy book Silas had in the store, and though the thought made her stomach churn, she could have sworn that what she had seen in the tank at Lord Vincent’s was a human brain.
CHAPTER SIX
The bright light of day made everything so much clearer.
When Finley woke up the next morning, mortified that the other part of herself had taken over and broken into Lord Vincent’s home, she told herself of course there hadn’t been a brain in that tank. It had only looked like one—not that she had any experience with brain examination. It had probably been something his lordship was working on—something machine related, and not human at all.
That was what she told herself, and part of her believed it enough to decide not to give it any more thought. Even when she went down to breakfast and found herself alone with Lady Morton, she said nothing.
“You look tired this morning, Finley, my dear,” the lady commented, her tone sincerely concerned. “Are you quite all right?”
“I’m fine, thank you. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
Lady Morton concentrated on spreading jam on her toast and did not look at Finley. “I thought I heard you come in quite late last night.”
Finley froze. “I… I went for a walk in the garden. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
“You didn’t. I thought perhaps you might have gone out.” Now she raised her pointed, and somewhat unsettling gaze.
Frowning, Finley could only stare back. Was she correct in suspecting that her ladyship had hoped she had gone somewhere, or was the woman merely trying to control her anger? It was difficult to tell, but a little voice in her head—a voice she recognized as her “other” self, urged her to trust her instinct. Against her better judgment, she listened to the voice.
“Where do you suppose I might have gotten myself off to? Had I gone out, that is.”
The lady smiled and poured hot coffee into the delicate china cup in front of Finley before topping up her own. “Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps around the neighborhood? Perhaps you might take a walk around Lord Vincent’s?”
Finley swallowed. Hard. Had Lady Morton spied on her? She hadn’t seen anyone follow her—not that she could remember. Sometimes when her darker half took over the details were fuzzy. “Why ever would I go to Lord Vincent’s?”
This time her ladyship lost all pretense. She set aside her coffee and her toast, and leaned in. “Because you have become a friend to my daughter, and because, like me, you have an unsettling feeling about Lord Vincent.”