“There’s still a slight click, but the branches rattle a little and hide it. Distraction is a powerful device.”
Then the bird spread its wings to reveal words written in gold beneath,PEACE,PAIX. They were glimpsed for a moment before the wings settled again with the slight ripple of a bird adjusting its feathers.
Everyone applauded, and someone demanded that it run again. Rothgar showed the man how to wind it up and set it in action and stepped back to join Ash and Genova.
“It stayed open before,” Ash said.
“And took skill to reset. A serious miscalculation in design. When it closes, as now, the natural impulse is to want to see it open again, and it only needs winding. Before, it stayed open, and that was that. But then D’Eon had reached the stage of miscalculation in many things. I am tempted,” he said, considering the dove, “to strip away pearl and diamonds and substitute feathers.”
“To make peace real?” Ash asked.
Rothgar looked at him. “Precisely.”
And Ash said, “So be it.”
Genova looked between the two cool, dispassionate men and wasn’t sure what she’d just witnessed, but she prayed it was what she thought.
Problems would still remain, but surely Rothgar would help his reconciled cousin regain the king’s favor. Hope stirred on her own behalf, but she knew one issue didn’t really connect with the other.
She turned back to the various mechanisms displayed on the bench. If people were machines, everything would be a great deal easier.
Rothgar joined her, demonstrating what each did, then encouraging her to take one clock apart, explaining what each piece did as she freed it.
When she thought to look around, everyone else had gone, even Ash. She rose quickly from the stool she was sitting on. “Oh, I’m sorry!”
“There’s no need to apologize for sharing an obsession, Miss Smith, though Ashart was perhaps surprised when you didn’t notice him leave.” His lips were twitching, but he added, “Don’t let guilt even touch your mind. Even the deepest devotion should not lock us away from the wider world. I hope he knows that.”
She looked back at the clock she’d investigated, accepting that she was reluctant to leave it half explored. “Is it something a woman can do?”
“There are few things a woman cannot do, though many that are made difficult for them. It might be hard if you tried to set up shop, but not for private work, especially as an amateur.”
“How would I learn? As an amusement only,” she added, unready to admit the grip this had on her.
“You may stay here and explore the mysteries if you wish. I employ two craftsmen.”
She looked at him, startled.
“Or if your destiny carries you elsewhere, I know others who will be pleased to share their knowledge.”
It seemed her ambitions would never stay within reasonable bounds. “What if I wanted to earn my living this way? I may have to.”
He didn’t seem shocked. “Private commissions would be possible. It would take time to learn, however.”
“I have a portion that could support me for manyyears.” Then she shook her head. “This is idiotic. I had no notion of this an hour ago!”
“But that is often how it is, isn’t it?”
She knew what he meant. She recognized also that he had not argued with her assumption that she might be free to learn a trade and possibly earn a living with it. In other words, unmarried.
As she carefully picked up her artificial hearth, she tried to let that settle in her mind.
She left the room with Lord Rothgar, coming to terms with another change. Once she had been in awe of this man. She didn’t think him any less grand, but now she could talk to him almost as easily as she could talk to Ash, perhaps because of a shared desire to make things work. To burnish away rust and corrosion, apply grease, and see order restored.
An inveterate need to meddle, in other words, she thought with a wry smile. She felt free to ask a question. “There is peace between you and Ashart?”
“Of a sort, but loosely pinned.”
“It could fall apart again? Because of his grandmother?”
