1
A HAND IN THE FIRE
May 1838
The children were impossible to herd, not that the adults were trying.The youngest boy sat in the mud, staring at the blue sky and gnawing on a biscuit.The twins were climbing a tree, one giving the other a boot up.Two younger girls whispered and giggled near the carriages.Sybil Grant’s siblings weren’t even close to leaving, and her parents were too preoccupied fiddling with a broken fairy light on the front lawn to care.
Sybil’s toe tapped beneath her skirts.They should have left a quarter of an hour ago.The whole lot of them.She needed them to leave, but here they still were, frolicking about the lawn, looking as if they might camp out there and invite the rest of the inhabitants of Hampstead Heath for a little friendly idyll as well.A lovely day for it, certainly.The bright spring sun filtered through green, leaf-heavy tree limbs and made the bright-white walls of Nickleby House and its clean, gleaming windows, almost too brilliant to look at.
Blinding—the day, the house, her family’s disregard for time.
Sybil pinched the bridge of her nose, then filled the frame of the front door of Nickleby House as much as her small stature allowed.Hands on hips, elbows jutted out, spine straight, and chin lifted.She allowed herself one weary sigh (because it felt nice) before she put her fingers to her lips and whistled.
The sound screeched across the rolling green lawn and skittered like frightened birds up into the blue sky.
Sybil’s family froze.Every head turned her way.
“What’s that?”her father barked.His long dark hair, shot at the temples with thick white strands, was pulled back in a messy queue.
Her mother rubbed her ear.“Mustyou, Sybil?”
A twin fell backward from a branch.
The other twin caught her, and they toppled to the ground, a tangle of trousers and skirts.
Sybil smoothedherskirts.Someone must command the Grant Army, and usually the someone was her.“Temple and Diana are expecting you.You were supposed to leave a quarter hour ago.You’ll be late.”
Papa snapped open a dented pocket watch then flinched.“Damn me.You’re right.”He marched for Sybil, bent over from his considerable height, and kissed the top of her head before marching for the carriage.“You heard the general!Load up!”He whipped the youngest Grant, three-year-old Ajax, up in his arms—mud and all—and the carriage rocked as he boarded it.Three other Grants followed.
Sybil’s mother approached her at a more leisurely pace, her gaze like a scalpel, willing to cut to discover secrets.She’d pulled her yellow-and-white hair into a neat coiffure at the back of her neck just beneath her straw bonnet, and her floral muslin gown was neat as a pin.Soft and sharp—her mother had always been a creature of contradictions.
“Are you sure you cannot join us this afternoon?”she asked, one golden eyebrow raised.“I suspect Diana and Temple will make a special announcement.You should be there.And if your head is fine enough for whistling like that, surely your megrim is gone.”She peered at Sybil’s skull as if she could see right through it to the brain beyond.
She’d find no megrim there.Just impatience.Sybil rubbed her temples.“Still there, Mama.But someone had to herd you lot in the right direction.I intend to find my bed as soon as you’re off.I do hate to miss the announcement.I know they will excuse me this once.”Besides, she’d have nine months to celebrate her older brother and wife’s good news.If there was any.
Her mother patted her shoulder.“Very well.Rest up.And…” My how her mother’s eyes could pry.“If you feel better, you might peruse that list Diana and I drew up for you.”
“Mama.”
“Some of the men named on that list were suggested by the queen.The queen, Sybil.You could do no better than marrying someone she recommends.And it will provide another inroad for us in the ton.”
Sybil clasped her hands fast, refusing to fidget.“They are all transcendent men.”The alchemists wouldn’t have her.“And a transcendent man will not allow me my… hobbies.”
“He will not, likely.I cannot contradict you.They won’t like a woman inventing things, but you could call itsketching.That’s all it is anyway.Truly.You are simply sketching potential devices.Call themfancies,if you will.He will not mind.It is not terribly different than painting a landscape or a child or a dog.”
If the sketches never moved beyond paper and ink, she was right.“Yes, Mama.I’ll look at the list.”If she could find it.No clue where it was.
“That’s a good love.”Her mother patted her cheek and practically bounced down the walk and into the second carriage with the remaining children, then the caravan lurched forward.
Sybil watched until it disappeared.Watched a little bit longer to ensure one or both of the conveyances didn’t come rumbling back into view.
Before she snuck into her father’s forge.
And tore off her gown and petticoats.
Underneath, she wore only her mother’s old stays over her brother Hesperus’s shirtsleeves and trousers.She hung her gown carefully on a hook by the door, stretched to the ceiling, stretched for her toes, then saluted the figure of Vulcan carved above the coal-glowing fire of the forge.She opened the large window that looked out into the woods behind their house but not the one that opened onto the road in front of it.Ventilation and secrecy both necessities.
Her hands tingling to work, she looked around the forge.“Now… where was I?Oh!”She reached into her pocket and pulled out the lump of metal there.Better to consider this than a list of potential husbands.She’d been considering the metal for a fortnight, the length of time since the last moment she’d found to sneak into the forge and work.“If they would just let women create,” she grumbled to Vulcan, “I wouldn’t have to sneak at all.”
