Chapter One
“Carrisford is an honest place,” Mr. Roseingrave said happily.
“So you’ve said, Papa,” Sophie dutifully replied.
They were walking out of the center of town, just crossing the north river bridge. On this winter day Carrisford was picture-pretty, all clear blue sky and ancient stone. The River Ethel murmured around the bridge pilings and bore away boats full of merchants, sailors, and oyster fishers.
Downstream the two great mills hulked on the riverbank. Mr. Obeney’s stood empty, its owner gone to build a new utopian society across the sea; beside it, Mr. Prickett’s mill did work enough for two, quaffing huge gulps of water to power the thrumming steam engines that kept the silk-winding machinery busy day and night. Upstream, the wind swirled through what remained of the ancient Castle Carrisford.
“Look at all of them,” said Mr. Roseingrave, beaming at the people on every side. “So busy, so engaged in their labor.” He turned to twinkle at his daughter, cheeks flushed with hope, the sharp wind tugging at the ends of his muffler. “No silver-tongued thieves and swindlers here.”
Sophie bit her lip. In her estimation, it was far too early to go making judgments about the character of an entire populace. The Roseingraves had lived in Carrisford a scant two weeks, and most of that time had been spent organizing the secondhand instrument shop: checking the stock against the previous owner’s inventory lists, setting out sheet music and partbooks, oiling wood and tuning strings, hanging the violins and guitars on the wall, placing the harps where they’d show to best advantage. Even with seven Roseingraves pitching in, the work had felt endless—the more so because it was now a full two months since Sophie or her father had laid hands on a piano.
She flexed her fingers inside her mittens, as though shaking off a weight.
Now, finally, they’d been called out on a piano job. A local widow, one Mrs. Muchelney, had asked them to take a look at some damage to her family instrument. If Mr. Roseingrave thought secondhand sales and repair work were a sad comedown for a man used to designing and building his own pianofortes in his own workshop—including a new type of piano action he was still hoping to patent—he didn’t show it. His cheeks glowed rose-red in the wind, and his lanky legs ate up the street beneath him.
Sophie’s frozen heart thawed a little to see her father so happy. He’d taken Mr. Verrinder’s betrayal so painfully to heart, it had acted upon him like a wasting sickness. When he’d told the family of his plan to move them out of London and to this town near the sea, Sophie’d thought of mineral waters and hot springs and quailed to think her father imagined himself a permanent invalid.
She hoped there was no new Mr. Verrinder to come along and blight his recovery. Thankfully, in all of London, for all her life, Sophie had only ever met one Mr. Verrinder.
Perhaps Carrisford was simply too small to hold anyone with so much wickedness.
They wound their way past bakeries, butcher shops, handcarts with pies of all kinds, and orange sellers. The streets grew more spacious, the houses less squashed against one another. Mr. Roseingrave set down his tools and knocked at the side door of a cozy home of three stories. “Mrs. Muchelney has a Southwell—and five children, I hear,” he murmured, hands clasped behind his back, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet.
Sophie nodded. She knew the role she might have to play: keep the children occupied and away from the delicate instrument while her father assessed the work to be done. Hand him tools one by one while warding off small sticky fingers. She’d done it all her life, ever since her younger siblings had started coming along, year by year. There had been four Roseingraves after Sophie, but somehow five Muchelneys seemed like a larger number.
It meant she’d likely be too occupied to set hands to Mrs. Muchelney’s piano today. Sophie writhed secretly at the tiny bright note of relief she felt about that.
Mrs. Muchelney was round and warm as a teapot as she greeted them. “Oh, Mr. Roseingrave, I cannot thank you enough for coming today. Harriet and Susan were trying to teach one another fencing and I do not know what harm they may have done to that piano.”
“Whatever it is, I’m sure we can mend it,” Mr. Roseingrave said, clasping the widow’s hands between his and sending her the deferential smile he saved for customers.
She smiled back gratefully, patted his wrist with a soft, pale hand, and guided him to where the instrument stood between a pair of windows overlooking the street.
Mrs. Muchelney’s Southwell was an old-fashioned demilune variety, the kind that looked like a simple half-circle side table until you lifted the top and found the keys waiting for you underneath. Instead of a pedal for the sustain, which would have looked odd on a table and spoiled the illusion, there was a lever to be pressed at the height of the player’s knee.
The underside of the fallboard had been inlaid with paler wood and veneered to look like the spines of a seashell, radiating upward and outward when opened—as it evidently had been when the duelists struck, because a gash marred the shining surface, and splinters framed a jagged hole in the wooden lattice that sheltered the instrument’s working parts.
Sophie bit her lip, and saw her father’s shoulders give a delicate shudder. “You said they were teaching one another to fence?” Mr. Roseingrave asked.
But the widow was attending to a footman, who had bent to murmur in his mistress’s ear.
Mrs. Muchelney’s sigh had the threadbare quality of a maternal patience long worn out from use. “Pray excuse me, Mr. Roseingrave,” she said. “The boys’ violin tutor has just arrived, and I have some similar matters to discuss with him.” She vanished through the doorway.
“Apparently this is a very dangerous house for instruments,” Mr. Roseingrave said, his low tone shaded by amusement.
“Susan was reading about assassins,” a voice piped up. “She said we were woefully underprepared to defend ourselves.”
Sophie and her father turned. A girl of thirteen or so was standing there, brown haired and brown eyed, face freckled and currently bright pink with rebellion. Hands clasped before her, shoulders back, chin up. As though she were determined to bear up nobly under some coming blow, like a martyr in a child’s book of sermons.
“What weapons had you chosen?” Mr. Roseingrave asked curiously.
“The fire irons.” The girl—Harriet Muchelney, presumably—replied. She spread her feet and braced herself for reproof.
Sophie smiled. “I’m sure this piano will think twice about threatening you after this.”
Those brown eyes fixed on her, then flickered back to the instrument. “It was a gift from Uncle Albert to Papa,” Harriet explained. “We only keep it because Uncle Albert died, and then Papa died, and it makes Mother sad to think of parting with it.” She chewed her lip. “Nobody even plays it.”
