Ticker by Lisa Mantchev Read Free Book Online Page B

wood, and teetering towers of account ledgers sat under the magnificent stained-glass window known as the “Papilionoidea.”
    The RiPA in my hand began to clack and clatter. The message was from Ambrose Farnsworth.
    BACK INSIDE THE FACTORY - STOP - DAMAGE LESS THAN ORIGINALLY ESTIMATED - STOP - SOME STOCK AS YET UNACCOUNTED FOR - STOP
    Pursing my lips, I tapped out a response.
    DESTROYED IN THE EXPLOSION - QUERY MARK
    His answer was as troubling as it was puzzling.
    CRATES EARMARKED FOR CURREY HOSPITAL ARE MISSING - STOP - DID YOU AUTHORIZE REMOVAL - QUERY MARK
    I hadn’t, but at this point in time, a few missing packing cases were the least of our worries.
    I DID NOT - STOP - CHECK TO SEE IF THEY WERE PICKED UP IN THE COMMOTION - STOP
    A soft knock at the door signaled Dreadnaught’s arrival with more clean linen. “Can I assist with your toilettes, ladies?”
    “I’m all right.” I pulled off my shirtwaist and considered the damage. Before the chatelaine took up residency at Glasshouse, the majority of my wardrobe had been cobbled together with pins, liquid adhesive, and rivets purloined from the factory. Though I couldn’t sew a tidy buttonhole to save my life, I was a crack hand at mending tears and holes. “I’ll just get my stapler and fix this.”
    “You will
not
,” Dreadnaught said. Only two degrees removed from a garment district stitch-counter, she was beyond horrified by the very suggestion. “Surely you have something more suitable.”
    I unfastened the hooks on my skirt and stepped out of my bustle without tripping and killing myself. Only that morning, I’d read that one in ten young ladies become entrapped in the wire cages. The claim was made by the founder of the Center for Fashionable Reform, but I didn’t feel compelled to desert my own “dress-enhancing death trap” until official documentation linked it to fatality or dismemberment. “Define ‘suitable.’ ”
    “There’s only one outfit fit to be seen right now.” Dreadnaught crossed to the wardrobe and extracted a walking dress of dove foulard. I raised an eyebrow at the elaborately draped overskirt, the rosettes, and the broad box pleats of navy silk. From Kashenkerry’s Atelier (Fine Garments & Ready To Wear) and a gift from my Grandmother Pendleton, it had hung in the wardrobe for a month like the shy miss at a cotillion. “Scrub everything from the waist up or you’ll leave smudge marks,” the chatelaine added.
    Under her keen-eyed supervision, I washed the grit and grime of the factory explosion from my arms and face, scrubbing at my skin with a washcloth until I was the color of a boiled Meridian lobster. Aided by the chatelaine, both Violet and I were dressed, coiffed, and sensibly accessorized in due time.
    Just not hastily enough for my taste. With every passing moment, my anxiety about my parents grew. It was one thing to watch them retreat into their own worlds after the deaths of my sisters and quite another to think that I might never see them again. “Everything that’s happened has been my fault, Vi.”
    “Piffle,” she retorted, adjusting her borrowed skirts. “It’s not your fault you were born with a heart defect, or that your parents care enough for you to move the stars to see you healed and well.”
    “Maybe. But it’s my fault they are goodness-knows-where. That Warwick tried to develop a better Ticker.”
    That he went mad and killed people in the attempt.
    I wouldn’t think about that just now. Defiant in the face of my fears, I marched from the room and made my way downstairs via a slide down the banister. Difficult to do when wearing a bustle skirt.
    Difficult, but not impossible.
    “Never mind waiting for your Ticker to give out, Penny. You’re going to break your neck,” Violet said for the second time that morning, following me down the more customary way. The ends of her ribbons flapped to match the cadence of her feet on the stairs. With lace mitts covering her tattoos and her