Today's Reading
His eyes narrowed. "I have a certain interest in her whereabouts, as it happens."
"So you've come to me, the one who advertised she doesn't know where she is." I jammed the pliers into my finger and winced, putting the injury to my mouth to keep the blood from the fine ebony veneer.
He leaned over the counter. "Lady Gwendolyn. Has she been here?"
My gaze flicked to the back of the shop...which now lay dark and still.
Cowardly woman.
"If she has, she has not announced herself." I picked up my tools, feeling an odd sense of loss. Over the mysterious box and the woman.
He dug about in his pocket. "When she happens to show her face," he said, striking a match and watching me through the flame, "you'll kindly notify me. You won't forget, will you?" He dropped the burning match into the open clock.
With a cry I slapped a cloth over it, smothering the flame with shaking hands and fanning away wisps of smoke. I grasped the counter with shaking hands. "Leave now, before I take this clock over your head!"
He struck another match, held it close to my face. "I'd be careful who I threaten, girl. Especially in such a nice little shop." He dropped it into a pile of buffing cloths.
I sprang to smother it as the men behind him laughed.
"Out!" I lifted an empty clock case over my head, but the gent merely tipped his hat and departed with all the gravity of a bull who feared no one.
They left, sucking all the tension out of the room...and the steel from my spine. I wilted onto the counter and trembled. How many men had she angered? How many? Three long, deep breaths, then a shuffle stirred my attention. I popped my eyes open and there she was—that veiled woman, staring at me through the gears and springs hanging from the ceiling.
And the box. The unopened box was tucked beneath her arm. She approached, weaving through the cluttered aisle, and pushed the box toward me on the glass counter as if offering treasure. "For you." Those lovely violet eyes tried to warm through my defenses.
Still shaky, I dropped my gaze to the catch on the box. Longed to spring it and peer inside.
But the aroma of singed veneer gave me pause. The image of that man's face, the barely controlled anger...and the letters I'd received from her other men hidden in the back of my bureau. If they couldn't find her, wring their vengeance from her, they'd wring it out of me. Out of Aunt Lottie. Dear Aunt Lottie, who had once swept me up as a throwaway and tucked me neatly into her life at the shop.
I had become like a viper she held close. Her ruin.
After a moment with my hands on the box, I shoved it back. "I don't want it." Dynamite is what it was.
She perched her black-gloved fingertips on the box, blinking at me. "You do repair clocks, do you not?"
Regret rained down upon my pent-up bitterness, dissolving it instantly. "Yes. Yes, of course. My apologies, I thought—that is—it doesn't matter." A puff of breath. Probably not my mother. "Yes. Yes, I repair clocks. Anything with gears, actually. Here now, let us have a look." I triggered the mechanism, and the lid sprang open. Tucked in a soft cloth lay a mahogany clock whose maker I did not recognize, gold hands from the last century but a newer glass faceplate, clear of the fog that ordinarily encroached with time.
"You'll notice, Miss Forrester, that it isn't like other clocks."
My hackles rose again. I stole a glance at the woman and lifted the clock, turning it over, running a finger over its polished surface.
"You are Sydney Forrester, are you not?"
"I am. And you are...?"
"Quite glad to speak with you." A soft smile.
"How long since it has kept time?"
She shrugged. "Five, maybe ten years."
I pulled the little piece toward me, sliding the back off and exposing a wealth of tiny gears, springs, and delicate pulleys. I gasped. It was a marvel. Hundreds of tiny pieces were all neatly packed together—more than I'd ever seen before. I dared to touch a tiny gear, its teeth barely thicker than my fingernail. "What...what is this?"
She merely smiled.
...
