How could the old dame’s knees take it? Her joints must be as crackly as a boiled fowl’s.
Lady Cruthlach pored over the pages, flipping and looking, flipping and looking. “Oh, ’tis the one! ’Tis the one indeed!” Her face went back and forth from gleeful to serious, like an actor practicing in a mirror. She let out a chirrup and pointed to a page. “This one, Hume. This one will make a fine start.”
“Yes, Your Ladyship.” Hume bowed, took up the open book, and carried it off.
Prue had been forgotten. She turned to sneak off, but then thought better of it. She should make sure the Cruthlachs were going to leave her in peace, now that they had their moldy book. She cleared her throat. “Lady Cruthlach, I don’t suppose it would be forward of me to make questionings into why exactly you’ve had your ogre kidnap me again.”
“Oh, good heavens,” Lady Cruthlach said. “I had quite forgotten about you—it is so thrilling to at last be in possession of that volume, you understand. Well, no, of course you do not understand. You are but a simple girl, born into the cinders, no? But all of that will change, and soon, too, as soon as Athdar and I have regained our strength. We have just enough time, I think.”
No doubt about it: Lady Cruthlach was a little misty in the attic. “I’ll just be going, then.”
“No!”
“Sorry, but I really ought. I got work to do.” Prue opened the door.
Hume hulked on the other side.
“Good boy, Hume,” Lady Cruthlach said. “Take Cendrillon to the chamber Marguerite prepared.”
Sendry-on? Who in tarnation was that?
Hume pinched Prue’s wrists together at her back.
“I ain’t Sendry-on!” Prue shouted over her shoulder. “I’m Prue! Prue Bright!”
“Lock her up, Hume,” Lady Cruthlach said.
15
The International Exhibition had had Paris in a lather since April. Eglantine and Austorga told Ophelia all about it during the carriage ride. Seraphina kept aloof. Exhibits from dozens of nations displayed artworks, handicrafts, the latest scientific and industrial inventions, ancient relics, and even entire Japanese and Chinese houses. The center of everything was an enormous building that enclosed a pavilion and gardens.
Their carriage crunched to a stop on a packed drive. Henri handed them down one by one. Seraphina ignored Henri, but Eglantine and Austorga both treated him to a simper.
Henri’s brown eyes twinkled. He did not seem to have noticed any rashy red upper lips.
In the packed exhibition hall, the echoing chatter was deafening. Some folks pushed and others, their faces buried in catalogues, tripped. The crowds around the daises were so thick that Ophelia couldn’t really see the newfangled steam-powered mechanisms on display.
“Mademoiselle Smythe is mad for velocipedes, Madame Brand,” Austorga said in Ophelia’s ear. “Her father has given her two of them, but her mother won’t allow her to ride them anywhere but in their back garden.”
Ophelia stood on tiptoe to observe the steam velocipede. It did not have pedals to turn the wheels, as a usual velocipede had. Instead, it glistened with a large brass canister, pipes, and tubing.
“It looks dangerous,” Ophelia said.
“Well, yes, but Papa always says that danger is the price one pays for scientific advancement.”
“Does he, now?” Danger. Interesting. Were the clockwork inventions in Malbert’s workshop dangerous? “Miss Austorga, I have been meaning to ask you—do you have a great interest in the ballet?”
“I do enjoy attending the ballet, yes. As well as the opera and the theater—I do so enjoy beauty and spectacle, as well as opera chocolates, and, well, the society.” She blushed.
Gentlemen’s society. “I see. And do you happen to know a great many persons who work at the ballet?”
Austorga glanced away. “Work there? Why, no.”
“You have never been backstage at the opera house?”