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Praise for Kady Cross’s Steampunk Chronicles
“…perfect for the beach, and I’m desperately hoping that
someone will adapt it for television.”
—Kirkus reviews
“A steampunk mystery with a delicious love triangle and
entertaining Jekyll and Hyde element.”
—RT Book Reviews
“If you are looking for a wonderfully fun romp through
an alternate history set in England with technology
and romance strewn throughout, try
The Girl in the Steel Corset.”
—Diana Chen, School Library Journal blog
“Finley is such a strong female lead. She stands up
for herself…She’s fierce and intelligent and gets
to wear a cool steel corset!”
—TwoGirlsandaNovel blog
“Wow. Fantastic Steampunk novel with everything you can imagine.”
—Lov Liv Life Reviews blog
“The Girl in the Steel Corset is an elegantly
written and entrancing mystery…”
—Fiktshun blog
Also available from Kady Cross and
The Strange Case of
Finley Jayne
Kady Cross
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
THE GIRL IN THE STEEL CORSET
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
London, The Age of Invention, late April 1897
“You’re the very spawn of Satan and I’ll not have you darken this door ever again.”
Finley Jayne jumped as the door was slammed in her face, leaving her standing alone in the small, damp flagstone square that acted as the servants’ entrance to the town house.
She’d been fired—well and good—by Mrs. Brown, the housekeeper. Normally being called the spawn of Satan would upset Finley, but lately she’d begun to wonder if the sentiment wasn’t true. This was, after all, the second job she’d been let go from.
At least the old crone could have let her collect her things.
Just like in a stage-comedy, the back door opened once more and Finley’s carpetbag sailed out of the dim interior. She caught it before it could strike her in the face.
“Oy!,” she cried, but the door slammed shut again—and this time Mrs. Brown locked it from the inside. She heard the tumblers fall into place as the bitter old woman turned the wheel engaging the mechanism which could only be opened once again by a punch card.
Mrs. Brown had taken Finley’s punch card from her room before firing her.
Of all the bloody rotten luck. Tossed out without a reference for something that wasn’t even her fault. She hadn’t been the one to slap young master Fenton hard enough to make him cry when he tried to take a fourth biscuit from the tea tray. That had been the governess—Miss Clarke—who had a particular habit of striking small children.
Miss Clarke slapped the boy, and then Finley punched Miss Clarke.
How was she to know the woman’s teeth were so brittle that they’d fall out? They’d certainly been healthy enough to cut Finley’s knuckles. And not having much experience with violence, how was she to know that “normal” girls weren’t supposed to have the strength to send a full-grown woman, three stone heavier than herself, flying backward several feet?
As she lowered her bag to her side and walked toward the stairs to the street, Finley had to be serious long enough to realize that she hadn’t been fired for striking the governess—Mrs. Brown struck the maids all the time. She’d been fired because there was something wrong with her.
She wasn’t right. Was it the work of the devil? She didn’t feel evil. Even when that darkness came over her and made her do the things she shouldn’t do, it didn’t feel wrong or bad. And she wasn’t going to apologize for knocking Miss Clarke on her fat behind when the older woman had brought a child to tears.
The memory of it made her grit her teeth as she climbed the cracked and crumbling stairs. Even the smells and sounds of Mayfair didn’t dent her anger. And now she had to walk through Grosvenor Square with hair frizzy from working a steam press all morning. If she’d known she’d get sacked she would have hit the cow harder.
She stopped two steps from the street. This was exactly what was wrong with her. She’d be thinking—could be about nothing in particular—and she’d have a dark thought, like hitting someone, or saying something true, but cruel. But unlike regular people, sometimes she couldn’t help but give in to temptation.
Perhaps it was the devil, after all.
Just like that, her anger receded, leaving a ball of fear and dread in her belly so cold and hard it felt like lead. She was unemployed in a city where good jobs for a girl were scarce, and without a reference.
She was, as her stepfather would often say when he thought she couldn’t hear, “buggered.”
The thought of her parents only brought her mood down lower. How was she going to explain to them that she’d lost her position because she couldn’t control herself? They didn’t know about these strange incidents. When she was younger they were so infrequent she barely gave them a thought, but they started getting worse shortly after she got her first monthly, and now happened regularly enough—and without warning—that oftentimes she wasn’t even aware anything had happened until it was far too late.
She couldn’t tell her parents the complete truth, but she had to tell them something. As of today she had no place to stay, and proud as she was, even she wasn’t foolish enough to spend the night on the street.
There were things far more dangerous than her in London.
Her mother made hot chocolate.
Finley smiled guiltily at the steaming mug. She knew it would taste like heaven, even when the toast she dunked in it left a buttery haze on top. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Nonsense,” her mother, Mary, countered, taking a seat at the table. She had her own mug, as well. “We haven’t done this for a long time.”
It really hadn’t been that long, but sometimes it felt like years since she’d left home. “I’m sorry to intrude upon you like this.”
Her mother’s warm hand closed over one of hers. “Dearest, this is your home, and it always will be. You could never intrude upon Silas and me.”
Finley stared down at the scarred, yet polished tabletop. Her mother and Silas weren’t poor, but they weren’t wealthy, either. The bookshop they ran did a solid business, but life would be easier for both of them without the burden of an extra body to clothe and feed.
If only she hadn’t hit Miss Clarke. If only she could bring herself to feel badly for it. She didn’t. She felt badly for being here, leeching off her parents, but she didn’t feel one ounce of remorse for what she had done—only the consequences of it.
“You’ll find a new position,” her mother added, giving her hand a squeeze. “And they’ll be glad to have you. Only next time, try to keep your mouth closed.”
Finley glanced up in time to catch her mother’s smile. She hadn’t been completely honest, nor had she lied precisely. She told her parents that she had lost her job because of an altercation with the governess who was favored by the mistress of the house. That was all true. She simply left out the part about causing that same servant to swallow her own teeth.
“I will, Mama,” she promised, trying to force her own lips to curve.
Slowly, her mother’s smile faded away, replaced by an expression of concern that tightened the corners of her pale blue eyes. Finley had often wished her eyes could be that color, but as she grew up she began to appreciate that she had something of Thomas Jayne about her.
“Has something else happened?” her mother asked. “Is there something you want to talk about?”
Words teetered on the tip of her tongue, just waiting to spill out and confess everything, but Finley bit them back. “No. I’m just disappointed in myself.”
“Learn from it and then let it go. Dwelling never helped anyone.” A strange expression crossed her face. “You must believe me in this.”
For a moment Finley wondered, as she often did when her mother was particularly cryptic, if she referred to Finley’s father. She had never known her real father, and though Silas had been as good to her as any father could, she often wondered about the man.
She wondered if she looked like him—her mother said she did. She wondered how many things that she enjoyed or disliked had come from him. And she wondered, of course, if he might have been a little mad. Her mother never came out and said such a thing, but there were secrets where her father was concerned. Finley had never even been to his grave. Her mother claimed she wouldn’t know where to find it in the graveyard, she’d been so grief stricken, but Finley sometimes thought that was a lie.
Perhaps it was better that she didn’t know the truth.
“I will try not to dwell on things, Mama,” she promised. “And I will begin to look for a new position first thing tomorrow morning.”
Her mother gave her fingers a light squeeze. “I know you will, but I want you to find something that suits you, so don’t rush in to the first employment you find. You may stay here as long as you want, and take time to find a post where they will treat you well.” A slight smile curved her lips. “One where they hopefully do not employ a governess.”
Finley laughed. Laughing made it seem like everything was going to be all right. She would find a new job and there was nothing wrong with her. If only she could keep laughing, she might just believe it.
CHAPTER TWO
Fate, it seemed, also had an odd sense of humor, because Finley didn’t have to go looking for new employment the next morning; new employment came looking for her.
She was in the small parlor in their apartments above the bookshop, taking tea with her mother and mending a tear in one of her best dresses with the small steam-powered sewing engine, when Silas came up from the shop, his lean cheeks pale.
“Silas,” her mother began in a concerned tone. “Whatever is the matter?”
“There’s a Lady Morton in the shop,” he told them. “She says she’s here to see Finley.”
Finley’s hand froze on the lever that operated the machine’s engine. She looked from her mother’s surprised face to Silas’s and then back to her mother. They knew of Lady Morton, of course; she was frequently mentioned in the society pages. “What could she want with me?”
“She didn’t say,” Silas replied. “And I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know how to ask.”
Slowly, on knees that trembled ever so slightly, Finley rose to her feet. Lady Morton was a friend to Lady Gattersleigh—mother of little Fenton, whose governess she had jobbed in the mouth just the day before.
Was the lady there to make her life even more unpleasant? Tell her mother and Silas that she was unnatural? Perhaps she was being overly pessimistic, but she didn’t see how this visit could possibly end on a positive note.
“Should I bring her up?” Silas asked, turning now to his wife, who looked horrified at the prospect of entertaining an aristocrat in her humble home.
“No,” Finley answered, partially because she didn’t want to embarrass her mother, but mostly because whatever Lady Morton had to say, her parents didn’t need to hear it. “I’ll attend to her ladyship downstairs. Excuse me.”
She didn’t look at either her mother or Silas as she made her way to the door that led downstairs to the shop. She held her head high and shoulders back and tried to keep her knees from visibly shaking. She would not be afraid. This woman could do nothing to hurt her any worse than Finley had already done to herself.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs and peered out around the entrance to the shop, she saw the lady standing in front of a shelf of leather-bound volumes of poetry by Byron. Ladies always seemed to enjoy the romantic poet’s work. A few feet away from her, Silas’s automaton assistant, Fanny toiled at dusting the packed shelves.
Fanny was a little shorter than Finley, but had arms and legs that could lengthen if needed. She was programmed to do menial tasks around the shop—such as dusting and shelving books. She had no voice box and did not respond when spoken to. Still, Finley felt as though the skeletal machine was part of the family.
Lady Morton was perhaps in her mid-to late thirties. A handsome woman with dark hair and pale green eyes—or rather, one pale green eye. The other was a curved, smoky lens that fit beneath her top and bottom lid. It was like looking into a storm cloud and seeing your own face reflected. Finley didn’t know how it worked, but apparently the lens worked much like an eye did, only better.
She wore a dark plum day gown with a pearl-gray shawl and matching hat. Finley glanced down at her own stockings, boots and short skirt and grimaced. Her clothing was very modern—not the sort of thing one wore to receive polite company.
Nevertheless, she was not going to put this off any longer. Better to just get it over with, like tearing a bandage off a cut.
“Lady Morton?” she inquired as she stepped into the shop.
The woman stopped her browsing and turned. Her strange gaze swept over Finley from the toes of her boots to the tip of the pencil she’d used to hold her hair in place on the back of her head.
“Miss Finley Jayne, I presume?” Her voice was low and crisp.
“Yes, ma’am,” Finley replied with a curtsy. “My stepfather says you wished to speak to me?”
“I do. Is there some place where we might speak privately?”
Well, it didn’t seem the lady was there to cause trouble for Finley with her parents, so that was a relief. “We could use my stepfather’s office if you like.”
Lady Morton actually looked relieved, as well. “That would be fine, thank you.”
Since she was already close to the back of the shop, it wasn’t much of a distance to Silas’s office. Finley stood near the threshold and gestured for her ladyship to enter first, as was polite.
Silas’s office was normally a chaotic terrain of papers, books and coffee cups, but the woman who came once a week to help her mother with some of the cleaning had been there just that morning, so the office was bright, neat and smelled of lemon furniture polish. There was even a chair for Lady Morton to sit upon without Finley having to remove a pile of books first.
Finley perched on the edge of her stepfather’s desk as she couldn’t bring herself to actually sit behind it in his chair. Plus, this position gave her a height advantage, and helped her feel less intimidated by her guest, whose foggy eye seemed to peer right through a person.
“Would you like something to drink?” she inquired. Her mother always offered guests refreshment, even if she didn’t like them.
Lady Morton smiled. It seemed a genuine expression, not a rude one. “No, thank you. I will get right to the point of my calling upon you, Miss Jayne, because I suspect you are naturally quite curious as to why I am here. I wish to offer you a position within my household.”
Finley blinked. “I’m sorry. Did you say you wished to offer me a job?”
The lady nodded. She looked as though she did this sort of thing all the time, sitting there with her matching bag clasped in her lap between her gloved hands. Normally, it was the housekeeper or the butler who took care of the hiring of staff within a large household, so this strange circumstance made Finley leery.
“I wish to hire you as companion to my youngest daughter, Phoebe.”
A frown squished Finley’s brows together. “Why?” She wasn’t the most intelligent of girls, but even she knew enough of how the world worked to know she was completely unacceptable as a companion. For one thing, she hadn’t been born into the right social class. Companions were often poor aristocrats, or at least of good to noble birth. She could claim middle class if she was bragging. She knew nothing of society and how to behave in it, but she’d seen enough of the girls who lived there to know that she’d rather cut her own throat than spend time with one.
Lady Morton’s eyebrows rose. “Why? My dear girl, from what I hear you are hardly in the position to question such an opportunity.”
“I know that, my lady,” Finley replied. “That’s why I have to ask. Why would a lady such as yourself want to hire someone as lowbrow as me to spend time with your daughter? Surely Lady Gattersleigh told you why I was sacked.”
“She did.” Her tone was strangely chipper and dismissive at the same time. “I have no interest in discussing your previous post, Miss Jayne. Suffice to say that I find the kind of girl who would defend a child at the risk of her own welfare to be exactly the sort of person I wish to have in my employ.”
How was it possible that this woman seemed insulted that Finley didn’t think she was good enough to work for her? Shouldn’t she be flattered? And should she really argue with the woman? She needed a job. She wouldn’t get too many people who would be as tolerant as Lady Morton after hearing what she did.
“May I inquire as to what my wage will be?”
Lady Morton’s shoulders relaxed slightly, as though a large weight had been lifted off them. “You will have food, lodgings and clothing provided for you. In addition to that I am prepared to offer you the sum of twenty-five pounds per annum.”
Twenty-five pounds a year? Finley’s jaw sagged at the amount. That was more than most ladies’ maids earned in a year!
“Fine,” the lady said in a clipped tone. “Thirty, but that is my final offer.”
How many times had her mother cautioned her that when things seemed too good to be true they often were? “When would you like me to start?” She fought to keep the excitement out of her voice.
Lady Morton smiled. “Is tomorrow morning too soon?”
“No, not at all.” She hadn’t even fully unpacked.
“Excellent.” The older woman rose gracefully to her feet. “My carriage will come by for you at nine o’clock. By the time you are settled Phoebe should be awake. We’re off to a charity event hosted by Lady Marsden and her nephew the Duke of Greythorne tonight.”
A duke, Finley thought. That was only a step down from prince. She imagined he was a plump, pasty-faced creature with bad teeth. Rarely, from what she’d seen and heard of English nobility, were aristocrats handsome or fit—too much inbreeding. Still, it sounded romantic.
“I shall be ready, ma’am.” And all she could think was how wonderful it would be if, as the daughter’s companion, she could sleep in past nine some mornings, as well. Perhaps even catch a glimpse of a duke.
“I trust you will be,” Lady Morton retorted as they left the office. Finley walked her to the front door of the shop, where the woman paused for a moment. She looked at Finley with a gaze that was both kind and somewhat…shrewd. “Thank you, Miss Jayne.” Then, without waiting for a reply, she exited the shop into the overcast morning.
Finley watched after her, still battling her astonishment.
She had never heard an aristocrat say “thank you” before.
“I’m not sure I like this,” Finley’s mother said for what had to be the one hundredth time at quarter of nine the following morning. “This whole situation smells unsavory.”
Finley rolled her eyes, taking her gaze off the street in front of their home for a few seconds. She was anxious, nervous and excited. And grateful. She was so unbelievably grateful. “Mama, it will be fine.”
Her mother, however, was so not easily convinced. “What do we know of this Lady Morton other than what little mention she’s had in the papers? There’s an air of desperation about the entire affair.”
Finley turned back to the window, feelings stung. “Meaning she’d have to be desperate to hire me?”
“No, dear,” her mother replied with forced calm. “I am simply worried for your welfare. She didn’t even ask you for references.”
“She’s friends with Lady Gattersleigh.”
“Exactly!” A pale finger was pointed in Finley’s direction. “Why would she hire you after that woman no doubt disparaged your character?”
“She couldn’t have made me sound too bad, Mama. Lady Morton’s hired me to spend time with her daughter.”
“Makes me wonder how many other companions this girl has gone through if her mother thinks a girl who punched a governess would be a good match.”
“Mother!” Finley stared at the older woman in affront. How did she know she’d actually struck Miss Clarke? Was the woman a bloody mind reader?
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” her mother asked without anger. “One of the maids brought a few of your belongings that got left behind. She told me.”
Finley bowed her head. “I didn’t want you to know.”
“Know what? That you defended a helpless child? I might not approve of the violence, but I approve of the sentiment, my dear. Though, in the future you may want to exercise better control over your emotions.” She sighed. “You’re a smart girl, Finley. Surely you wonder why Lady Morton is so adamant to have you.”
“Of course I have,” Finley replied with more indignation than she ought. “I also know I can’t afford to be too picky. Lady Morton has offered me a generous wage and all I have to do is play shadow to her daughter. If the girl is too difficult I can always quit, but I cannot afford to refuse this opportunity, Mama.”
A sigh was her only answer. Words were unnecessary, however. The rush of her mother’s breath spoke volumes. The woman made guilt-inducing irritation an art form.
“It will be fine,” she insisted once more. Perhaps this time it would stick. Perhaps if she repeated it enough times she would believe it herself. Her mother was right; there was something strange about this situation. More than likely, however, Lady Morton’s daughter was simply a spoiled brat, as many aristocratic girls were. Nothing she couldn’t handle.
The clock was still chiming the hour when a black lacquered carriage pulled up on the street below. White puffs of steam rose from the gleaming brass pipe atop the roof, and the buttons on the driver’s uniform sparkled in the sun. It was horseless, operated entirely by engine—she could hear the gentle chug of it.
“Now that’s just excessive,” Finley’s mother remarked, as she glanced outside.
Finley smiled. She didn’t know what had brought on her mother’s general distrust and suspicion toward the upper class, but she’d always harbored it as far as Finley knew.
“It looks comfortable,” she replied, easing away from the glass and picking up her coat from atop her luggage. “I’ll come to call on my first half day, and send a note on before that.”
“You’d better,” her mother said with a watery smile. She was going to cry, Finley just knew it. A person would think Finley had been home for months instead of a couple of days.
She hugged her mother, patted her on the back when she began to sniffle. Silas came round and took up her trunk, leaving Finley with a carpetbag and valise to carry downstairs.
The driver of the carriage stood on the sidewalk. He immediately came forward to take Finley’s bags and the trunk and loaded them onto the back of the vehicle. While he was doing this, Silas turned to Finley and offered her a small, paper-wrapped package.