Read Online Ether & Elephants by Cindy Spencer Pape - Free Book Online Page B

spend the entire day with him. “Let’s go, before any of the women demand to come along as well.”
    “Come along where?” Wink turned a corner and arched a brow at Tom when he leaned down to kiss her cheek. “You just got here and you’re leaving? Are we missing out on an adventure?” She wore her dressing gown and she bounced her infant son, Theodore Merrick McCullough, in her arms. Tom resisted the urge to reach out to stroke his godson’s bald little head.
    “Helping the villagers look for a couple of lost boys,” Connor said with a shrug.
    “Besides, you’re the one with a real job today,” Tom added. “Nell can give you the specifics, but we need you to use the Babbage machine to find out anything you can about her quest. Particularly travel records, if you can come up with any, since right now we have no notion of where they might be headed.”
    “As soon as Teddy here has his breakfast, I can do that while Melody plays hostess. But try to be back before dinner. If you miss her party, she’s liable to gut all of you with a serving spoon.” All of the men nodded as Wink continued, “Besides, Mum will be here and will want to see you.”
    Tom rolled his eyes as they went their separate ways. He looked forward to seeing Caroline, and his younger foster-siblings, but it was so easy to be overwhelmed when the whole family was around. He couldn’t wait to get on with this mission and away from the party and its abundance of family. When they were around, especially Merrick or Caro, it was so difficult to forget the damage he’d caused by his youthful stupidity. Nell was their porcelain angel, and he’d been the one to shatter her. He didn’t know how they could look at him with the same affection they’d once had, although somehow they always seemed to manage it. It was a kindness he didn’t deserve.
     
    * * *
     
    Nell always loved watching Wink work. The way her long fingers flew over the brass keys of a Babbage Analytical Engine was almost a caress, much like Nell felt when she played the piano. They’d set up operations in Melody’s workshop outside the main house, avoiding the crush of the gathering partygoers. As Wink typed in their search criteria, an electronic slate above the keyboard relayed the information. Meanwhile, Nell telephoned the Order’s headquarters in London, asking them to run different searches on the main engine there. After that, she began to ring up shipping companies and railway stations. Somewhere, there had to be some link to Charlie’s so-called aunt and their whereabouts. She refused to accept the possibility that their search was hopeless.
    “Did you know Doctor’s Commons issued five special licenses for Cambridge the month Tom was married?” Wink said as Nell rang off from another fruitless inquiry.
    “Really?” Nell had no interest at all in statistics. “Is that a lot or a few?”
    “Quite a bit for one town,” Wink answered. “Only London and Manchester had as many, and they’re much larger cities.”
    “But without a concentrated population of randy young gentlemen.” Nell kept her finger on the next number she needed to call, a French steamship firm with offices in Southampton. “I imagine there are often hasty marriages surrounding universities. I knew of at least one when I was at the Academy.” While Geneva, Melody and Wink had gone to Lovelace College at Oxford, among the first women in the country to study sciences at an advanced level, Nell had stayed in London with Merrick’s Aunt Dorothy and attended the Royal Academy of Music. More proof that she was the least adventurous of them all.
    “True,” Wink said. “But even Oxford only had two that month. And that’s not the strange part.”
    “Oh?” Surely the Order had already been over all the possible information surrounding Tom’s marriage. “I thought you were supposed to be searching for a birth record for Charlie.”
    “I am. This is just a secondary line of inquiry.”