Read Online The Dark Unwinding by Sharon Cameron - Free Book Online

larger than it looked from the vantage point of the road. There were no other doors on the workshop end of the building, but on the river side, there were two wide ones for the delivery of coal, I perceived, and another beyond that, all of them locked. I checked the sky, paler and with one bright star shining just above the dawn. I went to the nearest window, and it pushed upward.
    I thought for a moment and, after a quick glance at the deserted riverbank, scrambled headfirst onto the window ledge, swung one leg through and then the other, and landed lightly on the other side, brushing bits of dirt and crumbling paint from Mary’s skirt. And that, I thought, was one thing I would not be telling Aunt Alice. I looked around.
    An enormous engine rose ten feet above my head, quiet now and partially obscured by a brick wall, tubes of polished copper and brass running out of it and along the walls. But I was looking for papers, not pipes. The numbers were so unbelievable, proof of my uncle’s expenditures might save me a certain amount of trouble and explanation. I moved across the soot-strewn floor and found a door with a short hallway behind it, two doors to the left, two on the right, and one at the end, which I recognized as leading to the little sitting room with the couch, where I had entered and left the day before. Silently I opened the second door on the right, and slipped inside my uncle’s workshop.
    I was not alone. On the far end of the room, beyond the rows of Uncle Tulman’s toys in the faint glow of the gas lamps, a man had his back to me. He was in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, leaning over what looked like a trough that ran the length of the wall, something I had not noticed the day before. The man whirled about as if I had shouted, and the expression of dismay on his face softened into a smile of recognition. It was Ben Aldridge. He put one finger to his lips before turning back around, and I came noiselessly through the room to stand by his side. The trough he stood before was full of water.
    “What are you doing, Mr. Aldridge?”
    “The same thing as you, I expect, Miss Tulman, but I’d be most obliged if you would keep your voice low. Your uncle is asleep in his sitting room, and the walls do echo.”
    I eyed him speculatively. “Do you often come into my uncle’s workshop without permission?”
    “Only every blooming chance I can get, Miss Tulman.” He grinned, blue eyes twinkling in a sun-reddened face, making him somehow, just as yesterday, seem younger than his voice. “I am a student of science, and there is more knowledge in this workshop than in all the scientific brains at Cambridge.”
    “Have you attended Cambridge?”
    “I am a graduate.”
    I must have looked surprised, because he said, “How unfortunate it is to never be believed when I say that. I grew the side whiskers, but it doesn’t seem to help.” I smiled in spite of myself, and he laughed quietly. “I came here three months ago, Miss Tulman, after my graduation, to visit my aging aunt, the last of the old servants other than Mrs. Jefferies. My aunt had already died, I am sorry to say, but I stayed on, hearing at first the rumors of what this room contained, and then finally being admitted to see the marvels for myself. I wish to learn of them. But your uncle, I’m afraid, shares knowledge most reluctantly.”
    “So you sneak in, in the middle of the night.”
    “One does what one has to. I go to take up a private teaching position in just a few weeks’ time, so my opportunities are not unlimited.” He leaned on the trough, his sleeves rolled up and arms dripping wet, like a boy playing boats on a pond. “And what has brought you here so early, Miss Tulman? I heard your visit yesterday ended rather badly.”
    “Ledger books,” I replied, “the estate’s accounts.”
    Ben said nothing, but his smile disappeared. He stared pensively into the water, and after a time said, “Tell me what you think of this.”
    He