“Hail the guard to let us out.”
“Fetch a constable at the next station!”
Cold sweat slicked down Theodore’s brow. If a constable hauled him off for lunacy, he couldn’t look out for the ladies. He couldn’t protect them from Forrester. That cad had already gotten to Miss Stanton once on his watch. He’d fail them just as he’d failed his men. His mother.
Pressure swelled in his lungs, making each breath shallower than the last. Air. He needed air. He stood and tried to pry open the carriage window.
“The madman’s going to toss us from the moving train!”
A woman’s shriek threatened to shatter glass.
“Oh, snort some smelling salts, will you!” Miss Stanton’s voice cut through the pandemonium and enforced immediate silence. “Mr. Arthur isn’t going to harm anyone, but if the lot of you don’t pipe down, I just might box your ears. Stars, you act as though you’re in a penny dreadful. Mr. Arthur has obviously experienced a nightmare, and your histrionics are only serving to prolong his agitation. He’ll recover in due course, providing the rest of us remain calm. Ergo, do us all a grand favor and bite your tongues.Gardez votre paix.”
Bandaged hands appeared in Theodore’s peripheral, coaxing his rigid fingers to release the locked window latch. “Come back to your seat, Mr. Arthur.” As he sank onto the cushioned bench, Miss Stanton rubbed a thumb along his quaking fingers. “Just breathe. Nice long breaths. That’s the ticket.”
Theodore inhaled tremors, exhaled shudders.Inhale, exhale, inhale.Gradually, his breathing aligned with Miss Stanton’s soothing cadence, and the trembling ceased. Miss Stanton fell into silence, but she retained her hold of his hand. Glancing to his left, he found that Miss Stanton’s eyes were closed even as her mouth moved with inaudible utterance. Was she ... praying ... for the likes of him?
Withdrawing from Miss Stanton’s touch, Theodore edged along the bench, as far away from her underserved prayers as possible.
He felt Miss Stanton bridge the distance he’d created, whisper in his ear. “Who were you talking to ... in your sleep? You kept apologizing to someone. Telling them how you’d tried to be worthy of your name.”
Theodore clamped his eyes shut. After all these years of trying to conceal his past, he’d been betrayed by a nightmare.
“Is that why you never acknowledge your surname? Because someone thinks you unworthy of it?”
No, that was why he never acknowledged the Christianname bestowed by his dying mother. Leaving his surname on a headstone at Kingsley Court had been at Father’s behest.
Miss Stanton’s gaze lingered, awaiting an answer.
Theodore’s nerves tangled in knots and scraped against one another. Fraying. Threatening to snap. He couldn’t fall apart in front of her again. He needed to avert and redirect. He needed to be Arthur—the carefree part of himself the queen’s war and Father’s scorn had all but destroyed.
He forced a grin to turn on rusted hinges. “Was my madman act convincing, Miss Stanton? The lark sure fooled the lot of them, didn’t it? I spent a whole summer with a circus learning that bit, but if I’m honest, I think your ‘snort salts’ speech was more impressive.”
As the jostling train carriage clicked and clacked over rails below, Miss Stanton withheld expression. Not a single eyebrow did she raise in reproof. Instead, she leveled him with the constancy of her piercing eyes of gray. “All the quips in the world can’t distract from the broken clock on the mantel. Not forever. Eventually, the jovial residents will notice the silence, look up from their merriment, and find the clock’s hands unmoving.”
Theodore’s grin fell. The encasement he’d fashioned might yet hide his name and the details of his former life, but it could no longer conceal who he was. Could no longer contain all the shattered pieces of his true self. Theodore the disappointment. Theodore the weakling. Theodore the failure. “Some clocks can’t be repaired, Miss Stanton.”
The fair skin around her eyes pinched, and her mouth twisted to one side. “When I was a young girl, I once borrowed a costly leather-bound atlas from Papa’s office and took it down to the kitchen for an imagined safari. A blazing oven does wonders to simulate an African summer. Erm, in any case, the atlas was the unfortunate victim of a lion attack.” A becoming smile touched her lips. “Cook Collins stepped onmy calico’s tail, and the atlas was one of many things to suffer the consequences of her violent reaction. The beautiful illuminated pages were torn. Rent from the book’s spine. I promptly rushed the atlas to Grand’s shop because, well, he could fix anything. I didn’t even cry, so confident was I that he could mend what I’d ruined. When Grand admitted he’d no idea how to mend books, I burst into tears. If Grand couldn’t repair the atlas, surely all hope was lost.”
One of Miss Stanton’s bandaged hands slipped into her skirt pocket. “Grand put me in his lap, wiped my tears, and reassured me that everything could be set to rights again. All I had to do was take the atlas to the one who’d made it. For as he said, ‘Any broken thing can be made whole again. It all depends on who you give the pieces to.’”
But shouldn’t a man be able to manage his own emotions privately? Mend his own brokenness discreetly? Was that not what had always been expected of him?
Theodore tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. His voice too raw. “I’m a clockmaker. I ought to be able to fix any timepiece put in front of me.”
“You areamaker. NottheMaker.” Miss Stanton gave his hand a firm squeeze. “Just as Grand would never expect a clock to fix its own windings, God would never expect us to mend our own hearts.”
The broken cog in Theodore’s pocket pressed against his skin, cold and unnaturally heavy.“God would never expect us tomend our own hearts.”But would He deign to mend one so tarnished?
His gaze fell to Miss Stanton’s fingers wrapped about his, soft and warm and unsullied. Pulling away from her, he buried both hands in his overcoat. Perhaps one day he might gather the courage to find out. But not today.
He cleared his throat. “Very well said, Miss Stanton. Have you given this speech often?”
“This was its debut. I was inspired by a thought-provoking lecture on the sovereignty of God and the damage caused by our feeble attempts to do what only He can.”
“Indeed? Who gave the lecture?”
Mrs. S. peered around her daughter’s shoulder. “A wise woman so ahead of her time that the whole of London thinks her mad.”
