This woman—Reverie—was a veritable dream.
Wait, was he dreaming?
Charles blinked, but the image of beauty didn’t dissolve into mist.
After penning something into a ledger book, Reveriealighted, gliding around the desk on wings invisible. No, not wings. Wheels. The woman perched upon a wheeled chair. All elegance and grace. Curls of ebony, skin of ivory—wait, she was leaving. Gliding past him and toward the door as though unaware of his existence.
Charles cleared his throat. “Excuse me, I—”
“Mr. Glidden will return momentarily.” Reverie tossed the sentence over her shoulder, sparing him not a look.
“Wait ... miss.”
At last, Reverie stilled, rotated her chair, and met his enraptured gaze with eyes of crystalline green. Her fair brow furrowed, as though perplexed, and she glanced over her shoulder. “I beg your pardon, sir. Were you addressing me?”
Addressing ... admiring ... attempting to memorize. His cheeks flashed hot.Ahem.“Ap-plications?” He stumbled over the word, sputtering like a simpleton.
Reverie’s brow smoothed. “Ah yes, the building is quite hard to navigate upon one’s first visit. Best keep to the main passages and steer clear of the labyrinth.” Before he could inquire about the mysterious labyrinth she referenced, Reverie turned to leave, speaking as she glided out the door. “From here, it’s the second corridor to the right and straight on till Morning. That being the office of Mr. Morning, the clerk of applications.” And with that, she winged away by means unknown without so much as a by-your-leave.
Charles blinked as one awakening. His slackened jaw snapped shut with a clack of teeth.Dash it all, man! Her name. Get her name. Her real name!His slick palms fumbled with the latch, but the door, once open, proved the corridor to be lamentably empty. Reverie had vanished.
Chapter
8
As Margaret progressed through her morning routine, the gears of her mind jammed, struggling to turn with comprehension around the abnormal deviation thrown into the workings of her life. She still couldn’t believe she’d agreed to assume the role of lead inspector on the purloined patent case. Let alone that she was now tasked with investigating the mechanical empire of AlvanT. Harrison—the only inventor for whom she had no respect.
The man was a skilled entrepreneur, she’d give him that. But the most prolific genius the world had ever known? The man, most certainly, was not, regardless of what the newspapers reported and the general public believed.
To be fair, the only reason Margaret knew otherwise was because Mr. Harrison had once approached Papa to work for his industrial research laboratory, Innovation Park, after hearing him speak at an engineering symposium. She’d never heard tell of anyone receiving a personal invitation from Harrison before or since. Normally, inventors applied to workat the Park in droves, as it was the first such institution of its kind, purported as a hub of ingenuity. The prospect of having the time and resources to tinker while providing a comfortable living for their families was sufficient incentive for most inventors, who were often idea rich and cash poor, to sign the new employee contract placed before them with naught but a cursory glance.
Papa, however, was not like most inventors. He was a marquess and a successful businessman in his own right, which meant he’d no need of Mr. Harrison’s connections or resources. It also meant he’d the freedom of a gentleman of leisure to spend hours perusing the contract placed before him with a magnifying glass. A contract that, upon closer inspection, contained a troubling clause in fine print—any and all inventions developed on Innovation Park grounds would be considered the legal property of the company and thus patented under the founder’s name.
Thereby, the Invention Factory model credited more patented innovations to AlvanT. Harrison than he’d actually invented. A fact that remained a company secret due to a confidentiality agreement inventors were required to sign prior to being granted access to the new employee contract forms.
Because AlvanT. Harrison was the name on public record at the patent office, people assumed Invention Factory employees were naught but a living gadget mill for Harrison’s bubbling font of genius—rather than geniuses in their own right—and Mr. Harrison inexplicably allowed his reputation to benefit from that faulty assumption. A distasteful practice made legal by the rights forfeiture and additional confidentiality clauses buried amid pages of legal jargon in the inventors’ worker contracts.
It was for this reason Papa had turned down Mr. Harrison’s job offer and Margaret still turned up her nose at Harrisonhimself. While she’d never imagined the man would stoop to brazen thievery, the notion was by no means beyond the realm of possibility. Yet whether she could find sufficient evidence to prove her suspicions remained to be seen.
Since accepting the case three weeks ago, Margaret had undergone a thorough refresher course of standard D.O.G.S. training. By strict order of the Widow, not a single precautionary measure was to be overlooked before her first undercover assignment at Innovation Park. Therefore, every member of the D.O.G.S. had been recruited to aid in her education. Jane had taken to schooling her on covert operations, Iva Leene was charged with oiling the rusty defensive skills Margaret hadn’t used since completing basic training five years ago, and Helena served as a constant support every time she threatened to quit.
Which had been approximately eleven times thus far.
Today, upon completion of her requisite music therapy, Margaret had an appointment at D.O.G.S. headquarters with Lady Louisa Mayfield, the skillful producer of aliases utilized for clandestine assignments. Of all the lady inspectors, none was more qualified for the task of crafting fictitious people and false names than their resident novelist.
At precisely a quarter past two, Margaret rolled into Louisa’s office, which looked rather more like a library. Built-in bookcases stood along every wall, towering all the way to the ceiling. Despite what would be considered adequate shelf space for the casual reader, books were stacked in leaning towers in every nook and cranny of available floor space. The books buried the desk so completely that it seemed to be made of volumes. Come to think of it ... Margaret couldn’t recall what the desk even looked like, so long had it been entombed in works of literature.
Behind the desk, or rather tucked inside it like a cave, Louisa lay flat on her stomach upon a lush rug, blanket overher head like a shawl and nose stuck in a book that she paged through rapidly, thanks to her unusually swift reading capabilities. Margaret waited in patient silence, knowing well that to interrupt Louisa in the midst of a bookish adventure was futile at best and dangerous at worst.
Soon enough, Louisa read the final pages, closed the book with a contented sigh, and hugged it to her chest as though thanking the tome for allowing her to experience the story contained within its leather binding.
Margaret gently cleared her throat.
Louisa met her gaze with a happily dazed expression. “Ah, Maggie! Have you come for another book recommendation? I just had a shipment arrive yesterday.” Scrambling to her feet, Louisa dashed to the rolling ladder attached to the bookcases. With a dramatic wave of her arm, she kicked off the nearest shelf and sent the ladder flying across the room from one bookcase to another. “If you’re in the mood for something wonderfully romantical, I suggest the works of Jane Austen, P. D. Basham, or Antonia Shiloh.”
Before Margaret could respond, Louisa had glided to another wall of shelves. “But if you fancy a gothic tale of murder and mayhem, I highly recommend something by Wilkie Collins, J. J. Wright, or Mr. Poe.” Just as she landed before one shelf, she alighted and flew in the direction of another. “Knowing your vivid imagination, though, you’d probably prefer a story on the fantastical side. C.C. Schroeder, Jules Verne, or S.Haron Hinck, perhaps?”
Finally, out of breath, Louisa fell silent. Tucking a hand in one of the many book-sized pockets stitched in tiers along her skirt, she gazed at Margaret expectantly. Ink freckled her cheeks and stained the fingers grasping the ladder. Evidence she’d recently been hard at work penning another sensation novel. Her devoted readers would never suspect that Louisa, with her heart-shaped face and innocent braids, wrote A.M.Barnard’s popular blood-and-thunder tales. She was the very picture of a demure little woman—until the pet she’d adopted from Mumsie Stanton’s foundling home for disabled animals climbed up her dress with the aid of sharpened talons. With Jaime the raven perched on Louisa’s shoulder, broken left wing hanging lifelessly, the dainty novelist suddenly transformed into the very mistress of the macabre.
