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Chapter Nine
Ariadne cleaned the last of the grime-filled device that lay to the side of the studio. She had tried to work all morning but failed miserably. She wiped her brow as exhaustion slipped in on her. Now that Edward—despite his terrible fraud—had left them with coins, Ariadne ought to concentrate entirely on fixing her father’s lamp and getting it ready for a patent. But so far she was failing rather miserably.
Having spent the majority of the day sketching potential new designs for the lamp, she ended up scratching all of them out and then throwing the paper away. She had lost about ten so far. And after that, she had gone back to the original blueprint to see if she could have more success with that. But that didn’t seem to work either. Out of frustration, she had begun cleaning the old inventions, the ones that had been discarded by her father too.
“This wouldn’t do at all,” she muttered to herself as she sat back down at the work table. Inadvertently her mind always found its way back to Edward, despite what he had done. She was disgusted at the unfairness of it all.
Two weeks had passed and he was long gone. By providing them with a few coins, he had washed his hands of her and was probably recounting this silly tale at the club with his companions. Her head began to throb as flashes of their time together—her reading to him as he fell into a deep sleep, her mending his wounds, him laughing at some silly joke that she had told. And then all of that was replaced by the image of him leaving.
His father had even preposterously suggested that she had done him worse by bringing him into her house. Ariadne didn’t regret taking care of Mr. MP at all. She just wished that he had been forthcoming to her about his identity.
Had he perhaps thought that she would take advantage of him when she realized who he was? Is that why he had lied? This probably meant that the blossom of a feeling she had felt for him was not reciprocated on his part. Ariadne had set herself up for a disappointment.
She was walking down the busy street when she felt a hand brush past her skirts. She immediately caught it and then turned the thief around. “You messed with the wrong person,” Ariadne snarled. It was a man not much older than her. He wore a peculiar brown coat that didn’t look like it had been washed much and a bowler hat. “I’m sawry miss,” he said.
“You don’t look too sorry to me,” she said. She let go of his hand and snatched her small reticule back with the other.
“Sawry ‘o ‘ave bin caugh’,” he said with a smile and a wink.
Ariadne rolled her eyes at his cockiness. The man’s eyes widened as he realized who she was. “You’re Mad Davy’s daugh’er.”
Ariadne felt an uncomfortable prickle at the back of her neck. Her father was infamous around these parts so it was no surprise that the pickpocket knew him too. Ariadne began to walk away from him. She didn’t want to have to hear any of that. She was having a bad day as was.
“Sawry miss. Don’ mind my wawds,” he said, following her as Ariadne left the street and entered the flea market.
Ariadne narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you want? I don’t have coins to spare.” It was true. Even though Edward’s father had been generous with his purse, Ariadne had sat down with her log sheets and calculated that they would last them only a few months, but only if they were careful. Her plan was clear and simple.
“I knah,” he said simply. Ariadne couldn’t seem to get rid of this person and she was growing more and more uncomfortable. “Tell me what you want.”
“I’ve ‘eard a lo’ abou’ you,” he said, assessing her carefully through shrewd eyes.
“What have you heard exactly?” she asked.
He shrugged. “You’re like your fa’her. You make ‘things.” He makes a motion with his fingers as if to imply what Ariadne does at the studio. She snorts at the gesture. “And what about it?”
“You ‘ave a quick mind. We may be looking faw someone jus’ like you,” he said with elaborating on the matter again.
Ariadne frowned. She didn’t understand what this man was saying. He rummaged in his pockets and for one moment Ariadne was afraid that it was a knife. But he took out a calling card and handed it to her. What was a thief doing with a calling card anyway?
“Come see us. You may ‘ave some’hin ov in’eres’ faw us,” he said. It took Ariadne a few seconds to understand his thick accent. He tipped his hat to her. “My name is Jack.”
Ariadne looked down at the card where an address was scribbled. She knew it all too well, as it was in one of the most notorious parts of the Clerkenwell. She would never find herself there. Was this man trying to lure her there?
“I don’t have anything for you.” She looked up but Jack had already vanished. Ariadne almost threw the card away but then thought better of it. A what if was stuck at the back of her mind even though good sense told her that she shouldn’t go down there. Even though she didn’t have marriage prospects like her younger sister, she still had a reputation to maintain. Besides what could they possibly want from her?
Ariadne shivered at the thought of heading right into the capital of notoriety. She pocketed the card in her skirts and then went off to buy her groceries. Along with that, she also managed to convince a carpenter to give away his spare pieces of wood which he didn’t need anymore. She went around to the small workshops and tried to look for small gears, tubes, and so on—anything she might require to finish the final design of the lamp.
The fresh air did help her think better. After she deposited the food items with Emma, Ariadne returned to the studio and started working on the lamp again. She made a few tweaks to the design and then turned on the small knob. The lamp shone brightly in the dark for a few seconds before it flickered out.
A few hours later, she sat back on her chair, sweat running down her back, and wiped her brow. She breathed in anticipation and turned on the knob. The lamp came to life again but this time it didn’t go out as minutes passed.
Ariadne couldn’t help herself. Tears streamed down her eyes as she realized that after months of setback she had finally completed a rough design of the lamp. There was more work to be done of course but this would be enough to at least apply for a patent.
She wiped her tears and looked up at the roof, hoping he was watching from someplace above. “I did it, Pa. I fixed it.” Unlike the other inventions, she had been with him right from the inception of the idea of this lamp. She had helped him create the blueprint, helped him tweak the design as they continued to work on it on and off in the last few months of his life. When he had fallen sick, all George Davy could think of was his lamp.
“Ariadne you must complete my design, child. It belongs to you as much as it belongs to me,” he had said to her as he lay dying on his bed. She could only watch helplessly as he struggled. His entire body had been paralyzed and they couldn’t get a doctor in time. The fever had taken him away in the middle of the night while she had stayed by his bed and wept.
“I’ve finally done it, Pa,” she whispered, her face cast in the soft light of the lamp. They had spent countless hours poring over books, researching and working, working, working hard failing, and then pulling themselves back together again. All of that had led her to this moment.
