Page 57 of The Lawrence Browne Affair
“Will you look at this, Radnor?” Lady Standish interrupted, rising to her feet behind the sofa and shaking out her skirts. “Your battery is not the problem. It’s just that there are too many wires. Each additional wire multiplies the likelihood of something going awry.”
“I know,” Lawrence assented wearily. They had been through this at least a dozen times this morning. “But what use would fewer wires be?” There were twenty-six letters in the alphabet, twenty-five if they were to eliminate C, per Lady Standish’s pragmatic suggestion. What the devil could anybody do with fewer wires than that?
“The point isn’t to be able to communicate in perfect English prose,” she said. “That’s what the post is for.”
“A fat lot of good the post does when you’re snowed in,” Medlock chimed in.
“Listen,” Lady Standish insisted. “What you have right now is a way to communicate urgent, prearranged messages from one point to another. Say, from the coast to London.”
That was more or less what Georgie had thought. Lawrence felt another miserable pang at his secretary’s absence. “A way to signal a strange ship’s approach,” he said, echoing Georgie’s suggestion.
“Or favorable conditions for a crossing. That sort of thing.”
Lawrence nodded and knelt on the floor beside the telegraph. They spent the rest of the afternoon reconfiguring the device. It was pleasant working with Lady Standish; after such a prolonged correspondence, they were almost like old friends. Once he had gotten over the initial shock of discovering that she was a woman—and a youngish woman too, when he had been expecting a man considerably older than himself—he found himself recognizing in her conversation turns of phrase that she had been wont to use in her letters. Lawrence at first had to pretend that he was dictating a letter to Standish, but after a few hours and too many short circuits to count, he felt nearly comfortable with her.
Lawrence had never had this many people in his study at once. It had been years since he had even been in a room with so many people. It was unpleasant, and even the thought of his sanctuary being invaded made his heart squeeze uncomfortably in his chest. Medlock was silent, except for the incessant scratching of his pen on paper. Courtenay sprawled in the chair by the fire, thumbing through whatever books weren’t too damaged to be read, and then later quietly playing cards with Simon when the child tentatively poked his head into the room. He would have strongly preferred them all to go far away.
Except Lady Standish, because together they had accomplished more in a single day than they had in months of correspondence.
Except Simon, too, because seeing him filled Lawrence’s heart with a degree of joy he hadn’t thought himself capable of.
Except that old roué Courtenay, because Simon clearly adored the bastard.
And hell, he’d even keep Medlock, if for no other reason than because his presence seemed to be a prerequisite for his sister’s company.
So while he still much preferred being alone, this was . . . not horrible. He felt the walls closing in on him, the heat rising to the surface of his skin, but it never got unbearable. He had always assumed that if one of his episodes progressed too far, he would be plunged thoroughly into madness, and then be as lost to reason as his brother or father. But that hadn’t happened. Not now, not when Georgie had turned the house upside down, not when Simon had arrived.
Not madness, then. And it never would be. He finally believed what Georgie had been trying to tell him, and Georgie wasn’t even here to look smug about it. There were days and weeks and years opening before him, and every one of them would be without the person who had helped him see that he had a future.
“Radnor?” Lady Standish looked like she had been trying to get Lawrence’s attention for some time now. “Do you need to rest?” She pitched her voice low, so as not to be overheard by the gentlemen or Simon. He recalled that she had traveled some distance to check up on him. She knew he was a hermit; she knew his family’s madness. And she was treating him as a friend.
No, shewasa friend. Somewhere in between their disputes about the relative merits of brine and acid as electrolyte and their arguments about copper wire, they had become friends.
“I wanted this machine to send letters, not prearranged messages. I wanted a way for people to correspond instantly, without the hassle of letters crossing in the post or the annoyance of forgetting to send letters.” He still regretted all those unposted letters Georgie had found that first day—so many wasted words, so many conversations that had never taken place. “I wanted a way for people”—he busied himself in uncoiling a length of wire—“people like me, perhaps, to not be quite so alone.”
Lady Standish put her hand over his. “There’s time for that. You have decades to work out the details. Right now, though, I think we ought to go to the Admiralty. What was the name of that fellow who had asked you for the plans?”
It took Lawrence less than a minute to lay his hands on the letter from the Admiralty. This study, from the neatly labeled bottles and vials, to the meticulously organized papers, was Georgie’s doing. He had left his mark on every inch of this room, to say nothing of the rest of Penkellis.
He had reshaped the house, he had reshaped Lawrence’s life, and now he was gone.
Against his better judgment, Georgie peered over the side of the fishing boat. The ocean was choppy and frothed with white in the storm, and when Georgie looked inland he could see the cliffs covered in snow.
The fishermen—Mrs. Ferris’s smuggler cousins—assured Georgie that they would reach Plymouth tomorrow. Or perhaps it was tomorrow night. Their speech—whether it was a foreign tongue, a rustic burr, or a thieves’ cant, Georgie neither knew nor cared—was almost unintelligible. He was in the uncomfortable position of having to trust that these strangers weren’t going to dump him overboard to spare themselves the inconvenience of having to sail out of their way. But Mrs. Ferris had spoken to them very sternly, in the same tongue they now used among one another. Whatever she had asked for, none of the sailors had the temerity to deny her to her face.
At least Lord Courtenay’s coat was warm, with all its superfluous capes of heavy, soft wool. Georgie hadn’t scrupled to steal it, along with the man’s valise and coin purse. He would have stolen Courtenay’s hat as well, if it hadn’t been ruined by the snow. Lawrence didn’t care much for Courtenay, and that was enough of a reason for Georgie to rob the fellow blind even if he hadn’t arrived at precisely the moment when Georgie needed to make a quick escape.
Pulling the coat tightly around him, he realized that helping himself to Courtenay’s belongings and persuading Mrs. Ferris to aid his escape had been the easy part. Now he had to figure out where to go.
In the stolen coin purse was enough money to get him to Paris, maybe further. But he hadn’t asked the fishermen to carry him across the channel. No, he had asked them to bring him to Plymouth, where he would travel by the mail to London.
And once in London, well, he would choose the method of his demise, most likely. Either the gallows or a knife in the back.
At the moment he was leaning towards the knife in the back. If he delivered himself to Mattie Brewster of his own accord, the man might not look too closely into where Georgie had been—and who Georgie had been with—these past months. That would keep Lawrence safe and out of reach. Lawrence would be able to live peacefully at Penkellis, undisturbed. Georgie would either be killed as a traitor or put back to work for Mattie. Both fates appealed to Georgie about equally, but at least all the people he loved would be safe.
“Drink.” A fisherman shoved a flask under Georgie’s nose. Georgie took a long drag of what tasted like apple brandy.
“Thank you,” he said, returning the flask.
