Chapter Text
The calling cards began to arrive the next morning, each carried by a different clockwork animal, along with the usual bouquets for her younger sisters, the twenty-year-old twins Violet and Lily. Birds that puffed out steam as they carried roses in their beaks, little clockwork dogs with irises between their paws, iron horses draped with carnations, all of them bearing neatly embossed cards. As the rest of her family gushed over the “darling creatures”, Jemma sat politely on the sofa, her heavy skirts draped around her, and calculated how much longer she'd have to stay before she could make her excuses and slip away to the attic room she'd converted into her laboratory. She had a system for these mornings—a slight nod every two and a half minutes, a thoughtful hmmm every four, and a comment about how delightful the flowers were every ten. She was almost due for a nod when there was a loud metallic crash and the butler Jenkins appeared in the doorway bearing something long, thin, and scaly. “What on earth is that?” someone exclaimed.
“I'm not sure, ma'am, but it appears to be for Miss Simmons.” Jenkins deposited the object in her lap and Jemma peered down at it.
“It's a sea serpent, of course,” she replied, tilting it towards the light. The scales gleamed green, then blue, then silver and when she stroked along its spine, the serpent flicked a metal tongue out, two cream-colored cards resting on the fork of the tongue. One was an engraved invitation and the other one a note in messy, slanted handwriting.
Miss Simmons,
The usual custom when making the acquaintance of a lady is to send her flowers, but I thought you'd like the serpent better. He can fit a surprising number of things in his stomach, from collecting dishes to sandwiches, will change the color of his scales according to the temperature, and can tell time surprisingly well. I hope that you'll find him useful. The invitation itself is a little gaudy, in the hope that your parents will be impressed and allow themselves to visit the manor of a notoriously grumpy Scot. (Do mention to your father that I've recently purchased a small airship and to your mother that I've invited several men ranked higher than me in that awful article.) To the beginning of a new friendship.
Yours, Leopold Fitz, Duke of Hamilton
“It's from Fitz.”
“Jemma, when you say Fitz, you don't mean Duke Leopold Fitz, do you?” her mother asked cautiously and sidled over to the couch. “Holder of seven incredibly lucrative patents, heir to a four-hundred-year title, and number nine on the Tatler's list of London's Top Ten Eligible Bachelors?” If her mother's voice got any higher, their windows would start to shatter, Jemma thought. She wondered precisely what frequency it would have to reach in order to-- “Jemma!”
“There's no need to shout. Yes, it was that Duke Fitz. Yes, I met him last night, quite by accident actually. And no, I'm not about to become the next Duchess of Hamilton,” she said crossly. Hypothesis: If a lady begins to utter the name of a duke within her mother's hearing, then she will have sent out the wedding invitations by the time her daughter finishes saying the name. “We're friends, that's all, and he wants us all to come to his house party.”
“One doesn't accidentally make the acquaintance of an eligible duke. It's simply not the thing to be done.” Half of her family was gathered around her now, admiring the serpent and peering hopefully at the two cards as her mother went on. “One plots and plans and buys new dresses and engineers casual encounters until he falls at your feet with a proposal.”
“Well, no matter what I ought to have done, I did it and now he's sent us an invitation to his house party. As an act of friendship, like the friends we are,” she added, hoping to calm her family, but it was lost in the general hubbub around the invitation. Her mother was squealing with delight, Violet and Lily were asking her how many of the rumors were true in a scandalized whisper and stroking the sea serpent, and her older brother James was asking her about the rumors in a stern voice, over-protective ever since she was six and fell out of a tree trying to collect birds' nests. The family dog took the opportunity to bark loudly and dance around the rug and her six-month-old nephew Henry started crying, despite her sister-in-law Kate's best efforts to simultaneously soothe him and tell Jemma that she knew Fitz's sisters and they said he was simply wonderful. Jemma herself desperately fought the urge to laugh. She loved her family best like this, when they were in a constant state of chaos, where the person who was able to shout the loudest and rush around the fastest won. It reminded her of when she was very young, when her father's business was still up-and-coming and they'd poured every last penny into it. Her parents hadn't been able to afford a nanny so they'd brought her and James everywhere with them. It had been a childhood filled with sights and sounds and rushing from place to place and all sorts of things that weren't considered proper for children, from the muddy airship fields, where her father's pilots snuck them bits of toffee, to high-stakes business dinners where she and James quietly played under the table and distracted the guests so her father could take a look at their finance statements. It had been wonderful.
But then came the fortune, and the peerage, and the society gossips who were ready to criticize their every move. Her mother had become anxious about her daughters' social prospects, especially after Violet and Lily were born, and in due time Jemma had been laced into a series of sailor frocks and taught how to waltz, curtsy, embroider, and watercolor. She had executed a charming, very accurate series of watercolors of slime molds, embroidered the circulatory system of a frog, and learned to waltz without stepping on her partners' feet more than five times, and been a mildly spectacular social disappointment. A few months into her first Season, when it became clear that she would be a perpetual wallflower, her mother had redoubled her efforts at protecting the family from scorn and they became ever more prim and proper. Still, her family forgot all the etiquette that they'd learned from time to time, like now, as they swarmed around her and started planning for the house party. “It's not for weeks yet,” she said, laughing.
“But you'll want to have some new dresses made,” Violet put in. “Do you think he might like you in blue?”
“Jemma looks much better in green,” Lily argued. “A green walking suit with black accents that she could wear out on romantic walks with the duke—you really do look quite nice when you have some color in your face, Jemma, and all that collecting rocks and bugs should have made you an excellent walker.”
“I told you already that we're only friends. You don't buy new dresses to go see friends,” Jemma said firmly, though she was already remembering some of the people Fitz had been linked with in the gossip columns, men and women both. They'd looked good in green, hadn't they? The furious debate was finally interrupted by a loud cough from Jenkins, standing in the doorway with another basket of calling cards and a politely horrified expression on his face. Their butler was probably the most proper of all of them, complete with years of service to other noble families, a look that could freeze a footman in his tracks, and a framed certificate from Mr. Bushwick's Academy of Butlering. (The only diploma her family owned so far was James', which Oxford had only handed over under duress and out of a wish to get him out of there as quickly as possible after he'd set off fireworks in the middle of a literature lecture.) Jemma suspected sometimes if Jenkins had been in charge of the family's social campaign, at least one of her siblings would have been married into the royal family before the age of twenty one.
“Lady Skye to see you, madam,” Jenkins announced, proffering the scalloped calling card, and the entire parlor silenced instantly. Lady Skye had been the season's best known and universally adored debutante. She was the daughter of Lord Philip Coulson, the queen's spymaster and most trusted minister, and, according to the most recent rumor, a beautiful Chinese princess who had forsaken an arranged match to run away with Lord Coulson. (Of course, rumor paid no mind to what had happened to the princess afterward.) She had provided fodder for the town gossips for weeks, especially since Lord Triplett, war hero and heir to fourteen Caribbean islands, had claimed her for a shocking five dances at the first ball of the season. She'd made the prime minister laugh, she'd flirted with every eligible bachelor and maintained a spotless reputation, and best of all, the queen herself had attended Lady Skye's dinner party and gone so far as to compliment the cakes. She had been declared the absolute cream of society from the moment of her debut: pedigreed, wealthy, sought after by every hostess in town and in short, the kind of person who was extremely unlikely to appear in the parlor of the nouveau riche. Hypothesis: If Lady Skye Coulson came to call on the Simmons family, then the four horsemen of the apocalypse would be close behind.
Yet, there she was, wearing a stunning pink gown with her hair pulled back in an elegant French twist, no sign of the apocalypse behind her, and politely not making any comment about the shocked expressions on several family members' faces. Her mother was the first to recover, inviting their guest to sit down on the most comfortable sofa and promptly ordering tea. Gunpowder, of course. Lady Skye had declared that she adored gunpowder tea at a party five weeks ago and so of course, anybody who was anybody had immediately rushed out to purchase it. Some daring society hostess had even gone to Miss Melinda May, Lord Coulson's second-in-command and rumored former pirate queen, for advice on which stores Lady Skye frequented for her tea. In Jemma's favorite story, Miss May had responded that Lady Skye's favorite brand of tea had been smuggled in through an elaborate network involving tunnels under the English Channel, a high-speed train across the Siberian tundra, and Burmese star sapphires and if they cared to replicate that, they would be welcome to do so. After hearing that story half a dozen times, Jemma's mother had politely declined and made do with a rather excellent blend from one of her father's Chinese contacts.
An excellent blend which Lady Skye was currently sipping and making small talk over while Violet and Lily shot incredulous looks at each other behind her back, her mother tried to keep herself from crying with joy, and the dog proved himself to be the most sociable member of the Simmons family. He had curled up on Lady Skye's lap and was gazing up at her with open adoration when she scratched behind his ears. “You'll never be able to stop petting him now,” Jemma said. “He's decided that you're his new favorite person and if you ever dare stop, he'll start whining.”
“I don't mind. I never had any pets growing up so now I've acquired the awful habit of fawning over other people's. Lady Chesterton was quite scandalized when I picked up the gardener's little muddy dog at her garden party. I didn't care to explain to her that I'd been covered in far worse.” Something flashed across her face and Jemma remembered that no one had met Lady Skye before the age of twelve, when Lord Coulson had returned from a voyage to China with a new daughter, and wondered for a moment what her childhood might have been like before her arrival in England. Then Lady Skye laughed at the memory, bestowing a dazzling smile upon the entire room, and it seemed impossible that she had ever been anything other than perfectly poised.
“The same garden party of the infamous croquet incident?” she asked.
“You've met Fitz, then! Isn't he wonderfully odd?”
“I suppose he is.” Jemma couldn't help smiling at the thought of Fitz the night before, staring aghast at her when he saw someone else eating his crumpets.
“Did you know that he tried to retrieve his prototype from the lake after it had gone in? Waded in and ruined his trousers before our hostess sent her footmen to drag him out and prevent any more scandal. I could have told him that it wasn't going to work but then my specialty is communications and his is more technical.”
“Your specialty?” Jemma inquired.
“Our interests,” Lady Skye said hastily. “My father's gotten me quite interested in aetherograph technology. Did you know that there's a new aetherograph model in development where you can hear the voice of the person who's sent you a message? Quite a fascinating idea in theory, if not always the best in practice.” It was only later, when Jemma looked back on the afternoon, that she realized the aetherograph had been a perfectly executed distraction. From there, they'd gone on to the translation errors that aetherographs were notorious for, the time Jemma had snuck in to her father's research department, the most recent installment of Mr. Dickens' new serial, the upcoming week of balls, and the sheer absurdity of being expected to have a new gown for each one. They'd made plans to have tea at Selfridges next Sunday, exchanged their favorite Austen novels, and promised to call each other by their Christian names by the time Lady Skye swept out the door in a flurry of pink skirts and promises to see them at the house party, if she didn't call on them beforehand. Jemma felt a little like she'd been hit by a train, but in a friendly way.
“She's a lovely girl. A good friend to have, with all her connections if the duke doesn't work out,” Mrs. Simmons said, coming to sit by Jemma after Skye's departure.
“I can have a friend without calculating the social advantages, Mama. I'm on the verge of being off the marriage market, and I think that I'd much prefer a real friend to a husband.” She barely held back the question hovering on the tip of her tongue. Why are you so determined to marry me off?
“I just worry about your future, Jemma. I don't want you to be living off your brother's charity when your father's gone. I know that nothing's entailed and that your father's promised to leave you an allowance but—did you ever hear the story of how I met your father?” Her mother didn't wait for an answer, just went on. “When my father died, my brother inherited it all. He wasn't inclined to spend any money on a London Season for me, so I went to work as a governess in Liverpool. Your father nearly ran over me with one of the new steam cars he was testing when we first met.”
“And now you're a lady of the realm. If I do marry, I hope that it'll be as happy an accident as yours was. If I don't marry, then I don't marry. Easy as that,” she said patiently and stood up, gathering her skirts in one hand and making her farewells. Their social hour was over and she could finally retreat to her laboratory, and the delicate substance she had been brewing.
“I do hope that your happy accident involves the duke, Jemma,” her mother called after her.
“So do we all, Mama. So do we all.” Jemma muttered.