The Inventor (The Legend Chronicles) Read Free Page B

wore wire-rimmed glasses and Thadeus didn’t. Their similarities extended only to their features, though. Thadeus was hopelessly messy, whereas Marley found he liked things in neat, organized order, as evidenced by their worktables, which faced one another, Thadeus’s detritus of materials spilling into his own neat workspace.
    Their social skills were as different as could be as well. Thadeus reveled in talking to people, while Marley found himself more suited to solitarily creating machines and avoiding interaction as much as possible.
    “Well, it wasn’t as if I were cataloging her characteristics. We were working together on the STAR.”
    Thadeus looked both aghast and curious at the same time. “She was working with you on your machine?”
    Marley smiled. “Yes.” He did recall her vivid blue eyes and quick lithe fingers as she tinkered with the gears and wiring. Watching her work on the machine had been the highlight of his experience at the exhibition. “She’d make an excellent lab assistant.”
    His cousin stared at him, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly like a beached fish gasping for water. “Lab assistant! Lab assistant? Marley, have you gone off your rocker? Do you even know who Lady Persephone Hargrieve is?”
    Marley frowned. “I suppose she’s a fan of aeronautics and science.”
    Thadeus rubbed his hands over his face. If he’d already rolled up his sleeves to work, he would’ve left his visage streaked with great grease marks. As it was he just looked disgruntled. “She’s the only child of Lord Harrington onHargrieve, who married Catherine Percy and is next in line for the title of Duke of Northumberland once his father-in-law passes.”
    Marley just stared at Thadeus dumbfounded. He wasn’t exactly certain what Thadeus was nattering on about. Social rank was not one of the things that occupied his mind any more than gear ratios or the potential for focused light beams interested his lordship. “Oh.”
    “Oh?”
    “Well, it’s just, she has rather a sharp mind and a mechanical talent, hardly the hallmarks aspired to by a lady of quality. I wouldn’t have suspected she was the daughter of a soon to be duke.”
    Thadeus scurried around the worktables and grabbed Marley by the upper arms, giving him a shake. “Marley, you great dunderheaded trout! Don’t you see what this means? If Lady Persephone Hargrieve is interested in your work, her father might become the sponsor you need to launch you into the Aeronautical Society. The Queen’s interest is lovely, but she cannot sponsor you. Only a current member of the society can. Lady Persephone could be our golden ticket.”
    Marley’s frown deepened. “That’s so very crass of you, thinking of a bright young woman as merely a ticket to something else.”
    Thadeus just shook his head and muttered something under his breath about social normalities, marriage, and idiot buffoons. Marley was inclined to ignore him, in particular because his work on the autorotation cuff for the resonating device was just about finished, and he dearly wanted to have it complete before he met with Lord Hargrieve.
    “It’s not as if I’ll be discussing the matter of their support over tea this afternoon.”
    A heavy wrench fell to the flagstone floor with a great clank that echoed in the laboratory. “Lady Persephone invited you to tea?”
    “Well, it really was more Lord Hargrieve who issued the invitation to come and speak to him. Lady Persephone kind of just stood there.”
    Thadeus stared at him.
    “I say, are you sure you aren’t coming down with something? You seem rather peaked today,” Marley said by way of observation.
    “Please tell me, cousin, that you’ve at least thought of a gift to take her.”
    “A gift? Whatever for?”
    Thadeus groaned, tilting his head back and peering at the huge exposed wooden beams overhead. He closed his eyes for a second, then shook his head, his gaze landing squarely on Marley. “You know, for as