Discovery

The Duke of Ashvale stood in my workshop.

I'd imagined this moment a hundred times. The discovery. The exposure. The inevitable end of everything I'd built in secret.

In my imagination, I ran. Or begged. Or bargained.

Instead, I set down my soldering iron and met his gaze.

"If you're going to expose me, I'd prefer warning." My voice came out steadier than I expected. "I have three projects I'd like to finish first."

He didn't respond immediately.

That surprised me.

I'd prepared for anger. Confusion. The particular outrage of aristocrats when servants forget their place.

What I hadn't prepared for was the way he looked at my workbench. At the half-finished automaton bird, its brass wings spread for adjustment. At the prosthetic hand, the seventh iteration, the one that almost worked.

At the drawings pinned to every available surface, schematics that had lived only in my mind until I committed them to paper.

He looked at my work the way other people looked at cathedrals.

"You made these."

Not a question.

"Yes."

He moved further into the room. His footsteps were uneven, the war wound everyone whispered about. I watched him stop at my workbench, reach toward the mechanical bird with his right hand.

His only hand.

The left sleeve of his coat was pinned neatly at the wrist. I knew this. Everyone in the household knew. The Duke had lost it at Sebastopol, along with thirty of his men.

I'd never seen him reach for something and stop himself before.

"May I?"

I nodded.

He lifted the bird carefully, turning it to catch the lamplight. The gears inside caught and released, a soft clicking that filled the silence.

"The wing mechanism." He tilted it further. "It's articulated at three points. Most automata use two."

I stared at him.

"You know mechanics."

"I've been searching for the person who designed these for three years." He set the bird down with more care than I'd ever seen from an aristocrat. "The anonymous inventor who's been selling prosthetic designs through Whitfield's workshop. The mechanisms that saved what was left of my men's limbs after the surgeons were done butchering them."

The blood drained from my face.

"Those designs came from here." He looked around my hidden room, the converted storage space I'd been using for eight years, since I was sixteen and desperate and had nothing but my father's notebooks. "From my own household. From my..." He paused. "What's your position?"

"Maid, sir. Third housemaid."

His expression shifted. Something complicated moved behind his eyes.

"A maid." He said it like he was testing the word. "My third housemaid is the inventor who's been revolutionizing prosthetic design."

"I prefer to remain anonymous."

"I can see why." He turned to face me fully. "If society learned a servant was responsible for this work..."

"They'd dismiss it entirely." I kept my voice flat. "Or claim I stole the designs. Or have me arrested for fraud."

"All of those." His agreement was quiet. "And yet you continued."

"The work matters more than credit."

He studied me then. Really looked, in a way no one had looked at me since my father died.

I was used to being invisible. Servants were furniture to people like him. We moved through their world like ghosts, seen only when we failed.

He saw me now.

I wasn't sure I liked it.

"What's your name?"

"Cordelia Shaw, sir."

"Shaw." His brow creased. "Any relation to Millicent Shaw? The inventor?"

The question hit like a blow.

"My father."

"Ah." His expression softened. Understanding, perhaps. Or recognition of a different kind. "He died in poverty, despite his brilliance. No one would fund his work."

"No one would fund an eccentric with no connections." My voice hardened. "He had the ideas. Just not the right breeding to make anyone listen."

"And so his daughter hides in an attic, selling her genius through intermediaries."

"I survive."

"You do more than survive." He picked up one of my schematics, the latest prosthetic design, the one I hadn't yet sent to Whitfield. "This is extraordinary. The articulation at the wrist, the responsive tension, I've shown these designs to engineers at the Royal Society. They couldn't explain how they worked."

"They couldn't replicate them either."

"No." His smile was unexpected. Quick and genuine. "That frustrated them enormously."

I didn't smile back.

"Why are you here?"

The question hung between us.

"I told you. I've been searching for three years."

"But why? You have your prosthetics. The designs are already in use."

"Because I want more." He set down the schematic. "Not for myself. For the men still suffering. For the soldiers who came home with nothing. The designs you've created are remarkable, but they're expensive. Time-consuming. Only the wealthy can afford them."

"I know."

"I want to fund the work. Not through intermediaries, but directly. I want to build a workshop, a real one, with proper equipment. I want to employ engineers, train craftsmen, make these designs available to anyone who needs them."

I felt my expression freeze.

"You want to employ me."

"I want to partner with you."

The word was absurd.

Dukes didn't partner with servants. They owned them. Used them. Discarded them when convenient.

"I'm a maid."

"You're a genius."

"I'm a maid who will be dismissed without a character reference if anyone learns about this workshop." I gestured at the cramped space. "I've spent eight years building this in secret. Eight years of hiding, lying, pretending I'm nothing more than what I appear. And you want me to step into the light?"

"I want to give you the opportunity."

"Why?"

He was silent for a long moment.

"Because I've been looking for something worthwhile to do since I came home from the war." His voice was different now. Rougher. "Because I have money and position and all the privileges that come with being born into the right family, and none of it has managed to help a single person who actually matters."

He touched his empty sleeve.

"Because I know what it's like to have the wrong thing be the first thing people see."

I didn't have a response to that.

"You don't have to decide now." He moved toward the door. "I won't expose you either way. Your secret is safe."

"How did you find me?"

He paused, hand on the doorframe. "I followed the oil."

I looked down at my hands. The calluses. The faint stains that never fully washed away.

"Most people don't notice servants' hands."

"I'm not most people." He glanced back at me. "Think about my offer, Miss Shaw. I'll be in my study if you want to discuss it."

He left.

I stood in my workshop, surrounded by years of hidden work, and wondered if I'd just made the worst mistake of my life.

Or the best.

The lamplight flickered.

The mechanical bird clicked softly in the silence.

And somewhere in the house above, a duke was waiting for an answer I wasn't sure I could give.