Shadow Conspiracy Read Online Free

sending a servant as a snoop to satisfy your curiosity. Whatever are you about, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley? And what will you do next—hire someone to read Percy’s poetry and offer their critique as your own?
    I had worked up a most righteous dudgeon against myself by the time the gentlemen retired to the drawing room—all of the gentlemen, including Dr. Polidori. Clara (I had finally gotten used to calling her that) went to bed early with a headache, leaving me rather at loose ends. I could have just gone to the drawing room with the others—we didn’t stand on that silly ceremony of separating the men from the women—but I’d found that their conversation could be somewhat tedious in the first throes of postprandial satisfaction. At least until coffee stimulated or brandy relaxed.
    I could have gone in...but my curious and self-deprecating mind seized on another plan of action. I would go to that damned coach house and find some way to peer within. Paolo Foggi was at his own dinner in the staff dining room, the evening was fine (for once) and I was now all but suffocating with curiosity about Dr. Polidori’s Machine .
    I left the dining room and moved lightly up the stairs. I had a black velvet riding habit with a split skirt. It would be ideal for an evening’s sleuthing.
     

     
    Polidori’s Machine
     I had donned my riding habit and pulled a soft black toque Percy had given me over my coiled braid when Elise came into the bedroom.
    “Why, Mam,” she said curiously, “where are you going at this hour?”
    “To the coach house,” I said, tucking a few wisps of hair under the cap. “I intend to find out what sort of machine our dear doctor is building that requires the use of a small zoo.”
    Elise’s eyes glinted in the lamplight. “I’ll come with you...that is, if you like, Mam.”
    I shook my head. “I’ve been altogether too passive, Elise. Sending you to do my snooping for me. I’m ashamed of myself. You don’t have to carry on like a spy any longer.”
    Elise took a step toward me. “Oh, but I want to, Mam. Please, won’t you let me come with you?”
    I stared at her a moment, then smiled. Elise was more than my son’s nanny. She was a co-conspirator. “Have you anything black to wear?”
    She had—an old black dress of thin wool that she’d made for a funeral. She didn’t say whose, but she didn’t seem to mind wearing it for such nefarious activities as I had planned.
    We slipped out by a garden door that gave onto the grounds from the conservatory on the south side of the house. The moon gave sufficient light by which to find our way across the fifty or so yards to the coach house. I became concerned, as we approached, that perhaps we would have to light one of the candles I had stuffed into the pockets of my riding costume, but as we reached the rear of the building, I saw that we were in luck—a lamp had been left burning within. Its dim light seeped from the crack between the upper and lower portions of the dutch door.
    We pried at the door to no avail. Nor could we peep through the meager slit between its halves. We moved to the windows next, but those on the ground floor were shuttered and locked. Finally, I decided we must hope that the entrance from the stable had not been so carefully done up.
    Alas, it had been, and at length, we stood in the center aisle of the stable in silent frustration, ready to give up. I glanced around, hoping for an epiphany or a miracle. I got neither, but I did catch a flash of light shining on a tumble of hay high up in the loft. This, despite the fact that the stable itself was in complete darkness.
    I touched Elise’s shoulder and pointed upward. “The hayloft,” I murmured.
    Up we went. My split skirt made the climb easy, but after two attempts, Elise was compelled to roll her skirt up around her waist, and climbed the ladder displaying her shockingly white knickers.
    At last, we were rewarded, for the neat bales of hay hid a