September 1870, Brighton England

The loud and, if Rebecca was going to be honest, hideous clock ticked and whirred, giving fair warning that the wretched bird inside, more spectral raven than cuckoo, was about to burst onstage. The bedraggled little thing made two shrieking appearances before she stilled the Air around it with a sharp pull of her fingers, muffling its third cry. Offended—no, it was not sentient, and unable to take offense, but it was gratifying to imagine it was—the bird returned to its hiding place within the old gothic clock.

It would stay there for another hour, only to repeat the cycle, demanding to be silenced by her Skill once again. Noisy, disruptive, dreadful little contraption. She ought to pull it down, get rid of it, and be done with the disagreeable thing.

The customers of Fullers-Fix-All wouldn’t mind. More than one feared it would be the death of them, the way it screamed every hour like the harbinger of death.

Rebecca Fuller leaned back on her stool near the workbench and removed her wire-rimmed glasses to glare at the intricately carved, dust-collecting tribulation. It was not as if there were any other family around to care if Father’s Master-Wright project were on display or not. Her customers did not, and could not, ever know its precise nature. Father was always the one who insisted it be front and center, a memento of his proudest achievement.

Who would not want such a reminder staring at them when the debt-collector came calling?

Gracious, what had rendered her such a crosspatch this afternoon? She laughed to herself as she wiped her glasses along the shoulder of her practical, drab work dress. Forever dusty and dirty, they were.

It had been a long day, part of several long weeks. The pressure of the coming debt payments must be getting to her. Best not continue on with such a sour disposition, lest she earn a reputation as a bitter old spinster. No, focus on remembering that the lock box upstairs now contained nearly enough to cover the moneylender’s demands. And he would not be calling for another week. All would be well. She settled her glasses onto her nose and blinked the cluttered—no, not cluttered, it was busy—shop into focus.

Tools, great and small, hung along the back wall, all worn, but well cared for, and mostly for show. She managed the actual work in the cellar workroom, away from prying eyes, not at the front-of-shop workbench where she did small manual tasks to remind customers their beloved items were in expert hands. Wood-paneled walls, dust free through no small effort of her own, made the broad space homey and smell just right, like Father. Shelves lined the left wall and glass-fronted cabinets on the right.

Some of Father’s works still lingered on those shelves, waiting to find homes, but these days it was her work that filled them. Bits and bobs fashioned from scraps and discards that made their way into her hands. A novel means to supplement her stretched-too-thin income, and draw in customers, both curious and sentimental, when they had an idle hour and spare coin in their pocket to spend. Perhaps it was time to rearrange those displays.

Father hated it when she did that. A complete waste of time, he said. But it helped sales—her records proved it, even if Father had never believed her.

With his passing, the shop was hers and hers alone. She could do anything she wanted with it. And now that the new laws had passed, she might even marry and retain ownership of it all. Married women were now permitted to own their own property! These were heady days indeed.

Not that a potential husband lingered in the wings. It was the principle of the thing that mattered.

She parked her elbows on the worn wooden workbench and leaned her face into her hands. She could do anything she wanted. Anything within reason. Even sell Fuller’s Fix-all and move to the country or at least to a town more proper than Brighton. There were moments being out of Brighton seemed the best thing in the world. The Guild here was … ugh, impossible, simply impossible.

But selling the shop would require finding some manner of a job. There were several alternatives that might support her with no one the wiser about her Skill. Assuming, of course, she was frugal, and dull and proper and boring, and willing to give up her fondest hopes.

Not yet.

As encumbered by debt as it was, Fuller’s Fix-All challenged her, gave her purpose, community, and the hope of becoming a Master Wright. The shop was Father’s pride and joy, almost like a child to him. It was a son to replace the one he had lost, to carry his name in the future.

After Joseph died, Father insisted she should let Fuller’s Fix-all pass into other, more capable hands than hers when he shed his mortal coil. After all, what would, what could, a mere journeyman, much less an unorthodox female journeyman, do with the shop in the first place?

When the Guild revoked his training credentials, Father gave up all hope the Guild would recognize her as a Master Wright, enabling her to carry on his legacy. Everyone knew women did not possess the Skill, and even if they did, training one was unheard of. What matter that her very being contradicting all they ‘knew.’

Still, he had a point. If there was no chance of attaining Master’s status, what point in holding on to the shop?

She pounded the workbench with her fist. Dash it all! They were all wrong, and she would prove it. It might be too late to prove it to Father, but she would prove to the Guild, and to Brighton at large, maybe even to England as a whole, if it would pause and take note. She was not a mere journeyman, but Master Wright, no, a Full Wright, as Skilled as the Royal Guild Master himself. Someday they would recognize it.

Yes, yes, they would. She thumped the workbench again.

Ouch!

Such hubris! Served her right.

She rubbed the side of her fist, then pushed herself upright. Enough of the mulligrums. Most definitely time to start some proper work—the sort that made her lock her doors and put up the ‘Repairs in Progress—Do Not Disturb’ sign. She pushed back from the workbench and hopped off the tall stool. Its wooden feet squealed along the wood floor, protesting as it did when she left the front-of-shop. It would recover from its disappointment; it always did. Debris, wood shavings, metal filings, bits of thread and fluff cascaded from the leather work apron that covered the wholly impractical, ruffled and bustled brown dress she had to wear to keep up appearances. Some things could not be helped.

She ought to sweep up, but her fingers tingled and ached with Skill waiting to be applied. Sweeping would wait until morning. As soon as she locked up, she would—

The front door flew open, slapping the brass bells, which sweetly announced visitors, against the wall with an angry clank.

“Miss Fuller! Miss Fuller!” The rumpled boy, not more than ten years old, clutched a rough cloth bag to his chest. His dusty, dark brown knickerbockers were well made, though the elbows of his jacket showed a little wear. Big brown eyes completed his boyish features and a crooked, dusty cap topped off a shock of unruly sandy-blonde hair. “Oh thank St. Peter, St. Paul and all the angels. You’re still here!”

“That is quite the entrance, young man. Who might you be?” She folded her arms over her chest as she came around the workbench toward him.

“Fletcher, my name is Fletcher, and you are my only hope, Miss Fuller.”

“Rather dramatic, aren’t you? I’m about to close up shop for the day. Why don’t you come back tomorrow, with your mother or your father, and you can tell me what you need then?”

“I can’t! I can’t! She will kill me—they both will. If you don’t help me, I’m done for!” He looked over his shoulder as though one of them might appear in the doorway.

“I see.” She slipped past him and turned the window sign. “You have five minutes to tell me why you are here. Then I must get to work.”

“Thank you, Miss. They said you were good like that.”

“Who said?”

“My mates, Jeremy, John, and Robert.”

Three of the clumsiest boys known to man. “Have you broken something?”

“It weren’t my fault, Miss, truly, it weren’t. Ma and Pa are away, due to be home tomorrow. I was minding my own business, reading a book, and the cat—”

“The cat? It’s always a cat to blame!” Why were boys ever blaming innocent cats? Balthazar knocked nothing off the shelves when he made his daily rounds, prowling across every horizontal surface in the shop.

Granted, there was the occasional item that got pitched off the shelf intentionally, but it was because Balthazar detected some flaw in the workmanship. He had an uncanny knack for that.

And he was always right.

“Honestly, it were the cat this time. She was sleeping in a sunny window when she took off like the devil himself was after her, she did. Tail all poufed, eyes as big as plates, she tore off, running around the house and knocked this off the top shelf in the parlor.” He held out the coarse bag, pulling it open.

Broken porcelain. Shards and shards of it. Whether the cat or the boy were to blame, the bag contained a right mess.

“Come.” She led the way through the shop and poured out the contents onto a soft leather mat near the middle of the workbench. With the tip of her finger, she sorted through the debris. That bit looked like a base, and there were two faces, some leaves. “Staffordshire?”

“I dunno, Miss.” He wrung his hands, shifting from one foot to the other. “All I know is that my pa gave that to my Ma as a reminder of them courting or some such thing. She likes it ever so much. They’ll be no convincing them that the cat were the one who broke it. They will kill me. Please, miss, you have to help me.”

“This is well and truly smashed.” Such an unfortunate end for what seemed like a sentimental piece. Not the first such item she had seen. “What do you think I will be able to do?”

“Me mates said you can fix anything like new. They say you gots a trade secret glue or some such that mends everything. Can’t you do something? Please.” He turned up puppy dog eyes at her, the sort that were the reason she could not keep a dog herself.

His friends were right; she was able do the work. They were the sons, nephews or grandsons of important Brighton Wrights, just starting their own apprenticeships, and understood exactly the nature of her Skill. If only their elders appreciated her abilities the way the boys did. “You have the means to pay for the repairs?”

Fletcher reached into his pocket and pulled out a few coins. “This is all I have, Miss.”

Despite the puppy dog eyes. It was not nearly enough to justify the time away from working for clients who had already placed a down payment with her and had proven they would pay their bills in full.

“You can take it all, and I will pay you the rest over time, yes? My father lends money, and I know how important it is to make good on me debts. Please, I’m desperate. I need it before my parents come home.”

“You realize it will cost five times this much for the repair.”

“Five times?” He swallowed hard, tears welling in his eyes. “Please, you are my only hope.”

There was something about the look in his eye. Oh, merciful heavens! “Who is your father, lad?”

His cheeks colored. “Dick Mallory.”

Bless it all. Why did it have to be him? That name alone had her searching for ready avenues of escape. The backdoor wasn’t far…

“Miss?”

Could she allow the poor child to face the wrath of a man like that? She rubbed her left forearm, the bump in the bone there still a tangible reminder of his parting gift to her. Blast and botheration. “What useful tasks can you do?”

Fletcher sucked in a breath, like a drowning man breaking water. He dragged his sleeve over his eyes. “Anything you want, Miss, anything.” He glanced around the shop. “I can sweep. I can dust. I can run errands for you. Deliver things, pick things up. I can read and write, too. Would that be helpful?”

Actually, it might.

“I can work for you every afternoon after I finish working for Pa.”

“And your parents will approve?”

“Pa’ll be happy that I have a proper job to do, and Ma’ll be happy to have him happy.”

No doubt the poor woman would be. “Come tomorrow, and we’ll discuss the terms of your employ here.”

“Oh yes, Miss! Yes. I’ll work ever so hard. I promise you!”

“Go on then and let me get to my business.”

“Mightn’t I watch you? Me mates all say you do amazing things but they ain’t never seen you do it. Can I watch?”

Rebecca stepped back and stared at him, restraining the urge to brush away the chills running down her arms. What was he about—asking that sort of question? “No, that is my first rule. Trade secrets I will not violate. If you aren’t willing to abide by that, then take this, and we’ll go our separate ways.”

He jumped away as though he’d released a mad dog. “No, no, Miss. You can work in white face dressed as Clown himself for all I care. I won’t intrude on your secrets!”

Blasted puppy eyes! “Scamper off then. I’ve a great deal to get done tonight. I will see you tomorrow, then.”

He bobbed ‘thank yous’ as he backed his way to the door. and she locked it behind him. So many clients waiting on repairs. Why had she agreed to take on the boy’s troubles, too?

Apparently, she was still in the habit of cleaning up after Dick Mallory’s wrath.

Read part 2 here

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