“Busy, busy, busy,” Laura said. “So many orders to finish. I fear we won’t be done by Christmas.”
“Don’t worry, Miss Laura. I’m sure we’ll manage.”
“Sweet Scarlette,” she said with a smile. “Does Earl Walpole know you’re here, my dear?”
“Of course,” I replied. He did believe I was in town at the doll shop, but I doubt he suspected I was a temporary apprentice there.
“I like that man,” Laura said absently as she touched up the paint on the doll’s cheeks. “He’s an odd bird, but writers are always a strange sort. And I like his little castle. It’s very…whimsical.”
Whimsical was an excellent word to use to describe Strawberry Hill, Uncle Horace’s home. The Gothic castle in miniature was a peculiar mixture of the fashionable, the melancholy, and the playful—a bit like Uncle Horace himself.
One by one, I lifted the dolls and sewed the small buttons on the back of their gowns, tightening up anything Laura had missed. The work was delicate, the tiny buttons only half the size of the nail on my pinkie, but with a bit of concentration, I had them done in no time. Once I fixed the buttons, I straightened the girls’ dresses and laid them back down. “Three pretty—and properly buttoned-up—maids in a row. All done with these.”
Laura looked up at me, her blue eyes wide with surprise. “Already? Well, that’s very good, very good. I have a job for you in the back. It’s a bit complicated. Lady Ashcroft has requested a special doll. We have the pieces, but we need your hands to finish the job.”
“Special? Special how?”
Laura set down the raven-headed beauty she’d been working on. “Come see,” she said then led me deeper into the workshop.
We passed the shelves lined with doll heads and body parts, scraps of clothes, and boxes of broken doll pieces. At the very back was a table on which sat a tiny piano and an exquisite doll.
“Lady Ashcroft saw an advertisement for a doll that can play the piano just by turning a windup key. We told her we couldn’t promise we could make such a thing, but we would try. We have all the pieces we need, now, we just need her to play,” she said, motioning to the doll and the piano. She then turned to a small box sitting on the table. She lifted the lid. “Mister Duke, the clockmaker, gave us the parts. And I have an old music box there. Do you think you could try it? Here is the advertisement Lady Ashcroft saw,” she said then handed a yellowed piece of paper to me. The ad was for a toy shop in New York City. It showed a doll sitting at the piano. According to the advertisement, the doll moved, playing the piano.
“You want me to try it?” I asked.
It was then that Lizzie came around the back. She adjusted the pins holding her mountain of silver hair on the top of her head then pulled her shawl tighter around her.
“Cold back here, Laura. You’ll need to add some coal to the stove if Miss Scarlette is going to work on the pianist. So, will she?”
“You interrupted before she could answer,” Laura chided her sister.
Lizzie looked at the box. “Master Duke said you could stop by the shop if you need anything else. We knew that if anyone could make such a doll, it would be you, Scarlette.”
I grinned. “I’ll try.”
“That’s our girl,” Lizzie said. She patted me on the shoulder then headed back to the front. “I told you she would say yes,” she added, giving her sister a knowing look.
Laura chuckled.
“This doll is so beautiful,” I said, lifting the lovely red-haired doll sitting by the piano. “I’ll need to cut her open, tear apart her stuffing and stitches. I don’t want to make a mistake and ruin her. I wish I had something to practice on first. Do you have an old doll, maybe something broken or unwanted?”
“Well,” Laura considered. “Yes. I do. I nearly forgot about them. There,” she said, pointing to a box at the bottom of the shelf. “We made those for a garden party. No one wanted them, so they sent them back when it was over.”
I knelt down and pulled out the closed box. There was an inch of dust on the lid.
“Laura?” Lizzie called from the front.
“Feel free to work on those, Scarlette, and help yourself to whatever else you want, my dear,” Lizzie said then left to join her sister.
I lifted the lid off the box. Pushing aside the soft cloth covering, inside I found a row of dolls. Well, they weren’t precisely dolls. They were funny looking little men dressed in patchwork suits, animal skins, overalls, and knickers. They were made of cloth and had long noses, wild hair, bushy eyebrows, buck teeth, and all manner of playful expressions on their faces. Gnomes. They were stuffed gnomes. They were a funny looking ensemble. Uncle Horace had an excellent book in his library on gnomes. The tome included illustrations of gnomes just like these. I loved them at once.
Eyeing them over, I picked up a creature who wore shaggy, Angus-hide trousers, a knitted green sweater, and a red cap that covered his long white hair. He also had a substantial white beard in which the sisters had sewn a ladybug.
“Hello,” I said, looking down into his beady glass eyes. “Are you in charge here? You certainly look like the elder of this group,” I said, eyeing over the others. “If you don’t mind, I believe I’ll do a little tinkering. Just a few snips, and you’ll be as good as new,” I said.
Taking the box of cogs and gears, I sat down at the workbench with a new goal in mind—to bring the gnome to life.
Chapter 2: Strawberry Hill
It was after noon when I finally looked up from my work. The design I needed to make wasn’t that difficult; it just required concentration. I needed to create a design that would allow the doll to have the semblance of life. The piano player would lift and lower her arms and hands up and down to make it appear as though she played. The actual music would come from a music box cylinder, which I would place inside the piano. The pianist would activate the music box with a tap of her hand, setting the device in motion, then make it seem as if she were the one playing the score. I quickly arranged the music box inside the piano. That part was simple. Now I just needed to tinker the inner workings of the doll. In theory, the design was easy. Execution, however, was a little trickier. I was very glad Laura had given me the gnome to work with before I tried to tinker with the delicate porcelain doll.
I’d created a rudimentary clockwork torso for the gnome. I sat back and eyed my prototype. It should work. Should. Turning the wind-up key, I watched as the gnome’s arms jerked up and down. The movement was uneven and lacked fluidity. It had taken me hours to get even this much right. I gently removed the clockwork mechanism from the body of the little gnome and loosened the joint on his right arm. As I worked, I reminded myself not to get frustrated.