The Clockwork Nightingale's Song

By Amy Rae Durreson

In the automated Vauxhall Floating Gardens, high above the smoggy streets of London, Nightingale No. 48 is refusing to sing. Stern mechanic Shem Holloway brings in the Gardens' brilliant but arrogant inventor, Lord Marchmont, to fix the broken automaton. But the clockwork nightingale has a secret, and soon both men find themselves questioning whether they should be trying to fix a mechanical heart at all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amy Rae Durreson
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781999744632

Amy Rae Durreson

Amy Rae Durreson is a quiet Brit with a degree in early English literature, which she blames for her somewhat medieval approach to spelling, and at various times has been fluent in Latin, Old English, Ancient Greek, and Old Icelandic, though these days she mostly uses this knowledge to bore her students. Amy started her first novel a quarter of a century ago and has been scribbling away ever since. Despite these long years of experience, she has yet to master the arcane art of the semicolon. She was a winner in the 2017 Rainbow Awards.

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The Clockwork Nightingale's Song

Amy Rae Durreson

Copyright 2019 Amy Rae Durreson

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Table of Contents

The Clockwork Nightingale's Song

About the Author

Other Works by Amy Rae Durreson

NIGHTINGALE NO. 48 had stopped singing.

Its brass head should have been raised, not hanging low, and its jewelled wings were meant to whir. Instead, it stood atop its marble pillar (not real marble, of course, any more than the paste jewels were real, but wood painted well enough to fool the eye by gaslight) in the most secluded glade of the Vauxhall Flying Gardens. None of the thousands of visitors who flocked to the pleasure gardens every night had yet stumbled across it. Give it an hour, Shem thought dourly, once the ladies of the ton went home and the strumpets came out to play, and this would be a far more popular spot.

Better do something before then. This was the third time this month Shem had needed to repair this nightingale. Time for it to be taken apart for a proper look at its clockwork innards.

What should we do, Mr. Holloway? the boy asked.

Put a cage over the top until morning, Shem said. Stop the guests from interfering with it. Young gentlemen don’t have much respect for property.

"The gentlemen, Mr. Holloway? the boy protested, his eyes going wide. But they’re brought up proper."

"Properly, Shem corrected sharply. No apprentice under his charge was going to wander around the Gardens with a gutter accent. Higher they’re born, further they fall with a drink in them. You steer clear of gentlemen, boy."

Yes, Mr. Holloway, the boy said, but he still looked puzzled.

Shem sighed. He liked to take new apprentices with him on the late shift until he was convinced they’d learned some common sense (at which point it was safe to assume they were staying, and he would deign to learn their names). This one had him worried. He was hardworking, no doubt, and the masters at the training orphanage had been right when they said he was bright. Unfortunately, he was too eager to please, and pretty besides, all coltish limbs, pink lips, and slim hips.

It wasn’t just the mechanical devices the young gentlemen liked to interfere with. Some of them had a taste for mechanics. Shem kept a fatherly eye on his apprentices, for all they were only ten years younger than him. It was going to be a job to keep this one safe from wandering hands.

Shem unlocked the gate that connected the concealed path to the grove. It took an army of mechanics, gardeners, and servants to keep the Gardens running efficiently, and keeping everyone hidden maintained the illusion of magic.

Always lock these gates behind you, Shem instructed the boy, who nodded earnestly. It was bad enough the whores of London plied their trade in the quiet groves and dark walks. Give them access to the secret paths, and the place would be a brothel within a week and shut down within two, putting all the