Chapter Fourteen: The Missing Inventor
Price brought Ada to the mansion in his carriage.
Isaiah rode beside the driver, watching the road for Curtis.
Gideon stayed at the kiln with Abel until a wagon could carry him home.
Silas waited on the front steps.
When he saw Ada, he stepped backward.
“You have made a terrible mistake,” he said.
Ada climbed down without assistance.
“The mistake was believing you would keep your word.”
Silas looked toward Price.
“This woman is confused.”
Ada faced him.
“Then you will have no trouble answering my questions.”
Price stood beside her.
“Mrs. Fenwick will speak with the magistrate.”
Silas’s expression hardened.
“You cannot take her from my property.”
“She is not your property,” Price said.
The words hung in the air.
Isaiah felt their narrowness as keenly as their truth.
Price could defend Ada’s liberty while standing on land where Isaiah and his family remained enslaved.
Ada seemed to understand the contradiction.
She looked toward Isaiah before answering Silas.
“I am leaving, and I am taking the work my husband made.”
Silas reached for the wooden case.
Isaiah stepped between them.
Silas stopped.
“Move.”
Isaiah held his position.
“The case belongs to Mrs. Fenwick.”
Silas raised his hand.
Price caught his wrist.
“That will be enough.”
Lenora appeared in the doorway.
Her face was pale, but her voice was steady.
“Silas, let them go.”
He stared at her.
“You have destroyed everything.”
“No,” she said.
“I have stopped helping you destroy it.”
Ada looked at Lenora with open anger.
“You could have stopped weeks ago.”
Lenora lowered her eyes.
“I know.”
Ada turned away.
Isaiah watched the exchange without sympathy for either Whitcomb.
The household had changed, but its power had not vanished.
He knew that Silas could still order him punished as soon as Price left.
He also knew that Esther and Micah remained inside the estate.
He needed more than one afternoon of courage.
Price approached him near the carriage.
“I can ask the magistrate to hear your account.”
Isaiah looked at the front steps.
“Will he protect my sister?”
Price hesitated.
“I cannot promise that.”
“Then I cannot give him everything yet.”
Ada stepped closer.
“What do you need?”
“A way to keep Curtis from using my family as a weapon.”
Ada looked at Price.
“Thomas told me that Isaiah Bell helped him test the first wheel.”
Price nodded slowly.
“I remember the name.”
Ada continued.
“Thomas wrote that the machine could not be completed without the people who understood the wood.”
Isaiah shook his head.
“I helped for one afternoon.”
“You understood what he was trying to do,” Ada said.
She opened the wooden case.
Inside lay a folded page bearing several names.
Isaiah saw his own name beside Gideon’s.
Thomas had written them as contributors to the design.
Isaiah stared at the page.
The recognition did not make him free.
But it gave him a new fact that Silas could not easily erase.
