Betsy and the Emperor (9781439115879) by Staton Rabin

convinced her. I barely hid my sigh of relief.
    â€œI’ll go down and model them for Mother,” she said, reaching to take the dresses from me.
    Horrors! Think fast, Betsy!
    â€œUh, no, you can’t do that!” I said, pulling the dresses out of her reach.
    â€œWhy not?” Jane replied. “How can she possibly fit them properly without me in them?”
    â€œIt’s—it’s—” Come on, old girl, you can do it! “It’sgoing to be a surprise.” Ah!—Betsy’s wits come to the rescue again! “For your birthday. Don’t spoil it for Mother. She’ll murder me if she finds out I told you.”
    â€œOh,” Jane said, utterly convinced. “Don’t worry, little sister. I’ll keep your secret.”
    Not bloody likely.
    Jane turned to go out the door. I began to relax. Her birthday was so far off, surely I’d think of a way out of this mess by then. God willing. But a second later, Jane leaned in the doorway and faced me again.
    â€œBetsy, are you quite all right? You seem…agitated. Like you did that time before the blacksmith pulled your tooth.”
    â€œI’m fine, Jane,” I said. “I’ve only been home a few days. I guess I need some time to get…used to it.”
    Jane shrugged and went out the door.
    Nearly an hour later, when I was sure she’d left the house on an errand—shopping in town, I believe—I stuffed her silk dresses under the one I was wearing and sneaked out of the Briars.
    Â 
    I found a preoccupied old Huff poring over a calcified book in his laboratory. A large diagram—construction plans for some sort of scientific contraption—was spread out over the worktable, the lamplight castinglong shadows over it like huge, dark fingers. The drawing indicated distances and measurements, the dimensions for a basketlike contraption, and an immense bulbous object suspended by strings or wires above it. I suspected that the diagram related in some way to Huff’s plans for the emperor.
    â€œMaking progress?” I asked him.
    â€œYaaa!” Startled, the old scholar sprang out of his chair like a man half his age. “For mercy’s sake, Betsy! You’ll stop an old man’s heart!”
    â€œSorry,” I said.
    Huff sat back down and pointed to the diagram. “This will carry the emperor to freedom.”
    Then he referred back to the tome he was reading. I looked over his shoulder. It was the same book the emperor had knocked from the shelf the previous day—the Montgolfier brothers’ book of aeronautical experiments. Huff was reading the chapters about construction of a hot-air balloon.
    â€œYou mean, the emperor’s going to fly off St. Helena?” I asked.
    â€œPrecisely,” Huff said. He looked me up and down. “You’ve put on weight, my dear. Try to dipense with it. We need you as light as possible for our test flights.”
    Test flights? You wouldn’t get me up in one of those things! As for my supposed tendency toward corpulence, I removed the wad of silk dresses from under my gown and handed them to him.
    â€œAh!” he said. “Thank you, my dear. I knew I could count on you.”
    The old man started ripping Jane’s dresses into long strips.
    â€œHuff! Those are Jane’s! She’ll eat me alive!”
    â€œNever mind, my dear,” Huff said, continuing his work.
    It was not difficult for me to figure out how those dresses would be used. The balloon would be constructed out of them! How would Jane feel to know her dresses were instrumental in the escape of Britain’s most famous prisoner? I must say I smiled at the thought.
    â€œHere is a needle and thread,” Huff said, handing me a red velvet box. “I need your young eyes and hands.”
    â€œWhat do you want me to do?”
    â€œSew the pieces back together side by side. Like this,” he said, showing me the balloon