Clockwork Angels: The Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

books some more.
    Sitting alone, Owen’s pulse raced as he thought of his planned foolishness for midnight. Only two more hours before he would slip out and meet sweet Lavinia for a stolen kiss. Although he knew it would be over in a moment, the memory would last for a long time.
    After he turned seventeen and the rest of the Watchmaker’s safety net wrapped around him, he would have no further opportunity to be so impetuous. He intended to make the best of it.

CHAPTER 3
     
    On my way at last
     
    H is father was quietly snoring by 10:06 p.m., but Owen wasn’t sleepy at all. Even the synchronous ticking of the clocks in the house failed to lull him. Anticipation was a tightly wound spring inside.
    The more he thought about it, the more surprised Owen was by his impulse. What had driven him to suggest it? In Barrel Arbor, decent people didn’t sneak out at midnight. He and Lavinia were a comfortable pair who spent most days together doing their assigned tasks, compatible, clearly intended for each other in the scheme of things. None of the villagers gave a second thought to seeing him in the young woman’s company, but the two were not yet betrothed, and Owen could imagine quite a scandal if anyone discovered that they were meeting in secret long after dark.
    Which made the idea all the more exciting . . .
    He hoped Lavinia was as captivated by the thought as he was. This daring little escapade would be something they’d both remember and pointedly not tell their children. As they grew older and settled in their lives, who would believe that reliable, predictable Owen and Lavinia Hardy had been reckless or impetuous in their youth? He laughed at the very idea that his own father might have done the same when he was young. But maybe his adventurous mother . . .

    He daydreamed that Hanneke had gone off to see the world, that she had visited the Seven Cities of Gold, that she had ridden steamliners and found distant shores. Someday, maybe he and Lavinia would also run off, explore the enticing continent of Atlantis. The thought of his mother still miraculously alive, a queen of some lost country, brought a smile to his face; she would welcome her son and his beautiful wife as a prince and princess. They would feast on hundreds of types of fruit, instead of just apples!
    He kept trying to imagine Lavinia traveling with him, but his thoughts wandered off. . . .

    He woke with a start and saw by the ticking bedside clock that it was 11:28. Only half an hour before midnight—still plenty of time, but he felt rushed. He pulled on his trousers and gray homespun shirt, took a small sack with two apples, thinking that he and Lavinia might sit together for a while under the starlight. It would be nice if he recited poetry to her, but Owen didn’t know any poems.
    The door creaked as he pushed it open. He slipped outside, closing it quietly behind him so his father would never know anything was amiss. He made his way up the streets, past the dark cottages and their slumbering inhabitants, beyond the cold and silent racks of the Huang beehives that produced more honey than the village could possibly use. The town’s angel statue appeared pale and ethereal under the stars. The night was bright as he climbed the path that led through the close rows of apple trees and reached the top of the orchard hill.
    Lavinia wasn’t there, although he had hoped she might come early. He checked his pocketwatch—ten minutes until midnight. The Watchmaker claimed that punctuality was the surest demonstration of love.
    While waiting, Owen looked up at the stars, tracing the constellations that he knew from books, but rarely saw for himself. Barrel Arbor villagers got up with the first light of dawn and spent little time outside late at night pondering star patterns. The study of such things, as well as the phases of the moon, movements of planets, combinations of elements, and magic, was the province of expert alchemist-priests, not simple