27
Lottie was good at inventing things. And she had an idea. The sisters met in the playroom among their long-abandoned dolls that evening as usual to discuss their stories, but this meeting lasted until their candle guttered out.
“Father doesn’t even remember that he’s gone anymore,” Lottie explained, “I hear him talking to Bran late at night sometimes. He still calls him his ‘brilliant boy.’”
Actia was cautious. “People will know he’s an imposter, won’t they? A mechanical disguise the size of a grown man would surely draw attention to itself in the world.”
Lottie grinned her cat-faced smirk. “Not in London, it won’t. No one even notices each other there, whether that other is a man, woman, or puppet of neither.”
Elly remained silent for most of the meeting, until the very end when she volunteered to operate the disguise. Her sisters were surprised, but consented. They would begin the next morning.
The stuffing came from an old mattress, straw only slightly damp, tossed with lavender to smell sweet.