Magnificent Devices 07 - A Lady of Integrity (16 page)

“You have been getting into a scrape, haven’t you?” Gloria said. “Springing people from gaol? Here? Are you mad?”

“Of course she is not,” Claire said hastily. “Mad, that is. She is simply speaking of—of one of her brother’s friends, who was not permitted to join them at the exhibition today. She was simply exaggerating for effect. A deplorable trait, is it not?”

Gloria gave her such a pitying look that Claire felt the blood of sheer chagrin flood her cheeks. “Claire, do not mistake me for one of those silly schoolgirls you and I once knew. I remember Jake vividly. I am particularly interested in his welfare, the young scamp. He is Captain Chalmers’s navigator, is he not?”

“Yes,” Alice said.

“What has happened to him?”

Claire exchanged agonized glances with Alice, with Andrew, with Ian. Wouldn’t someone speak? What could they say?

“I see,” Gloria said, her interested expression fading, like a flower that folds up when the sun goes down. “Of course your affairs—and his—are none of my business. But since we have met again, I thought that— Never mind. I was wrong, that’s all.” She set her cup and saucer on the low table and rose, shaking her pretty vandyked skirts so that they fell more perfectly.

Claire could not bear to see the life fade out of her eyes, leaving her resembling the little doll her father imagined her to be. “Gloria, you don’t mean to go?”

“I’m afraid I must. I do not wish to intrude.”

Claire might have given in and regretted the circumstances forever if she had not heard the tremor in Gloria’s voice. A tremor that made her suspect that Gloria had held the same hope of friendship that Claire herself possessed. A friendship that might nurture a lonely young woman—that might change the course of the future.

Claire saw that Alice had also risen, and in one of those moments of perfect agreement, realized that her friend’s thoughts aligned with her own. A flicker of her lashes was all it took to signal her thoughts. Alice touched Gloria’s wrist to stop her.

“Please don’t. We want to hear what happened at the Ministry of Justice. Let me tell you why.” In brief but pithy sentences, Alice outlined the circumstances that had brought herself and Jake to Venice. Claire took up the tale, leaving out Ian’s and Tigg’s purpose for being there, but making it clear what the intentions of the party in general were. And, since it appeared Claude had been taken into Lizzie’s confidence, she included him as she related the facts.

As she spoke, Gloria sank back into the chair as though her knees could not bear her up. “Do you mean to tell me,” she said when Claire finished, “that you honestly believe you can free him? After what we saw today?”

“What did you see?” Tigg asked. “We’ve told you what we saw and heard—now you must return the favor.”

Claire and Maggie tried, but in the end it was Gloria and Captain Hollys who filled in the most horrifying details, and brought them up to the present moment. Lizzie covered her mouth with her hands, her face turning pale, and could not speak.

Even Tigg’s good humor deserted him, and Claude looked utterly ill. “It’s bad luck all round, old chap,” he said to Tigg, clearly doing his best to bear up. “But if anyone is to succeed, it will be you lot. If you have one tenth the ability of my sister, you won’t be able to help it.”

Lizzie gripped his hand in silent thanks, and Tigg nodded. “Jake’s me mate, and has been since I was a little tyke, turned out on the streets by the madam when my mother died. He saved my hide enough times that I’m not going to give up easily. He never gave up on me, even when circumstances looked bleak.”

“Or me,” said Maggie.

“Or me,” echoed Lizzie.

“Well, then,” Gloria said, picking up her cup and saucer once more, “how can I help?”

“You already have,” Ian said with some warmth. “If you had not invited us along on that dreadful excursion this morning, we should still have been sitting here trying to plan a strategy for seeing the prison ourselves. We are extremely grateful to you.”

Gloria blushed, and Alice looked away. “That was sheer cowardice. It
was
utterly dreadful—but imagine how much more it might have been with only Father for company.”

“Are you … not close to your father, then?” Alice asked diffidently, as though she expected Gloria to snap at her and tell her it was none of her business.

But Gloria only shook her head. “I was not born a boy, and twenty-three years later he still cannot forgive me. He has no choice but to treat me as his heir, but he hates every moment of it. I never used to care about his business affairs, but after I met you all in the Canadas…” A smile flickered on her lips. “Your young navigator changed my way of looking at the world—and at myself. If he is imprisoned, I must help to free him, even if it’s only to thank him face to face.”

“Do you know about the convict plan?” Lizzie asked. When Claire hushed her, the girl protested, “Well, she knows everything else—she ought to know the whole.”

“Convict plan?” Gloria repeated. “What do you mean?”

“Your dad plans to help the Minister of Justice with his shortage of convicts by capturing the ships transporting them to the Antipodes, and bringing them here,” Lizzie said.

“Lizzie, really,” Claire sighed. “Poor Gloria has quite enough to deal with already, don’t you think?”

“It’s all right,” Gloria said, her prettily coifed head drooping. “I didn’t know the details, but I knew he was up to something. All the undersea dirigibles that have been plying the Mediterranean have for some reason been ordered
en masse
into the Adriatic. It’s as if they’re waiting for orders. Pigeons are flying back and forth with messages—most of which I’ve managed to read while he was busy elsewhere.”

“How many vessels?” Ian asked.

“Half a dozen, I would say. A few are the large transatlantic ones, and the rest are smaller ones that don’t have that kind of staying power for long voyages.”

“Manned and crewed?”

“Oh, yes. Each has a crew of nearly fifty, and the big ones well over two hundred.”

“Like a private navy,” Maggie murmured. “Just like before.”

“He has no shortage of men wanting to serve,” Gloria told them. “He must pay very well, though I don’t know how. I’ve seen the accounts.”

“But this is not getting Jake out of gaol,” Alice said, clearly impatient with a discussion of Gerald Meriwether-Astor’s resources. “Now that we know exactly what we are up against, what are we going to
do?
”

17

“Captain Chalmers is quite right,” Ian Hollys said. “We must act. I have been considering a number of strategies, but I must caution you once again that each of them holds its dangers.”

“Not as many dangers as Jake is facing,” Lizzie pointed out.

“On the contrary,” Ian told her. “The ultimate price any of us will pay if we do not succeed is to join him. Mr. Malvern, Lady Claire tasked you with the invention of a device that might aid us. Have you made any progress?”

“I had, in fact.” Andrew opened a drawer in the sideboard where one might expect to find linens, and withdrew instead a large sheet of engineering paper. “Maggie’s adventures in the English Channel gave me the idea. I had thought that, instead of constructing a rudimentary
chaloupe
manned by one or two people, one might devise a helmet of a similar shape to fit over the head, so that one might breathe. With a few modifications to the rocket rucksacks in
Athena
’s emergency equipment, one could swim to Jake’s assistance.”

Claire saw the flaw in this otherwise brilliant plan at once. “But—”

Andrew nodded sadly. “But the kraken put paid to that idea. Even if we were able somehow to swim undetected to Jake’s location on the gearworks, we could not assist him to freedom. The kraken seem to be attracted to movement near the surface. I have no doubt that the Minister of Justice’s ‘training’ includes this unnatural behavior, for surely kraken prefer to hunt in the depths, where they have cover.”

“Wretched, cruel man,” Lizzie muttered. “Those poor creatures.”

“Quite so,” Ian said. “Mr. Malvern, have you an alternate plan?”

“Not that I have conceived in the hour since our return from the tour, no.”

“Then I am convinced that military strategies must prevail, if those of science have failed us,” Ian said.

“Now, wait just a moment—” Andrew began.

“They have not
failed
,” Claire said in Andrew’s defense, with no little indignation.

“What military strategies, Captain?” Tigg inquired, his deepening voice having the effect of a bell in an enclosed tower. “How do you suggest that we proceed?”

“Simply this—that we go to the Master of Prisons and propose an exchange. How much was the transfer tax, Captain Chalmers?”

“Half the value of the cargo. So, about three hundred pounds.”

“Good. I am sure I am worth three hundred pounds, so it ought to be convincing.”

“I beg your pardon?” Claire exclaimed. “You cannot mean to exchange
yourself?
What good would that possibly do?”

“Captain, I don’t understand,” Tigg said. “We’d just be trying to figure out how to spring you, not Jake.”

“Let me explain,” the captain said, the corners of his lips curled in amusement at their consternation. “I propose we strike a deal: myself and the certainty of ransom money from the family in exchange for Jake’s freedom. This way the corrupt government saves face—they let Jake go quietly, and I am a guest of the state until the money is just as quietly delivered. Her Majesty is not involved, since neither politics nor commercial interests come into it. Here in the Levant, ransom is a business not only lucrative, but socially acceptable. I am a gentleman, whom they would not dare to imprison below the water. There must be some accommodation for those in the upper echelons of society who have offended the government.”

They had best revisit the
chaloupe
idea, for this was ridiculous.

“Then,” Ian went on, “at the moment of the exchange, Tigg exercises the—er—” He glanced at Gloria, who was struggling with her horror, too, at this mad idea. “—the orders he has from his commander. We take Jake and make a quick escape. Mission accomplished.”

“I would lay better odds on the kraken,” Andrew said bluntly.

“Your odds would play out as well as others’ have before you, as we saw this morning,” Ian said just as bluntly. “I do not see that we have an option.”

“And if anything goes wrong, we lose you and Jake both, and likely Tigg as well,” Alice pointed out. “No, we must think of something else.”

“There is nothing else, because if there were, the minds in this room would have put it forward,” Ian told her. “No, we must play on their greed and exercise subterfuge.”

“And if you are wrong, and they treat a gentleman no better than the
canaille—
the riff-raff that loiter on the banks of the canals?” Gloria asked. “What then?”

“Then I shall endure as best I can until the ransom is paid by the Dunsmuirs,” Ian said.

He could not be serious. Claire would sooner see him married to—to Catherine Montrose than allow such a crack-brained scheme. “Ian, you seem to be placing a great deal of faith in the rules of gentlemanly behavior,” she said in as calm a tone as she could muster. “But I have not seen much evidence that the rules in the society we have been exposed to are the same as they might be at home. Not,” she said modestly, “that I know so much of what goes on among gentlemen. But I do not believe that—”

“Claire, forgive me for saying so, but you are quite right. You do not know what goes on among gentlemen. Trust me when I say that you must leave Jake’s rescue to me. I have seen much of this world and I have a fairly accurate estimation of what it takes to get the job done successfully.”

If he had struck her, she would have been no less surprised—and hurt. She stared at him, speechless with the affront not only to her intelligence and experience, but to their friendship as well.

She did not miss the way Lizzie’s and Maggie’s eyes widened. They would expect her to deal him a set-down he would not soon forget … but she could not. Any disagreements among them could only harm, not help, Jake’s chances. So she bit back the icy words on her tongue.

“You will need reinforcements,” Alice said. “My Remington is in my room, and I brought extra bullets for just this kind of situation.”

“I will indeed need reinforcements, but with your permission, Captain, not from you.”

“I beg your pardon?” Alice’s voice rose in just the way Claire’s might have a moment ago had she allowed herself to speak.

“You have forgotten that there is a price on your head,” Ian reminded her. “You have taken enough risks. One glimpse of you by anyone connected with Jake’s incarceration and your days above the water are ended, too. No, I will take only two with me—Lieutenant Terwilliger and Mr. Malvern.”

“Impossible,” Claire burst out. “You cannot—”

“Claire,” Andrew said gently, “he is right. It is far too dangerous. This is no task for ladies.”

“It is no task for any person with an ounce of sense or integrity!” she cried. They planned a bait and switch—and the murder of any witnesses. Surely it need not come to that, if the plan were managed properly. “You will need scouts—lookouts—we must all assist in order to
reduce
the danger.”

“On the contrary, Lady, if you’ll forgive me,” Tigg said. “With fewer men we attract less notice.”

“To say nothing of the need to protect you,” Ian added.

“I can protect myself!” Had he learned nothing during their adventures in the Canadas? Had he not seen the proof of his own eyes that some women, at least, had every advantage in intellect and resources that men possessed? How dared he cut herself, Alice, and the girls out of an opportunity to assist one of their own simply on the basis of their sex?

“I am sure you can, in any circumstances but these,” Ian replied, which did not exactly pour cool water on the fire of her temper. “However, the four of you are needed on another front. Once we have Jake secured, we must depart these skies with all possible speed. Your task will be to have
Athena
ready to lift on a moment’s notice.”