Magnificent Devices 07 - A Lady of Integrity (2 page)

She passed an affectionate hand over Maggie’s hair—put up now that she was a young lady, and her hems lowered in equal measure. “I will not say whether you must go or not,” she told her. “But I would be saddened indeed if all your work were left unfinished and you did not get the credit for it.”

“You can’t stay here,” Lizzie said firmly. “What would I do with myself all alone at school?”

“Become better friends with the other girls?” Maggie suggested.

“I’m as friendly with them as I intend to be.”

“Wait about for Tigg to get leave?”

“Oh, yes,” Lizzie nodded. “I shall run to meet the post every single day and weep all night when there’s no letter.” Her mouth pursed up in disdain at such missish behavior. “Tigg would wash his hands of me if I did such things. No, Mags. You’re coming back with me and that’s that. Nothing is going to hurt either of us, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I never said so.” Maggie traced the rose design in the carpet by her knee with one finger.

“But I know you. You like things peaceful-like. The thing is, trouble found you as easily in Cornwall as it did me in the Cotswolds and the Lady in the Canadas. We can’t hide from adventures—they find us whether we want them to or not.”

“They don’t seem to find me,” Lewis pointed out, clearly somewhat disappointed.

“Give them time,” Andrew advised him.

Since in her mind the matter was closed, Lizzie returned to the crossword. “What’s a nine-letter word for ‘young lady of marriageable age’?”

“Elizabeth,”
teased Snouts.

Lizzie swiped the box of toothpicks and threw it at him. Since she very rarely missed, Snouts exclaimed in chagrin and returned it to the mantel where it belonged, rubbing his shoulder.

“Lizzie, really, where are your manners?” Claire wondered aloud.

“
Debutante
, you gumpy,” Maggie told her cousin. “Even Willie might have got that one.”

Happily, Lizzie filled in the last space and closed the paper. “Speaking of Willie, has the invitation come for his birthday party? It’s bound to be a—”

Someone pounded on the street door, sounding as though they meant the lion’s-head knocker to break right through the panel.

“I’ll get it.” Snouts went out of the family parlour and into the hall, moving on the balls of his feet in a way that told the observant eye he believed trouble lurked even behind the laurel hedges and glossy iron railings of Belgravia.

Claire put her notebook aside and stood, Andrew beside her.

“Snouts,” they heard a familiar voice say, “is Claire here?”

“Captain! She is, but—”

“Thank heaven. And Mr. Malvern?”

“Aye, but—”

Claire started forward, but before she could even reach the door, a blond, disheveled wreck of a young woman fell through it, the tracks of tears cutting lines through the dirt on her face.

“Claire—Andrew—thank God,” Alice Chalmers said breathlessly, pulling the flight goggles off her unruly hair. “You’ve got to come with me to Venice and get Jake out of that underwater prison before he dies in there.”

“When was the last time you had something to eat?” Claire handed Alice a steaming cup of tea and a healthy piece of fruitcake.

Alice snuggled more deeply into the comfortable sofa and reflected that it was lucky the two of them were much of a size. Claire’s blouse and knitted cardigan were comfortable enough, particularly now that she’d had a bath, but the black raiding skirt was a bit short. Not that she was in the habit of wearing skirts.

“And do you have anything else to wear?”

“I don’t remember … and no.”

“We’ll take care of you, our Alice,” Maggie said, curling up against her side as though to give her both comfort and warmth. Alice was grateful for the thought, though comfort of the mental kind was a stretch at the moment. “One of the girls tried to launder your pants and they fell apart in her hands. The Lady won’t mind you borrowing a few things until we can get you your own.”

Those pants were about the last things she
could
call her own, save her goggles. How could she have gone from self-supporting captain of her own ship and crew to such poverty and dependence in such a short time?

“I didn’t have myself smuggled here in a rifle case to get a repeat of our shopping trip in Edmonton,” Alice said, too exhausted by despair for politeness.

“In a what?” Claire nearly dropped the teapot. If it had not been for Andrew’s quick steadying movement, she might have. “Alice, you must tell us what is going on now that you are clean and able to think clearly.”

Alice was not so incapacitated that she didn’t notice the very modest ring containing three pearls set in gold upon the fourth finger of Claire’s left hand as she returned the teapot to the low table. Since to her knowledge, the only jewelry her friend owned was her grandmother’s emerald ring and the St. Ives pearl necklace, this could only have come from Mr. Malvern. How long had they been engaged? And when was Claire planning to tell her?

Oh, she’d never had any hope of Mr. Malvern’s regard, except for a few brief hours during their adventures in the Canadas five years ago. Claire’s letters since then had not revealed much—but so much air had passed under her own hull in the intervening years that she was practically a different woman.

Or maybe hardship and experience had convinced her there were more important things for a woman to think about than a gentleman’s affection.

The cake fortified her enough to speak coherently, and promising smells coming from downstairs in the kitchen gave her hope that a proper meal would make an appearance soon.

“It was Count von Zeppelin’s idea.” She began at the end instead of the beginning, because the beginning was too painful to talk about just yet. “When it began to look like my troubles had followed me to Munich, it was either get rid of me or arm himself and the baroness as they went out in their landau. So he acted. He got me out to the airfield disguised as a member of his party, and when he asked for a tour of one of his new M7 cargo ships, two of his men popped me into an empty crate filled with straw. They made sure there was just enough space between the slats that I could lift the latches with my knife when we got to England. At Hampstead Heath, I simply climbed out and disembarked with the other members of the crew.” She leaned over and took another piece of cake, and Claire pushed the plate closer. “From there it was a matter of hitching a ride into town and finding your address.”

“You could have sent a note from the mooring station,” Andrew said. “We would have come to fetch you immediately.”

“But then someone might have seen you,” Alice said. “I came on the sly in hopes that no one would twig to me being on this side of the Channel. Not before we’re rigged and ready.”

“Ready for what?” Lizzie asked, her eyes wide, maybe at the thought of being shut up in a rifle case for all that time. Alice couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t an experience she wanted to repeat. “Who is chasing you?”

“That’s just the thing. In Venice I had my suspicions, but no proof. And by the time I realized the danger, it was already too late. They’d impounded the
Stalwart Lass
and taken Jake as insurance for my cooperation. But as I found out, they had no intention of setting him free.”

“Alice, you’re getting ahead of yourself.” Claire’s tone was calm, but the pads of her fingers on her teacup were turning white around the edges from tension. “Of whom are you speaking?”

“The Famiglia Rosa,” Alice whispered, her voice dropping to nothing. This was Wilton Crescent. Claire’s home. She’d only been here twice in five years, but those visits had been enough to tell her that this house was one of the safest places in all of London.

If London could be said to be safe—and Alice wasn’t one hundred percent sure of that.

Blank, expectant faces told her she’d better get on with it. “The Famiglia Rosa—that means Red Family in the Venetian tongue—owns the shipping trade from the Levant to the north coast of Africa, and all the Adriatic. Everyone thinks it’s the Doge—that’s the Duke who sits on the throne—but he’s just one of three brothers who pretty much run the tables in that part of the world. One brother rules Rome, one controls Naples, and the third is the Doge.”

“And how did you and Jake run afoul of them?” Andrew asked.

Alice sighed. She’d give a lot to know that herself. How kind Andrew’s eyes were, yet how intelligent and alert. Oh, if only …

Never mind.

“It was just an ordinary job, or so I thought. A month or so ago I got orders from the Dunsmuirs to take a cargo of furs from Charlottetown to Byzantium, and do a deal with a contingent from the Tsar of Russia.”

“In Byzantium?” Claire sounded puzzled. “That’s a long way from the Tsar. Why not go directly to St. Petersburg?”

“It might be autumn here, but it’s already too cold there. Airships can’t fly directly to the Russias after October, just like at the Firstwater Mine, remember? The gas contracts in the fuselages if the weight of the ice doesn’t collapse them first. So the solution is to go to Byzantium, where it’s still temperate, and put things on a train. Of course, Byzantium is just close enough to the Famiglia Rosa territory to give them itchy fingers. If they can coerce an airship to go through Venice instead, they can extort what they call a ‘transfer tax’ … which can be as much as half the value of your cargo. And where is a rope monkey like me going to get cash like that?”

“From the outfit you contracted with?” Snouts said. A reasonable suggestion. Too bad it hadn’t worked out so reasonably. “How much were you carrying?”

“About six hundred pounds’ worth—so the tax would have been three hundred.”

Good heavens. Claire’s spine wilted into the back of her chair. She could almost buy
Athena
over again for that price. If she had in fact bought
Athena
. Which she had not.

“But if you were going to Byzantium, how did you come to be in the Duchy of Venice?” Now Claire put her teacup down altogether, and it rattled in the saucer before she let go of it.

“Stupid me—I put down for water and repairs. It’s halfway, you know, and getting over the Alps is a tricky business at this time of year. The poor old girl still has your power cell in her, which runs like a clock, but the rest of her is beginning to show her age. I no sooner reported to the port authority when this gang showed up to confiscate my cargo. Illegal import without authorizing papers, they said. Oh, they’d give it all back once I had the paperwork, but what they didn’t tell me is that you have to get authorization before you leave your home port, as part of filing your flight plan.”

“But that’s ridiculous!” Claire exclaimed. “No one does that. Shipping would slow to a crawl.”

“It’s just an excuse,” Andrew said, “to seize and extort whatever tariffs they wish.”

“Seize is right.” Alice nodded. “Before I knew what was what, they had the
Lass
locked down and Jake in quarantine so I’d do what they said. But when I didn’t—because I couldn’t—I went into hiding. Next thing I find out is that they’ve run poor Jake through a sham trial and clapped him in gaol. And he wasn’t alone. There were ships—and presumably prisoners—there from England and Prussia and France. And from the Americas, too.” She lifted her gaze to Claire’s. “Meriwether-Astor ships.”

“That’s impossible,” Lizzie piped up, evidently recovered from the thought of the rifle case. “One, he’s dead, and two, his ships aren’t allowed to leave the Fifteen Colonies.”

Andrew was about to reply, but a boy Alice had never seen before appeared in the doorway to the dining room. “Beggin’ your pardon, Lady, but Granny Protheroe says to tell you dinner’s on the table.”

“Thank you, Charlie. We will be in directly.”

Claire rose and shook out her skirts. “We’ll stand on no ceremony. I want to get food into you, Alice, before we ask any more questions. I do not like your color at all.”

Alice had eaten unidentifiable dishes in Na’nuk villages and exotic ones in the Dunsmuirs’ castle in Scotland, but she’d never tasted anything better than the golden pheasant pie at Wilton Crescent that night. Rich with gravy and vegetables, and accompanied by potatoes and roasted onions, it could have rivaled anything set before the Queen.

Claire allowed her enough time to wolf down her first helping before she said, “Alice, is there any evidence to indicate Gerald Meriwether-Astor is alive?”

Her mouth full, Alice shook her head. When she swallowed, she said, “He don’t need to be alive for his ships to fly into the Levant. The company would go to his girl, wouldn’t it? What was her name?”

“Gloria,” Maggie said, exchanging a glance with her sister that Alice couldn’t read. All she could see was the mischievous smile that played around her lips, as though she’d put one over on the absent Gloria and still enjoyed the joke.

“Surely not,” Andrew said. “She didn’t seem the sort to break the law—although she certainly did you and Claire a service in the Canadas.”

“Lot of rope pulled up since then.” Alice addressed herself to her second wonderfully runny slice of pie. “Anyhow, that edict only applies to the Prussian Empire and England. If Meriwether-Astor Shipping wanted to run cotton over to Byzantium or Venice, I suppose they could. It’s not like the Famiglia Rosa are going to pay attention to anybody’s edicts—and the Turks certainly won’t.”

“Enough politics,” Snouts said around his potatoes. “Can we get to the part where we spring my brother from gaol?”

“One must know the lie of the land before one goes barging in to break someone out of gaol, Snouts,” Claire told him, her tone soft with understanding. “Even we reconnoitered Bedlam before we freed Doctor Craig.”

“Claire, you are not seriously thinking of going to Venice?”

Both Alice and Claire stared at Andrew in shock before Claire found her voice. “Andrew! If not we, then who?”

“He is there under contract for the Dunsmuirs,” Andrew pointed out. “Between her ladyship and Her Majesty, it should be a simple enough matter to send an envoy and free an innocent English subject from what is clearly a gang of criminals. At gunpoint, if necessary. There is no need for
you
to go.”