Brilliant Devices (30 page)

For a moment Gloria gazed at her, as though she
were trying to remember where she’d seen her before. “You aren’t really governess to those Cockney children, are you?”

Dear heaven, the girl was unbalanced. “I really don’t have time for—”

“How did you meet them?”

Impatiently, she said, “They accosted me the night of the Arabian Bubble riots. I accosted them right back, and we came to an agreement—I would teach them their numbers and letters, and they
would teach me how to survive in—in less comfortable circumstances than I had been used to. I am now their guardian—we are family. But what has that to do with Mr. Chalmers?”

“I never thought I’d learn anything from an alley mouse,
especially one so rude, but …” Gloria shook her head. “Never mind. For once in my life I’m going to do what’s right instead of what’s expected of me.”

Perhaps Gloria meant to betray them all. Perhaps she was deluded. But the truth was bleak:
Claire had no plan other than to trust to chance that four girls could save a man’s life. And for that, chance was not good enough.

Gloria was a gamble of a different sort.

So Claire dealt her the cards.

Andrew Malvern had been dancing with Davina when the pressure wave engulfed the
Margrethe
, sending them both sideways and toppling over a potted plant. He had managed to roll so that her ladyship’s slender form landed on him rather than the other way round, to be followed immediately afterward by a shower bath from the punch bowl, which circled away under a table after it had deposited its contents upon them both.

His first thought,
while picking orange slices off her ladyship, was for Claire, his second for Alice. Since then, both those thoughts had remained uppermost and urgent in his mind as he tried to find them in the chaos.

Then, out of a porthole, he had a glimpse of
Claire—no longer in evening dress, and with the lightning rifle out and ready, tearing across the field with the Mopsies—which galvanized him into action. He had left the young officer he was tending to the medic who had finally arrived, and sprinted after Claire, only to lose her in the shouting, panicked crowd at the gates of the mine.

Then, to his horror, he
heard a man’s name taken up with chants of “Hang him!” and realized who the man in the middle of the crowd must be. Tall, blond, one eye, and with the same wide mouth and firm chin—it could only be Alice’s father.

“Get Isobel!” Chalmers shouted
into the screaming crowd—and a second later, Andrew tripped over a pair of booted feet and fell to his hands and knees with bone-jarring force.

“All right, sir?” Someone hauled him up by one arm. Someone with a familiar voice.

“Jake?” He got to his feet to see that the crowd had moved on, dragging Chalmers deeper into the circle of buildings. “Jake, what is going on? Is that Alice’s father?”

“It is. They’re going t’blame the explosion on ’im and ’ang ’im for it.
I just saw T’Lady run off—I ’ope she’s gone t’fetch ’elp.”

“Is she all right? I must find her.”

“Ent nowt you c’n do fer her, but you c’n give me a hand.”

“Jake, you don’t understand—she will be hurt.”

“The Lady?” The boy snorted with derision. “Not likely. She’s armed and in a fine uproar of a temper. Don’t you worry about ’er—worry about yer own self. She gave me a job and I can’t do it and do wot Alice’s dad said, too. You gots to ’elp me.”

Was he ever to be useful to Claire on this benighted journey? How was she to see him as a man she could trust with her life and future if she kept
leaving him behind to go and save people? Andrew reined his emotions in with an act of will and focused on the boy in front of him, whose desperate eyes belied the curl still on his lip.

“All right, then. What
can I do?”

“The Lady bid me follow Alice’s dad and report back to ’er when I found out where they’re goin’ wiv ’im. But he needs someone t’find that Isobel Churchill, and I reckon that’s you.”

“I heard him shout. But why—”

“Dunno, and it don’t matter.
A desperate man shouts for ’er, seems a bloke ought t’find ’er.”

Privately, Andrew thought that a
desperate man might call a woman’s name if he were having a love affair with her and wanted to see her one last time before he met his doom, but that was none of his business. “Right. I shall do that, and bring her … where?”

“You ought’nt to ’ave much trouble ’earing where ’e is, ’specially if they’re to ’ang ’im. Folks tend to get loud on such occasions.”

“I trust you have not learned this from experience?”

“Mr. Malvern, sir, wiv all due respect, we ent got time.”

“Quite right. To the
Skylark
, then, as quick as may be.”

Andrew had only had the briefest glimpse of Isobel Churchill
this evening on the
Margrethe
. He had wanted to ask her to dance, but by the time he had screwed his courage up to the sticking point, he could no longer see her among the dancers or at the buffet. And after the explosion, he did not remember seeing her at all.

Whe
n danger threatened, it seemed logical that a woman would take her only child and flee to safety. He would begin with the
Skylark
.

She did not even have a
crewman posted at the base of the steps. “Mrs. Churchill?” he called as he emerged onto the lower deck. “Mrs. Churchill, are you here?”

Peony dropped down the gangway from B deck and landed lightly in front of him. “Mr. Malvern, what a surprise.”

“Miss Churchill, this is no social call. They’re about to hang Frederick Chalmers for sabotage and he is calling foris size=" your mother. Is she here?”

Peony’s flushed cheeks drained of all color. “That can’t be true.”

“I heard it myself. Time is of the essence. Is your mother here?”

“Yes.” She turned and climbed the gangway as nimbly as she had come down it,
seeing as she was wearing riding breeches. “She’s sending a pigeon.” He resolutely did not look at the unusual view of a woman in breeches as he leaped up the steps after her. “Mama! Come at once!”

But she did not come. Instead, Peony ran to the stern of the trim little gondola, where they found Isobel Churchill seated on a sandbag, writing furiously, a pigeon with its hold open
lying at her feet.

“Mama, they are going to hang Frederick Chalmers for sabotage, and he bids you come at once!”

Isobel signed her name with a flourish, folded the still-wet paper, and stuffed it into the pigeon. A few taps of her fingers embedded the magnetic coordinates of its destination in its small engine. She released it from the nearest porthole with a shove that caused its wings to spring open and catch the night wind as it soared upward.

“I told him to go,” she said in a voice like steel. “
As soon as I saw him walk into the salon, I told him
Skylark
would escort his daughter and meet him in Edmonton if he would only leave at once, but no. He had to do this himself. Had to reveal himself in front of all our enemies, and now all is lost.”

Andrew
did not understand, but he did not need to. “He is asking for your help, Mrs. Churchill. He, and the two young Esquimaux men who were taken with him.”

Her eyes blazed. “He has dragged them into it, too?” Her laugh cut the air like an axe. “If he survives this and they do not, he will answer to Malina’s
mother, the priestess. They are her youngest sons.”

Why on earth was
this woman not—in the Texican parlance—saddling up and moving out? “Will you come to his aid, or no?”

“There are bigger things at stake here than you have any idea of, young man. Frederick Chalmers has been one of the best friends the Esquimaux Nation has ever known, but even he would tell you that the good of the village comes before the good of the individual. He has gone into this recklessly, acting from the heart and not the head, and has put hundreds of people in danger.”

She reached for the airman’s coat lying on the sandbag, and Andrew realized with something of a shock that she had also divested herself of her green ballgown some time earlier, and was now clothed in breeches, boots, and shirt.

“Come, Peony. I shall t
ell Captain Aniq we lift in five minutes.”

“
But Mama—”

“Do not argue. We cannot go charging in there with no weapons and no information and expect to save his life. But we can save the village, if the pigeon gets there and they lift before that mob decides there are more saboteurs where he came from.”

Peony turned to Andrew as her mother went forward, presumably to command the engineers to fire up the boiler in preparation for lift. “I am sorry. I would help if I could.”

“What did she mean about the village lifting?
There were no airships there—I saw the place myself. And what part does Frederick Chalmers play in the lives of the Esquimaux? She made it sound as if they were a government—a country.”

“Why, they are.” Peony gazed at him in some surprise. “He has been liaison between Her Majesty’s government and the Esquimaux Nation these seven years at least. Why do you think the Dunsmuirs have permission to mine here?”

“I understood they own this land.”

“
Ownership is a foreign concept to the Esquimaux, as is the European fascination with diamonds. It is more of a … partnership with Lady Dunsmuir. Which is, of course, utterly unacceptable to certain business interests on this continent.”

“Colonial interests.”

She twinkled at him. “My, my, Mr. Malvern. Your quick mind will get you into trouble one of these days.”

“I hope it will get Frederick Chalmers out of it. I am going back to do my best to assist him.”

She laid a hand on his arm. “Be safe. Tell him I am sorry. And give my regards to Claire. I do not know when we shall see one another again.”

*

For a moment, Alice could not place the tiny, muffled sound. Then she realized it was poor Maggie’s teeth chattering.

“Dearling, come close to me.” She sat on the stone steps where they gave onto the narrow corridor chipped out of frozen ground and granite. “L
izzie, you too.” She lifted the voluminous folds of her turquoise gown and wrapped the fabric around both girls, folding them in close like a mother hen with her chicks. “I should have gone to the
Lass
and changed out of this silly rig.”

“You weren’t thinkin’ of clothes at the time,” Maggie said with some sympathy. “Besides, all these petticoats is warm.”

“Do you think Claire was able to fetch the earl?” Down here, with only a thin yellow ribbon of electricks for light, she was cut off—buried as surely as any corpse in a grave. And for so long a time, it seemed eternity had passed.

Alice wobbled dangerously close to losing hope. “I’m going to give her another five minutes and then I’m going up there myself.”

“Wot ’ud you do?” Lizzie asked from within her turquoise-and-lace cloak. “Come to fisticuffs wiv that lot?”

“No, but I have a set of lock picks and I know how to use them.”

“Right, and they’ll ’ave left ’em unguarded.”

Alice exhaled in lieu of snapping at the child. “How can someone so small know so much about lockups?”

“Did the Lady ever tel Lang l you about Dr. Craig, and ’ow we broke ’er out of Bedlam?”

And she made the mistake of saying, “No,” and some while later when the two of them wrapped up their tale,
Alice realized that the little scamps had actually made her forget what they were all doing there.