Lady of Devices (19 page)

Maggie turned big eyes on her sister that plainly said,
Cooooo, a real lordship
, before both girls bobbed obediently.

“Your charges?” Lord James repeated. “Do you mean to tell me you are their ... governess?”

“I am.”

“And a fine one,” Lizzie said without a trace of Bow’s bells in her voice.

“We quite like her.” Maggie took her sister’s hand. “We’re ever so hard on governesses.”

Claire struggled not to gape, and then struggled even more with the urge to box their ears for playacting when the moment was so serious. She reached down and took Lizzie’s other hand with rather more firmness than necessary.

“So nice to see you, Lord James. Good day.”

“Just one moment, Lady Cl—”

“Come along, girls!”

“Wait!” he boomed just as one of those silences peculiar to large crowds fell all at once. Reddening, he collected himself. “Please, just a moment.”

If she did not listen to him, he would likely stalk her the length of the arcade. “Yes, my lord?”

He glanced to either side, but people had gone about their business. “I would have hoped for a more solicitous environment to say what I must say, but you are an elusive quarry. It seems I must take my opportunities where I find them.”

“You have something you wish to say to me?” She had quite a number of things she wished to say to him, but not in front of the girls. If one wanted models of good behavior, one must be a model of good behavior oneself.

“Yes. I—well, I—” Flushing again, he chewed the lower edge of his moustache. Good heavens. He was as edgy as a man about to propose. Not that she had any experience along those lines except for what she’d seen in the flickers.

“Cat got your tongue?” Lizzie enquired.

“He’s got something stuck in his throat,” Maggie agreed. “Lozenge?” She held up a hard cherry drop, somewhat fuzzy from being carted about in her pocket all day.

Lord James looked down at them like Zeus from Olympus. “Little girls should be seen and not heard.”

If Claire had heard that once, she’d heard it a thousand times, and every time it irritated her more. Girls should certainly be heard. It was their voices that the world was missing.

“Really, Lord James, I’ll thank you to leave the girls’ upbringing to me.” Her tone could have been chipped right out of the sheet of ice behind them. “As it happens, I’m a great believer in little girls being heard, if they have something to say. Miss Margaret was merely offering to help.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” Maggie sounded very pleased.

“You’re not a nice man,” Lizzie told him, eyes narrowed. “You made the Lady go all frosty. You really don’t want to do that.”

“Great Caesar’s ghost.” Lord James had finally lost his patience. He glared at Claire. “You’re as poor a governess as you are a scientist. All right. I’ll say what I have to say, and that is this. I will offer you a thousand pounds not to take the position in Andrew’s laboratory.”

She could not possibly have heard him correctly. “I beg your pardon?”

“All right, then, if you will stoop to bargaining. Fifteen hundred. I know your position, my dear young lady, and that isn’t the kind of sum you can turn down.”

The rage came bubbling up from under her corset and into her throat. Was it possible for a man to be any more insulting? “Isn’t it?”

If she said one more word, her façade would split and she would scream blue invective at him, right here, right now. The glass above their heads would crack and rain down upon him and it would serve him right for treating her in this high-handed, criminal, cruel manner.

Oh, if she were a lady in society instead of name how she would glory in crushing him to social powder under one kid heel! She would make it so that no one in their circles would receive him ever again. Even the King and Queen would frown when his name was mentioned. If she were—if only—

“Lady?” Maggie tugged her hand. “Look, there’s Tigg and Willie with Mr. Malvern.”

“Mr. Malvern?” James lifted his head like a wolf scenting the sheepdog.

Claire pulled in as deep a breath as she could, feeling her corset cinch her sides like the twin hands of caution and propriety. “Yes. He has been such a gentleman today. We’ve spent most of the afternoon together deepening our acquaintance and he has told us all about locomotives and steam.”

Ever so sweetly, she smiled at him and allowed the girls to drag her away.

Like the confluence of events that results in a battle at sea, nine people converged at a single point in the cheerful arcade next to the ice-skating rink. The chamber orchestra played “Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes” while the skaters dipped and twirled, vendors called the attention of customers to their hot meat pies and iced drinks, and Lady Julia Wellesley and Gloria Meriwether-Astor spotted Lord James and bore down upon him like two battleships under full steam.

“Lord James, how very unexpected!” Julia trilled.

“Such a pleasure to see you,” Gloria added, then halted in midstep, her skirts swirling forward like foam upon the waves. “Oh, hello, Claire.”

“Claire? Claire Trevelyan?” Her focus on Lord James broken, Julia looked around, her eyes registering astonishment at the number of people who had witnessed her unladylike hailing of his lordship in public. “Heavens, we thought you’d gone to Cornwall.”

So much for attempting to keep her name out of the children’s hearing. Well, that had been a thin hope at best.

Then Julia seemed to register Lord James’s proximity to Claire, and her long lashes fluttered. “Are you ... and his lordship ... enjoying the exhibit?”

“I am, very much.” Claire resented her implication that she and James were there together, and resented even more having to assure Julia that she was no threat to her pursuit. Honestly, what would it be like to live a life where such a thing was her only problem? “I cannot speak for his lordship, who was merely passing by.”

Lord James had concealed all his emotion of the moment before, and had put on his public face. “Ladies, the pleasure of our meeting is all mine. Lady Julia, you look enchanting. Miss Gloria, you should build yourself a crystal palace of your own. The light of heaven suits you exactly.”

Claire resisted the temptation to implore patience of that same heaven, and welcomed Andrew and the boys instead. Here was reality. No simpering exchange of insincere compliments. Instead, with them she could enjoy the meeting of like minds in pursuit of a common goal: a greater knowledge of how the world worked.

Julia and Gloria smiled and blushed. Lord James went on, “May I introduce my business partner to you? Lady Julia Wellesley, Miss Gloria Meriwether-Astor, this is Andrew Malvern of the Royal Society of Engineers.” The ladies inclined their heads while Andrew bowed.

“And what business are you working on together?” Gloria’s words were polite while her eyes said,
What business does a Blood have with a Wit?

Lord James chuckled. “I would not trouble your lovely head with it. Suffice to say we are working on making locomotive engines run more efficiently.”

Lady Julia waved her hand in front of her face, as if she were overcome. “Goodness. How very droll. Do you own a railroad?”

“Not yet.” He smiled at her. “But I like to engage my mind in such matters, and Andrew and I went to school together, so I knew a fine scientist who could do the practical work.”

Dispensing with Andrew as unsuitable for her further attention, Lady Julia finally noticed that Claire appeared to be surrounded by children. Claire took a firm grip on the Mopsies’ hands and braced herself.

“Goodness, Claire. Are all these children with you?”

“They are. Girls, make your curtsies to her ladyship. Mr. Tigg, Willie, a bow, if you please.”

To her knowledge, Tigg had never bowed to anyone in his life. But having just observed Andrew, he replicated the courtesy exactly as he had seen it, and Willie imitated him so well one would think he had been born to it.

Gloria’s eyebrows drew together in such a way that Claire was tempted to tell her she would have wrinkles before she was thirty if she kept it up. “Is that ... person ... with you, Claire?”

“Of course. I would not be concerned with his manners if he were not.”

“I should think you’d be concerned with his clothes. Wherever did you pick him up?”

Tigg began to swell. Andrew said smoothly, “I believe Mr. Tigg is in training as a chauffeur at the children’s home. Lady Claire is encouraging his interest in engines.”

Both Gloria and Julia dismissed Tigg from their universe, for which Claire could only be grateful. “And who might you be?” Gloria bent as far as her corset would allow and chucked Willie under the chin. The boy tipped his head down and moved closer to Lizzie. “Don’t be shy.” When he still didn’t respond, she straightened. “Where I come from, children speak when they are spoken to.”

“Willie doesn’t speak to anyone, milady,” Lizzie told her. “Don’t take it personal.”

“Is that so. And you are?”

“Li ... Elizabeth. This is my sister Margaret.”

“And how do you come to know Lady Claire, Elizabeth?”

Lizzie, don’t—don’t say it
— Claire squeezed her hand in inarticulate warning and opened her mouth to say something—anything—

“The Lady is our governess,” Lizzie said blithely. “We’ve been skating. Do you skate?”

Gloria did not answer. She and Julia exchanged a single incredulous look and then turned it on Claire as if they were two automatons built for a single task. “Governess?” Julia’s eyebrows rose so high they practically disappeared under the flowers on her hat.
“Governess?”

“For what family?” Gloria’s voice trembled with scandalous enjoyment. “Oh, do tell, Claire, so I can send your invitation to my next ball to the correct address.”

“You—you would not know them.” Claire’s lips felt stiff, her skin cold. Why had she chosen today to come to the exhibition? It had held nothing but humiliation and disappointment. Even her pleasure in Mr. Malvern’s company had been spoiled backward by the last ten minutes.

“So they do not move in our circles?” Julia inquired.

“What I mean to say is, I am not precisely a governess.” Was her voice as wretched as her blotchy scarlet face? “I am more a ... teacher. For the time being, until I find more permanent employment.”

“So you are not with a family of good name and fortune?” Julia pressed. “Then these children are ... ?”

Lord, help me.

Andrew Malvern hoisted Willie up into his arms, drawing the young ladies’ attention in his direction almost against their will. “As a matter of fact, I have been assisting Lady Claire in her educational efforts this very afternoon. We have a collection of fine young minds here.” He smiled at her, and even in the depths of her misery, his kindness made her smile back. It was a poor effort, but his eyes twinkled when he saw it. “I have been doing my best for weeks to convince her to assist me in my laboratory, but her loyalty to her charges has thus far prevented it. I still have hope, however.”

She could not bear another moment of Julia’s and Gloria’s smiles at her expense, however cleverly hidden behind beaded pocketbooks and gloved hands. Behind them, Lord James skewered her with his gaze. He would offer her fifteen hundred pounds to tell Andrew “no” once and for all. With it, she could return to her life and pay for a full year at the university. No one need ever know what she had been doing since that dreadful night in Wilton Crescent.

With fifteen hundred pounds, she could leave it all behind.

Willie wriggled in Andrew’s arms and held his own out to her. Without thinking, she reached over and took the child, his familiar little body settling against her with the full weight of his trust.

Trust.

He had trusted her, right from the moment she had pulled herself up off the filthy road outside Aldgate Station.

What had she been thinking? She could no more betray the trust of Willie, the girls, Tigg, Jake, or Snouts than she could her own baby brother Nicholas. No. Impossible.

Claire lifted her head and deliberately turned her shoulder to Lord James. “Mr. Malvern, you have convinced me. If we can work out a suitable arrangement for the continuing education of the children, I would be honored to assist you in your scientific efforts. Perhaps together we may yet change the landscape of the railroad industry.”

His delighted astonishment was all the reward a woman could ask for.

What a pity she couldn’t see the reactions behind her. Still, the silence reverberating in the air was extremely satisfying, and the brevity of their farewells even more so.

As she and her little party walked slowly toward the exit, the light playing over them as though even Heaven approved of her boldness, Claire couldn’t help the flutter of nerves in her stomach. Once again, she had burned a bridge behind her—this time, for all the best reasons.

Only time would tell if she had done the right thing.

She lifted her face to the sky as, surrounded by her accidental family, she stepped out of the mighty glass doors and into her future.