Lady of Devices (6 page)

The great engine of the Flying Dutchman, capable of eighty-nine miles per hour and therefore making it the fastest train in the world, huffed out an enormous puff of steam at precisely nine o’clock and began to pull slowly away from platform number four at Paddington Station. Gorse tugged his cap from his head and waved it as Claire lifted a gloved hand. “Good-bye! Safe journey!”

Lady St. Ives, of course, did not lean out of the window, but Silvie did, her elegant black-gloved hands waving with such emphasis that Claire shot Gorse a sudden look of comprehension. “Gorse, is something going on between you and Silvie?”

“Was, miss.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing with sudden effort. “Not so sure about now, though.”

“Why on earth didn’t you say something? You could have gone down to St. Ives with them instead of the second footman.”

“They’re still driving carriages in St. Ives, miss. I’m much more likely to get a place here.” His gaze never left the train and the distant black flutter of Silvie’s glove. “I have an interview at Wellesley House this afternoon, as a matter of fact. Word is that his lordship is soon to be the owner of a four-piston laudau.”

“No! I don’t believe it. That family would never give up its horses.”

“Times change, miss, as we are living proof.” They stood upon the platform until the last of the Dutchman’s carriages disappeared around the bend. “Would you like to drive home, miss?”

“No, you may. Perhaps it will help take your mind off Silvie.”

“Not much possibility of that.” He guided her outside and waited until she had climbed into the landau, proud possessor of only two pistons. Two was all anything but a steambus needed. Four was ostentatious. How fast did Julia’s father’s driver propose to go? Or—yes, that was it—he obviously planned to enter the races at Wimbledon. She snorted, then resumed watching the road like a hawk on a fence post.

The truth was, after Mr. Arundel’s information on Wednesday, she looked at London with new eyes—eyes that saw the unrest, that found menace in a crowd surging to board a bus, that calculated distance now in terms of safety rather than convenience. She was no coward, but all the same, Claire was content to let Gorse navigate the turn into Park Lane and skirt the boundary of Hyde Park, where beyond the trees she could hear the roar of a crowd.

Gorse heard it, too, and applied a little more steam. “Let her stretch her legs a bit.”

“There must be a demonstration of some kind.”

“Likely the orator of the hour getting folk stirred up.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s what it must be.”

Her breath did not come easily until they had turned into Wilton Crescent and hurried into the safety of their own mews. Once upstairs, Claire dragged the brass-studded trunk, which she had thus far resisted filling, out of the hall and into her room. A warm coat, trimmed in the latest Art Nouveau vinery. Three sensible dresses in dark colors, and five pretty embroidered white waists. Two walking skirts. Shoes. Unmentionables. Two practical hats and one utterly impractical one that she loved, with its flowers and plumes. Gloves.

She found herself packing the kind of wardrobe, in fact, that she might have begun a university career with. She left Madame du Barry’s evening gowns where they hung. The apple green had been burned days ago. Lady St. Ives had not permitted her to see her father’s body, but the memories of that night hung on the ballgown, as ugly and clinging as soot, and she never wanted to see it again.

She tipped up the false bottom of a small traveling case and laid her few pieces of jewelry inside, then covered it with handkerchiefs, her best set of tortoiseshell hair combs, and her Bible with a lock of her baby brother’s hair pressed between its pages. Last of all she put in Linnaeus’s
Taxonomy of Elements
, her engineering journal, and a set of pencils. If her new status as a career woman allowed her any spare time, she could continue her experiments and sketches in solitude.

Not that that would mean any great change.

The heavy weight of anxiety in her stomach eased a little now that she had done something constructive about the future. It was time to stop wallowing in her own fear and anger and behave as the young woman of substance that Mr. Arundel, at least, believed her to be. Her father may never have held that belief ... Claire swallowed as hot tears sprang to her eyes.

She blinked them back. Look where Papa’s beliefs had got him. She was not a fool. She had never hung her future on the traditions of the Bloods, but she had never done anything to prove that she was different, either. If she thought of herself as a Wit, now was the time to show it. She reached for the bell pull to ring for Penwith, and realized a moment later that of course he was no longer there. If she were to make her own way in the world, she must get used to doing even the smallest things herself.

The house seemed even more silent than usual with the absence of the servants. Most of them had gone to the employment agency with her ladyship’s departure. Aside from the ubiquitous mother’s helper scooting about in the hall, the only two left were Gorse and Mrs. Morven, the cook, whom she found in the pantry, counting jars of jam.

“Oh, hello, miss—er, my lady. I’m just making an inventory in the event the new owners take the place complete.”

“I won’t keep you, Mrs. Morven. Do you know what Penwith did with this morning’s
Times
before he left?”

“He always leaves it on the hall table, miss, in case your lady mother wants it. Of course, with him gone, if you want it, you just need to tell me.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Morven. The hall table is fine. I suppose I should look into canceling our subscription.”

“I’ll ask Gorse to do it. Ah ... miss? Lady Claire?” She turned at the door. “Me and Gorse—we were wondering ...”

“Mrs. Morven, times are changing. We must not be afraid to speak plainly to one other.”

The cook fiddled with her apron strings and adjusted the set of her pristine white cap. “We were wondering, miss, how you’d be set were we to take other positions before the end of the month.”

“Have you had an offer from Wellesley House too?” The bitterness rasped at her throat.

“Oh, no, miss. I can’t abide the nasty biddy they have as housekeeper there. A face like suet pudding and no salt, that one. But young Lord James Selwyn is setting up his own household and has advertised for a cook. It would be light work, seeing as he’s single, and I’m ready to tote a lighter load in my golden years.”

“Mrs. Morven, your golden years are a long way off yet. But it would be a change to look after a young man instead of all of us. I’m acquainted with Lord James, you know.” She paused. “He is a gentleman of humor and, um, wit.” And a bit of a cad, but Mrs. Morven would likely not be the target of that.

“Plus he’s offering to equal the wage his lordship—rest his soul—was paying me.”

Claire saw her chance to even the score. “Negotiate for more, Mrs. Morven. Another ten percent and he can have you by the end of next week.”

The cook’s flushed cheeks became positively apple-like as she smiled. “You’ll be all right, then, miss?”

“I’ll be perfectly all right. In fact, I hope to be gainfully employed by then, myself.”

“Beg pardon?”

“I’m not going down to Cornwall, Mrs. Morven. I’m going to get a job and go to work, and apply to begin at the university in the fall.”

“Are you, now, miss?” Mrs. Morven’s eyes widened.

“Yes, I am, despite what my mother says. I’m nearly eighteen and have nothing but a trunk full of clothes, a steam landau, and my brains to recommend me. So I and they are going to work. Which is why I need the
Times
. Would you be so kind as to give me some instruction on how one actually goes about answering an advertisement?”

What a relief it was to send mail tubes that didn’t contain stationery rimmed with black. By Tuesday Claire had arranged four interviews—two families wanted a governess, a scientist wanted a secretary, and the British Museum needed someone to catalogue artifacts.

On Wednesday, she heard from Lady St. Ives.

My dear Claire,

We arrived safely Saturday evening and have settled in to life in the country. We are all well and your brother has gained another two pounds. Polgarth begs me to tell you that the chickens send their best greetings and look forward to your arrival.

As does your loving

Mama

Claire had to smile. As a child, she had loved the flock at Gwynn Place, which gave the best eggs in the parish. Polgarth the poultryman swore that she had a natural gift with them, and they used to follow her about the garden as if she were an exotic sort of rooster. The companionship of birds may have been all she needed then, but at nearly eighteen her requirements were substantially more. The hens would have to do without her some while longer.

By Thursday, she had decided that governessing was not the career path she was meant to take—not unless she was desperate and starving in the streets. The gentleman at the British Museum seemed more interested in cataloguing her anatomy than in her qualifications for cataloguing his artifacts, which left her feeling as though she needed a bath when she left that afternoon. Whatever her father’s faults, at least his protection had been real. No man would have dared to treat her that way if he had still been alive.

Of course, if he had been alive, she would not be piloting carefully through the crowded streets of London, sweating in her duster and jumping out of her seat every time a horse shied upon seeing the landau. Silly creatures. She made the turn onto the Blackfriars Bridge and proceeded across it in a stream of drays and carriages. The scientist kept his laboratory in a warehouse on Orpington Close, which turned out to be little more than an alley running down to the mud on the south side of the Thames. She parked the landau at the foot of an exterior staircase, as instructed by tube, and released the valve. Steam hissed into the air like a sigh of relief at their arrival, and she set the brake.

She was just raising her hand to knock at the lower door when it swung open. The apparition within looked as though it had come up from under the sea. Out of its leather helmet snaked a series of rubber tubes, while a pair of glass-fronted eyes stared at her with alien blankness. The rest of it was covered in a leather apron of the sort butchers wore, and the hands reaching for her were encased in leather gloves.

With a squeak, she stumbled backward, bumping hard against the post that supported the staircase. How far was the landau? Could she get inside and get it fired up before the thing caught her?

“Miss Trevelyan? Don’t—what are—oh, blast it all!” The monster tore its head off and tucked it under its arm.  “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I forgot that—Miss Trevelyan? Are you quite all right?” A young man with hazel eyes and tousled hair the color of Brazil nuts took off his glove and extended a hand to her. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. It would serve me right if you turned and left this moment.”

Slowly, she extended her hand. “Is—what is that, sir?”

“It’s a gas mask. I devised it myself, you see—so that I could enter a large compression chamber without breathing in the gases. Look, these tubes attach to a flask of air at the back.”

“Ah.” She craned her neck to see. “Air, you said? Not compressed oxygen?”

A smile dawned, reaching all the way to his eyes. “Been reading the scientific journals, I see. Last month’s
Illustrated Science
article on Dr. Weathering’s undersea bell?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” She tilted her chin. “Not all of us find our entertainment in
Lady’s Home and Garden
.”

  “You’ll find neither home nor garden here, I’m afraid. Do come in. Watch your step. These boards are uneven.”

She followed him across a huge warehouse containing what appeared to be pallets of various metals and glass, along with an enormous heap of lumber, to an interior staircase that brought them up to a spacious loft. “Am I to assume you are Mr. Malvern?”

He stopped in the act of clearing a stack of diagrams off the chair in front of the desk, and smacked his forehead. “Good grief. You will think me an ill-mannered ass. Yes, I am Andrew Malvern, A.B.D. Member of the Royal Society of Engineers. Part owner of this warehouse and in dire need of someone to keep me organized.”

“A.B.D., Mr. Malvern? Is that a new scientific society? The Association of Biological Diversity or some such?”

“No, no. It means
all but dissertation
. I would have a Ph.D. to add to my string of initials if I could only get this da—er, excuse me, this wretched theory of mine to work.”

Claire opened her mouth to ask him what was wrong with his theory, and closed it again. He might not appreciate her nose in his business. And anyway, if she got the job, she would find out eventually, wouldn’t she? She seated herself in the chair he had emptied, and regarded the blizzard of papers and drawings on the desk. Oak filing cabinets stood against the wall, papers sticking out of the drawers as though they were trying to escape the crowded conditions within. Here and there, instruments and devices held down stacks of drawings and columns of figures on the floor, and the woodbox next to the cast-iron stove was full of still sealed mailing tubes instead of kindling.

He followed her gaze around the room. “You see why I’m in need of an assistant.”

“I do, sir. Were I to be your choice, I should start with the mailing tubes and then work in concentric circles in a clockwise direction, from filing cabinets to loose papers.”

“Would you?” His chair swiveled as he followed this thought. “I supposed it’s as good a method as any.”

“What is your field of research, sir?”

His circumnavigation of the loft completed, he folded his hands on the desk and regarded her. He had very nice eyes, with long lashes and a twinkle that was most distracting. “You make it sound so formal. My interests are in the railroad industry at present. I’m working on a way to make coal go further more cleanly, reducing costs and increasing the engines’ ability to use it more completely. As it is, there’s too much waste without enough return in speed and efficiency.”

“Ah.”

“Are you familiar with the workings of engines? Was that your landau I saw out there?”

She may not know the first thing about locomotive engines, but the landau she knew inside and out. “Yes, it’s a two-piston Henley Dart, with a five-gallon boiler and a top speed of forty-five miles per hour.”

“Did you drive it here at that speed? If so, I salute you.”

He was teasing her, the rascal. “No, I topped out at twenty. It is very crowded on that bridge.”

“What do you say to taking it for a spin? I’ve never been able to afford such a thing, and the Dart is a very pretty model.” His gaze rested briefly on her hair, then moved to her eyes.

Claire shifted in the chair, and checked that the clasp of her pocketbook was firmly secured. “Did you mean to drive it yourself, sir?”

“Heavens, no. I want to expand my sphere of experience, that’s all. I’ve never seen a woman drive. It would be very useful to have an assistant with such skills. Consider it a test—much more useful than handwriting and typing samples, wouldn’t you say?”

Below, a door slammed and footsteps thumped across the boards to the staircase. “Andrew, are you here?”

“I’m conducting an interview. Come on up—my prospective assistant may as well know what she’s getting into.”

“You’re interviewing someone?” A reddish head appeared in the stairwell, then the rest of the speaker’s frame. Recognition sparked a moment later, and Claire drew a breath of surprise as Lord James Selwyn stepped into the light from the aperture overhead. “Good heavens. Lady Claire, what are you doing here?” He turned to Malvern. “I thought you were interviewing an assistant.”

“Lady Claire?” Malvern glanced down at her letter of application, as though puzzled he’d missed this fact.

“We are one and the same.” She rose and extended a gloved hand to Lord James. “I thought it prudent to use my family name and not my title in my correspondence. Lord James, this is unexpected.”

“Not half as unexpected as you interviewing for a job.”

She lifted her chin, even as the hot blood scorched her cheeks. Blast. She would blotch again, and in front of her prospective employer, too. “My circumstances demand flexibility, my lord. And you agreed yourself the last time we met that a lady makes her own luck.”

“Making one’s own luck is one thing, but reducing oneself to trade is quite another. Is this a joke you’re playing on us?”

“James, what a thing to say.” Malvern frowned. “Miss Trev—er, Lady Claire. Please excuse my partner’s forthrightness. He has been too long in the American Territories.”

“Believe me, my circumstances are no joke,” she replied in as steady a tone as she could manage, considering her temper was fast approaching a rolling boil. “I am seeking employment, and believe I could contribute to Mr. Malvern’s operations here.”

“Not to mention the fact that she can drive,” Malvern put in. “That’s tipping the scale right there.”

“Andrew, don’t talk nonsense. Lady Claire is a society belle barely out of the classroom. What can she contribute here? What does she know of science or business?”

“If you would address me directly, Lord James, I could tell you that I graduated with firsts in mathematics and languages, and I plan to apply to the engineering program at the university this fall.” She enunciated each syllable so crisply that each word cut the air. “This position, besides keeping me in bread and butter, would go far in recommending me to the admissions committee. If that were any of your business, of course, since it is Mr. Malvern who is interviewing me at present.”

Lord James stared. “The girl has a spine after all.”

Malvern pushed his chair back. “James, what has got into you? Miss Trevelyan, perhaps we should go for that drive now. I don’t know what bee my partner has in his bonnet, but it’s embarrassing both of us.”

“I just find it amusing, Andrew, that the lady who turned down the offer of my regard is now forced to seek employment in a venture I’m financing. I’m merely appreciating the irony of it all.”

“What?”

“The offer of your regard?”

Claire and Malvern spoke simultaneously. Then Claire controlled her tongue, gathered her courage, and bid farewell to her hopes. “Mr. Malvern, I regret taking up your time today, but I thank you for seeing me. Good afternoon.”

“Wait. Miss Trev—er, Lady Claire. Our interview is not finished.”

“I believe it is. If I am to be dependent on the financing of Lord James, then I prefer to seek employment elsewhere. In any case, he does not believe me capable of carrying out my duties.”

“But he’s not—Miss Trevelyan, wait—”

She reached behind and twitched the hem of her grey suit out of any possible reach of Lord James’s patent-leather shoes, and swept down the stairs. Malvern darted after her, but Lord James caught his arm and their raised voices followed her out of the warehouse, muffled only by the slam of the exterior door.

She ignited the landau and drove back to Wilton Crescent as fast as she dared, where she found Mrs. Morven in the kitchen preparing dinner.

“Mrs. Morven. Are you still set on taking employment with Lord James Selwyn?”

“Yes, miss.” The cook eyed her disheveled state, for she had not stopped to put on her motoring duster at the warehouse. “Why do you ask?”

“My advice has changed. Ask for twenty-five percent more, Mrs. Morven, not ten. And you have my congratulations and my deepest sympathy should you get the job.”