Lady of Spirit, A (8 page)

“That light.”

Some thousand yards to the west of the house, a red lamp glowed on the cliff-top, right where a valley cut down to the sea, filled with the dark shapes of trees.

On. Off. On-on-off. On for ten seconds. Off.

“That’s the second series,” Lizzie said. “The first is what caught my eye. What do you suppose it means?”

“Someone is signaling, that’s clear.” Maggie looked out to sea, but saw nothing. No answering signal from a boat, no horn, no blast of releasing steam. “But to whom?”

And then her attention focused on the waves. “Lizzie, we have to retrieve Claude and go up. The tide is coming in.”

Lizzie dragged her gaze off the red lamp, which was going into its third series of flashes to … no one. “Perhaps someone is practicing. We ought to take a picnic over in that direction in the morning and see what we can see.”

“Lizzie! The tide!”

Lizzie finally realized that if she did not move, her boots were going to get wet. They scampered up the sand to find Claude had disappeared completely.

“Oh, that boy,” Lizzie said impatiently. “He’s probably in the garden by now, congratulating himself on his prowess and planning a mountaineering holiday in Switzerland. Come on—we don’t have time to wait for him to come down.”

They dashed into the
sawan
and scrambled up onto the landing, heedless of the guano that covered the stone and wood, and ten minutes later emerged into the cellar. They found Claude in the stair well waiting for them, delighted that he had been the first to gain the house—as if it were a race and he had won.

He was so happy over the joke that Maggie just shook her head at him. She noticed, however, that in all the whispering and sliding of keys under doors and sneaking up staircases, neither she nor Lizzie brought up the subject of the red lantern signaling to no one on the cliff-top.

A small thing. A trifle.

But Maggie felt a glow of happiness nonetheless that, despite her cousin’s changed circumstances and her own dubious status, there was still something that the Mopsies could share between themselves alone.

At ten o’clock the next morning, the girls presented themselves to Grandfather for his inspection. His gaze swept from jaunty straw hats covered in flowers to navy suits to lacy Belgian cutwork blouses to gloves, and with a decided nod, he declared that they would do. He handed them into an open horse-drawn carriage, where Claude was already waiting.

Lady Claire, Mr. Malvern, and Tigg climbed into her steam landau, in which they had come back yesterday afternoon. Maggie had no doubt that all three would thoroughly enjoy the sensation they made as the Lady piloted it through town.

Maggie eyed the rumps of the horses, and leaned over to whisper to Lizzie. “You don’t suppose they’ll—er—fertilize the road while we’re driving, do you?”

“Horses have been pulling carriages for hundreds of years,” Lizzie whispered back. “I’m sure someone will have accounted for that. But how very strange not to travel in a landau.”

Fortunately, the journey was a short one, taking them down the High Street hill in state. People stopped to gape at the landau, and nodded in greeting when the carriage passed. Some even pulled off their hats, which felt even odder to Maggie than having the little housemaid curtsey to her. The procession made its way to the harbor and the carriage driver pulled up in front of the huge, imposing stone building that housed the offices of the Seacombe Steamship Company.

They were ushered into Grandfather’s office, which was the size of the drawing room, with a big mahogany desk and shelves and cabinets and all manner of curiosities from foreign parts upon display tables. They were treated to a history of the company from its founding by Pendrake Seacombe, all the way to the enormous map showing the current shipping routes.

Claude rose from the nap he was taking in the upholstered guest chair to trace with his finger the routes painted from Penzance, Southampton, and Portsmouth to the Nordic countries, the Royal Kingdom of Spain, the East and West Indies, and the Fifteen Colonies.

“What an enormous undertaking,” he finally said. “I can scarcely wrap my mind round it all.”

“That is why I am so anxious for you to begin, my boy,” Grandfather said. “While I might wish that your education had taken place here in England, and not France, it is too late to unmake those decisions now. When you graduate from the Sorbonne in the spring, it is my fondest wish that you take a commission and begin serving aboard one of our ships. It is best to begin at the water line, as it were, and work one’s way up. That way one understands the entirety of the business.”

“To say nothing of the lives of one’s employees,” Maggie offered. “You will understand how they think and feel if you are doing the same work they are.”

Grandfather cleared his throat with a harrumphing sound. “The thoughts and feelings of sailors and longshoremen are hardly the business of the Seacombes. We have larger concerns, young lady, such as the political and economic states of the countries with which Her Majesty trades.”

“But you said—”

“A young lady should not bother her head about it in any case. It is Claude’s career of which I speak. Now, Claude, you will notice that there are no shipping routes to Calais or for that matter, any of the French ports.”

“The lines appear to have been painted out,” Claude said as the Lady whipped her skirts around her and stalked to the window. He tilted closer to the great map on the wall. “Or at least, a darker color has been used.”

“That is because the Ministry of Trade has advised us to suspend activity with France until they come up to scratch and stop this nonsense.”

“Suspend activity?” Lizzie repeated. “Is there going to be a war?”

Her grandfather beamed at her. “An excellent question, Elizabeth. You see now why some knowledge of global politics is necessary in this very office. France, I am sorry to say, has shrugged off its Republican costume and revealed its true colors, putting Bourbons on the throne once more. And you know what they’re like.”

“Um. Would that be Louis the Fourteenth and that lot?” Upon her graduation, Lizzie had received firsts in mathematics, German, and the French language, not its history.

“I believe he means that the French kings have always believed themselves entitled to the English throne,” Maggie said. “Is that not correct, sir?”

Grandfather harrumphed again at being thus directly addressed. “A tempest in a teapot—or the mind of a crackpot,” he said. “Her Majesty and her nephews—the Kaiser and the Tsar—will give that French nincompoop a smack on the side of his schoolboy head and it will all blow over.”

But Maggie took courage from the approving look the Lady passed over her rigid shoulder and spoke up once more. “Claude, you go to school in Paris. Have you heard nothing of this?”

“If I did, I made certain I forgot it forthwith,” Claude said with a laugh that sounded somewhat strained. “I am afraid horribly dull lectures on history and economics from the professor’s podium are as close as I wish to get to that sort of thing.”

“You will feel differently when ‘that sort of thing’ affects your livelihood,” his grandfather said. “I must confess I am glad you will only be in that blasted place for a few months more. Come. I will show you the rest of the offices, and then we will proceed to the docks for a tour of
Demelza
, which lies at harbor for the family’s use. She is our flagship, you know, named for your grandmother.”

Maggie wondered if her lines were as stiff and her temper as uncertain as the woman for whom she was named, but the Lady would never recover if she said such a thing aloud. She didn’t know what the others thought of the tour of the offices, but she found it most interesting, particularly on the lower levels, where the goods were stored which had been received and inspected and were waiting to be loaded onto trains for shipping in England. There seemed to be everything from lovely embroidered fabrics to strange hairy nuts and lumber from exotic trees on the warehouse levels, and it fascinated her. Who had woven these fabrics, or picked those nuts? What was the climate like there? And why on earth would one choose to ship goods by sea when it was so dangerous and unpredictable and slow?

But apparently there were as few answers to that last question as there were to the first two.

The warehouse levels bustled with people—clerks, laborers, sailors—and when Maggie turned from her contemplation of a large winch assembly that was loading a cart, she realized that Lizzie and the others were nowhere in sight.

Goodness. She had better catch up, or she’d never find them in this melee. But they had only just been on the viewing platform, so no doubt she’d see them at the top of the wooden staircase.

But she did not.

Instead, she found herself with no prospect but a catwalk strung over the bustle of the warehouse, or a trip back down the steps that would net her nothing more than she had before. In vain she looked for the bobbing froth of Lizzie’s hat, or the painfully fashionable yellow-and-black plaid of Claude’s jacket.

Why had Lizzie not noticed she was missing? They were close as two peas in a pod—or at least, they had been until they’d come to Penzance. No matter what Maggie did, it seemed Lizzie was far ahead of her—with dazzling prospects, with Tigg, with the family—and Maggie was left behind with nothing but her manners to recommend her.

And a letter to her mother. And the Lady.

In her catalogue of sorrows, she must not forget her blessings, the Lady chief among them. In fact, she would just pull Claire aside and obtain her permission to abandon this whole disastrous excursion. The prospect of laying her hot cheek on the Lady’s shoulder and feeling the comfort of her arms around her was immensely appealing.

“I say, are you lost?”

Maggie dashed the moisture from her eyes and turned to see a young man coming across the catwalk as though he were strolling down Pall Mall.

“I am not,” she said. “Though my party seems to be.”

He took her in from head to foot, and seemed to find the picture more satisfying than had her grandfather. “You would be with Mr. Seacombe’s party, then? You are … Miss Margaret, if I am not mistaken.”

Surprise rendered her bereft of speech. She had not seen him before, because if she had, she would have remembered those roguish eyes, that triangular smile, his even teeth white in his tanned face. Then— “I do apologize, sir, but have we met?”

He laughed as if this were a fine joke. “Not ruddy likely, since I’m but a clerk in the receiving office and you’re the granddaughter of Howel Seacombe.”

“But—how do you know that?”

He made an expansive gesture that encompassed the entire busy operation below. “Everyone knows. We’re all on our best behavior while the family visits. I saw you from across the other side, you know—you and your cousin and the young master. Is your cousin as pretty as you close up?”

“Much prettier,” Maggie said automatically, and then blushed that she had dignified such a familiar remark with a reply. “I mean—I have become separated from them somehow. Would you be so kind as to help me rejoin them?”

“Oh, now I’ve offended you. I didn’t mean to. Because you are, you know—awfully pretty.”

Oh dear, this was dreadful. “I won’t trouble you. I’m sure you have work to do. I’ll find them myself.” Blushing, hot, she stumbled down the staircase, only to hear a
whoosh
—and turned just in time to see him sliding down the rickety banister past her.

“Please forgive me,” he said, landing with aplomb and sweeping his tweed cap from his head. “I’m dreadfully prone to personal remarks. People are interesting to me. Come—I saw where they went, and I’ll take you up there now.”

“I think after that performance you must tell me your name. Not—” she said hastily, as his eyes widened with apprehension, “—to report you for your unsolicited opinions, but so that I may know to whom I am indebted.”

He gazed at her. “That was quite a speech. Do you normally use that many syllables?”

She tilted her chin. “Only when they are warranted. I could throw rocks at you instead of words, if you prefer.”

“Words can do as much damage, if a person aims them well enough.” He offered her his arm and after a second’s hesitation, she took it. “Michael Polgarth, at your service.”

“Polgarth!” she exclaimed as he opened a door she had not seen at the rear of the viewing platform, and ushered her through it. “I know a Polgarth. He is a poultryman, and I credit him for my interest in the study of genetics.”

“Do you, now?”

The corridor was lined with office doors bearing important-looking brass name plates, but he took her past them all to an external door, where she found herself on the street that ran down the side of the building, straight to the sea. In the distance, there were Grandfather, Lizzie and Claude, and the Lady and Mr. Malvern, all engaged in spirited conversation and apparently completely unaware that there was one missing from the party.

Her steps faltered to a halt, and beside her, Michael stopped, too. “Is something the matter, Miss Seacombe?”

“Yes. I mean—no, of course not.”

“And yet, you seem unwilling to join your family on
Demelza
. She’s a trim little ship, you know, for a steam vessel. You’d probably like her.”

“Have you been aboard?” Maybe if she stalled long enough, her party would walk back this way and see her in conversation with this nice young man, as unconcerned for their company as they seemed to be for hers.

“Once or twice, in the course of my duties. She returned from the East Indies one year, and I could swear I smelled cinnamon in her hold when I went down there to deliver the manifests. But it was probably just engine grease. So you know Polgarth the poultryman at Gwynn Place?”

She turned, her eyes wide. “I never said from where I knew him, merely that I did.”

He grinned. “There is only one Polgarth in these parts who makes a study of genetics in chickens, and that’s my grandfather.”

“He never is!” she exclaimed, most inelegantly. “Polgarth—your grandfather!”

Michael dipped her a bow. “Does that make us friends?”

“I should like it to. Have you seen him recently? Lady Claire and Mr. Malvern are to go up to Gwynn Place on Wednesday, but I’m afraid we’re stuck here until—I mean—that is to say—”

And he laughed again, the irritating creature. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Yes, I go up to see him and my aunt Tressa at least once a month—she keeps house for him, you know, since my grandmother died. He’s looking forward to seeing Lady Claire very much. How does she come to be with you?”

“She is our guardian, mine and Lizzie’s.”

“Well, this bears exploring. Wait here just a moment, will you?” He popped back inside and in less than a minute reappeared. “There, that’s settled. I am to be your escort—I’ve just let my superiors know so that no one thinks you’ve been kidnapped. When Mr. Seacombe’s party comes back, they will be informed.”

Somehow she found herself walking at his side, her hand in the crook of his elbow, proceeding up the hill instead of down to the harbor.

He returned to the previous subject with interest. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your connection to Gwynn Place. Lady Claire your guardian? I wouldn’t think that the granddaughter of Mr. Seacombe would be in need of any such person.”

“Well, considering that a month ago, I didn’t know Mr. Seacombe existed, much less that I was his granddaughter, you would be incorrect,” Maggie said with some asperity. “We have been Lady Claire’s wards since we were ten, and we are sixteen and a half now.”

He said something in Cornish that might possibly have been the equivalent of “Blimey!” Then he said, “Of course you may depend upon my circumspection. These are facts that are not generally known.”

“But surely the folk hereabouts would know of the deaths of our mothers—Elaine and Catherine.”

“It is not something that is talked of openly, you understand. Out of respect for the Seacombes.”

“But do you know something of it? For you see, I know absolutely nothing of my mother.” Except that she liked the scent of lilac, and might have had a May Day beau whose name began with a
K
.

They had reached the top of the hill without Maggie being aware of climbing it.