Lady of Devices Page 10

  Clearly, better accommodations must join recovery of her property and employment on her list of immediate needs.

  She combed her hair with her uninjured tortoiseshell comb, rewound it and pinned it into its customary chignon. Then she changed into a fresh waist and descended the stair with Rosie in her cage in one hand. The sound of conversation led her into the depths of the house, where she found her companions, including Willie, gathered in the kitchen around a three-legged table. A stack of bricks replaced the fourth leg.

  Kitchen was a generous term. The room contained only a cold iron stove and the table, and the shelving tacked onto the walls above the stove were empty but for dirt and spiders. In the center of the table, a hard loaf had been hacked at with a pocket-knife, and the children were busy wolfing it down.

  “Good morning,” she greeted them. “Where did this come from?”

  A mumble answered her. Rosie tottered to her feet and focused on the bread on the table, tilting her head so as not to lose sight of it.

  “We already been out,” a Mopsie said. “I got a corncob for Rosie.” She extracted it from a pocket and held it up.

  “I could’ve et that,” Jake complained. “I’m still hungry.” Someone had wrapped a rag around his burned hands.

  Claire opened the cage door and put the fresh ear inside. Rosie fell upon it like an eagle on a carcass. “A little self-sacrifice now will all be forgotten when we have our fry-up later in the week. May I have some of that bread, please?”

  “Help yerself,” Jake said.

  “Mr. Jake, a gentleman would slice a piece and offer it to a lady.”

  “I ent no gentleman.”

  “Since I am a lady, and since I do not consort with men who are not gentlemen, your training in that department begins immediately.” She smiled at him. “Thank you. You are most generous.”

  He just stared at her.

  “Crikey, Jake, you deaf? Cut ’er off a bit.” Snouts pushed the knife closer to him.

  “I ent servin’ ’er. What d’ye take me for?”

  “It is not a matter of serving, Mr. Jake. A gentleman puts the comfort of others before his own. That is how one tells he is a gentleman.”

  “I said I weren’t a gentleman. Cut yer own bread. Or better yet, don’t, and I’ll ’ave it.”

  Snouts swore and cuffed him across the head. “Do as she says, ye stupid cove.”

  “Why should I? First she burns me, then she boils me eyes. If I take that knife to anything, it’ll be ’er, and that’s a fact.”

  Though he couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen, Claire could not mistake the deadly resolve in his eyes and had no doubt he meant exactly what he said. “I did warn you not to raise the landau’s front panel, Mr. Jake,” she said in quiet but firm tones. “You chose to ignore me. And as for the gaseous capsaicin, we’re going to turn that to our advantage and you shan’t have to experience it again.”

  “About that,” Snouts said as Jake reluctantly picked up the knife and sawed off a chunk of the dark bread. Claire took it and tried to chew a few bites. Then she tore the remainder into bits and gave them to Rosie, who launched herself at them with enthusiasm.

  “Yes, about that. The first thing to do is to compile the ingredients.” She told them what she would need. “Are you able to find these things?”

  Snouts and Tigg exchanged a glance. “Sure. We’ll just stroll into the nearest chemist’s or apothecary’s and pick those up.”

  “Lovely.” Claire smiled.

  “I ’ope you ’ave lots of dosh, lady, because those things don’t sound free. Or easily liberated, if you get my drift.”

  “Dosh?”

  “Cash. Blunt. Pounds sterling.”

  She had no such thing. She had never carried more than a few shillings for sweets, and had no doubt at all that the household money had been looted from wherever Mrs. Morven kept it in Carrick House. “I’m afraid not. What shall we do, then?”

  The Mopsies elbowed each other and grinned. Snouts jerked his chin in their direction. “These ’uns ’ave a few useful talents along those lines. At least it ent the Lord’s Day. Pickings is always slim in the church crowd.”

  “Pick—?” And then the penny dropped. “Oh, no. No. You will not be stealing from people’s pockets the means to obtain these items. Absolutely not.”

  Five pairs of eyes turned on her with incredulity. “Beggin’ yer pardon, lady, but where d’you suppose the bread and corn came from?”

  “I have no idea.” Someone had gone to the market, hadn’t they?

  Snouts shook his head at her ignorance, and Claire began to feel nettled. “Babes in the woods,” he sighed. “Rag-pickin’ don’t cover expenses. If we don’t steal, we don’t eat, simple as that. If you’ve strong opinions on’t, I suggest we end our association ’ere.”

  “Not until I get my landau back.”

  “Then yer goin’ t’be awful hungry along about Wednesday.”

  Sleeping rough was one thing. But descending to criminal activity simply to eat? Unheard of. Unacceptable. As it was, she was walking the knife’s edge—if it were discovered where she was, she could never be received again in polite society.

  “Good heavens, Mr. McTavish. Has it never occurred to you that there are alternatives to stealing? Such as employment, for instance?”

  “’Oo’s gonna employ the likes of us?” Tigg wanted to know.

  She surveyed the ragged, filthy band. Point taken. “Well, if we cannot earn our bread by the skill of our hands, we must earn it by the power of our intellect. How many of you have your numbers?”

  No response.

  “None of you can count? Or do arithmetic?”

  Silence.

  “Dear me. All right. I can see I have my work cut out for me. So let me ask you this—do any of you gentlemen know where the gaming parlors are?” At this, every male hand but Willie’s went up. “Ah. I thought as much. Are we possessed of a pack of cards?”

  Tigg reached over and removed the lid of the stove. He rummaged inside and withdrew a pack of dog-eared and dirty cards, tied into a bundle with a piece of hemp. “Keeps ’em dry in there,” he said by way of explanation. “What does knowing our numbers ’ave to do with the gaming parlors, lady?”

  “Simply this. Unless one knows the values of the numbers, one cannot play cards successfully. And unless one plays successfully, one cannot win the pot. Do you see my reasoning now?”

  Their eyes widened as the bright vista of possibility opened up to them. “Gather round, all of you. I’m going to teach you your numbers—yes, even you, Willie—and then I’m going to teach you a game of skill and strategy. To the inhabitants of the Wild West, it’s known as cowboy poker.”

  Chapter 18

  Andrew Malvern had not known that James, always so hearty and hail-fellow-well-met, was a proud man. But it was quite plain that he possessed that vice, and that Lady Claire Trevelyan had injured it, whether she’d meant to or not. The fact that his partner struggled with a vice he did not didn’t bother him. After all, Andrew himself struggled with his temper and a tendency to fall into a glass of whiskey when he was tired and frustrated.

  No, what bothered him was that because James considered himself snubbed by the young lady, he, Andrew, had lost the possibility of a fine assistant. How many gently bred young ladies, after all, were not only possessed of a landau and the skill to pilot it, but read scientific journals to boot? It galled him, frankly, and he was quite put out with his friend even now.

  In fact, he was so put out that he couldn’t stay in his own laboratory, for fear that James would return and he would say more things he couldn’t take back. Instead of sending a tube to place another order of coal and chemicals, he had gone to the coal-yard himself, and then to the manufactory. He’d taken his evening meal with a glass of foamy beer at his mother’s cottage in Stratford, and watched the sun set over the smoke of London feeling full but not content.

  He heard the whisper of her skirts upon the terrace
a moment before she joined him. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you and young Lord James on the outs, Andrew. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  “There is nothing you can do, Mother.”

  “I can listen. It’s clear you need to get it off your chest, and you know it’ll go no further.”

  That was true. A former lady’s maid, his mother had married a policeman who had advanced through the ranks to captain of his own detachment before he’d passed on. As confidante to both, she was the repository of secrets that even he was not permitted to know—such as what really caused the Duchess of Tavistock to divorce her husband, or what might have happened to the infant Lord Wilberforce Dunsmuir, who had disappeared two years ago from his bed under the very nose of his nurse. His mother had been employed in both households in her youth and in the latter case, still kept in contact with the nurse, sending the poor woman a basket of food every now and then to keep her from starvation.

  “Very well.” He told her the whole story and ended with, “So there you have it. A woman’s come between us at last—but not in the way I might have expected.”

  “The poor child,” his mother murmured. “Viscount St. Ives’s daughter, you say?”

  “The very same. Now reduced to earning her bread like the rest of us—though I must say she doesn’t behave like your average Blood. She plans to put herself through university.”

  “It will take more than the wages you can give her to do that.”

  “I know, but I admire her for her ambition, at least. And there are scholarships to be had.”

  “If one has the right connections.”

  “Wit or Blood, I’m sure she does.”

  His mother reached across the glass table for the newspaper that sat folded there. “I thought her name sounded familiar. Did you see this?” She opened the Evening Standard to the front page.

  RIOT IN BELGRAVIA LEAVES BURNING QUESTIONS

  Last evening the titled residents of Belgravia were treated to a shocking example of unbridled brigandry that prompted butlers up and down the tidy streets to lock doors and seek out the nearest fireplace poker. Carrick House was the focus of a mob of fifty or more, all of whom were whipped into an emotional frenzy by a speaker at Hyde Park Corner. The crowd adjourned to Wilton Crescent, where they converged upon the house of the late Viscount St. Ives, whom many are accusing of being the engineer behind the infamous Arabian Bubble. Whether this is true or not, the crowd obviously believed it to be so. With windows broken and furniture burned, this reporter was shocked to the core at such a public display of bad feeling.

  A bystander said the uncontrollable mob was shouting about recouping its investments. “But that’s hardly reasonable when they made a bonfire in the street out of items they could have sold,” he said. “I feared for the lives of the remaining occupants of the house.”

  Indeed, according to reports, the sister of the present viscount was believed to have been in residence at the time, along with one or two loyal retainers. Her whereabouts at present are not known.

  “Great Scott.” Andrew held the paper up. “It says no one knows where she is.”

  “So now I ask myself, is this tiff really over the young lady and Lord James, or the young lady and you, my dear boy?”

  Andrew put the paper down and rose. “She is a young woman of intellect and spirit, Mother. This is not about a tiff at all—anyone would be concerned for a person of their acquaintance.”

  “Certainly,” she agreed.

  “Any gentleman with an ounce of humanity would be shocked at such a report.”

  “Of course.”

  “I shall take my leave now, Mother. Thank you for supper.”

  “My compliments to Lord James when you make it up with him. And to the young lady when you find her.”

  He paused in the act of putting on his bowler. “Mother.”

  She made a gesture as though she were buttoning her lips, and smiled as she kissed him goodbye.

  He caught an evening train into Victoria Station and walked the few blocks into Belgrave Square at a fast clip. The smell of burned, wet wood hung on the air as he rounded the corner into Wilton Crescent, and though he had never been to Carrick House, it wasn’t difficult to tell which had been Lady Claire’s home.

  It was the only one on the crescent with no windows left on the ground floor. The white-painted Georgian exterior was smudged with black handprints, and the sidewalk in front had been trampled to the point that bricks had come loose, like teeth after a blow.

  Dismayed, he stared from the house to the street, where dustmen were still loading the last charred and broken pieces of furniture into their wagon. One of them saw his face and paused to direct a stream of chewing tobacco into the still-smoking heap.

  “Shame, innit?” he said affably.

  “That it is.” Understatement of the year.

  “Eejits, all of ’em. Her ladyship’ll not be able to get half the dosh she might’ve before. If they’re lookin’ for their money back, they just done themselves out of a bundle of it.”

  “I daresay you are right.” Andrew scanned the house once more. “Her ladyship is not in residence?”

  “Not that I know. Was supposed to be a daughter still ’ere but there’s been no sign of ’er, and I been ’ere since teatime. Prob’ly be an hour or so more, once t’lamps come on.”

  Andrew dug in his breast pocket. “If you see her, could you give her my card?”

  The dustman peered at it in the gloom. “Wot’re you, some sort of solicitor or summink?”

  “No, just a—” Well, what was he, exactly? “A friend. A very concerned friend. I should like to know she’s safe, at the very least.”

  “Can’t fault a man fer that.” The dustman pocketed the card. “S’a shame.”

  It was as good an epitaph as any. Andrew thanked the man and began his walk back to Victoria Station. He had inherited his father’s aptitude for puzzles, and here was one that involved not only the brain, but also the sympathies of a gentleman. Lady Claire’s incursion into his life had been brief but brilliant, and he could not now walk away. He must apply his mind to finding her himself.

  Chapter 19

  As it turned out, Snouts possessed the greatest aptitude, not for numbers, but for bluffing. “It is that talent that will allow you to win,” Claire assured him. “Such a skill cannot be taught. In the meantime, let us count these diamonds once more—if you have three on this card and four on this one, how many do you have in total?”

  Tigg and Jake had at one time in their dark pasts received some schooling, so addition and subtraction came back fairly quickly. The Mopsies, however, treated the concept of multiplication with dark suspicion. To them, it was simply not possible to arrive at a single answer in a multitude of ways. One added three to three to get six, one did not simply say, “twice three” and arrive at six. Since there were only four suits, Claire could only advance to the four times table in any case. Everything after that would have to be memorized … another day.

  Without slates, chalk, or books, they were limited to what the cards could teach them, and as the day tilted into afternoon, she and Snouts needed the deck themselves. They played hand after hand of poker until Tigg nudged her.

  “We can’t do this much longer, lady. Everyone’ll be stumblin’ off ’ome soon to get a bit of shut-eye before tonight’s games.”

  “We want to play when they’re tired and foxed.” Snouts gathered up the cards and tapped them into a neat deck. “Only one problem I can see.”

  “What would that be?” Claire lifted the stove lid so he could put the cards back in their place. “You have all done very well today. Even Jake can play a respectable hand, though I would not bet the deed to an estate on it.”

  “That’s just it,” Snouts said. “What ’ave we got to bet wiv besides great lots of nuffink?”

  Claire sat rather suddenly on the broken stool she had been using. “Oh. I had not got that far in my strategy.” She regarded him
while her mind raced and anxiety puddled in her stomach. How could she not have thought of this? The whole point of gambling was to win, but one had to have a stake in order to be included in the game.

  She did not even have a toothpick.

  But wait—

  Her gaze narrowed on Snouts. “We do have something to throw in the pot,” she said. “Where is my exchange for teaching you your numbers? Where is my great-grandmother’s ring?”

  “You get yer stuff back when you teach us about chemicals and suchlike useful items.” Jake tilted his chair back, severely endangering its bodily integrity. “Not arithmetic.”

  “Shut up, Jake.” Snouts reached under the muffler wound about his neck and rummaged in his shirt. “This it?”

  Her great-grandmother’s Georgian emerald winked in his palm. Claire restrained herself from snatching it by sitting on her hands. She would not say she had gained their trust, but at least she was making every effort she could to help them in their uneasy truce. However, it seemed she would have to make this ultimate sacrifice in order to attain the greater goal.

  “Yes, that’s it.” With a breath, she committed herself. “We will use it for our stake. I implore you to use your skills to the utmost, Mr. McTavish. I should very much like to see it come back again.”

  “I ent goin’ into this wiv the intent to lose it, if that’s wot you mean.” He tucked the ring away.

  “I still say we pawn the thing,” Jake put in. “Stupid to risk it when we could get ten pound easy over t’ Seven Dials.”

  “We ent goin’ to pawn the lady’s ring if we have a chance of winnin’ the pot,” Tigg told him.

  “What chance? Snouts ent no strategy man. You’ve got me for that.”

  “But you cannot recognize the numbers on the cards fast enough,” Claire reminded him. “Snouts is our best chance.”