Lady of Devices Read online

  I will be much occupied over the next several weeks but I beg you not to worry.

  Your affectionate

  Claire

  With a hiss, the second missive began its much briefer journey over to Cadogan Square. Claire could only hope that Emilie was in the habit of intercepting her own mail, otherwise she would have sacrificed an end-paper to the Fragonard drawing-room fire. She returned to the third floor and began to collect end-papers and frontispieces from the shards of books on the floor. If Tigg and the others were to advance beyond the four times table, she would need something to write on. She tucked them in her satchel and surveyed the bedrooms. What else? Linens? No. There were no beds to put them on. Basin and ewer? Smashed. Clothes? She was hard put to carry the trunk she had. No point in bringing anything else along.

  The painful truth was, she could not bring anything from her old life with her. Nor could she bring Snouts and the others here, sensible though that idea was. They could not be coming and going in Mayfair without danger of arrest simply for being who they were. It was up to her to resign herself to living rough until she had done what she had promised to do.

  But in the meantime, life could be made a little easier, could it not? Back on the fourth floor, in Mrs. Morven’s room, she found a spare packet of tooth powder and a bar of soap. The good lady would not begrudge them, and Claire would reimburse her as soon as she could. She scooped up the mother’s helper and it immediately stopped moving. Tucking it under her arm, she descended the stairs.

  Where was Mrs. Morven? And Gorse?

  She had no way to tell them she was safe, and no way to find out if they were. All she could do was leave a note in their shambles of a kitchen and hope that one of them would return and find it. She wrote something brief and cheerful on an end-paper and left it on the chopping block. Then she picked up half a dozen metal forks and two slightly bent knives from the floor and tucked them in her satchel, with the mother’s helper going into the basket. If there was to be food today, at least they would have the wherewithal to eat it.

  Food. Her stomach must surely be sticking to her backbone. In this house of plenty, could she not at least find something to keep body and soul together? At the very back of the cold cupboard, she found an apple, aged and wrinkled. With relief and a sense that she was behaving very much like poor Rosie, she devoured it in seconds. It did not fill her stomach, but at least she could face the long walk back to the squat with something approaching fortitude.

  The squat. Another night lying on the rag-pile. And the prospect of Jake, who would have knifed her if his fear hadn’t overridden his hatred.

  Outside on the step, she ran a gentle hand over the panels of the door as it did its best to close. For a moment, she leaned against it, eyes closed, breathing in the smell of paint and slightly splintered wood. Then she turned her face to the street and steeled herself to leave home once again.

  Chapter 21

  “Twenty quid! Twenty quid!” Snouts riffled the ragged pile of bills in Claire’s face and danced a jig around her. “I’m the king of cowboy poker and I’m rich!”

  With a laugh, Claire watched him attempt to polka with Tigg, who pushed him off with a “Garn, ya big lummox!” Then she folded her arms. “You mean to say, of course, that we are rich. Since this was a community effort, we all share in the spoils.”

  “Ah ... but it was me puttin’ me ’ead in the lion’s mouth, as it were.”

  “Nonsense. The lions were drunk as lords and too bleary-eyed to see. It was a case of superior apprehension of strategy on your part, timing on Tigg’s part, and a lavish stake on my part. Which I would like returned, if you please.”

  Whatever else he might be, she had observed that Snouts was a practical boy. Not only was he outnumbered, but the outnumbering parties were hungry, anxious, and not too proud to take him to the ground if he gave her any more guff. He dug about his person and produced the emerald ring. Claire’s fingers closed around it with an internal prayer of thanks. Then she slipped it on the middle finger of her right hand—the only one it fit—and held out her left hand, palm up.

  Snouts eyed her. “Now, lady, even you will say it’s fair for me to ’ave me winnings once you’ve got your property back.”

  “I’m grateful to have my stake returned. But as I’ve said, the winnings belong to all. We must save five pounds to stake the next game. Each member here receives two, to spend as they wish. That leaves five pounds for you, Mr. McTavish, which you must admit is far more than you would otherwise have had without our help.”

  “An’ what about them chemicals?” Jake wanted to know.

  “You are quite correct, Mr. Jake. I can obtain the chemicals with one of my two pounds. With the other, I must have something to eat or I shall fall down where I stand. We do not even have a loaf of bread this morning. Who’s with me?”

  Maggie and Willie crowded her skirts. “C’n we ’ave a sweet?”

  She looked down into two pairs of eyes, both shadowed with dirt and more care than a child should ever be burdened with. “I should think that a sweet would be a fitting reward for a job well done in the field of mathematics. And we must not forget Rosie while we are enjoying the fruits of our labors.”

  “She laid an egg,” Maggie said in a confidential tone. “I hid it.”

  Lizzie hung back, her face cloudy as the desire to go fought with the necessity of its being in Claire’s company.

  “Miss Elizabeth, we would be glad of your company if you should care to join us.”

  “My name’s Lizzie.”

  “Of course it is—to your family. But it would be impertinent of me to address you so familiarly on such short acquaintance.”

  “Say ‘I beg yer pardon,’” Maggie urged her sister.

  “Ent beggin’ her pardon for nuffink.”

  “That’s quite all right, Miss Margaret,” Claire assured her before fisticuffs ensued. “I am not offended. Let us be off. Master Jake, if you would be so kind as to accompany us, you may find it useful to memorize the list of ingredients as they are measured out. Since I do not have the use of my notebook.”

  He nodded, his face expressionless as this hint flew straight past his ears.

  Ah well. She could hardly expect to reclaim all her things so soon.

  They found a likely chemist in a lane just off Haymarket, in a neighborhood where Claire was unlikely to see anyone she knew, but which received enough custom from people of quality that her accent would ensure there were no uncomfortable questions. At the door, Claire turned to see a familiar form whisk itself into the shadows further down the street. She schooled her lips into serious lines. “Miss Maggie, would you be so good as to invite your sister to join us? It is too bad of an acquaintance of mine to behave like a footpad.”

  “She ent much of a footpad if you could see ’er,” Jake pointed out.

  Maggie ran off while she pushed open the door to the shop, setting the bell over the door to ringing. Behind an oak counter blackened with age, the chemist looked up from measuring a paper of powder. At the sight of Jake, he frowned. “See here. Get away from that lady, you. I’ll have none of your thievery in here.”

  The place smelled of lemon, bitter herbs, and kerosene, and Claire fought the urge to sneeze. “This young man is not a thief,” she assured him in her plummiest tones. “Nor is this boy, or these girls,” she added as the bell rang again and the Mopsies fell into the shop. “He is here to assist me as part of his education.”

  The chemist did not dare contradict her, but his gaze did not leave Jake’s grubby hands as he said, “My apologies, my lady. Many ladies of quality take an interest in the indigent. How may I help you this morning?”

  Beside her, Jake bristled. He may not know what indigent meant, but he certainly recognized the tone. She laid a hand on his jacket sleeve. “We are pursuing studies in the field of science, and my experiments require a number of chemicals.” Beginning with the liquid capsaicin, she dictated a list of what she required, estimati
ng the amounts of each from recent experience. She spoke slowly, so that the chemist could write them down, and Jake could commit them to memory.

  “It will take me some time to measure these out, my lady. Boy!” he shouted.

  Beside her, Willie jumped, though he had been doing nothing worse than pressing his nose against the glass of the case.

  “Sir?” A young man even thinner than Snouts popped out of a door in the rear like a jack-in-the-box.

  “Would you care for some tea while you wait, my lady?” the chemist inquired. “Robin will fetch it for you.”

  “How very kind. We should all love some, thank you.”

  The chemist looked flummoxed. “Er, so that would be—”

  “Five cups. Thank you so much.”

  Ten minutes later found them seated with mugs of hot tea, sweet with honey and smoky with toasted jasmine. Lizzie and Willie slurped theirs with abandon, and Claire realized that lessons in deportment would need to be added to mathematics and science if they were to come out with her again. Maggie watched her every move, mimicking the way she held the mug, sipping when she sipped. When Willie drained his mug, Claire picked up the teapot. “May I offer you more?”

  He shoved the mug closer, and Claire said to Maggie, “One goes to finishing school for months to learn how to pour tea gracefully, but the essence of the matter is this—your back must be straight, your shoulders lowered, and the speed of the pour is in direct proportion to the depth of the cup. In addition, you must never allow the spout to leak. If it does, the angle at which you are holding it is too steep.” She filled Willie’s cup without spilling a drop from the Brown Betty pot. “Would you like to try?”

  Maggie swallowed the last of her tea and put it down, regarding the pot as one would a poisonous viper. “Pick it up by the handle, and rest your fingers upon the lid. In this way it will not fall off and land in your guest’s cup. I can tell you from experience the consequences can be disastrous.”

  Fortunately, the pot was nearly empty and not very heavy. Maggie picked it up, held the lid on as if she were preventing a geyser from spouting out the top, and dribbled a quarter of it on the table before she got some into the mug that Jake pushed toward her.

  “Thanks, Mags.” As if having his tea poured by a lady were nothing out of the ordinary, Jake picked it up and took a long swallow.

  “Well done, Maggie.” Claire smiled as the girl put the pot down and sat back, blowing a long breath up through the blond curls that fell in her face.

  “She made a mess,” Lizzie said angrily. “It weren’t well done at all.”

  “Would you like to try?” Claire hadn’t meant to be challenging, but Lizzie evidently took it that way. She snorted and grabbed the handle of the pot. But she underestimated its weight—the spout dipped—the lid fell off and smashed upon the tiles—and the entire pot slid from her hands and crashed upon the floor in an explosion of pottery shards and sodden tea leaves. Lizzie shrieked and burst into tears.

  “Here, here, what’s this?” The chemist and Robin erupted from the back of the shop, staring at the mess in dismay. “You ruffians, look what you’ve done!”

  Claire rose, lengthening her neck and looking down upon him. “To whom are you referring?”

  He blinked and flushed. “I didn’t mean you, my lady. I meant—”

  “Surely not my charges. I was attempting to give a lesson in deportment and we met with an accident. I will be happy to reimburse you for the cost of the pot and the tea. It was delicious and we enjoyed it very much.”

  It would also likely wipe out the few shillings she was hoping to save for something to eat, but there was nothing to be done about that. She could be grateful the tea had come their way unasked; her dehydrated body was reviving already.

  Robin cleared away the mess while Maggie dragged her snuffling sister out into the street, where it was clear the latter was being read the Riot Act. Claire couldn’t find it in her heart to stop her. Perhaps a remonstration from the sister she loved would do more to changing Lizzie’s attitude than chapter and verse from anyone else.

  The chemist tied up the vials and papers of chemicals into a neat parcel, and Claire handed over her precious two pounds. When a couple of shillings came back, it was all she could do not to snatch at them in case he changed his mind. Instead, she tucked them into her glove, gathered up her charges, and handed the parcel to Jake.

  “Now,” she said as they emerged from the lane onto Haymarket, “let’s find lots of lovely things to eat while you, Master Jake, recite the contents of that parcel back to me.”

  As they went from the pie-seller to the sweet stall to the orange seller, Jake slowly and laboriously told over the list of chemicals, exactly as she had given it to the chemist. And when she finally—finally!—had a steak and kidney pie in her hands, she had to admit that his memory was faultless.

  “Well done, Master Jake.” She ate the pie out of her own palms, and nothing had ever tasted so good. “Well done indeed. Are you able to read and write, so that you can make the record permanent?”

  “I know my letters.”

  “Good. Then I encourage you to possess yourself of a pencil at one of these stalls—paid for, if you please,” she added hastily, as he made to reach for one on the sly. “I have paper in my satchel. You can begin your own compendium of chemical devices this very day.”

  He slid a glance at her as he handed over a ha’penny for the pencil and put it in his pocket. “Don’t seem very smart to be tellin’ folk yer secrets.”

  “That was our agreement.”

  “Still. Folk’d pay big to know how to make them devices.”

  “Perhaps. Do you plan to sell that list to Billy Crumwell?”

  He stopped, his eyes wide, and his free hand slid under the hem of his ragged jacket, where he kept his knife on his belt. “I ent no turncoat,” he said in a low, dangerous tone.

  Claire hoped he could not see her pulse pounding in her throat, and busied herself dusting crumbs off her hands and face. “I did not say you were. It seemed an odd thing for you to say, that’s all.”

  “Tweren’t me I meant. You could sell that list easy.”

  “I have no desire to sell it.” She kept her voice admirably calm. “I would rather use it to better our circumstances. No, Willie, I’m afraid that if you have another sweet you will be sick. Perhaps you might look for something Rosie would enjoy.”

  “What’s the matter wiv our circumstances?” Jake demanded.

  “You must admit that rag-picking has its limits as a career,” she told him. “If you were to focus your talents on chemistry, you might go farther.”

  “How’m I to do that?”

  “I might be of some assistance.”

  “Yer gonna disappear as sudden as you came. I don’t know what yer playin’ at, lady, but you don’t belong wiv us.”

  Playing was the last word she would use to describe her situation. She swallowed the sharp retort on the tip of her tongue and said instead, “At the moment, our circumstances are remarkably similar. Rioters burned my house two days ago, Master Jake. It was in fleeing them that I came to your attention at the Aldgate station.”

  “What’d they do that for?”

  “They thought my father owed them money. Except that he is dead and unable to pay.” Jake snorted and Claire felt her cheeks cool with affront. “I find nothing amusing in that, sir.”

  “Oh, I do, lady. That’s ezackly how I came to be on the streets.”

  “Where is your mother, then?”

  “Dead.”

  “And you have no one?”

  “Just Snouts and Tigg and the others.”

  “But no family?”

  “Nope. You?”

  “My mother is in Cornwall. She may as well be at the ends of the earth.”

  “I’m goin’ t’the ends of the earth someday.”

  Unbidden, a smile tugged at her lips. “That’s an admirable ambition, Master Jake. Shall you explore the Amazon, do you thi
nk?”

  “Dunno. I’ll most likely be transported for thieving.”

  With a sigh, Claire turned her attention to the whereabouts of her younger charges. One thing at a time. He had not, after all, pulled the knife on her.

  Yet.

  Chapter 22

  The moon was no more than a possibility above the rooftops and catwalks of the docks when Claire finished compounding the gaseous capsaicin devices. By the light of a single stubby candle, Jake had recorded the ingredients and the steps by which they went together in laborious capitals, which meant that Claire worked much more slowly than usual. If she had had her notebook to hand, she could have completed the task in a quarter of an hour, but she stood more to gain by encouraging Jake’s cooperation—not to mention the fact that here was an excellent opportunity for him to practice his letters and spelling.

  Snouts ranged from doorway to doorway, his eye on the cobbled street on one side, and the river on the other. “Come on,” he urged every five minutes. “They’ll be long away before we get there.”

  Claire was at least as impatient as he; she was only better at concealing it. “We are ready, Mr. McTavish.” She wrapped the vials carefully in what might once have been a tea towel before stowing them in her satchel. “Let’s be off.”

  Billy Crumwell and his gang, it turned out, were the lords of a squat in St. Giles Close, an address that sounded much more aristocratic than it was thanks to its proximity to the impoverished St. Giles Church. All the same, it possessed a stone foundation, sturdy walls, and even an empty space in the back that had once aspired to being a garden.

  “Does Billy Crumwell own this property?” Claire whispered to Snouts, crouching next to him in the shadows of the church’s graveyard.

  Snouts gave a snort, quickly muffled. “Don’t nobody own it but who c’n ’ang onto it. Billy knifed Spotted Dick Black to get it, after ’e’d been in ’is gang for a year.”

  “But someone must own it.”