Magnificent Devices [5] A Lady of Resources Read online

  Lizzie sat up straight on her bed, and swung her feet to the floor, as if the glossy walnut planking could steady her.

  Father had said he’d sent a pigeon to Geneva, telling them of her change in name and requesting a lady’s maid for her. But pigeons did not fly to fixed addresses. That was what the tube system was for. Pigeons flew to moving recipients, like airships and steamships. The only reason Athena’s pigeon came to Wilton Crescent was because Lewis had illegally monkeyed with its guidance system to protect the Lady’s most confidential correspondence.

  Why had Father sent a pigeon instead of a tube? To rendezvous with a ship bound for the same location? But Victory had been moored right here when he’d sent it. Lizzie got up and began to pace the Persian carpet.

  You can’t solve that one, my girl. Back to the cannon.

  All right, then. One could shoot ships and things out of the sky. But why would one want to? The only ships that passed by this deep in the country—far from the industrial shipping lanes—were private ones, like Victory or Athena or the one the Prince of Wales would undoubtedly use to come to his estate.

  She ran into a wall, both literally and figuratively, and turned for the door. There was no point in thinking this way, ducks notwithstanding. None of it made any sense, just as that pocket watch that was a bomb had made no sense until her father had explained what it had been intended for. She simply did not have enough information—and would not, until she could talk with someone.

  She needed Maggie.

  If she sent a tube now, her sister would get it this evening, and board a train in the morning. By this time tomorrow, she could be sitting here with her, talking it over and trying to decide if it would be better to sit tight and not think crazy thoughts, or to get down to the business they were both best at—keeping a watchful eye out while poking their noses where they didn’t belong.

  Quietly, in as ladylike a fashion as she could manage, Lizzie drifted through the silent house to the morning room, where there was an escritoire, ink, and stationery. The fact that it bore the family crest of those who had lived here previously made her a little uncomfortable, but when one needed paper this urgently, one ignored such niceness.

  Dear Maggie,

  Please forgive me for being such a toplofty gumpus. It has only been a day, but I miss you dreadfully. I was stupid, and I’m sorry.

  Something has come up here at Colliford and I need you with me, as soon as you can get a train. If you get the seven-fifteen from Paddington you’ll be here in time for lunch. I can’t put it in writing, but … bring raiding rig. And my antigravity corset. I could have used it today.

  Please don’t tell the Lady. I may be able to explain you to Father, but I will not be able to explain her—and besides, she will only worry, or worse, come like lightning rather than harmless as a cloud.

  Please, Mags. I believe I may be going crazy, and I should like you to tell me not to be a stupenagel.

  All love,

  Lizzie

  She sealed the sheet in an envelope so it couldn’t be read by whoever happened to collect it at Wilton Crescent, and set the code. With a pneumatic slurp, the tube was sucked away. She checked to see that nothing had arrived in the other slot, and then heard the lunch gong.

  She and Evan were the only ones to come to the table, but this time, she refused to sit thirty feet away. She picked up the entire place setting and walked the length of the table to re-set it all on Evan’s right.

  “Miss Elizabeth,” Kennidge said, shocked. “Is the setting not satisfactory?”

  “When we are en famille, Kennidge, I should like to be seated together from now on. How can I get to know my family when I am forced to shout down the length of the room?”

  Kennidge permitted himself a smile, and bowed. “Yes, miss. It shall be as you say. And, er—the pickle fork goes to the outside of the salad fork, miss. Like this.”

  It was the first time she had ever given household instructions. It felt very satisfying—but she must not let the feeling of power go to her head. The Lady had told them often enough that servants were simply men and women like themselves, earning a living, and were to be treated with the respect and civility one would give an equal.

  After lunch, Evan returned to the tower and she listened to the servants moving about the silent house. With every hour that passed, she became more and more edgy, listening for the sound of a tube arriving even though she knew it could not come before midnight at the earliest. The thought of the telescope—cannon—gnawed at her, and the sharper the thought of it became, the more it seemed that her father must know what he was housing on his roof.

  He dealt in arms. She knew that because he’d told her, in Munich. He’d had that bomb in his pocket to show to Count von Zeppelin. His story seemed wildly dangerous—if not utterly improbable. Looking back now, the Lady had to have been right, and Lizzie had been blinded by her need to believe in him and had not been willing to admit it. What if, as she had suggested, something had tugged the pin out during the dancing? What if he had pulled too hard on the chain or dropped the device? Why on earth carry a bomb about your person when you knew it was live and could kill you and everyone within ten feet of you?

  Oh, this way lay madness. She hated not knowing the answers to questions. And what was more, she hated having to ask them. To admit the possibility that she might have been deceived.

  Lizzie found herself back on the second floor, outside her father’s study, which was next to the morning room. The door was closed, but she knew he was out on the estate with his manager. Perhaps there was something in here that could shed some light on the subject before she began screaming from tension and sheer frustration.

  She went in, careful to close the door behind her. It was the only entrance, but two long windows with burgundy velvet curtains overlooked the front drive. One of them stood open, the curtains gently billowing and brushing the carpet. Outside, the wind was coming up, and clouds scudded across a sky that had been clear before lunch.

  She wouldn’t stay long. Perhaps only long enough to glance over his desk.

  It was very clean, as though the maids had dusted only moments ago, and held nothing but a blotter and an inkwell.

  She’d stay only long enough to open a drawer or two, then.

  The top ones held pens, stationery, peppermints, two letter openers, and bits and bobs of pencils and string. Both the middle ones held what seemed to be account books. She riffled the pages and didn’t see anything more exciting than the price of cigars and a replacement propeller for Victory. These must be his personal accounts, not those of the estate. Claude’s tuition and books, seven pairs of shoes—seven? Good heavens, Claude was nearly as bad as Arabella. A silk scarf, cufflinks from Bond Street. Yawn. She flipped some more pages, but they were blank.

  The deep bottom drawer on the right held a bottle of spirits, though why he should bother when there was a full array there on the sideboard was a mystery. When she shoved the drawer back in with her knee, it stuck.

  “Bother. Come on, you.” What was the matter with it? It had come out easily enough. She ran a hand under the drawer above to check the clearance, and felt something soft. With pages. Held to the underside of the drawer above by a pair of thin leather straps. Good grief, did he think this was a particularly good hiding place? Willie could have found a better one. “So, Father, what have we here?”

  She drew out a leather-bound book. Another account book, from the look of it, but its contents were utterly different. Metal parts and gears. Gunpowder. Brass barrel, two hundred pounds sterling. Columns of figures that looked like estimates of distance versus velocity, multiplied by several different weights of projectiles.

  Outside, she heard the musical chugging of a steam landau and for one crazy moment, she thought the Lady had returned to collect her. A quick look out the window squashed that idea—it was her father, unfolding himself out of the passenger side while a man who must be his estate manager leaned over the acceleration
bar to converse through the window.

  Lizzie dashed to the desk and slid the book back into its holding straps, then lifted the bottom drawer a little in its track as she shoved it in. It slid into place with a clink of the contents inside. She wasted no more time, but ran out of the room and down the stairs, and was waiting with a smile when her father came in the front door, removing his gloves and hat and placing them in Kennidge’s care.

  He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Now, here is a sight to warm the heart. What have you been doing with yourself today, my dear?”

  The Lady said that the truth was always the best course—except when it might result in bodily harm or the betrayal of a friend. But one did not have to tell the entire truth—or even the majority of it. “Evan showed me the dream device, and I have volunteered to be a subject for him before the week is out.”

  “Have you?” He led the way into the library, where he poured himself a thimbleful of spirits. “That is both brave and kind, to help your cousin in such a way.”

  “The only trouble is that we cannot work for two more days, until after the scientists have gone.”

  He poured another thimble. “Our loss is somewhat mitigated, then—I have been informed that the weather is too unpredictable and the entire party have put off the trip.”

  Disappointment clashed with relief. “Then I shall not have to be your hostess?”

  “Not for a few days. Why, were you nervous about it?”

  She shook her head. “Between Lady Claire, Lady Dunsmuir, and the Landgrafin von Zeppelin, Maggie and I are well versed in etiquette. In fact, I think we could pour tea into a thimble balanced upon the nose of a spaniel and not spill a drop. No, I had been looking forward to it. I shall merely continue to do so.”

  “Good. Well, I must catch up with the newspapers, now that I am to be at leisure today.” He settled into a chair, where the afternoon editions were already neatly stacked on a table at his elbow.

  She hovered near the door. “Father, how did you hear that the scientists were not coming?”

  He looked up, distracted, from the racing news. “I suppose I received a tube. I cannot remember, but I do remember feeling quite put out for your sake. I believe you missed your Lady Claire’s investiture today for nothing, to say nothing of the excursion to Newquay.”

  There had been no tubes, and she had been listening all afternoon. “Does the estate manager’s house have its own tube address?”

  “Hm? Of course, dear.”

  “Then you got the news about the scientists there?”

  “No. Here. What the deuce does it matter? I am trying to resuscitate my mind after a distressing afternoon looking at tumbledown tenants’ cottages, and I do not wish to be pestered.” He took a breath as he tried to control his tone. “Forgive me, my dear. I dislike a badly run show, and that is what this estate has become. Be an angel and go and tell Evan he may begin his experiments on—with—you as soon as he pleases.”

  “Of course, Father.” She crossed the room to kiss him, but by the time she reached the door again, he had disappeared behind the paper.

  Grimly, she took herself outside, where the wind was as fractious as a small child in a temper, slapping her skirts this way and that, and tugging on her hair.

  Point one: Her father knew he had a cannon on the roof, and had overseen its construction himself in some detail.

  Point two: There had been no tube. Either the scientists were coming still, or they had never been coming at all. What proof did she have, after all, that they were expecting guests? The servants had not been dashing about with bed linens and flowers, nor was there activity in the kitchen that would suggest the preparation of a large meal. The entire castle, in fact, seemed to be resting on its elbows in quiet relief after the Sorbonne set’s departure, not building up a head of steam to manage a new influx of guests.

  Conclusion: Her father was lying to her in matters great and small. The question was, why? What was going on here at Colliford Castle … and why, she wondered with a chill as the clouds massed and hid the sun, had he maneuvered everything so that she was here all alone?

  17

  Evan Douglas, while taken aback at the change in plans, was quite willing to make adjustments and alter course. “If I do not have to waste the evening worrying about collar points and dessert forks, I can spend it preparing the mnemosomniograph. If you assist me, Lizzie, it is entirely possible that we could begin in the morning.”

  While she had been looking forward to acting as hostess for the very first time, underneath it all Lizzie felt a loosening of tension. For if even one of the scientists brought up the subject of telescopes, she knew herself only too well. She would not be able to resist asking questions about it, and she would slip up, and then her father would know that she knew.

  The fact that she knew nothing would not keep her out of trouble, if he was going to these lengths to keep the cannon a secret.

  She spent the evening fetching and carrying for Evan, and then upon his advice, took a hot bath in the clawfoot tub and drank a mug of warm milk and honey in bed. This was supposed to calm her mind and clear the slate, as it were, for the experiments the next day.

  A scientist might be able to go to sleep and save his dreams for the next day, but she was too excited about what might happen upon the dreaming table to do so. She fished a couple of books out of the bookshelf next to the bed to see if reading would help to put her to sleep. It often worked with history textbooks, to say nothing of philosophy.

  They were children’s picture books. Mother Goose. Little Playfellows. Aesop’s Fables. And as she turned the pages, time seemed to recede and turn back on itself. It was not the same room, nor the same bed. But these were the same books.

  Her books, Maggie’s books, from their life before.

  She could almost feel the warm arms of her mother around her, almost hear the soft voice as she read Lizzie’s favorite, “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” She’d never had much patience with silly Grasshopper, when even tiny birds knew that you had to save up for the winter. Ant’s patient industry in the face of Grasshopper’s derision had stuck with Lizzie, even when she’d long forgotten its source. Maybe Ant was why she’d steal two pieces of bread when it was much more dangerous than one. Or hide a bit of cabbage or a wrinkled apple in the squat, just in case a day passed where they couldn’t scrounge enough for everyone.

  Before long, the soft echo of her mother’s voice reading still in her mind, Lizzie fell asleep.

  “Charles!” Lizzie woke with a start in the cozy cupboard bed where she and Maggie slept aboard the airship. Her mother had slid the doors shut so that if there was rough weather, they would not fall out. Lizzie loved the cozy space. Sometimes she and Maggie would play in here, though Mama would be very angry if she knew they had brought a candle in earlier to see by. Lizzie slid the door open a crack as their father strode into the cabin, where Mama was tidying up the books they had brought. She thought they were asleep. Maggie was, but Lizzie wasn’t.

  “We did not expect to see you—how did you—”

  “I imagine not. There are enormous advantages to owning laboratories that produce such things as velocithopters and aeroscopes. I simply landed upon the fuselage and entered via the ventral hatch. Our gallant captain does not even know his employer is aboard.”

  “But why?”

  “You are not a stupid woman, Elaine, and sadly, not a devious one, either. Did you think I would not follow you?”

  “I do not know what you are talking about. I am simply taking the girls to visit my family. Why on earth would you follow us?”

  “Via London?”

  “I thought we might do a bit of shopping before we went down to Penzance. Really, Charles, the girls are asleep. May we continue this conversation elsewhere?”

  “It does not matter now whether they sleep or not. Sit.”

  “I shall not.”

  “Sit, or I will make you.”

  Mama’s navy-bl
ue skirts rustled as she sank into the seat under the viewing port. “The speed of the velocithopter has addled your mind.”

  “No, it has cleared it. I know what I must do. Whom have you told?”

  “No one. I have nothing to tell anyone—with the possible exception of the clerk at Fortnum and Mason.”

  Lizzie’s eye, pressed to the crack, widened as Papa pounced on Mama like Cinders the cat on a mouse. “Playing at ignorance will gain you nothing. You were listening at keyholes last night, weren’t you?”

  “No. You are hurting me.”

  “What did you hear?”

  Mama muffled a shriek as Papa did something Lizzie could not see. Cold fear showered through her, held her immobile, surged in her small body like a wave.

  “I heard you and your friends,” Mama gasped. “I—I cannot believe this of you. The Prince of Wales—and Prince George—why, he is hardly more than a boy!”

  “They are heirs to a throne that is redundant—scions of a family that is rotten to the core.”

  “You are mad.”

  “I am perfectly sane. I am a patriot—one of many—charged with a sacred duty to England.”

  “Assassinating a young man and his father is hardly sacred!” she snapped, then groaned when Papa twisted her wrists behind her back.

  Why was Papa being so unkind to Mama? He loved her and brought her presents. And who was this boy who was causing all the trouble between them?

  “When this country is a republic with a responsible government, you will see. Or perhaps not. Because I cannot allow you to betray me, you see, my dear. I cannot allow little birds to twitter to London magistrates and members of Parliament.”

  “What are you going to do, lock me up?”

  “No. That would be inhumane. Good-bye, Elaine. We could have been happy for many years if you had not run away.”

  “I could not allow my girls to stay another moment in that house with you,” she hissed. “Beast. Madman. Murderer ….”