Magnificent Devices [5] A Lady of Resources Read online

  “Sponsoring a come-out.” Claire wilted back into the chair, right way round again. “This will require some thought—especially since it never entered my head.”

  Lizzie thought back to the time the Lady had explained what coming out was. She’d been educated on the subject quite a lot since then, but her original ideas had not been so far off the mark. “She really does intend to put us in a window with fancy paper round our feet?”

  Claire smiled. “At least you will have the correct posture, and your feet will be together in a ladylike manner. Lizzie, I do not know how you manage to slouch like that when I saw Maggie hook your corset myself.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  “I don’t know if I want a come-out,” Maggie said, her voice quiet in that way it had when she needed to speak but didn’t want to give offense. “It doesn’t seem real for the likes of me and Liz.”

  “You and Liz are as worthy of society’s attention as any girls in London or Europe,” the Lady informed her crisply. It was not the first time she had said so, and not the first time Lizzie had not believed her. “In any case, it is still two years off. The more pressing decision is what you will choose to do with yourselves in the interval.”

  This was why the Lady was so good in the laboratory. She refused to be distracted by nonessentials.

  “What about finishing school?” Lizzie surprised even herself at the words that came out of her mouth. The Lady and Maggie looked dumbfounded as they both spoke at once.

  “In Switzerland?”

  “Aren’t you coming back to London with me?”

  “Of course I am.” How could she make Maggie understand what she could hardly put in words herself? “For the summer, to see Lewis and everyone at Carrick House, and to go up to Scotland with the Dunsmuirs for shooting season. But in September … Mags, if her ladyship is to see us presented, oughtn’t we to do what we can to—to give her a good bargain? With finishing school, we’d be a little closer to being ladies, at least.”

  “But—but I thought we’d go home,” Maggie said, her eyes huge, her voice a disconsolate whisper. “Or at the very least, stay here and do the sixth-form classes so we can stay with the Lady. You can’t go to finishing school, Liz. Why, we were laughing at the idea only the other night.”

  So they had been. Claire seemed to be having difficulty marshaling her words together, so Lizzie took advantage of it. “But that was before we knew what Lady Dunsmuir was up to. This changes everything, Mags.”

  “It does not.” The Lady had finally gotten her tongue under control. It was a lucky thing MacMillan had finished her work, because Claire leaped to her feet. “Lizzie, I am utterly astonished at you. Finishing school? You?”

  She wasn’t slouching now. “What’s wrong with me going to finishing school? See, Lady, this is exactly what I mean. You don’t think I’m good enough to be finished, never mind presented, do you? Do you?”

  Two spots of color appeared in the Lady’s cheeks, and too late, Lizzie wondered if perhaps she ought to have kept her real opinion to herself.

  “I cannot believe you just said those words to me, Elizabeth,” the Lady whispered. “Not to me.” Her cheeks blotched even more, and to Lizzie’s horror, tears welled in her eyes and fell, dripping past her chin and into the lace that edged her decolletage.

  “I—I—” She looked to Maggie for help, and found none. She had hurt the Lady horribly—the one person in the world to whom she owed everything, the one person who had never shown her anything but respect and consideration and love.

  Oh, drat her uncontrollable mouth, that let words fly like birds out of a cage so that she could never call them back!

  “Lady, I didn’t mean it,” she mumbled miserably, unable to look into those gray eyes any more. Outside the window, a pair of swans beat the air, on their way to the lake that was the main feature of the enormous park in front of the Landgraf’s palace.

  Lizzie heard the door close quietly, and when she dragged her damp gaze back into the room, the Lady was gone.

  2

  The University of Bavaria’s ballroom, Lizzie was quite convinced, could hold three of the Lady’s airship, Athena, with room to spare. Its white walls were curly with ornate Empire plasterwork and gold leaf, and its ceiling held murals and paintings from the previous century, including portraits of previous emperors and empresses whose names and reigns she and Maggie had had to learn by memory during their second year. On a stage at the front bedecked with potted palms and flowering trees sat the Regents and the university’s president, along with Count von Zeppelin, its pre-eminent patron.

  Maggie elbowed her in the side. “They’ve called her name. Look, there she is!”

  Because they were the guests of Uncle Ferdinand, and sitting with Lord and Lady Dunsmuir, along with the officers of their airship, Lady Lucy, their party had been seated in the first section behind the men and women graduating today. Lizzie was not as conscious of this privilege as she was that Tigg, who served aboard Lady Lucy, was with them again after an absence of nearly a year.

  “What’s the silver sash she’s wearing?” Tigg whispered as Lady Claire walked down the center aisle and mounted the stage. Her face glowed, all evidence of the blotching that Lizzie had caused erased in the glory of achieving her dream at last.

  At least, Lizzie hoped that was the case. If she had been up there, she’d have been turning cartwheels for joy or some other undignified display, but the Lady merely smiled and accepted the rolled-up diploma tied with a scarlet ribbon from the university’s president. Then she held out her right hand, and the Dean of Engineering stepped forward to slide the engineer’s slender iron ring upon the little finger. The Dean of Women standing beside him embraced her—an unprecedented proceeding thus far—and Claire’s smile widened as she crossed the stage and descended the steps to her own seat.

  “It means she’s graduated from the School of Engineering,” Maggie whispered back. “Along with the ring. The doctors have a yellow one, and the humanities lot get green or rose, depending on their field. The Lady explained it to me.”

  “What’s humanities?” Tigg said, puzzled.

  “Books, music, art, that sort of thing.”

  “Why don’t they just call it books, music, and art?”

  “Because it’s humans what do it, and not dancing monkeys,” Lizzie hissed. “Quiet, you two, or they’ll boot us out.”

  How good it felt to have Tigg with them again! Though goodness knew he didn’t look a bit like the eight-year-old ragamuffin who had found her and Maggie on the Billingsgate river stairs, cold, starving, and with frightening gaps in their memories. Weepin’ Willie might have been rendered mute before Snouts had found him in the river, but at least he mostly knew how he’d got there. She and Maggie had not been so lucky. But never mind. Lizzie had been all too happy to forget the past and concentrate on surviving in the present, never dreaming that her future would be so changed by setting upon and robbing a young lady driving a steam landau where she should not have been.

  No, Tigg was not that little boy any more, though she suspected his natural protectiveness had not faded with time and acquaintance. At eighteen, he wore a lieutenant’s bars with pride on the collar of his khaki airman’s uniform, which contrasted rather nicely with his coffee-colored skin and melting brown eyes.

  But one should not notice the eyes of a young man one considered a brother, no matter how much affection and even admiration one found in them.

  And then it was time for the final procession, to the accompaniment of the full orchestra. With the crush of the crowd, it took some time for their party to locate Lady Claire over near the terrace, where the long afternoon rays of the sun turned everything golden. One long black academic gown and the flat board on the head looked very like another, until you saw the auburn hair and the flash of Nile green silk underneath.

  There was to be a ball immediately following the refreshments, and Lizzie’s stomach clenched under the restraint of the corset. Three
years of dancing lessons had not prepared her for the prospect of dancing with an actual man. No, she would not think of that now. Now was the Lady’s moment, and Lizzie hung back as the Dunsmuirs embraced Claire in a flurry of kisses and silk.

  “Claire, we are very proud of you.” His lordship kissed her upon the cheek. “Congratulations upon realizing your life’s dream.”

  “Thank you, John.” Claire swept ten-year-old Willie up in a hug, much to his delighted embarrassment, and gave him a smacking kiss. “It is the realization of one dream and the birth of another,” she said gaily. Maggie hugged her, and then Lizzie stepped up to do the same. Was it her imagination, or was the hug perfunctory and slightly less warm than hugs ought to be? Or was it her guilty conscience making mountains out of mole hills?

  Claire took a breath, as though she were going to say something privately to her, but she saw something over Lizzie’s shoulder that caused her to gently set Lizzie aside. “Captain Hollys,” she said, the color rising in her cheeks. “So you have given your officers and crew a day’s holiday as well?”

  “John and Davina are not the only ones who are happy to see you realize your dream,” he said in a tone that Lizzie was quite sure was not meant to be heard by anyone but Claire. The kiss he gave her was so proper that even Queen Victoria might have looked on in approval—but Claire’s color deepened even more.

  When she turned to hug Tigg, who had been standing a respectful distance behind his superior officer, it looked to Lizzie as though she took the opportunity to hide her face against his uniform collar. “Oh, my dear, I am so glad to see you,” she exclaimed, looking his tall form up and down. “How you have grown! I was so disappointed your duties kept you from dinner last night.”

  “Someone had to command Lady Lucy,” Tigg said, trying to stifle his pride in being given that responsibility, and failing utterly. “But I was sorry not to see you. You’re an honest-to-goodness engineer now?”

  Claire waggled her little finger, on which the ring glinted. “Honest to goodness and for true.”

  Captain Hollys said, “Lieutenant Terwilliger will be writing the engineering entrance exams himself in the fall. Mr. Yau has been coaching him.”

  Claire clasped her hands beneath her chin in delight. “Tigg! Why did you say nothing of this in your letters?”

  Because he did not want you to know if he failed. Lizzie kept her mouth firmly closed. It was for Tigg to say, if he chose to.

  “I wanted to surprise you,” Tigg said, and Lizzie allowed as how that might have been part of it. “But algebra is a mysterious language and it’s lucky that Mr. Yau is a patient man. I almost didn’t get through the book.”

  “Nonsense.” The captain clapped him on the back. “A mind as fine as yours could do nothing but wrestle x and y to the ground and subdue them.”

  “As you say, sir.” Poor Tigg. He was trying so hard to be grown-up and dignified in front of the Dunsmuirs and his captain. It was all Lizzie could do not to stick her fingers in his ribs and tickle the daylights out of him. But one did not tickle the lieutenants of one’s acquaintance. They might tickle back—only luckily, in this corset, she’d never feel it.

  The ballroom was cleared and then the first-year class, who had been seconded to wait upon the seniors, carried in the refreshments, laying them out on long tables along one side of the room that had been covered in snowy linen with silver vases full of flowers from the horticulture department’s gardens.

  “Quite the spread,” Maggie said out of the side of her mouth some time later, having enjoyed slices of beef and ham, to say nothing of the familiar mountains of Bavarian sausages and at least a dozen different kinds of salad. Now she and Lizzie savored a strawberry ice, allowing the sweet chill to melt upon their tongues. “Uncle Ferdinand likes a good feed, so to guarantee it, he sponsored the dinner.”

  “How do you know these things?” Lizzie would have licked the delicate china dish if she had not been quite certain that the Lady would have seen it from across the room and descended upon her like Rosie the chicken upon a beetle. Instead, she rose gracefully and brought a second helping back for both herself and Maggie.

  “He told me the other night, when we were acting out a play with the grandchildren.”

  “You’ll miss that, back in England.”

  “I can always act them out with you. Though you’ll have to play the boys’ parts, unless we can get Lewis and some of the others to join us.”

  Lizzie was silent. She didn’t want to think about Maggie and Lewis and the others, eating Mrs. Morven’s wonderful suppers and having loads of fun while she was walking about with a book on her head in Switzerland. So to distract both herself and her sister, she said, “Who’s that gentleman there, leaning on the pillar? The one with the odd spectacles, and the waistcoat nearly as fancy as my corset.”

  “Lizzie, you mustn’t mention undergarments in public.”

  “Yes, Lady,” she mocked. “He’s looked at us three times since we sat down.”

  “How would you know, you goose? Those spectacles are dark, and they have driving magnifiers to boot. Anyway, a gentleman is allowed to look at anyone. It’s when he wants to speak to a lady that he must be introduced.”

  It was plain that she, Lizzie, was the only one who needed to go to finishing school. Maggie remembered every word that came out of the Lady’s mouth. “Yes, but he’s old.” Forty at least, with graying temples and a faintly military moustache.

  “Maybe he thinks you talk too much and he’s wishing someone would come along to set you in your place.”

  “Oho, Miss Priss. Listen to you. I suppose you’re impervious to the looks of gentlemen.”

  “I am not. But I’m too young to dance. Not that anyone would ask me. We’re not officially out, you know. We’re merely here in the Lady’s party.”

  “What if Tigg asked you? Or Lord Dunsmuir?”

  Maggie sniffed. “Tigg is different. He’s my brother—or as good as. And his lordship would not waste his dances on me—not when Lady Dunsmuir loves it so much. But I would dance with Willie. Lady D. tells me he has been taking lessons, poor darling. I can imagine how I would have felt about that when I was ten.”

  Lady Dunsmuir would like as not be in some library or boardroom somewhere, meeting with the mysterious personages who ran countries behind the scenes, but Lizzie did not say so.

  Lizzie finished the second strawberry ice, and when she looked again, the gentleman was gone. How odd. Not odd that he was in the company, or that he had been gazing at her and Maggie, but odd that she had noticed him at all. Her experience with gentlemen was flavored heavily by her years on the streets of London, where one trusted at one’s own risk and one’s mind categorized people as safe or not safe at a glance. That instinct had become a little rusty of late with so little material to work with. Between the count’s palace and the lycee, there were not many people she could say were not safe, unless you counted random aeronauts who became lost in the palace corridors after one too many glasses of beer in the mess hall.

  Lizzie shook her head at herself and smiled as Tigg joined them. “Is the grub usually this good at a university?” he asked. “If it is, I might abandon ship and come study here.”

  “It’s not the university, it’s Bavaria in general,” Maggie told him. “They like to eat and drink, and the count is no exception.” She explained about his sponsorship, and then said, “Do you happen to know if the Lady has spoken to the Dunsmuirs about her plans?”

  Tigg looked a little surprised. “You live in the same rooms, don’t you? I’d think you would know before anyone else.”

  Lizzie shook her head. “I don’t think she knows herself. But things might come clearer in London.” Over the heads of the crowd was one that stood a little taller, neatly brushed and held with the pride that came with both breeding and responsibility. “Did you see Captain Hollys kiss her?”

  “It was only on the cheek.” Tigg straightened a little, as if the mere mention of his name might m
ake that gentleman look his way with a measuring eye. “But he makes no secret of his admiration of the Lady.”

  “She makes quite a secret of her admiration for him,” Lizzie said. “I can’t tell which she likes better. When she’s with Mr. Malvern, I’m sure it’s him. But you should have seen her blush when the captain spoke to her.”

  “Maybe she can’t decide, either.” Maggie beckoned them both a little closer with a crook of her finger. “Mr. Malvern’s proposed, you know. I saw the letter he wrote, after we left Charlottetown that first time.”

  “He never,” Tigg said. “She didn’t let on at all. I was with them in the laboratory at Christmas and it was just like always.”

  “He’s waiting to speak again until she’s graduated.” Lizzie’s tone held the authority of someone who knew absolutely nothing about the subject. But it made sense, didn’t it? “But what I don’t understand is how a girl can be married and engineer airships. Who’s going to wash Mr. Malvern’s socks if she’s in the Antipodes testing a flying something-or-other?”

  “Servants, silly,” Maggie said. “They’ll live in Carrick House with all of us, and Mrs. Morven, just like we’ve talked about a hundred times.”

  “She won’t be engineering airships from London if she’s employed by the Zeppelin Air Works,” Tigg said. “That plan doesn’t make a bit of sense. Enough chatter, you two. We oughtn’t to talk about the Lady behind her back.”

  “Then you go and ask her to dance, and while you’re at it, find out what we want to know.” Lizzie stuck out her tongue at him, just a little, so no one but he would see.

  “I will.”

  “You don’t know how to dance.”

  “I do, Miss Impudence. All the officers do, in case the Dunsmuirs have extra ladies among their guests.”

  “You, dance? Oh, how Snouts would laugh at that.” She was egging him on, needling him for no reason in the world other than to see how he’d take it.