Her Own Devices, a steampunk adventure novel Page 2

  “Oh. Well, ’at’s simple. We wouldn’t run. The rifle’d put paid to anyone ’oo comes round.”

  “We can’t depend on the rifle for everything,” Claire pointed out. “The sad example of Lightning Luke has shown us that.”

  “We make ’em a house,” Lizzie said. “One that moves, so we c’n take ’em wiv us.”

  “Or floats,” Maggie put in. “They could sleep on t’river and come up into the garden in t’mornings.”

  “We’re not talking about ducks,” Granny Protheroe informed them. “Hens don’t like water. Ent you ever heard of ‘madder’n a wet hen’? Besides, they’d be stolen by some waterbug, like as not, and et. How’d you like that?”

  Maggie’s eyes filled with tears, and Claire hastened to say, “It is a fine idea, though. A moveable coop. Would you put it on treads, like a steambus, or legs, like those automatons we saw at the Crystal Palace?”

  “Legs,” the twins said in unison.

  Claire tried not to show her glee at finally hitting on a project for this stubborn pair that would combine all the best lessons she could teach—a project they were motivated to do out of feminine protective instincts, the strongest on earth.

  “Excellent,” she said. “We will begin with drawings—” Art and perspective. “—and proceed to building the structure.” Mathematics and physics. “We will need a small steam engine to power it, and some means by which to operate the legs.” Mechanics.

  “When can we get the hens?”

  Claire sighed. One thing at a time. “As you make your way through the city tomorrow, you must keep your eyes open. I have no doubt that Rosie was not the only chicken in London in need of rescuing. But no stealing, mind. The birds you find must be in honest need of a home.”

  “Why are we going into the city?” Lizzie wanted to know. “We ought t’stay on this side of t’river and lie low after last night.”

  “It is my first day as Mr. Malvern’s assistant, so I can drive you as far as Blackfriars. Snouts will take you on a reconnaissance mission to gather materials for your coop. You might have some success in the scrap-yards behind the foundries. We will work on a list later today.” Measurements and penmanship.

  The hens won out over Lizzie’s natural caution. She and her sister turned back to the pea trellis, chattering in low voices about what the walking coop should look like. Granny Protheroe had gone back inside, leaving Claire to pace the length of the garden alone. Garden was a grandiose word for the half-acre riot of brambles and potholes blasted out of the earth, all enclosed in a six-foot wall at least a foot thick. No toll-taker needed such a wall; only the criminals who had appropriated the tumbledown cottage would in order to defend their territory. Had Lightning Luke used the ground for target practice of some kind? A missile or an explosive might gouge holes like these.

  Not that they bothered Rosie in the least. Claire watched the red hen throwing dirt in the air with abandon as she enjoyed a dust bath at the bottom of a small crater. “I’m glad you’re finding these useful,” she said. “I trust you’re prepared to share. The Mopsies will be bringing some companions for you soon.”

  Rosie blinked in slow contentment, utterly unconcerned about the prospect of rivals.

  “I wish I had your sangfroid.” The truth was, she was a little nervous about beginning work at the laboratory. Doubts and fears swarmed her confidence like mosquitoes. Would Lord James Selwyn be there? Would he find some way to sabotage her efforts and make her look incompetent? He had been in a barely concealed rage the last time she’d seen him. Had that temper burned itself out, or was it merely banked until the next confrontation?

  The memory of his attempt to bribe her into turning down Andrew Malvern’s offer of employment had been both infuriating and mortifying. Even now, the thought of his insolence at the Crystal Palace made her cheeks burn and her blood run hot.

  Yes, it was true that taking his money would have turned all her dreams of a university degree and a career into reality. But at what cost?

  Her own integrity, that’s what.

  The children’s safety.

  And Mr. Malvern’s regard.

  She could not afford to lose the first or second, and as for the third ... well, he was to be her employer, wasn’t he? Of course she wanted his good opinion.

  As would any reasonable person.

  *

  Snouts, the Mopsies, and Weepin’ Willie—who could not be persuaded to stay at home helping Granny Protheroe to make pies, if there were more birds like his adored Rosie to be found—joined the crowd swarming across the Blackfriars bridge.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to go with them?” Claire watched the little group as long as she could, but they were soon lost to sight.

  Tigg shifted in the seat beside her. “I’ll go if you say to, Lady, but I druther stick by you.” His voice dropped to a mumble. “Might learn summat useful.”

  The warmth of approval colored her tone as she said quietly, “I have no doubt you will, and I applaud your determination to get on, Tigg.” Smiling, Claire steered the steam landau down the warren of narrow streets until she reached Orpington Close—another grandiose name for a lane to the river barely wide enough to admit her and her gleaming engine. “I am quite sure Mr. Malvern could use a tender for his experiments with coal. And if he doesn’t, we shall persuade him that at the very least, he must have someone to sweep up afterward. I certainly have no intention of wearing my duster while I work for fear of ruining my clothes.”

  She parked the landau and threw the switch that would shut down the flame and begin the boiler’s cooling process, then climbed out. No coach bearing a noble crest stood there, or any other kind of vehicle, but Lord James could have come by hansom cab.

  “Oh, stop,” she muttered, unwinding her chiffon scarf and removing her driving goggles. “You have a perfect right to be here, and he can just take it like a gentleman.”

  “What’s ’at, Lady?”

  “Nothing, Tigg. Can you make sure the hood is secure, please? We don’t want anyone being nosy while we’re inside.”

  Her duster over one arm, her navy skirt spotless and her hat in place, she waited by the door for him to check the latches on the brass hood flap that he kept polished to a gleam. He nodded in satisfaction and the two of them mounted the stairs to the loft, where Andrew Malvern kept his offices. The expanse below was filled with piles of building materials and an enormous glass chamber with brass rivets and hoses snaking in and out of it. Her back felt strangely naked without the weight of the lightning rifle, but even in this neighborhood, eyebrows might be raised if one arrived at the office armed.

  No one need know it was under the seat of the landau.

  Her employer raised his head as she reached the top of the stairs, and dropped his drafting pencil. “Miss Trevelyan! Er, I mean, Lady Claire. Good morning. I’m pleased to see you value punctuali—” He stopped halfway across the room. “Why, Tigg. I wasn’t expecting you.”

  Tigg flushed with pleasure at being remembered. It had only been a week, but still ... many would consider a boy of thirteen beneath their notice.

  Claire shook hands, and was close to coloring with pleasure herself when Andrew shook Tigg’s as well, as though he were an equal. “I hope you do not mind his accompanying me. As you know, he has a talent for mechanics, and you did say that on occasion—”

  “I did say so, and I meant it.”

  “If I can’t help ye wi’ that great engine downstairs, sir, I’ll sweep ... or run errands ... or ...” Tigg struggled to control his emotions. “Appreciate it, sir,” he finally mumbled.

  “Your appearance is providential,” Andrew confided. “It will speed my work enormously to have someone to work the coal tender while I conduct the experiments in the main chamber. I’m forever having to go back there and shovel coal into the hopper.”

  “I’m your man, sir.” Tigg stood straighter.

  “Excellent. You might go down and find an apron and one of the heavier
pairs of gloves. If I am only to have you in the mornings, I shall make good use of you. I’ll give Lady Claire some brief instructions, and we will begin immediately.”

  Tigg vanished down the stairs so quickly Claire wondered if his feet touched them at all.

  “Thank you,” she said softly. “He’s been a different boy since we all met at the Crystal Palace and you showed him the workings of those engines.”

  “I admire an inquiring mind,” Andrew said. “Tell me, has he had your landau into pieces yet?”

  “Just the boiler. I’m afraid to let him touch the drive mechanisms to the wheels in case they don’t go back together again. If worst comes to worst, at least I know how to reassemble the boiler.”

  Andrew laughed. “It’s only a matter of time. Have I told you how pleased I am that you accepted my offer?”

  “Not this morning.”

  “I should make it a daily practice.”

  “I trust Lord James has resigned himself to a better opinion of me, now that we will be working together?” She hardly dared hope that was so, but she had to know.

  “I don’t know, to be honest. The day after our fortuitous meeting at the Exhibition, he left for the Midlands to meet with the president of one of the railroads there.” A shadow fell across his hazel eyes. “I wish he would wait until we had reliable results in hand, but what do I know? He is the man with the vision and the money. I’m just the man who puts it into practice. Glad-handing bankers and railroad presidents would give me hives, so it’s fortunate he has a talent for it.”

  Claire’s eyebrows rose at this unexpected confidence. Should he be telling her such things about his business? Then again, in the course of filing the stacks of paper teetering all around her, she would learn all about it whether he told her or not.

  “Now.” He gazed around the loft as though he wondered how all the mess had got there. “I believe you mentioned you had a plan when you were here for the interview?”

  The disastrous interview, where she learned to her horror that Lord James had been prepared to court her—until he found out she was penniless and actually seeking employment with his partner—still burned in her memory. He had been so insulting she had fled.

  Well, she was not prepared to flee now. No matter what he said, she would stand her ground and fight for what she wanted—which was to learn so much from Andrew Malvern that she could apply to The University of London to study engineering, and secure a letter of reference from him when the time came.

  She dragged her attention from dreams of the future to the reality of the present. “Yes, I believe I said I would work in concentric circles, starting with the desk and moving outward.”

  “I have no filing system,” he said meekly. “I trust you will institute one.”

  She had never done such a thing in her life. “Of course. I will use the method that seems most logical.” She made it sound as if she had all the methods ever invented right at her fingertips, and he looked relieved.

  “Right, then. I’ll leave you to get started. At midday I’ll take you and Tigg to lunch. We should celebrate your first day somehow.” He smiled, and she lost her iron grip on her mental to-do list.

  Claire gathered her wits as he rattled down the staircase, and focused on the desk. Never mind the fact that he was continually throwing her off balance. She had work to do.

  By midday, she had managed to clear the desk, leaving only the drawings he had been working on, an inkwell, his pens and blotter, and a heavy book he seemed to be referencing in the drawing project. She had made her way through the stacks of journals, academic papers, receipts, and reports, pausing now and then to read a particularly interesting one. He had been sitting on a newspaper, so she fished it off the chair and shook it out, ready to use it to wrap parcels or start a fire in the potbellied stove. As she folded it, an advertisement with a portrait on the back page caught her eye.

  HAVE YOU SEEN THIS YOUNG LADY?

  PLEASE WRITE W/DETAILS

  C/O THE EVENING STANDARD

  “Good heavens!” Claire flung the paper at the stove in a kind of convulsion, then recovered herself and snatched it up again.

  Took it over to the round, curtainless window, where there was more light.

  It had to be a mistake.

  The portrait, taken from the senior class daguerreotype and reproduced in the Standard’s line-drawing-ink-blot style, was of her.

  Chapter 3

  By the time Andrew and Tigg came up to fetch her, the Standard had burned to ash in the bottom of the stove and Claire was industriously wiping the inkwell with a clean rag.

  This is what you get for not answering your mother’s letter, she told herself furiously as she ignited the landau and waited for Andrew to fold himself into the passenger seat and Tigg to climb into the small space behind them where the articulated brass top of the landau ratcheted down on fine days. She is reduced to advertising for informants.

  As soon as they got back to the cottage, she would write a firmly worded letter to Cornwall. This nonsense must stop. With her luck, Julia Wellesley would see the advertisement and turn it into the joke of the season—because of course, anyone who must make their living by default must have fallen off the social map.

  “Will you direct me, sir?” She backed the landau around until its forward lamps pointed up Orpington Close, and released the lever that allowed the head of steam to move them forward.

  “Ladies’ choice. What do you like?”

  She liked a number of places—every single one of which would be swarming with people she knew who also read the Evening Standard.

  Then again, what better way to spike the guns of gossip than to appear as if everything were normal and laugh it off as a curiosity? The drawing, after all, was not that good a likeness.

  “I should love to go to the Swan and Compass, in Piccadilly. It’s favored by the Churchill set, you know.” She steered for the bridge, and pushed the lever out to the point that Andrew had to hang onto his hat.

  “I say, what speed are we doing?”

  “Thirty miles per hour.”

  He exchanged a huge grin with Tigg over his shoulder. “Marvelous. I never thought I’d see the day.”

  “It’s a new day, Mr. Malvern,” she said cheerfully as they gained the bridge. Fortunately there were not too many people or vehicles on it, though up ahead the traffic had slowed considerably as a dray backed into the street.

  Once they were past it and on the Victoria Embankment, she slowed to a respectable pace. “Are you interested in learning to drive, sir?” she asked.

  “You might well ask me if I’m interested in taking the transcontinental airship to South America and exploring the jungles.” He still gripped his hat, though they were hardly going fast enough to stir up a breeze. “Both entail laying out vast sums and risking one’s life.”

  “No risk in an airship,” Tigg put in. “Safe as houses, I’ve ’eard. Not that I was ever in one. Closest I’ve been is seein’ ’em go over.”

  “I was referring to the jungles. You are quite correct that airships are the safest and most efficient means of long-distance travel yet invented. But in answer to your question, Lady Claire, no, I have no desire to learn to drive. I have enormous admiration for those who do, however.”

  He slanted a glance at her that she was forced to ignore, or drive right over some unsuspecting pedestrian. Goodness. It almost sounded as though he admired her. But that could not be so. He had hired her for her mind.

  Which was just as it should be.

  “Here we are.” She slowed to a stop half a block from the Swan and Compass, and by the time they reached the restaurant, she had regained her composure. He was only being kind. She must take people at their word, and stop reading personal meaning into casual conversation.

  They were shown to a bright table in the window at the front, where they could watch people strolling to and fro on the sidewalk, and Claire saw Tigg watching carefully as Andrew pulled out a chair and
seated her. With such an example, it wouldn’t be long before the boy would be absorbing more than chemical formulas and theories of physics. With the opportunities the world offered in this modern age, he would not be forced to remain in the sphere in which she had found him. They might make a gentleman of him yet.

  A lady enjoying lunch in a restaurant, she had been taught, might nibble delicately on a bit of endive, and sip tea with a pastry. But Claire was ravenous, and her mother was at the other end of the country. She ordered steak and mushroom pie with a salad, and devoured it so quickly and neatly that even Lady St. Ives might have wondered if it was ever actually there.

  “I like to see a good appetite,” Andrew observed, cutting up the last of his Dover sole. “My mother never could understand why it was necessary for titled young ladies to eat their dinners before they went out, so that it wouldn’t look as though they were actually hungry.”

  “Was your mother taught that by her mother?”

  “Oh, no. Mama was a cook in the Dunsmuir house. She had to send the young ladies’ dinners up in the evening before they went out. She used to say at least she knew the girls enjoyed something they ate that evening.”

  “The girls?” Surely his mother had not been employed in the house of those Dunsmuirs. Do you mean the sisters of the boy who was ... ”

  “The very ones.”

  Tigg was looking from Claire to Andrew, clearly lost. “Wot boy? Wot ’appened to ’im?”

  “You never heard the story?” Andrew refilled his tumbler with lemonade and offered Tigg another glassful. “The nursemaid was out in the garden one afternoon two years ago with the son and heir to Lord and Lady Dunsmuir’s fortune—the family owns practically the western half of the Canadas, you know, including vast diamond mines, and what they don’t own they have interests in—and she fell asleep in the sun. When she woke up, the boy was gone, and despite advertisements, an enormous reward, and the hiring of several Pinkerton men, no one ever discovered what happened.”