A Gentleman of Means Read online

  Gloria could not have left them voluntarily. Their friendship and regard for one another would not have been abandoned so utterly. She was sure of it.

  Her father would find her eventually, and in the meantime, she would do what little she could. She enclosed the letter in the pigeon’s glossy body, set the numbers and letters of the code for his vessel, and released it into the sky.

  Under her breath, as she watched its running lights disappear among the stars, she whispered a prayer for Gloria’s safety.

  *

  The letter that came back from Catherine Haliburton (née Montrose) a week later was unenlightening at best.

  What a surprise to hear from you, Claire. I had not supposed you interested in continuing your acquaintance with any of your old friends now that you are forced to earn your living by the sweat of your brow. You are working in a factory, I hear. That must be terribly distressing for your mother. We have not seen her in town for an age, so I imagine that is why.

  I was just remarking to Julia the other day as we were lunching at the Orangerie how amusing it is that our old set seems to have done rather well in society—and the roots of our success were clearly visible even in the classroom.

  In answer to your rather odd questions, no, I have not seen Gloria. I had a letter from her from Paris a year ago in which she promised to send me some of the fashion plates from the Worth atelier. She still has not fulfilled her promise, so I have washed my hands of her. I have no patience for those who do not keep their word.

  I trust you are well, despite your unfortunate circumstances.

  Mrs. David Haliburton

  With a sigh, Claire tossed Catherine’s letter, full of complaints and slights both given and received, into the fire. An envelope engraved with the Mount-Batting crest had come in the same mail, so she opened it with a sense of resignation, expecting more of the same.

  Julia did not disappoint.

  Claire, darling, how very amusing that I should hear from you this week, when your name has popped up in conversation repeatedly, though the subject of your family is not one I generally dwell upon.

  I have not heard from Gloria recently, outside of a postcard from the exhibition in Venice. Spiteful thing—she knows I was wild to go, but alas, with the renovations to our town house, I am plagued with architects and decorators and simply could not take the time. I am surprised you made her acquaintance there. Goodness, the things she said of you while we were in school—but perhaps that is best left in the past. We are women now, and our school days are behind us.

  I see in the society pages that you are to be married at last. What an age you have been about it—quite the last of our class, if I am not mistaken. I myself am delighted to announce that the heir to the Mount-Batting title will be born in the early summer. Amidst all this chaos, I am interviewing nannies and nursery maids, and what a chore it is.

  Were you not a governess at some point? If I can find no one for the post when he is old enough, perhaps I shall write to you. I should much rather have someone I know teaching the future earl, and with your odd notions of independence I suppose you will continue to work after you are married. Goodness knows anything would be better than working in a factory.

  I must close. They are hanging the chandelier over the grand staircase and my presence is urgently requested.

  Julia’s letter hit the back wall of the fireplace with rather more force even than Catherine’s, and fell into the flames, where the venom embedded therein caught instantly. The offending sheets were consumed in moments, and Claire told herself she must put their contents out of her mind with equal speed.

  Some people, as they matured, learned and grew. And some simply never did. She was more grateful than ever for the continued unstinting friendship of Emilie, Lady Selwyn, who wrote faithfully once a month. Each letter was a delight, full of the minutiae of country life in words that fairly glowed with happiness.

  Claire looked forward to that same kind of happiness with Andrew. She might have passed up two chances to be the mistress of a great estate—three, if she counted the Kaiser’s unfortunate nephew—but what did that signify when she was to become the wife of a man who had earned her respect and admiration as well as her love?

  Feeling somewhat restored, she pulled another sheet of paper toward her and wrote another missive to Mr. Meriwether-Astor. It was short and to the point, and would hopefully be the last of its kind.

  Dear sir,

  I regret very much to inform you that Gloria’s and my mutual friends in London have not heard from her more recently than a month ago, and certainly not within the last week.

  While I realize that my information brings you no closer to locating her, at least one avenue of investigation is closed so that you may concentrate your not inconsiderable resources on another that might be more profitable.

  If there is anything more I might do, I hope you will write to apprise me of it. Please let me know when she is found. I shall be very happy to hear of it, but it will not stop me from giving her a fine talking-to for causing us all so much anxiety.

  Yours sincerely,

  Claire Trevelyan

  *

  Lieutenant Thomas Terwilliger, on leave from his service aboard the flagship Lady Lucy, gave a final turn of the last screw and set the modified mother’s helper on Swan’s hardwood floor. The rotary mechanism in its belly that normally contained sweeping brushes was now a sanding device meant to take the peeling, warped planks back to their original state so that they could be varnished and restored to beauty.

  “There she goes,” he said with satisfaction, as the mother’s helper buzzed slowly across the expanse of the salon, a track of sanded wood spooling out behind it.

  “That will save us a lot of elbow grease.” Alice Chalmers watched it with the approval of one who has sanded plenty of floors. “Thanks, Tigg. Well done.”

  “It was nothing,” he said modestly, because truly, it was a trifle compared to the mighty Daimler 954C engines he had been working on down in Swan’s engine room. But still, he took pleasure in a job well done. That was something he’d learned from the Lady, who took as much pleasure in a mother’s helper behaving as it was designed to do as she did in tuning Athena’s own Daimlers, or for that matter, designing a membrane for an airship that collected its energy from the sun.

  That was supposed to be a secret.

  She thought her sketches were meaningless to an observer, but he had caught enough veiled references and seen Mr. Malvern’s monograph on sun cells on locomotives open on her desk. The Lady was up to something big, and if she was keeping mum about it, he would not be the one to blab even though his curiosity was burning as bright as the lamps in the ceiling above.

  “Come along, boys,” Alice said, wiping her hands on the rag hanging from the back pocket of her pants. “It’s time to change for supper, if the clock in my stomach is right.”

  Tigg had long ago become used to the toffs’ insistence that a man sit down to dinner in fancy clothes. Luckily for him, his khaki uniform fit the bill and so far he hadn’t been required to turn out in evening togs. Maybe he never would. Truth be told, he couldn’t imagine himself ever being rich enough or flash enough to indulge in such a thing, even when he and Lizzie were married. Unless the Lady and Mr. Malvern came to dinner, he would sit down in his regular trousers and shirt like a sensible being, and Lizzie wouldn’t fuss.

  Lost in a happy dream of their first home together—fuzzy and nebulous though its appearance and location might be as yet—it took two tries for Jake to nudge him out of it.

  “Woolgathering, lad?” He jerked his head toward the hatch and he and Tigg followed Captain Hollys and Alice back to the crew’s quarters to wash up and change. “Penny for ’em.”

  “I’d rather have a penny for yours,” Tigg said. “You’ve been making yourself scarce.”

  “I’ve been up on the fuselage, mending bullet holes,” Jake retorted. “I’ve got no time for social conversation if we mean t
o get Swan in the air for true anytime soon.”

  “Not what I meant,” Tigg said, unperturbed. “You’re not resting easy, nor the captain either, and it’s—”

  “—none of your affair.” Jake cut him off.

  “The captain’s my superior officer, and you’re my mate. If a bird flies into the viewing port and both of you hit the deck leaving the helm unmanned, it becomes my affair with a vengeance.”

  “Are you saying you don’t trust me to do my duty?” Jake demanded, his expression hardening.

  Tigg had known the older boy since they were little ’uns begging in the Haymarket. Where his half-brother Snouts could be counted on to keep a cool head in a pinch, Jake would fly off the handle at the hint of a slight, and hold a grudge sometimes for years. Tigg hadn’t been around him much in the last couple of years, but it was a sure bet Jake hadn’t changed in the essentials.

  “I’m saying that talking about what happened might be good for you.”

  For answer, Jake stripped off his shirt and ran water over his head from the boiler overflow valve, scrubbing off the sweat and dust of the day’s work. Tigg did the same, and by the time he dried his face and rubbed the towel over his military-cut hair, Jake had screwed up the bluster to answer.

  “The sooner I forget that place, the better. Talking about it ent going to change what happened.”

  “It might help us understand, though.”

  “I ent putting that in your heads. Bad enough it’s in mine.”

  “So you and the captain are content to jump like mice every time the steam pipes clank? To wake in the middle of the night in a puddle of sweat? To stare off into space and not come back no matter what anyone says to you?”

  Jake’s mouth tightened, as though he might be reining in his temper with an effort of will. That was different—he was learning control.

  “Do you blame us?” Tigg went on. “What happens when we’re in an air skirmish and you go into that trance, Jake?”

  “I won’t.”

  “You can’t say that. Are you willing to put Alice’s life in danger because you’re too proud to admit you’ve got the megrims?”

  He barely saw Jake’s fist in time to throw up his arm and block it. With a twist and a movement of his foot, he had him on the cabin floor, leaning on him gently, the offending fist twisted up between his shoulder blades.

  “You forget I’ve had advanced training from Mr. Yau,” Tigg told him softly. “Don’t swing on me again or I won’t be so gentle next time.”

  Jake was fuming with rage as Tigg let him up. “It’s none of your business,” he snarled. “If you ent got the sense to let me keep the ugliness to myself, you deserve what you get.”

  Tigg, on the alert in case he took another poke, said, “I’m trying to be your friend, you numpty. We’re a flock, remember? We help each other.”

  He could see the struggle going on behind the other boy’s eyes, as green as those of Snouts. The struggle between the horrors of the megrims and the belief that a man kept his fear to himself. The struggle to trust someone other than Captain Chalmers. Well, Tigg could understand that. Alice had made a man out of an angry boy, but that didn’t mean a man could live without friends.

  Especially friends who knew all about the ugliness that their lives had been before the Lady came.

  “Think on it.” Tigg turned and shrugged into a shirt and his uniform jacket. “I saw what little I saw, and only a fool wouldn’t have the megrims.”

  Jake only grunted. But through dinner on Athena, Tigg kept an eye on him and saw the effort he was making to be normal. The only time he seemed to soften was when he spoke to Maggie.

  Maybe she was the key.

  After dinner, when the gentlemen had joined the ladies in the large salon for the latest variation of cowboy poker, he waylaid Maggie at the door on her way back from fixing a pin in her chignon.

  “Got a sec, Mags?”

  Her smile warmed her amber eyes, making Tigg wonder for about the fortieth time why no one had spoken for her. Yes, she was young, but didn’t they have eyes in their heads at that fancy school she and Lizzie went to? There should be a steady stream of young gentlemen traipsing through the park bringing her Flanders chocolates and flowers. But Maggie didn’t seem to mind.

  Perhaps she was like the Lady had been, and had bigger fish to fry than the opinions of young gentlemen.

  “I have all the time in the world for you,” she told him. “What is it?”

  “I’m worried about our Jake.”

  The smile faded, and she glanced to where Jake sat hunched protectively over his cards—as though he expected someone to take them from him. “I am, too. It’s been weeks since we were in Venice, and he’s perfectly safe here, but still … he reminds me of the way he used to be. Remember?”

  Only too well. “I think we should get him to talk about it. Him and the captain both, but Alice is the best one for that job.”

  “I think so too. But how?”

  “You could ask him to escort you out into the garden.”

  Maggie raised an eyebrow with an expression that clearly said, Are you mad? “He’d laugh in my face.”

  “Tell him you’re afraid of villains. It won’t be far wrong—we’ve had our share here.”

  “That’s true.” She thought for a moment. “All right. And you’ll find us out there? Because I don’t want him to think—” She hesitated, and color washed into her cheeks. “I wouldn’t want to give the wrong impression.”

  “I don’t think he’s sweet on you, if that’s what you mean.”

  “You don’t?”

  Well, blow him down if she didn’t look disappointed. Crushed, even. If Tigg could have backed away and run for it, he would have. This was Lizzie’s department, not his. Before he opened his big mouth again, he’d remind himself he belonged in the engine room with a wrench, not in a drawing room.

  “I’m no expert,” he finally said, sounding as lame as he felt. “But I bet he’ll go with you.”

  At least he turned out to be right on that score. Jake might not be a gentleman, but Tigg had never known him to refuse Maggie anything, even though his pride might put up a fight first.

  As Tigg followed them down the gangway trying to look as though he was merely out for a stroll, Lizzie slipped up behind him and took his hand. They fit together so well that his fingers entwined with hers without his even needing to think about it.

  “Something is up,” she said without preamble. “You were distracted at dinner and hardly heard me. What is it?”

  Trust his Liz to get down to brass tacks.

  “I’ve asked our Maggie to talk to Jake. His mind is still locked in that Venetian prison, and if anyone can give him a key to get out, it’s she.”

  “So you’re out here to prevent their being interrupted?”

  “No.” He squeezed her hand, hoping she would understand. “I’m going to join them. I’m hoping that between the two of us, he’ll open up.”

  “He won’t open up to you.”

  “Whyever not? I’m his mate. And I’ve already brought it up once today.”

  “Didn’t get very far, did you?”

  “No. He told me to shove off. But I could see in his face that it’s driving him mad.”

  “You haven’t asked for my advice, but I’ll give it anyway. Maggie sees things that the rest of us don’t. I think you should leave her to it. If she can’t get him to confide in her, then nothing any of us can do will work, and he’ll have to come to terms with his memories himself.”

  “But—” Tigg almost couldn’t voice the fear that lay deep down. But this was Lizzie. They’d never kept anything from one another, and now was no time to begin. “What if he hurts her?” he finished reluctantly.

  Lizzie stopped dead in the white gravel of the walk. “Hurts her? Is there some danger of that?”

  “He took a swing at me this afternoon for getting too nosy. I just wondered—it’s why I wanted to be there.”

  �
�Surely not.” Lizzie sounded a bit winded. “Not our Jake.”

  “He’s not the same as he was, Liz. Or rather, he’s become all too much as he used to be. Before the Lady. Remember?”

  “That was a long time ago, when we were children.”

  Tigg had no reply.

  In the twilight, he heard Lizzie take a deep breath. “If you truly think so, then perhaps we’ll just take a walk through the park. We’ll give them a wide berth—wide enough that they can’t see us, but close enough that we can help if she cries out.” She choked. “I cannot believe I am even saying such a thing about Jake.”

  “Are you warm enough?”

  “Yes, I brought a shawl. And you will keep me warm if that fails.”

  He passed an arm about her shoulders and drew her close to his side. “Don’t let the Lady hear you say something so wicked. She might think you were drawing me in.”

  “I didn’t let her, did I? She and Mr. Malvern are beating Alice and the captain at cards. I let Mr. Stringfellow know where we were going, but no one else.”

  Near the lake in the middle of the park, they could hear the murmur of voices, and Tigg made out the two figures pacing slowly along the gravel walk—one tall and rangy and looking perpetually underfed, and one straight and graceful, her sleeves puffed in the new fashion and her skirts trailing now that the Lady had allowed both girls to let their hems down.

  One girl had saved the life of a future king, and the other had prevented a foreign invasion. It did not seem sensible to keep the Mopsies looking like children when anyone with eyes in his head could see that they were not.

  Tigg wondered if these two girls who meant so much to him had ever been children. If any of them had.

  “Do you ever wonder what life might have been like if we’d grown up like normal people?” he mused aloud.

  “I am a normal person,” Lizzie said crisply.