A Gentleman of Means Page 4

  “But do normal people get tipped out of a burning airship into the Thames and grow up as street sparrows?”

  “Well, if you must put it like that … no, I don’t think of it. For if I did, I should be filled with hatred toward my father for taking my mother’s life. For taking Maggie’s and my lives away from us—twice—and there is no profit in that.” She glanced up at him, though it was getting increasingly dark. “Why? Do you?”

  “I can’t imagine it,” he said after a moment. “My earliest memory is holding a spool of ribbon for my mother as she trimmed a bonnet. Then it’s a blank until the next memory—the madam giving me a wallop for crying while my mother was with a man. But how she went from being a respectable milliner to a—” He couldn’t say it. “To working there is just dark. And then she died, and I never had the chance to ask her.”

  “Have you ever known your father?”

  He shook his head. “Just shadows—moments that might have been memories, or something my mother told me in a story. I know he was an aeronaut, and he must have been a Nubian, for my mother was as fair as you.”

  She slid her hand into the crook of his arm, tugging her paisley shawl with its peacock pattern more closely around her. “I’m glad we’ve had the lives we did. For I wouldn’t trade what I have now for all the jewels in the Queen’s treasury.”

  His smile held quiet content. “I wouldn’t either. In fact, I—”

  He stopped, and she looked up at him curiously. “Tigg?”

  “Have you seen the sentries?”

  The count’s guards paced the walks and boundaries of the park twenty-four hours a day. There were usually always two within view, even if they were off in the distance. Now Lizzie’s keen eyes swept the park, the lake, and the trees. “That’s odd.”

  And then a shot rang out.

  4

  Claire lifted her gaze from the contemplation of her cards. “What was that?”

  Alice had abandoned her hand on the tablecloth altogether, allowing everyone to see that she would have been the first to fold. “Sounded to me like a rifle.”

  “A rifle? In Munich? In the count’s own park?” But despite his reluctance to believe it, Andrew was already pushing back his chair.

  “Where are the girls?” Claire said suddenly. “Have they gone back to the palace?”

  “Allow us to look,” Captain Hollys told her. “Do not distress yourself, Claire.”

  She was about to tell him she was not in the least distressed—that when one heard gunshots, one customarily looked to the safety of those for whom one was responsible—when they all heard a second shot.

  At this confirmation of reality and not imagination, the salon was abruptly abandoned. Claire dashed into her cabin and snatched the lightning rifle off its brass rack on the wall, thumbing its cell into life in the same motion. Andrew waited for her at the base of Athena’s gangway, his face tense.

  “Mr. Stringfellow says that the girls are walking with Tigg and Jake in the park.”

  “Good heavens,” Claire breathed. “Two shots—”

  “Do not think it, dearest. Come.”

  Where on earth were the sentries? Had the entire company been set upon? Rendered unconscious? Killed? And what of the count and the baroness and their visiting grandchildren?

  No, no. She must not let her fears run away with her. The most immediate necessity was to find the girls and make sure they were unharmed. But where would they be? The park was enormous—acres and acres of grass and gardens, the lake, the trees, all artfully laid out to look as natural as possible.

  A flash of white caught her eye by the lake. A swan, startled out of sleep? Or—

  “Andrew, it’s Maggie!”

  She gathered up the skirts of her evening dress in one hand and set off at a run. A moment later she found Lizzie and Maggie both crouched behind a statue of Zeus, breathing hard, as though they had been running, too.

  “Girls!” The lightning rifle in her other hand was no barrier to the embrace she gave them both. “Tell me what has happened at once.”

  “Two shots, both from behind Swan,” Lizzie said without preamble, and Claire realized that between walking with the young gentlemen and meeting her, they had been scouting. She should have expected nothing less, and her earlier concern seemed foolish. “Something has happened to the sentries.”

  “I noticed that too.” Since it was now fully dark, she used the light in the glass globe of the rifle to scan their forms quickly. “You are not hurt?”

  “No,” Maggie said. “Jake and Tigg have gone to flush them out, whoever they are.”

  “Excellent. The pheasant shall find the hunters waiting at the butts.”

  Another shot whistled over their heads and took a chip off Zeus’s noble ear. Why, the nerve!

  Claire had clearly seen the muzzle flash, there beneath the trees. She sighted through the notch in the lightning rifle’s flared barrel and squeezed the trigger.

  The grass, the trees, and the intruder were all illuminated in the blue-white flash before it engulfed the man standing there, flickering along the barrel of the gun still pointed at them, and causing it to explode in his hands as the cartridge caught fire. The charge made short work of his clothing—his body—his hat. The charred remains slumped to the earth.

  “Nicely done, Lady,” Lizzie said with admiration.

  Claire could not rejoice at any man’s death, though he had clearly meant theirs. “The question is, how many are there?”

  “That was the third, all from different directions,” Maggie told her. “But it was the first shot to be directed at human targets. The others seem to have been shooting at poor Swan. Don’t they know that they would need many more bullets than that to damage a fuselage?”

  “Unless they meant to draw us out, in which case, they succeeded,” Claire said grimly. “The other villains will have seen the bolt, so we must be careful in our examination of the corpse. Come.”

  Lizzie shared her dark shawl with Maggie so that the white lace of her waist would not draw undue attention. Claire was thankful that her own gown was sapphire blue—close enough to black in the dark to make it easy to blend in with the shadows.

  She pulled a fold of it over her nose and mouth as they approached the remains of the gunman. The smell of charred flesh was dreadful, and it was all she could do to circle the body enough to ascertain that all hints of identity had been burned away.

  Andrew joined them a moment later and she turned gratefully into his arms. “Claire, dearest, you frightened me to death, haring off into the night in that manner.”

  “I am sorry,” she said meekly into his shirt. “I saw the girls and every thought but reaching them fled my mind.”

  “I saw the shot, and your return fire. I suppose I should be used to it, but …” His arms tightened about her. “There is no possibility of your becoming an ordinary hausfrau, is there?”

  “I do not think so,” she confessed. “Would you love me more if there were?”

  Softly, he said, “I do not think it possible to love you more. I should simply explode.”

  She might have expressed her complete agreement with this view in more concrete terms had Lizzie not whispered, “Lady! Bring the light.”

  With a sigh, Claire forced herself to recollect the danger of their situation. They might not have much time. There had been no further shooting, but that might only be because the villains were triangulating their position.

  By the clear glow of the lightning globe, within which tendrils of energy flickered restlessly, waiting for the next depression of the trigger, Claire examined what the girls had found.

  It was a rucksack of the kind that walkers used in the Alps. It contained half a sausage in waxed paper, a shirt, a box of ammunition, and in an inner pocket, a medallion.

  “What can this be?” She turned it over, but other than a pin on the back, it revealed nothing. The front contained an etched design. “Are these cats?”

  Lizzie frowned a
s she took the bit of brass, the size of a sixpence. “A lion, it looks like, and a leopard with spots, and a dog? No, a wolf. All three with circlets on their heads.”

  “Is it a coin?” Maggie asked. “A medal?”

  “Never mind,” Andrew said urgently. “We must find the others—to say nothing of the two villains who remain.”

  The words were no sooner out of his mouth than there was a fusillade of shots from the woods surrounding the clearing in which Swan was moored.

  “Tigg!” Lizzie squeaked.

  Claire grabbed her just as she leaped to her feet. “You must not!”

  “But Tigg—”

  “Tigg is a trained aeronaut. Dearest, we must have help. Run to the palace and alert the count that we are under fire from persons unknown. Quickly—you and Maggie are the fastest of us all.”

  Despite her fear, Lizzie’s practical nature told her that this was the necessary and most helpful course. She grabbed Maggie’s hand and they took off like athletes at the starting gun in the direction of the palace, where lamps were coming on all over the ground floor.

  “Nicely done,” Andrew said. “They will both be safe.”

  “Until they accompany the sentries back here,” Claire said wryly. “Come. Let us resume our hunt for the hunters.”

  But by the time they reached the area from which the sounds of fighting had come, the battle was over. Alice and Tigg knelt next to the lifeless bodies of two men, whose lack of knowledge of the park might have contributed to their undoing.

  “It was me they were after,” Alice said grimly, rifling pockets for some sign of identity. “Look at this.” She held up a second medal, the cast figures identical to the one Tigg had found. “I’ve heard about these. I knew I’d have a price on my head when I fled Venice, but not that they’d come so far, nor take to shooting when they got here. But all they accomplished was to put a few more holes in Swan’s fuselage for Jake to patch tomorrow, and give us all a run around in the dark.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Tigg said, dusting off the knees of his uniform trousers as he stood. “If it hadn’t been for me, this one would have dropped you for sure. He had a clear shot.”

  “Then I owe you my life.” She grinned at him, but it was belied by the sparkle of tears. “Again.” Her smile faded as her gaze took in her company. “Say, where is Ian?”

  “I thought he was with you,” Tigg said. “And where is Jake?”

  “Here.” Jake stepped out of the trees and picked his way over to Claire. “I checked quite a distance out, but there don’t seem to be more. And no indication of how they came, either. They might have rappelled down from a lampless airship on ropes.” He paused. “Where are the girls?”

  “Gone to the palace to get help,” Andrew said. “We must find Ian. I do not relish being mistaken for an assassin, and he might know the significance of the medal.”

  “Medal? You mean like these?” Tigg and Alice both held out similar brass pieces, and Tigg went on, “Not a scrap of paper to indicate who they are, but they all carried these—as though they belonged to a club.”

  “Let me see.” Jake tried to take it from Tigg’s hand, but the young lieutenant shook his head.

  “I can hear the count’s men. Come. We must get out in the open and identify ourselves. If something happened to the sentries on duty tonight, the others will be on edge.”

  Spoken like a true military man, Claire thought with quiet admiration. How easily Tigg took command, with both logic and concern for those under his protection. She was more convinced than ever that Lizzie was a fortunate young woman. If ever two souls were meant to match each other in bravery and resources, it was they.

  The sentries were indeed on edge at the discovery of the lifeless bodies of two of their mates, lying where they had fallen near the rear gates of the park. Tigg handed over the medallion he had found to the captain of the company, and informed him of what they suspected was its significance. The sentry turned it over in his leather-gloved hand without recognition.

  “A vengeance medallion, is it?” he said at last, squinting in the light of the lamps on Athena’s mooring mast. “I shall bring it to Count von Zeppelin’s attention as soon as he and the baroness see to the grandchildren.”

  “Let them know we are all well,” Claire said. “I would not want them to suffer a moment’s anxiety on our behalf.”

  But they were not all well. Ian was still missing, and a quick search of Athena proved that he had not returned.

  “He must be on Swan,” Alice said at last, her hands on her hips and a frown wrinkling her brow. “But if he isn’t, I suppose we’ll have to wait for the sentries to make a full search of the grounds. I don’t fancy being shot while I’m looking for him, either.”

  “We’ll come with you,” Andrew said. “If a chance exists that a fourth man might be on Swan, you’ll want reinforcements.”

  This had not occurred to Claire, and she exchanged an anxious glance with Alice. “We shall all go together,” she said. “Lizzie, Maggie, arm yourselves with your lightning pistols. I do not wish to be taken by surprise again.”

  “We’ll be putting pockets in our dresses for the pistols after this,” Lizzie said, rather too happily, considering the circumstances. “Imagine coming armed to the dinner table.”

  Not for the first time, as they searched the crew’s quarters on Swan, Claire wondered with some despair what it would be like to be that imaginary hausfrau, living a quiet life quite unconcerned by the evils that dwelt in the world. Then her good sense caught up with her.

  Someone had to manage the evil, and it was her own good fortune that around her had gathered men and women suited to that task. Or, if not precisely suited, then certainly with the capacity to grow into it. Not for the first time, her thoughts turned to Gloria, who seemed to have been this second kind of person.

  Perhaps that was why they had become friends after their meeting in the Canadas. Perhaps each had recognized in the other that capacity to rise to a challenge, and thereby change the course of events. Perhaps even the course of history.

  Gloria, where are you? What has happened to alter your course? And what are you doing about it at this very moment?

  But if there were answers to those questions, they had to be put aside. For Jake called out from the catwalk traversing Swan’s cargo bay, the alarm in his voice startling them all.

  A fourth villain!

  “Lady!” he called when Claire dashed out behind him, rifle at the ready. “It’s the captain—I think he’s dead!”

  Claire’s lungs constricted as she flung herself against the iron railing, her gaze straining to see below in the dim light of the operating lamps. “Where? Alice, can you see?”

  And then Alice pointed. “There, behind those boxes of supplies. Get lamps. He might still be alive. You three, we still need the ship secured.”

  Tigg, Lizzie, and Maggie scattered along the catwalks and gangways. Agile as a cat, Jake swung down to the cargo deck while Claire and Alice hiked up their skirts and negotiated the ladder. Andrew, carrying a lantern, met them a few moments later, holding it up to illuminate Ian’s shivering form.

  Shivering…?

  “He’s alive,” Claire breathed, bending down. “Ian, are you hurt? Can you hear me? Ian!”

  A high, wavering sound was her only reply, muffled by the hands pressed to his face.

  “Ian!” Alice touched his shoulder. “Come on, man, what has hap—”

  He jumped violently and struck her hand away. In the light of the lamp, his eyes, normally so sharp and commanding, were distended and wide, darting hither and yon as though expecting an attack. His face was so pale that even in the golden light it looked positively gray, and a sheen of sweat stood out on it.

  “Cor, Lady,” Jake breathed over her shoulder. “I hate to say it, but I think his time in the prison’s done for him. The captain’s gone completely mad.”

  5

  Gloria was no stranger to the undersea dirigible.
Of her five voyages across the Atlantic, one had been entirely under the water … an experience whose novelty had faded once they had left the continental shelf behind and the only scenery consisted of darkness, punctuated occasionally by whales and fish. The fact that her father had used the interminable hours to school her in the workings of his business had not helped the situation, but rather made her feel as though flinging herself out the hatch with the daily load of refuse might be an appealing alternative.

  The Mediterranean was much more interesting, being shallow and showing the evidence of long human habitation, even on its submerged shores. But even the archaeological delights of the sunken city of Atlantis and the ancient volcanic ruins of Thera, to which Captain Hayes made a point of detouring to give her some relief from rocks and coral, began to pall after the second week.

  She had used every trick and weapon in her considerable arsenal of female wiles to get Captain Hayes to divulge who he was and where they were going—England being rather a general term. Even a hint as to why she was being taken would have been helpful. But to every blandishment, every subterfuge, he and his crew remained immune.

  She had even resorted to burglary and theft, only to find that no papers existed other than those relating to the muster in the Adriatic and earlier orders for shipping in the Mediterranean. No messages had been received by the vessel during its periodic surface expeditions for supplies—unless they had been destroyed promptly after they had been read. The only thing concerning her current situation that she had been able to find was a receipt for the feminine underthings that had been discreetly left in her cabin, when they had surfaced at Sicily.

  She supposed she ought to be grateful for such a consideration, for she had nothing to wear but what she stood up in. One thing was certain: When they reached their destination, she was tearing off this particular walking suit and leaving it, for she never wanted to see it again.

  Captain Hayes’s courtesy never failed him, no matter how cross or how cold she was. If he hadn’t been kidnapping her, she might have enjoyed his company. Each evening—or what passed for evening in the perpetual gloom of fathoms of seawater—she dined with him and his officers in the canteen set aside for their exclusive use. The small library in his cabin was made available to her in its entirety. She had now read the complete works of Miss Austen and Mr. Thackeray twice through, and had recently begun to plow through A Mariner’s Guide to Land Forms and Navigation. Next up was Astronomy and Exploration, and after that, The Fall of the Roman Empire.