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  Claire had discovered there were many things in the world to fear, but heights, in her opinion, were among the more benign. That said, she still felt a sick swoop in her stomach when she realized that the captain meant them to climb out onto the roof of the gondola and into a hatch set in the fuselage of the ship. The curve of the great rigid structure did not conceal them entirely from the view of anyone in the pirate bridge. But there was no time to think of that.

  The wind was like liquid ice this high above the earth, and as she tried to gasp for breath, it cut into her lungs as though it had actual physical form.

  “Quickly.” The captain lifted Lady Dunsmuir bodily through the hatch, and her husband pulled her through the rest of the way. “There is not enough oxygen in the air to sustain us long.”

  Claire scrambled through, and the captain closed both hatches behind him, spinning the wheels until they snugged tight. “That will keep them guessing for a few moments, at least, when they find a locked room with no one inside. Come.”

  Lady Dunsmuir was as white as her own Brussels lace waist. “Where are we going?”

  “Our first task is to arm ourselves. Then free my crew. Then retake the ship and cut her free of the Stalwart Lass.”

  Such was the captain’s confidence that Claire could almost believe it was possible.

  Apparently the coaxial catwalk was not the only way to travel the length of the ship. “We are between the B and A decks now,” Lord John said in a low voice, speaking over his shoulder to Claire, while Captain Hollys brought up the rear, herding them closely so no one fell behind. “The false ceilings were designed to lead up here so that if we were boarded, the family had a means of escape and concealment. I was not aware of the hatch out of the gondola. That anything escaped my brothers and me in our explorations quite surprises me.” He touched a metal strut as he passed it. “I thought I knew the old girl inside and out.”

  “We could find William in here, then?” Hope had brought color back to the countess’s face. “May I call him?”

  “No!” both men said at once.

  “The walls are thin,” Lord John said more gently. “And he is in the A deck ceiling, a floor above.”

  “We must be quiet and take them by surprise,” the captain added. “No more talking, now.”

  Moving swiftly, they reached the stern in a few minutes, evident by the narrowing of the fuselage and the increase in the sounds of men’s voices. At a niche in the wall, the captain paused, selected a key on his ring, and turned it in a lock. “They must be under guard, or Jack and the other officers would already have been up here to retrieve these.” He reached in and took a rifle, handing three of them back in rapid succession.

  But it was not a rifle—at least, the kind that fired either bullets or current. There was no means of loading it. Claire turned it over. A trigger. Well, that was something.

  “It is called an aural detonator. It fires sound waves,” Lady Dunsmuir said, indicating the bell of the barrel. Suddenly Claire realized where the barrel of her own rifle might have originated. “We cannot use anything else aboard ship. Fired straight at a person, the wave it emits will knock a man senseless but will have no effect on the fuselage.”

  Clearly Lady Dunsmuir had not been as gently reared as one might have expected.

  “Brilliant,” Claire said.

  “Here is our plan,” the captain said. “We come out of the ceiling, we disable the guard, we release the crew and move forward. Questions?”

  Claire needed clarification on one point. “Are we—Davina and I—to stay behind?”

  Davina looked at her incredulously. “Certainly not. Can you fire a gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what purpose would it serve for you to stay up here?”

  To which, of course, there was no answer.

  Captain Hollys and the earl moved a panel aside, and then dropped to the carpet below. Davina went next, then Claire. As soon as possible, she was going to possess herself of a rope and grapple, if this climbing in and out of ceilings was going to become a regular practice.

  The crew’s quarters were guarded by two pirates, who whooped and raised their weapons. But the earl and Captain Hollys beat them to it. Claire felt a curious sensation, rather like the popping in one’s ears when one descends to a landing field too quickly, and the pirates fell in a heap. A trickle of blood seeped from the ear of one of them.

  The captain dragged them out of the way and pounded on the door. “Gentlemen! It is Hollys and the earl. We are coming in.”

  It was fortunate he had given a warning. As he opened the door, someone jumped down from a wardrobe pushed up next to it, and put away what appeared to be a candlestick. It was the first officer, looking enormously relieved. “Sir! Is the family all right?”

  “Quite all right, thank you, Mr. Andersen,” her ladyship said, stepping into view. “We must retake the ship and then locate Lord Will and the young ladies, who are in the A deck ceiling.”

  “Right ho. Middies, look sharp. First opportunity you get, scamper up into the A deck rafters and find his lordship and the girls.”

  The captain nodded. “The rest of you, arm yourselves. I want four men posted on the gangways to A deck. No one but our crew is to pass alive, is that clear? This is no time for Queensberry rules.”

  Claire had no time for more than a glance at the men in the room. Tigg did not seem to be with them—but she could be mistaken. Mr. Yau was not present, either, so perhaps they were still at the engines.

  They divested the pirates of a considerable number of weapons and locked them in the wardrobe. Then they headed forward, to the closest gangway up to the A deck, which was between the galley and the crew’s and officers’ mess.

  Two more pirates went down, a third caught halfway down the steep stair.

  The first officer went up and kicked the unconscious body aside. Before he could clear the gangway, however, a pair of objects clanked onto the stairs and bounced down them two at a time.

  They looked rather like pine cones, only made of metal. One rolled to a stop and the end of it popped open.

  A wisp of green mist puffed out, then a stream, then a cloud.

  “Gas!” the captain shouted. “Retreat!”

  The first officer plummeted to the deck before he could finish the word. Two of the middies collapsed toward each other in a hug, then landed in a pile.

  The second bomb puffed and her ladyship went down.

  Claire dove through the galley doorway, tripped over a silver coffee pot lying on the floor, and fell headfirst into the dumb waiter.

  A hiding place!

  She yanked her feet in and slammed the door, then let out a squeak of dismay as the floor rose up under her posterior.

  Good heavens. She would be deposited in the serving pantry, not ten feet away from where she had begun the day, in the dining saloon facing a roomful of pirates.

  Only now they had much more reason to be angry with her.

  Chapter 7

  Had anyone heard?

  Curled up as small as she could make herself, Claire listened so intently that her own breathing sounded loud enough to bring the pirates running if the dumb waiter’s mechanism had not.

  Nothing seemed to be stirring outside, though she could hear a ruckus below—one with a triumphant tone to it. Round two to Ned Mose, but they were not beaten yet. Claire now knew two things the pirates did not—the existence of the ceiling passages and the location of the weapons locker in the stern.

  Slowly, she slid the door aside and wriggled out feet first. On her hands and knees, just pushing up from the floor, she froze.

  A pair of boots stood in the doorway of the serving pantry.

  Boots she knew as well as her own.

  “Hallo, Lady,” Jake said.

  Drawing a deep breath, she rose to her feet. She must be calm. She must use her wits and perhaps he could be persuaded to abandon this madness and help them all.

  He lounged against the doo
r jamb, what looked to be an actual bullet-shooting rifle in the crook of his arm. “I figured I’d find you here.”

  She had no idea where her aural detonator had gone. It had probably fallen down a shaft somewhere. “Did you? How is that?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just wot I’d do. You’d best come wiv me quiet-like. Captain’d like a word.”

  “Jake, just a moment.”

  “Don’t ’ave a moment if you value yer life.”

  “Oh, stop talking like a pirate.”

  “I’ll talk ’ow I like and there’s nowt you can do to stop me. I’m the one ’oldin’ the rifle now.” His posture was cocksure, his tone as insolent as she’d ever heard it. But something in his eyes, in the tension around their corners, told her he wasn’t completely comfortable in the role of ruffian.

  He’d lost the talent for it somewhere along the way, and it was that which kept her tone gentle, and allowed the faintest shoot of hope to spring up where a rational person would find none.

  “Only tell me why, Jake. Why did you throw in your lot with these men when his lordship has done so much for you?”

  His face hardened, and the conflicted look in his eyes faded. “I make me own way in the world. I take handouts from Dunsmuir and I’m nowt but ’is lackey, then, ent I?”

  “Certainly not. You have been earning your way. His lordship is not the kind of man to give handouts, in any case. He is fair. A gentleman. And worthy of your loyalty. As, I hoped, was I.” Her throat closed and made her voice fade to a whisper.

  She turned away, unable to look at him. And there, practically under her nose, was a paring knife lying next to a pile of fruit, some peeled, some not.

  She gripped the edge of the counter and hoped her skirts were enough to conceal what lay on it.

  Jake merely shrugged. “Takin’ a gentleman prisoner is heaps easier’n regular folks. But you was harder. They needed me, and captain’s gonna give me a cut of t’plunder. When we find it.”

  “And yet you’ve said nothing to him of the Mopsies. Or Willie.” She reached back slowly, feeling for the knife.

  He shrugged, and levered himself off the jamb. “Kids don’t interest t’captain. I got nothing against t’Mopsies. No reason to hand ’em over. Once we make port, they’re on their own.”

  “That’s hard. They’re only children.”

  He raised his eyebrows and nearly smiled. “A lot you know. Come on, enough lollygaggin’. Captain’s waitin’.”

  As she pushed away from the counter, her fingers found the knife. Before she had taken a step, it had gone up her sleeve where once, in happier days, she had kept a spare handkerchief.

  Her interview with Ned Mose went rather more poorly than the first one. The upshot was that they were all imprisoned in the crew’s quarters on B deck once again, leaving the pirates to make themselves comfortable in the family’s and guests’ quarters above.

  Claire lay on an airman’s bunk, twitching and tossing and wondering how a man could possibly sleep on such a hard pallet. But she must not complain. She and Lady Dunsmuir had the only bunks, one above the other. The other pallets had all been requisitioned by the pirates for their greater numbers, forcing the men to take what rest they could on hardwood floors.

  The sun rose and fell, from the limited view she could get out a tiny porthole, and still they flew steadily west, their progress slowed by the drag of the Stalwart Lass on the tow line. She wished she’d punctured the pirate ship’s fuselages while she had the chance. But it was too late now. Below them, the landscape changed from verdant tracts of trees broken by the occasional patchwork of farmland, to more farmland, to open prairie.

  “We must be nearly to the Wild West,” she said to Lady Dunsmuir. “How long does it take to cross the Americas?”

  “Days.” Her ladyship lay on the top bunk, one wrist across her eyes. “You will know the Wild West by the color of the landscape and its aridity. Do you suppose my poor darling has starved to death by now?”

  “No, I do not. He is in the Mopsies’ company, and is likely in much better shape than we.”

  “How can you say so? He is trapped in the ceiling.”

  “He is not in the least trapped. We are trapped. If they have not been feasting on trifle and roast beef, I will eat my hat.” She paused. “If I had it.” Her lovely hat was gone, knocked off somewhere or whisked off her head by the wind during the escape from the gondola. Some lady in the Fifteen Colonies would come out of her farmhouse and find it perched in her garden like an exotic bird.

  “I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies,” her ladyship sighed. “These could be pirates from the Spanish Main, in which case we would be dead. They have no patience for ransom and a distaste for witnesses.”

  “The Spanish Main?”

  “Yes. Everything south of the Fifteen Colonies—the Bermudas, Florida, Louisiana, all the way to the South American coast. A lawless anarchy of a place which all good society avoids.”

  “Dear me. I had no idea.”

  “It is not something spoken of in the drawing rooms of London. But in the homes of the railroad barons and shipping people, particularly those seeking trade in the southern hemisphere with the Royal Kingdom of Spain, it is a concern. One cannot fly safely through those skies at all. Hence the vigor of the Texican economy—everyone is forced to fly their way and east again.”

  “But our captors are … local?”

  “There is no shortage of lawlessness in the Texican Territory, my dear. The Rangers do what they can, but the country is simply too big.”

  “I wonder where they are taking us.”

  “I do not know. Usually we travel further north than this, from New York to the Canadas, so my usual landmarks and little familiarities are leagues away.”

  Claire gazed out of the glass, wishing she could at least open it. The room was tiny to begin with, and two women crushed into the space without even a breath of fresh air was beginning to make her a little crazy. If she could only see enough of the country to—

  The floor dropped ever so gently out from under the soles of her boots.

  Lady Dunsmuir sat up. “Did you feel that?”

  “Are we descending?”

  It happened again.

  “I believe we must be. I don’t know whether to be glad or terrified.”

  “One thing we can be glad of,” Claire said. “The children have not been found.”

  “I hope they have the sense to remain concealed,” Davina said. “When we escape, we will return to the ship. Do you suppose they will think of that?”

  “I hope so.”

  They had dropped about a thousand feet by now. Outside, the two women heard a ruckus and in moments the key turned in the lock.

  A pirate stood in the doorway. “Nearly there. Out with you.”

  “Where are we going?” Claire asked.

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  They were herded, along with the officers and Lord Dunsmuir, down to the embarkation hatch where normally a set of steps would be rolled up to let the passengers on and off. But now there was nothing but the large boarding area and the open hatch, through which Claire could see the landscape sailing past several hundred feet below them.

  Trees. Rolling hills. And now, water. A lake? Or the ocean? Oh, if only she knew where they were!

  The captain strode up to his lordship, his neck outstretched like a rooster challenging a more powerful one. “I’ve had about enough of this nonsense. I’ve asked nicely. I’ve looked myself. And now I’m about done with being nice.” Practically nose to nose, he demanded, “Where are those jewels?”

  “I have no idea, sir,” his lordship said with the conviction of one who tells the truth. He did not, after all, know where Willie had gone with them.

  “You’re lying!” the captain roared. He reached out one long, apelike arm and grabbed Jake by the shoulder. “Boy, tell him what you told me last night.”

  “They got to be in the ceiling,” Jake managed, as
the captain shook him.

  The blood drained from John Dunsmuir’s face, and Captain Hollys started forward, only to be yanked back so roughly he fell to his knees on the deck.

  “He was tellin’ the truth, at least. I sent him and a team of my men up to comb every inch of them passages. Found a nice cache of weapons, but no jewels. Now, once and for all, you tell me where they are, or this boy takes a long walk.”

  “Wot?” Jake jerked away, to no avail. The captain had a grip like a grappling hook.

  “What does that mean, exactly?” Lord Dunsmuir’s color had not improved.

  “It means exactly this—you tell me what I want to know, or Jake here goes out that hatch. Simple.”

  His lordship searched his wife’s face, the full horror of his dilemma in every line of his own. It was clear Jake had not told them about the children. If John Dunsmuir revealed where they were, the pirates would take the jewels and Willie’s life would be in mortal danger along with their own. As long as the children remained concealed, there was hope for the desperate parents. But if he did not speak, there was no hope for Jake.

  All three Dunsmuirs could be held for ransom by the threat of death. But what of the Mopsies? Their lives were worth nothing to these men. If they were discovered, would they be deemed useless and pushed out the hatch, too? And what of poor Rosie? She would last only as long as it took someone to whip out a butcher knife.

  For the first time, Claire felt the sheer terror that parents feel when the children they love are threatened.

  My lord, you cannot make this decision. Claire reached out a hand in entreaty. Who to, she hardly knew. Ned Mose? John? The Lord looking down from heaven?

  Ned Mose roared in utter frustration. “That’s it! I’ve had enough of you! If you weren’t worth so much, I’d toss you out myself. But he’s worth nothin’.”

  With that, Mose whipped around and before Jake could brace himself or grab something or so much as take another breath, the pirate captain had given him a mighty shove.

  With a shriek that Claire would hear in her nightmares for years to come, Jake tumbled out of the hatch and fell like Icarus into the empty sky.