Magnificent Devices Read online

  But Ned Mose and his motley crew had never dealt with the Lady of Devices.

  Chapter 9

  The locks ground and Ned Mose kicked the door open. By the time it had banged against the wall and rebounded on him, Claire was sitting demurely on the bare pallet, ankles crossed, hands in her lap, just as Miss Follet at St. Cecilia’s Academy for Young Ladies had taught them a lifetime ago.

  He narrowed his gaze at her. “What are you up to, you minx?”

  A lifting of the brow in inquiry was his only answer.

  “Stand up. Turn around and show me that holster of yours.”

  She did so, and was subject to a number of jerks and tugs. “Are you interested in designing one?” In the process, he investigated the contents of her pouch.

  “Shut up. What are these?” He sifted the gears and bits of machinery through his fingers.

  They were the parts that went into a fire balloon. “Mr. Yau gave them to me. I thought I might crochet a purse and weave them into the design. That spiral gear is particularly pretty if you don’t think about its original use.”

  “You ain’t gonna be crocheting purses anytime soon.” He pocketed them, and her heart sank. “Where’s my rifle?”

  She tried to keep her expression calm as she gazed at him. “In your hand?”

  “Not this one, you aggravating chit. The one I took off you. The one that don’t work.”

  The lightning rifle had gone missing? “I have no idea, captain.” She adjusted the pins in her chignon. “You are welcome to search, however.”

  “Don’t give me that. That rifle was in my cabin on Lady Lucy and now it’s not. The only other person with an interest in it is you.”

  “I have been here all day, not gallivanting about the landscape stealing arms. I suggest you look to your crew, sir.”

  An irate glance about the cabin told him that even if she had managed to get her hands on the rifle, there was nowhere to hide it. The room held only Claire, the bed and pallet, a brass chamber pot, and the sprigged-china water pitcher.

  “My crew is true. If I find out you had something to do with this, and lied to me, you’re not going to like what happens.” He glared at her. “I’ve been making inquiries about your ransom. Seems you’re not a very good investment.”

  “I am sorry,” Claire said quite sincerely.

  “Yer queen knew who the Dunsmuirs were smart enough, but she didn’t have no idea about you.”

  “Are you in communication with the queen?” How on earth had he pulled that off? A simple tea with her took weeks of management and involved several layers of the military, not to mention household staff.

  “Don’t take that tone with me. Course not. But I made headlines in the London papers two inches tall,” he said with rather more pride than this should normally warrant. “In New York, too. I seen ’em. Pigeon brought ’em this morning. My demands were plainly laid out. I expect to hear something tomorrow on the Dunsmuirs.”

  She was silent. He was not expecting to hear about her. “Was I … mentioned at all?”

  “Pricked your pride, has it, that no one cares about you enough to want to ransom you?”

  “I don’t think it’s a question of caring. It is a question of resources. My family have none.”

  “You got a fancy title and no money?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  He snorted. “Might have to make your own way in the world, huh, girlie? Ain’t that a shame.”

  “I have been, sir, and quite successfully. I ran a home for indigent children up until very recently.”

  “Indi—ing—“

  “Orphans.”

  At this, he stopped playing with the fire balloon parts in his pocket, pulled them out, and absently dropped them out the window. Claire bit back a cry of distress.

  “You some kind of bluestocking do-gooder?”

  “No, merely an impoverished woman making the best of a bad situation.”

  “So what are you doing with the Dunsmuirs, then, with satin dresses in your cabin and them fancy boots on?”

  “I have precisely one satin dress to my name. And these boots were bought in Leadenhall market off a rag picker who’d had a good day.”

  Now he was looking at her as though she’d inconvenienced him—worse, that she’d somehow lied to him and he’d made a bad bargain because of it.

  “I’m sorry to have misled you. Had I known we were to be skyjacked I would have been more clear about the situation.”

  Sucking in his lower lip, he thought for a moment. “Oh well. Buck up. Maybe someone will come forward yet.”

  “One can always hope,” she said pleasantly. “However, if that turns out not to be the case, what might you do with me?”

  “I dunno. I ain’t never skyjacked a working woman before. I’ll have to think on it.”

  And with that, he turned and left with a slam of the door. The lock ground into its housing once again, and as soon as the sound of his boots on the stairs faded, Claire darted to the window and leaned out.

  Twenty feet below lay the scattered parts of her device. First thing on the agenda was to get down there and collect them. Second thing was to find out what had become of the lightning rifle.

  It would have been far too easy for Ned Mose to shake it out of any of his crew members foolish enough to steal from him. Who would risk being shot for theft, or whatever the punishment was out here for such things? If it had gone missing on the Lady Lucy, there was only one explanation.

  The Mopsies.

  They must have lowered themselves from the ceiling and taken possession of it, and by now they would have discovered it did not fire. All she had to do was reunite with them, pull out the trigger coupling concealed in her hair and replace it, and their odds of success would increase immeasurably.

  Off in the distance, thunder growled in the twilight sky. The prospect of rain in this dry landscape seemed impossible—the state of the plant life proved it. But rain and night notwithstanding, a sense of urgency was growing under her breastbone. If Rosie was indeed in that hatbox somewhere out there, she would make a meal for some creature unless someone did something quickly.

  She had to get out of this room!

  Sitting on the windowsill, she leaned out and surveyed, not the wall below, but the wall above.

  Urgh. Nothing but sheer wood planks. Five or six feet away was a rusty drainpipe, but it looked so unstable it would barely support a spider, never mind a young woman. Claire could just see herself leaping for it, and it promptly tearing away from the wall. Frustrated beyond measure, she slid back into the room.

  Just in time to hear someone release the lock.

  Ned Mose came in bearing a lamp, and Claire blinked, her eyes adjusting to the light.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “Gazing at the stars and feeling homesick.”

  He snorted. “You won’t have much longer to do that. Buck up, girl. Seems you’re to be ransomed after all.”

  Claire stared at him. Impossible. Lady St. Ives would not sacrifice Claire’s baby brother Nicholas’s inheritance, even for her own daughter. Would she? “You’ve heard from England already? How is it possible for the pigeons to travel so fast?”

  “If they don’t have so far to go, it ain’t difficult.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They read the New York papers up in Santa Fe. And telegraph works as well there as it does in New York.” He sounded indignant, as if she’d impugned the literary abilities of the outposts in this godforsaken land. “Turns out you got a friend up there with a bit of ready cash.”

  Andrew!

  Hope leaped in her heart and she put a hand to the wall to steady herself. His letter had said he was in pursuit of Lord James Selwyn. Had he located him so soon? Had he sold their Kinetick Carbonator to lawful buyers instead of the thieves who had spirited it out of England?

  Ned Mose was watching her closely. “I sent a message back saying I was willing to negotiate, si
nce if I was looking to recoup my costs I wouldn’t get much out of you otherwise.”

  “That’s … comforting.”

  “So this Selwyn fellow should be here by tomorrow night at the earliest, if he takes ship. Train’ll take longer.”

  Something was wrong with her head. Claire felt as if her ears had stopped up. He couldn’t possibly have said what she thought he’d said. “What was that? Whose name did you say?”

  He pulled a piece of yellow paper out of his pocket and squinted at it. “James Selwyn. What’s the matter? Is he a friend of yours or not? Don’t matter anyway—long as he’s got the cash I don’t care who he is.”

  And with that, he walked out and closed the door.

  Claire heard the sliding of the lock as if for the first time. Locking her into a room—a house—a life she could not seem to escape, no matter how she tried.

  *

  Lizzie nearly came to blows with Tigg over the question of who would stay with the airship and who would go and find the Lady.

  “Our Willie can’t leg it all that way and back,” Tigg said as firmly as a person could with a six-year-old clinging to him like a burr. “Besides, ’e won’t leave the ship.” Willie shook his head vigorously. “His dad told him to stay put, and nothin’ short of a bomb’s gonna make ’im go.”

  “Fine,” Lizzie snapped. “He stays. But we can’t leave ’im alone. What if t’watch finds ’im? He can’t defend ’imself.”

  “That’s why you’re going to stay wiv ’im,” Tigg said patiently. “Girls stay with the kids and look after ’em.”

  “Wot?” Maggie goggled at him. “Tom Terwilliger, I ent never heard you spout such nonsense in all me life.”

  “That’s wot Mr. Yau says.”

  “Mr. Yau don’t know us very well,” Lizzie said grimly. “Who’s been scouting for Snouts since we was little tykes, eh? It weren’t Mr. Yau, now, were it?”

  “Besides, all his opinion got ’im was locked up,” Maggie put in. She had nothing against Mr. Yau—had quite admired him and his red sash, in fact. But being left to mind the children just because she was a girl was plain silly.

  “Me and Maggie will take the rifle to the Lady. We know wot we’re doin’. And seems to me knockin’ out the watch is more your job, now that Jake went over to the other side.”

  Tigg’s eyebrows drew down in a way Maggie had never seen before. “Don’t say ’is name in front of me again. I catch ’im, I’ll give ’im what for, see if I don’t.”

  “Cheer up,” Lizzie told him. “Maybe they made him stand watch. You c’n fill yer boots then.”

  “T’engines need checked,” Tigg said, clearly torn. “When Mr. Yau comes back, likely he’s going to want a fast liftoff.”

  Lizzie could sense her victory close at hand. “They did smell a bit on the burnt side, didn’t they?”

  Tigg nodded, as if he’d made his final decision. “All right, then. Willie and me will get the Lady Lucy ready to cast off when you come back with everyone. We’ll do for the watch quiet-like. And don’t forget Rosie.”

  “As if it were all ’is idea,” Maggie muttered indignantly to Lizzie as they hurried through the ceiling to the cabin they had shared.

  “Never mind. Let ’im think wot ’e wants, long as we get to do wot we want. Tigg belongs wi’ them engines and we belongs out there, sussin’ out the situation, an’ that’s that.”

  They changed quickly into raiding rig—black skirts and stockings, their hair braided tightly so as to stay out of the way. “Will we want a rope?” Lizzie asked, tipping up the false bottom of her travel bag. “And a fire balloon?”

  “Best take both. You never know. Here, use my sash an’ tie the rifle on my back. You got the Lady’s ring still?”

  “Round my neck. The pearls?”

  “Under my cammy.” Maggie grinned over her shoulder as Lizzie cinched the last knot. “We’re as rich as Rosie, an’ that’s a fact.”

  The humor of the situation lightened their feet as they crept down the gangway. Silence and darkness greeted them. “Wonder where t’watch is?” Maggie whispered.

  “Long as ’e’s not ’ere, I don’t care. Come on. Hope you remember ’ow to shimmy down a rope.”

  “No need. Look, ’ere’s the airmen’s ladder.”

  Working quickly, they opened the hatch and tossed the bundled ladder out, where it unfurled and hung within jumping distance of the ground. Maggie had been in plenty of high places, but she still forbore to look down, concentrating instead on the immediate sight of the rungs in front of her eyes and under her boots.

  There was no watch on the ground, either. She’d only been on an airship twice—once down to Cornwall and this time—but even she knew that an airman stood watch on the mooring ropes at every field.

  “Lot of confidence, this Mose bloke,” Lizzie muttered. “Only four guy ropes and no watch to be seen.”

  “Lucky for us. Come on.”

  Snouts had always told them to avoid roads and open land if they could, so they crossed the curious shallow course cut into the ground in order to approach the town from the opposite side. There was more cover over here—the thorny bushes stood a mite taller, and Maggie could smell the scent of pitch from the stunted little pines, breathing in the night air.

  You would think a deserted wasteland would be quieter, though. Above the steady wind, she could hear something else.

  “Liz? ’ave a listen. Wot’s that?”

  Lizzie cocked an ear. “Wind.”

  “No, under that. Deeper.”

  “Sounds like a train comin’.”

  There had been train tracks—she’d seen them from above as they’d come in. “Ent no train runnin’ in the middle o’ the night. Besides, them tracks are on t’other side.”

  “I don’t like it.” Lizzie picked up her pace. “Might be a ship o’ some kind. Let’s move.”

  By the time they got within sight of the town Maggie could hear more than just a roar—it sound like a band of trolls in full cry. “Lizzie! Get up on that rock! It ent no ship!”

  They flung themselves at a pile of rocks, each the size of a house, all tipped and tilted as though a giant child had knocked them over one day and had never picked them up. Kicking and scrambling, Maggie pulled herself up onto the last one and looked over the top just in time to see a huge wave of water engulf the town.

  The sound of it! The worst thunderstorm she’d ever been out in was like a baby’s temper tantrum compared to this. The water roared, while big rocks and pieces of trees chunked against the stone bases of the houses, whirling off whatever it could grab.

  “We could’ve been out in that!” Lizzie shrieked, and they clung to each other as the mad flood scoured through the buildings and out the far side, washing away their footprints in ten feet of water.

  The edges of it came within a few yards of their perch, but it was like a flood tide in the Thames basin. It made its mark and then began to recede. The stars had barely moved in their wheeling arc across the sky when the roar became a rush, and then a chuckle, and finally a whisper, as if the whole town let out a breath.

  Nothing moved but the watercourse, running and trickling and sighing after the bulk of it had stampeded off and what was left leached into the ground.

  “D’you think they survived?” Lizzie’s voice cracked.

  “Dunno. Wot kind of idjits plant a town in t’middle of a riverbed?”

  “Idjits who don’t want company?”

  Silence while a few more minutes passed.

  “Mags?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m afraid to go down there. Wot if it comes again?”

  “It comes regular like, if that watercourse is any indication.”

  “Tonight, I mean.”

  “That’s a chance we got to take. The Lady’s down there, and Willie’s mum and the captain and all. We gotta spring ’em before dawn. Seems now would be the best chance, while everyone’s—”

  Recovering? In shock? Dead? It was hard
to find a word that would do justice to this stunned silence that lay across the land.

  “I don’t think I can move.”

  “Buck up, Liz.” Maggie pushed herself to her feet. Truth be told, she’d far rather put her arms over her head and have a good cry, but that wouldn’t do the Lady any good, nor any of the others, either. “Now’s our chance.”

  “I can’t. The noise, Mags! Ent no surviving that, you get caught in it.”

  “It’s down to a trickle now, see? Come on. The Lady’s countin’ on us.”

  Cajoling, urging, and finally pulling on her arm, she got Lizzie down the rock. Their two figures cast long, vague shadows ahead of them as they ran toward the first of the buildings.

  Starlight made a shadow. Who’d have thought?

  *

  Any hope of sleep fled. Claire lay on her pallet as though she had been paralyzed—and perhaps she had.

  She had no plan, no action she could take. All she had was the slim hope that, after the ransom had been paid and she was under James’s protection, she could somehow give him the slip and find Rosie and the children.

  I cannot let him pay the ransom.

  Of course you can. It’s your money. He stole it. You would practically be ransoming yourself.

  It is Andrew’s and mine and Dr. Craig’s and the children’s.

  Regardless. Let him pay it and gain your freedom.

  Yes, but at what cost? Would James be willing to assist her in freeing the Dunsmuirs and the children? Would he stand up to Ned Mose and the pirates for their sake? Would he be willing to comb the countryside in search of Rosie? Or would he take the Dunsmuir diamonds the same way he had taken the Kinetick Carbonator and return to Santa Fe, his investment tripled?

  Her throat thickened with tears.

  No. She must not give way to despair. There must be something she could do.

  Perhaps the drop was not as far as she thought. If she hung from the sill and dropped to the ground, why, that would subtract six feet from the twenty-foot total.

  She pushed up the sash and leaned out.

  Fourteen feet was still a very long way. Long enough to break an ankle. And then where would she be—unable to run or save or do anything for anybody. Who knew if there was even a doctor in this place to set the bones?