Lady of Devices Read online

In the meantime, here came the lamplighter, climbing down into the chamber under the walk that concealed the engine powering the lamps for this block. While she had been within, full dark had fallen, and Claire had exactly no experience in piloting the landau after dark. Carefully, she opened the switches to the headlamps, and ignited the engine.

  Returning home was out of the question. So, the next question became, where should she go? Wellesley House was out. She would rather sleep in a bathtub with no ticking at all than endure Lady Julia’s suppressed smiles at her misfortunes. Perhaps she could go to St. Cecelia’s and beg the headmistress for a bed. But no, that would entail far too many questions and very likely public exposure of her plight.

  There was nothing for it. She was going to have to go to her grand-aunts Beaton in Greenwich, wake them out of a dead sleep, and explain in as little detail as possible why she was there. They were elderly, excitable, and as ignorant as chickens about the affairs of the day. They actually believed that Papa had had an accident while cleaning his gun. Not that that was a bad thing. It was necessary for everyone to at least pretend to believe that, or Papa could not have been buried in hallowed ground. At the same time, giving credence to a lie galled her.

  Very well. To Greenwich she would go, and as soon as she read in the papers that the Esquimaux delegation had been heard and were on their way back to their home in the frozen north, she would return to Peony’s and claim both friendship and a bed until she could find employment and rooms of her own.

  She turned east and tried to visualize the best route. The difficulty with Greenwich was that it lay on the far side of the East End. She could either cross the river at Lambeth and circle around to the south, in which case she would arrive long after midnight, upsetting her grand-aunts even more, or she could stick to the well-populated roads in Town and hope that the speed and the sturdy brass skin of the landau would protect her until she got over the new London Bridge.

  If only Gorse were here.

  Then again, she thought with a snort as she motored down the Embankment at a respectable thirty miles per hour, she could always accept the offer of Lord James Selwyn’s regard. She had no doubt that a fiancée of his would not be chugging briskly through the night, homeless and alone. But then, a fiancée of his would have neither a landau nor a brain to call her own, either.

  This cheered her immensely, and she turned her back on the Blackfriars Bridge and took the corner into Farringdon Street with aplomb. Now came the tricky part. The lamp lighters had obviously not come this far yet, leaving her dependent upon her own head lamps to keep her in the center of the thoroughfare. The mouths of the streets yawned black on either side. The sound of the landau’s engine bounced back at her from the brick and wood surfaces of the buildings and the cobbles of the street, making it sound as though she were three or four engines, not just one. She swerved to avoid men loading kegs on to a cart, and steered back the other way to avoid a knot of people who had clearly just come from the theater. Was she so close to Covent Garden? No, that couldn’t be right. She was supposed to be on Queen Victoria Street, away from the bank. What street was this, exactly?

  Along with keeping track of the thoroughfare and unpredictable human bodies in her path, she now peered into the cone of dim light provided by the headlamps, seeking a street sign. How careless of the city fathers not to provide them. Etching the name of a street into the corner of a building did not help at all in the dark. Ahead, bright lights shone onto the sidewalk, and she heard the subterranean screech of a train.

  A station. That would tell her where she was. In moments, she had come abreast of the station’s front.

  Aldgate. Aldgate Station? That couldn’t be right. Why, that would mean she was blissfully driving down Whitechapel Street in the middle of the night. She was not on Queen Victoria Street at all!

  Oh dear. Oh dear. She had to turn around and get out of here.

  Claire steered to the far side of the street and pushed the steering lever all the way out. At the apex of the turn her front tire bumped up onto the sidewalk in front of the station, but there was no help for it. She couldn’t reverse unless she got out and pushed, and she was not getting out of this vehicle for all the tea in China. Not in Whitechapel, for the love of God.

  Careful. Carefully now. The last thing you want is to dislodge the arrangement of the boiler when you bump back down onto the street. One wheel. Good. Now the oth—

  With a communal howl of triumph, a crowd of black shapes pelted out of the mouth of the Underground station and surrounded the landau.

  “Lookit this beauty, Snouts! We got a pretty ’ un this time, ent we?”

  “And a pretty lady to boot. Whatsa matter, lady, want some help unsticking your carriage?”

  “No, thank you,” Claire said as loudly as her desert-dry throat would allow. “Stand out of the way please.”

  “Stand aht the way, please,” mimicked a high voice. “Am I in your way, lady? Wot’ll you give me and my mates to get aht the way?”

  “I shall give you a penny. But you must move first.”

  “Wot else you got, lady? I bet there’s more’n a penny in this pretty carriage.”

  “Don’t touch that!”

  “Lady, I wouldn’ say you was in a position to be dishin’ orders,” said a tall, thin shape with an enormous nose. “Give us what you got and then we’ll think about movin’.”

  “Yeah! What’cha got, lady? Bet there’s plenty for me in here, eh?”

  “Don’t open that! Don’t, I tell you—it’s boiling—”

  Too late. The thug had popped open the landau’s side hood panel, probably thinking it was a repository for riches, and a cloud of steam billowed out of the boiler. With a scream, he fell back, writhing on the ground clutching his burned face with equally burned hands.

  “You bloody rich witch!” screamed someone in the back. “You’ve hurt Jake!”

  With a roar of fury, the entire pack descended on her. Claire just had time to feel her coat ripped from her shoulders when something hard whacked her on the side of the head, and the night whirled around her before she landed hard on the ground.

  Chapter 14

  Something dug mercilessly into her ribs. With a groan, Claire cracked open her left eye, and then her right. Her head spun with dizziness and confusion, but she had not been rendered unconscious. At least, she didn’t think so. Under her cheek, dirt grated between her skin and the hard cobblestones, stinking of soot, alcohol, and ancient urine. Revolted, she lifted her head.

  Something poked her in the ribs again. Blindly, she whipped her arm backward, connecting with empty air. “God help me.” It seemed to take an eternity to pull her knees under her, and even longer to get her hands on either side of them.

  Her gloves were gone. Bare skin scraped the stones.

  She raised her head. The landau. Her trunk. All her worldly goods. Memory rushed in—the shouting, the ridicule, being hit. Falling.

  The landau.

  The street stood empty, the lamps outside the Aldgate station shining steadily, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Something glinted on the cobbles, and she bent to pick it up, groaning again as the blood rushed to her head.

  One of her tortoiseshell hair combs. A tine had snapped off, leaving a gap like the smile of a child without a front tooth. Absently, she reached up and slid it into her chignon. So they had found her traveling case. It seemed too much to hope that they would miss the false bottom in it—at any rate, it had disappeared into the night with them and she was unlikely to see her pearls or her great-grandmother’s emerald ring again. At least they had not stolen the very pins from her hair, or the clothes off her body. Her coat, however, with its lovely twining soutache trim, was gone.

  The landau. Oh woe. The landau. Tears welled into her eyes as she surveyed the empty, silent street, and scalded a hot track down one cheek.

  Something poked the back of her knee.

  “Get away!” She whirled, expecting to see
a dog nosing at her to see if she was edible, and found instead a child. “Good heavens. Who are you?”

  Dressed in a ragged homespun jacket and pants, and a shirt with a fraying band and no collar, the waif turned huge dark eyes on her and pointed into the mouth of an alley across the street. He took a handful of her blue merino skirt—streaked now with something she didn’t want to investigate closely—and tugged.

  “Oh no, my dear. I know your tricks. If you’re hiding another band of miscreants in there, they’ll not have me to work over again.”

  Brave words to a scrap who couldn’t be above four years of age. She was as weak as a day-old chick and wouldn’t even be able to fight off this child if he decided to do more than poke her.

  He shook his head and tugged again on her skirt.

  “I’m not going with you, poppet. I must find a bobby and report Mr. Snouts and his friends to the authorities at once.”

  The ragged head, which might have sported curls if it had been brushed, shook more vigorously. He tightened his grip on her skirt and began to tow her across the street, toward the alley.

  “Stop, little man. I’m not going in there. I need to find a policeman. Do you understand? Do you speak English?” He nodded, then made a buttoning motion over his lips, still tugging her toward the alley. “You’re not permitted to speak?”

  Another nod. He frowned when her stumbling steps stopped, then seemed to get an idea. He dug in one pocket and pulled out her other comb, all its tines intact. After handing it to her, he pointed again at the alley.

  Comprehension dawned as she rammed the comb into the other side of her chignon. “They’ve gone this way? The ruffians who stole my landau and my trunk?” His gap-toothed smile lit up his face in the dim glow from the station lamps across the road. “Aha. Then lead on, little man. It would be useful for the bobbies to have a destination for their investigations once I locate it.”

  Again the vigorous shake of the head, but he set off at a trot, pulling her by the skirt as though she were a horse on a leading rein. Claire followed him down the empty alley, dodging crates and kegs and even a sleeping human form, its legs sticking out from behind a rubbish bin. The alley doglegged past the door of a tavern, where they both picked up their pace, and disgorged them into a street lined with warehouses of all shapes, piggybacked onto one another and leaving barely enough room to squeeze between. Beyond their ramshackle outlines, she could hear the suck and pull of the Thames as it gurgled against dock and piling.

  Squeezed between two warehouses she saw a squat building that might have been a house once, or maybe a customs shed. Even with the moonlight, it was difficult to tell. Its roof raked upward at a steep angle, and it was so narrow a person could stand on one side, toss a stone, and hit the other. The ragged child tugged her skirt as if to moor her to the spot, and pointed.

  “They’re here? This is where they’ve taken my things? What is it, some kind of robbers’ hideout?” The boy frowned. Too many questions. She tried again. “They’ve brought my things here?” He nodded. “Are they friends of yours?” He nodded again.

  Here was a puzzle. She squatted next to him in the shadow of the neighboring warehouse. “But my little man, if they’re friends of yours, why have you showed me? I’ve said I’ll bring the bobbies down on them. Is it because they’ve hurt you?”

  He shook his head so vigorously his matted hair swung straight out above his ears. He took her hand and pointed to the ramshackle place, smiling in a way that she could only interpret as encouraging.

  “You want me to go in there?” Big nod. “By myself?” He thrust out his chest and planted his feet as though he were a captain surveying the quarterdeck. “Well yes, I know you’re with me, but you probably couldn’t stop them coshing me on the head a second time the moment they caught sight of me. All I want is to get my things back. Do you know where they might have put the landau?”

  Confusion wrote itself all over the smooth but filthy features.

  “Never mind. I shall find it.” She rose, the muscles on her right side—the ones that had unceremoniously met the street as she was pulled from the landau—aching with the effort. “And since I haven’t seen a member of Sir Robert Peel’s policing force in the last hour, I must conclude I’m on my own.”

  Claire surveyed the building, which leaned against the warehouse next door like a drunk against his best friend. Rage bubbled just beneath her breastbone. How dared they take the clothes literally off her back? How dared anyone treat her like this? It wasn’t enough that a mob had invaded her home and caused her to run for her very life. It wasn’t enough that her father had made the poor decisions that had opened her up to this. But this scum—these ruffians—had taken everything she had in the world, everything that would have made it possible for her to make her own way. Without respectable clothes and the landau, she could not convince anyone she was worthy of employment, much less gently bred.

  These wretches had stolen her future from her, and by all she held holy, she would not tolerate it. She was finished with apologizing and hiding and running away. It was time to stand up and impose her will on someone else for once in her life.

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” she told the youngster still standing beside her, waiting for her to go skipping into that house to have tea and crumpets with his criminal friends. “And if you would be so kind as to make inquiries as to the whereabouts of my landau and meet me out here, I promise I will not involve you in what I’m about to do.”

  The child’s eyes widened and he released her skirt as if it burned him.

  She marched down the street, picked up her skirts, and took to her heels in the alley. The last trains ran at eleven o’clock. If she was lucky, she could steal a ride on one and get to the laboratory at St. Cecelia’s and back before an Underground conductor caught her without a ticket.

  Chapter 15

  No one occupied the Underground train carriage but two middle-aged charwomen more interested in their own gossip than in what a young lady was doing unaccompanied on a train in the middle of the night. Claire sidled off at Victoria Station, ticketless but unaccosted, and took a shortcut through Eaton Square to the back gate of St. Cecelia’s. The administration fondly thought that their property was secure, but the students knew better.

  Claire found the foot- and handholds worn into the wall behind the glossy curtain of ivy and clambered up and over in moments. From there it was a quick dash across the lawn and down the basement steps, where skillful application of a hairpin to the lock made the way plain.

  The stairs were as dark as criminal activity required them to be, though Claire kept a firm hold on the rail. The last thing she needed was to miss her footing and tumble to the bottom.

  Ah. The Chemistry of the Home laboratory.

  She found the jar of lucifers Professor Grünwald kept next to his blotter for the purpose of lighting a forbidden cigar during the lunch hour, and by their light set to work. It took a few moments to dredge up the recipe from the recesses of memory—blast the thieves for taking her notebook!—but within a quarter hour she had four vials stoppered and ready to go. Some day, when she was famous and once again rich, she would make an anonymous donation to the school’s pitiful science department and make restitution for what she had removed. But for the moment, necessity was most certainly the mother of invention, and on that principle alone even Professor Gr ü nwald might approve.

  After bundling her treasure in a used cardigan and then into a leather book satchel, both abandoned in the Lost and Found, she strapped the satchel to her back and retraced her steps. Half an hour later, she stepped out of the alley mouth opposite the rake-roofed home of the rascals who had stolen her things.

  No small boy waited for her. Her lips thinned. Well, if he had not taken her seriously before, he most certainly would now.

  Keeping to the shadows, she hurried around the corner of a half-timbered warehouse that might have seen active commerce in King Henry’s time and removed the vials from
her satchel. Their noxious contents gurgled in her hands once she’d refastened the satchel on her back. Since it and the cardigan were her only possessions, she was loath to leave them lying on the street—and the satchel had the advantage of providing storage while allowing her hands free movement.

  Thank goodness she’d put on this navy merino suit this morning. The fog breathing off the river was damp and chill, and droplets were already condensing in her hair. The dark color also allowed her to blend into the shadows as she crept from corner to corner of the building. A rat’s entry chewed into a board welcomed the first vial. She smashed it into the floorboards. “That’s for my notebook, you miserable wretches.” A board missing altogether was a fine entry point for the second. “And that’s for my pearl necklace.” At the third corner, she could find no way in except for a window, so she tossed it through and heard the satisfying tinkle of glass. “My coat, thank you very much.” She ran for the front entry as the first noxious tendrils of smokelike gas began to curl out from between the boards.

  She wrenched open the front door. “And this—” She threw it with all her might. “—is for my landau!”

  Someone yelled as the gas did its work, and then pandemonium broke loose. Claire retreated, smiling in satisfaction, as half a dozen figures staggered out in various stages of undress—or not—good heavens—that creature was wearing her coat! Claire flew across the street and tore it off a very short individual who was trailing its lovely panels in the dirt. He—or she, it was difficult to tell—spun in place, both hands mashed to his eyes as he shrieked in pain. Shrugging on her coat, Claire felt as Queen Elizabeth must have at seeing the first of the fire ships succeed so brilliantly against the Spanish armada. It was almost enough to make a person dance a hornpipe.

  But she restrained herself, for there in front of her was one of her pretty embroidered waists, being used as a nightdress over a pair of ragged combinations! She dashed over, grasped the hem of it, and pulled it over the filthy girl’s head. Weeping with pain, the child turned to her, instinctively seeking to be comforted, but she hardened her heart and stepped away. Finally, the spindly person with the enormous nose staggered out, his face contorted in misery, carrying the waif who had directed her here. The latter’s unhappiness was acute, from the sound of the roars emanating from under the coat covering the lad’s head.