Lady of Devices

by Shelley Adina

  “I figure you ent gonna cut out on us now, Lady,” he said gruffly as he handed them over.

  “No.” She clutched the books to her chest, resisting the urge to check that no pages had gone missing. “I’m glad to see your confidence in my character is improving.”

  He shook his head, and his chocolate-brown eyes met hers. “You either keeps yer word or I goes to the bobbies and tell ’em it was you what kilt Lightning Luke.”

  Clearly she did not have to look as far as the road or the river for justice to be meted out to her. She was harboring it right here.

  Since the kitchen was now the sole domain of Granny Protheroe, with occasional incursions permitted by Claire and the Mopsies should they be bearing groceries, the front parlor became the laboratory. No more did boys lounge on sofa and floor, drinking rotgut, smoking, and staying out of range of Luke’s gun. Instead, glass tubes and flasks appeared, along with retorts, Bunsen burners, and cells for the creation of electrick current.

  Claire had no idea who had built Lightning Luke’s gun, but he or she had obviously been a genius. Her first task was to discover the source of its power. If she could replicate it, then they could make other devices and sell them. She would not be so silly as to replicate the rifle itself—she was neither metallurgist nor fool—but there were other mechanisms that might be devised.

  In the meantime, her sketches and equations had to be translated into terms that her ragged compatriots could understand. Some gave up and joined Snouts at the card table. But some, like Jake, persevered even in the face of repeated failure, stubborn as stones and unwilling to allow capricious numbers and persnickety measurements to defeat them. Jake had the makings of a fine chemist. What a pity she had to fight his mistrust at every turn. Ah well. If she could not create a friend where none had been, then at the very least she would create a capable assistant.

  In the evenings the poker players scattered to their chosen fields of labor. There they learned variations on the venerable cowboy poker, or invented them, and taught the others when they returned. One of Snouts’s variations in particular, Old Blind Jack, suddenly became the rage in even the most fashionable of London’s card rooms, to the point that strategy diagrams began to appear on the back page of the Evening Standard where illustrations of classic chess moves had held court for years.

  Snouts just chuckled and bought his very first velvet waistcoat, tailored to fit.

  Upon seeing it the Mopsies immediately demanded their own finery, and Snouts magnanimously handed over twenty pounds as though it were nothing. Claire had seen the account book they’d cobbled together out of the end papers of her books from Wilton Crescent, and in comparison to the money flowing through the boy’s clever hands, twenty pounds was next to nothing.

  On the next sunny Saturday, Claire took the Mopsies, Tigg, and Willie to Fortnum & Mason to have them outfitted. Never again would she allow the likes of the chemist in the Haymarket to look at her charges in that manner. And once the salesladies had removed the children’s old clothes to the dustbin, their mouths pruned in disgust, and dressed them from the skin out in clean linen, cotton, and lace for the girls, and practical navy wool for the boys, Claire beamed at them proudly.

  “You look as though you were visiting from Buckingham Palace itself.” She smoothed Willie’s sailor collar so that it lay flat across his shoulders. “Even Her Majesty’s grandchildren don’t look as fine.”

  “The Princess Alice chose that very dress for her youngest,” the saleslady confided, nodding in Lizzie’s direction. “She took the blue hair ribbons, though, instead of the coral.”

  Lizzie wavered visibly.

  “Have the blue as well, if you like,” Claire told her. “Snou—I mean, Mr. McTavish would approve.”

  Upon their return to the river cottage Claire discovered that Lizzie was in unrepentant possession of the saleslady’s purse, having picked her pocket as the lady was dressing her.

  The chill of disappointment warred with the heat of anger as Claire fought to keep her voice steady. “This is unacceptable.” Her tone was deadly quiet—so quiet, in fact, that Lizzie made the mistake of believing Claire was not serious.

  “’Twere easy,” she said, swinging the pitifully small purse back and forth. “She leaned over to tie me sash and there it was, in front of me nose.”

  “You will return it immediately.”

  Lizzie gave her a look of disgusted disbelief. “Shan’t.”

  Before the girl could do more than whip the purse back into her own pocket, Claire had snatched her off her feet and again applied the laws of physics in vigorous fashion. In the resulting uproar, the chemists reached protectively for their vials of liquids, and the card players froze with their cards pressed to their chests.

  Unfortunately for Lizzie, her fine new underclothes were no match for the force of Claire’s temper, and when the girl was reduced to a sniveling, just barely repentant huddle on the floor, Claire said in a tone not one note removed from the one she’d used previously, “We shall leave immediately for Fortnum’s, where you shall return that purse.”

  Mumble.

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Elizabeth?”

  “What’m I to tell ’er?”

  “The truth, of course.”

  “She’ll call t’bobbies for sure and it’ll be your fault if I land up in the clink.”

  “You could say you found it on t’ground,” Maggie put in helpfully.

  “And add lying to thievery?” Maggie quailed at the control in Claire’s voice. Claire would never have believed that of all the things her mother had taught her, how to infuse deadly force into one’s voice without raising it was the last she would have expected to find so useful.

  “No, Lady.” Maggie’s lips trembled, both from shame and from fear for her sister’s liberty.

  “You are young ladies now,” Claire said, allowing a touch of gentleness to creep in. “You make your way through the application of intelligence, grace, and consideration for others. You do the right thing, not the easy thing. I suggest you use the time it takes to drive back into town to compose an appropriately humble and truthful address to the purse’s owner.”

  When they had located the young lady in question, it was clear she had just discovered the absence of her purse. “I beg your pardon, miss, but I’m all of a flutter. I—I seem to have—that is, I’ve lost—and I was just paid, too.” Her enormous brown eyes filled with tears before she got herself under control. “Is there something else you wished me to help you with?”

  “My young charge has something to tell you.” With an inexorable hand between her shoulder blades, Claire pressed Lizzie forward.

  The girl held up the little leather purse and the sales lady gasped as she took it. “Oh, thank you! What a precious child! You have given me such relief!” She swept Lizzie into her arms and hugged her so hard that Lizzie’s cheeks turned bright pink.

  “Miss, I—” she tried to speak, but the saleslady covered her face in kisses. With a final “Thank you!” she bustled through a door in the back, leaving Lizzie with her fine speech trembling on her tongue, unsaid. She turned a beseeching face to Claire. “I tried, Lady, but she wouldn’t let me.”

  “You have received thanks you did not deserve, and forgiveness that you did.” Claire touched the wide ribbon in her hair. “It took courage to make the attempt, and I salute you for it.”

  Lizzie and Maggie shared the front seat all the way home, holding hands and considerably lighter of heart than on the trip in. Claire was no judge of how to bring up children, but she was a fair judge of character. The tension of that ride to town would go a long way to preventing Lizzie from exercising her light fingers again. At the very least, she’d seen the effect thievery could have on someone who was barely more fortunate than herself. The loss of a week’s wages would have hurt that young woman deeply, and Lizzie was headstrong, not heartless.

  Dear me. Mathematics and chemistry are so much more straightforward. How have I managed
to become a ramshackle sort of mother when I’m mere weeks out of school myself?

  But there was no use wondering about the strangeness of her lot. She had killed a man, even if she hadn’t meant to. If she could turn these ragamuffin children into useful young men and ladies, maybe it would go some way toward paying back that debt. She may as well play the mother. After all, with every day that passed here on the wrong side of the river, the likelihood that any man would want to wed her faded further away. She had no prospects and now possessed what could only politely be called a “past.” If with God’s aid she could help these children, maybe she would have done as much good as any real mother in London.

  Chapter 27

  If she held onto her hat, Claire could tilt her head wa-a-ay back and take in the topmost panes of the immense Crystal Palace. Beside her, Lizzie did the same, lost her balance, and staggered backward into Tigg’s arms.

  “Steady on,” he said, setting her on her feet. “Don’t want to tumble into any of these engines.”

  “’Ow tall is it?” Claire had never seen the girl so awestruck. “Does it touch the clouds?”

  “It might if it were raining.” Claire consulted the guidebook. “It says here the top of that rounded roof is one hundred and eight feet. So if you took seven houses like ours and stacked them one on top of each other, you’d just be able to climb up and touch the glass.”

  “I ent climbin’ up any such for all the tea in China.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it. Shall we go look at the steam engines?”

  Making their way through the crowds of people, it took some time to get to the exhibit hall. Half the spectators were looking at the exhibits and the other half were gazing up and down the long vistas of glass, holding their hats as Claire had done. While Willie and Tigg examined a small engine meant to pull wagonloads of coal or tin, Claire stood next to an enormous steam locomotive and gazed at it with as much awe as Lizzie had the glassed-over sky.

  How was it possible that such power and intricacy could be so beautiful? And how was she going to gain admission to the university so that she too could one day create something as huge and inspiring as this?

  “I see our interests coincide once more,” said a male voice beside her.

  If he had left off the last two words, Claire would have cut the man dead for his impertinence and moved away to collect the children. As it was, she blinked up at him from under her impractical but very pretty hat brim.

  Of all people ... ! “Mr. Malvern.”

  “I must confess how happy I am to see you. Did you get my card?”

  Concerned. “I did. What did you mean by it, sir?”

  He hesitated, evidently expecting her to swoon like the schoolgirl his partner believed her to be. “Simply that I was worried about you. The papers were full of the Belgravia riots. When I could get no news of you, I went to the house. I left a message with the dustman.”

  Ah. Mystery solved.

  Goodness. He traveled all the way from his laboratory to Belgravia simply to see if she was safe? How kind. And how very singular. “You have no need to worry. I am quite well.”

  “I see that.”

  Tigg drifted to her side and Claire resisted the urge to smile at his protectiveness.

  Andrew Malvern tensed under his conservatively cut suit. “I say. Not so close to the lady, if you please.”

  Claire laid a hand on Tigg’s arm before he did something foolish, like attempt fisticuffs. “It’s quite all right. Mr. Tigg is with me, as are the three children examining that engine behind you.”

  “With you?” Mr. Malvern’s gaze went from the Mopsies and Willie in their clothes fit for a queen’s grandchildren, to Tigg, who had not consented to dress for the occasion, in his ragged pants and jacket fit for the dustbin. “Is that so? Are you looking after the children of a friend, perhaps?”

  “I am their governess, sir.” Though there was nothing wrong with her gloves, she tugged at them with brisk movements. “Mr. Tigg’s experience is with carriages and horses. I am giving him instruction in the operation of the landau, since he aspires to be a chauffeur. Thus, he has come with us to see the engines.”

  Tigg, who did not even break a smile during these outrageous falsehoods, tilted his chin as if to say See? I’ve as much right to be here as you. The entrance fee had been set low on purpose, so that they were surrounded by people of all classes, from washerwomen to lords, from Wits to Bloods.

  “Ah.” Mr. Malvern offered her his arm. “Then may I be of use to your party? Steam locomotives, you might recall, are a particular interest of mine.”

  For the span of two seconds, Claire hesitated. The memory of the disdain in James Selwyn’s eyes flared, and then she squelched it. Lord James was not here. Andrew Malvern, who had never shown her anything but kindness—concern, even—was.

  And he could tell her and the children about engines. Perhaps he even knew something of electrick cells.

  She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Thank you, Mr. Malvern, that would be most kind. Elizabeth, Margaret, Willie ... come along. This is Mr. Malvern, with the Royal Society of Engineers. He is going to tell us all about this magnificent locomotive.”

  Since the girls had received strict instructions that there was to be no picking of pockets, they became bored by the time the little party had walked the length of the engine. Receiving permission to go to the ice-skating rink, they ran off while Tigg, Willie, and Claire drank in every word.

  “You remember the experiment I was conducting the day we met, Lady Cl—“

  “Yes, I do, certainly,” she said swiftly, before he used her name. “Have you had further success?”

  With a sigh, he stopped, as if contemplating the row of four enormous iron wheels with their gleaming brass rods. “I wish I could say I had any success. But I cannot. I am stymied.”

  “Perhaps you might ask for help?”

  “James isn’t an engineer. He’s the brains of the outfit, as they say in the Wild West, but it is I who put his ideas into motion. At the moment, however, I am making no progress at all.” He looked at her sidelong from under the brim of his bowler. “What a pity you have found employment. The position is still unfilled, you know.”

  How could this be? “But surely any number of candidates will have jumped at it.”

  “Some. But having found the perfect candidate, I’m having difficulty settling for second best.”

  His gaze did not leave her face, and Claire’s cheeks heated in a most disconcerting manner. “I—I—Mr. Tigg, what do you make of the position of the wheels under the boiler there?”

  Startled, Tigg gaped at her. “Lady?”

  “I mean, perhaps we might continue our tour with an exploration of electrick cells. Do you know anything of them, Mr. Malvern?”

  While she pulled Willie away from his open-mouthed contemplation of the engine’s headlamp, set high above, she attempted to regain her composure. Goodness. Mr. Malvern could not be serious. Surely, with all the bright minds circulating in London like fireflies, he could find someone to assist him who was at least as qualified as she, if not more so? Surely he was not holding the position open in case she changed her mind?

  And surely she was not even now contemplating doing so?

  No, no, no. Eventually she must put those foolish dreams away. Even if she could leave the river cottage every day and drive to the laboratory, she could never tell him where she was living. And with whom. The fact was, she had painted herself into a corner with that confabulation of a story. How could a governess absent herself from her charges for hours each day? Even if she said she had left the position, there could very well be occasions when she would need to bring one or another of the children with her. There was their education to consider, after all, and what better place to conduct experiments than in a real laboratory?

  Oh, no indeed. Because stories aside, what would Mr. Andrew Malvern think of a woman who made her home with cutpurses and gamblers, and who had actua
lly slept in the rough and eaten stolen food? He would never employ such a woman if he knew that, much less ... much less hold her in esteem.

  Concern.

  No. He would not squander his concern on a woman with a past, nor would she ask him to. She would enjoy his company for one brief hour and never see him again.

  A stout resolution, to be sure.

  What a pity the thought of keeping it made her sick to her stomach.

  * * *

  On the other side of the Palace, their little party found an entire hall dedicated to the wonders of electrick power. “I read in the Standard that at night, this hall is illuminated by electricks running along channels in the ironwork structure,” Andrew said. “They say it looks like a frozen lightning storm, and that you can read the paper by its light.”

  The young ruffian Claire had called Tigg looked doubtful. “How’s that?”

  Andrew pointed to the unobtrusive housings mounted next to every other support pillar, concealed by potted palms. “See those small engines there? The cells within generate the current. It’s tempting to come back later, isn’t it, just to see it all working.”

  The hint could not be any broader, but Claire only looked away. “I’m afraid the children must be at home by teatime,” she said.

  “Aye, some of us ’as to work,” muttered Tigg.

  Claire looked at him in some alarm, which seemed puzzling under the circumstances. “He means in the mews.”

  “Of course.” Andrew could not imagine what else he might have meant.

  “Mr. Malvern, perhaps we might look more closely at the small electrick cells. I am conducting a series of experiments at present and I am interested in increasing power while constraining size.”

  “You and every other inventor in that field.” Andrew smiled, and was rewarded with a smile in return that actually reached those anxious gray eyes. “Why don’t we start with the mother’s helper? It’s probably the most familiar to you.”