Magnificent Devices 6: A Lady of Spirit

by Shelley Adina

  “Oh, I’ve done that, Lady,” Maggie said, flushing with chagrin that she had utterly forgotten about the post in her pocketbook. “They are well and happy, and had a nice hunt in the grass while I was checking the post.” She dug the letters out, and handed Lizzie’s to her. “There’s a bit of paper in there, too, that I believe has been misdirected. Yes, that one.”

  Lady Claire pulled out the slender missive and gazed at it, puzzled. “What on earth?”

  “Exactly what I said.”

  “We think it must be a cipher,” Michael put in. “Fifty liters and four hundred fifty kilos of something at two in the morning, the day after tomorrow.”

  “It is a poor cipher, then, if it can be understood so readily. Is it a manifest of some kind?” The Lady handed the sheet to Mr. Malvern. “It is certainly misdirected. I have not ordered fifty liters of anything, I’m afraid.”

  She rose, and the party prepared to leave. The sheet lay abandoned between her plate and that of Mr. Malvern, so Maggie picked it up and replaced it in her pocketbook. Whatever it was, it was not rubbish, but the private correspondence of someone. It should not be left out in public view.

  When they were out on the street once more, Mr. Malvern said, “Mr. Polgarth, Tigg, may I trust you with the girls if Lady Claire and I take a spin in the landau? I have screwed my courage to the sticking point and am ready for my first driving lesson. If I begin on the airfield, there will be no obstacles—and if I run into poor Athena, she at least is tough enough to shrug me off without too much damage.”

  “You will do perfectly well, sir,” Tigg told him. “Just remember that she builds up a head of steam while she is stationary, and you must let the acceleration bar out slowly to compensate for it.”

  “Noted,” Andrew said with the air of a man committing a lifesaving fact to memory.

  “Mr. Polgarth, if you are escorting the girls home, you must join us for tea at four o’clock,” the Lady said.

  “Oh, no, your ladyship. I couldn’t. I’m just a clerk—Mr. Seacombe probably doesn’t even know I exist.”

  Claire lifted her chin. “Then he will when you arrive and I introduce you. I wish to hear more news of Gwynn Place and you have not nearly satisfied me.”

  “If you are sure, my lady.”

  “Oh, goodness. You are only a few years younger than I. Please call me Lady Claire. Her ladyship is my mother.”

  “Yes, your—Lady Claire. If you feel it would be suitable, I would be happy to join you.”

  “I do. We shan’t be long, provided Andrew does not run us into a stationary object.”

  “Or off a cliff,” Mr. Malvern said with his usual self-deprecating humor. “You will not make me pilot it on a road, I hope?”

  And reassuring him on that point, the Lady took his arm and they proceeded back along the street in the direction of the harbor, where the landau was no doubt entertaining a crowd.

  No sooner did she have her back turned than Lizzie took Tigg’s arm in much the same manner, smiling up at him. “This is more like it,” she said. “I confess I’ve had enough chaperonage and proper behavior for one day. How clever of you gentlemen to fix it so that they are alone and so are we.”

  “What happened to Claude?” Maggie asked. She stood rather awkwardly at Mr. Polgarth’s side. It was rather too bad of Lizzie to be so familiar with Tigg when Maggie could do nothing more than take Michael’s arm politely. They ought to be on equal ground in public, and people were staring already. “Come. Let us walk round the harbor.”

  “He went home with your grandparents,” Tigg explained, his hand over Lizzie’s in a way that, had Maggie not been so embarrassed, might have struck her as touching.

  “That’s odd—Claude missing out on a—what did he call it? A ramble?”

  “I don’t think he had much choice in the matter,” Lizzie said over her shoulder, the breeze tossing the tendrils of taffy-blond hair at her temples. “Grandfather had not quite finished telling him about the trade routes. My best guess is he might be by teatime.”

  “Poor boy,” Maggie said. “Better he than I.”

  “Don’t you want to learn about the trade routes?” Michael asked, pacing along the harbor promenade beside her.

  Maggie ran a hand over the heads of the lion statues as they passed. “I do, very much. But Grandfather has rather firm views on what is suitable knowledge for a young lady. Lizzie, did you see how annoyed Lady Claire became in his office?”

  “I did. I must say, I think you or I could do a perfectly capable job of running the company. Poor Claude does not possess what one might call a head for business.”

  “He may in time,” Tigg said. “Give him a chance. He’s only just lost his father and come into all this, you know.”

  “I know, but he has had nearly all his life to come to terms with being the Seacombe heir—and yet he is two and twenty and no closer to accepting it than I am.”

  Tigg glanced at Michael, who was attempting the impossible—walking directly behind the two of them while pretending not to hear what they said of his employer’s family. “What is your opinion of Claude, Mr. Polgarth?”

  At being thus directly addressed, Michael swallowed. “I do not think it fair of you to ask me, Lieutenant. I could not express an opinion of those who employ me.”

  “Of course you can,” Lizzie said briskly. “It’s only us. Don’t you think Maggie and I ought to learn about the business? Wouldn’t it be just the thing if the three Seacombes were to run it together? Goodness knows we could all fit in that office with a private secretary for each of us and have room for a string quartet.”

  “I think there would be entirely too much riotous behavior in there. You would scandalize the captains and no one would get any work done.”

  Lizzie laughed in delight. “There! I knew you had opinions of your own.”

  “Ah, but it would not be wise of me to express them. I can be sacked at any moment. You, I suspect, cannot.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” came out of Maggie’s mouth before she could close her teeth on it.

  Lizzie looked at her curiously. “What does that mean?”

  But thankfully, they had reached the end of the harbor promenade and Mr. Polgarth handed her down onto the rocks, where a path wound up and around the bluff that would take them up to the house on the promontory. And in the scrambling and pointing out of views and trying to keep their hats on their heads in all the wind, the opportunity for explanations blew away and out to sea.

  *

  When the giddy foursome finally gained the top of the bluff and made their way into the garden, Maggie was feeling a distinct glow. The Lady had once told her that her mother had been quite firm on that point: “Horses sweat. Men perspire. Ladies glow.”

  Maggie was glowing with a vengeance now, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that some of the flowers from her hat might by now be halfway to the Channel Islands. But she felt wonderful, being out of doors again in such amusing company. She and Lizzie had been happy to notice that Tigg and Michael Polgarth had taken a liking to one another—or perhaps it was merely a case of Tigg relaxing his protectiveness of herself and Lizzie enough to appreciate the other young man’s honesty and good humor.

  The fact that Lizzie allowed their handsome friend to hold her hand on the way up the cliff path when it was not strictly necessary for him to do so in order to assist her may have gone a long way to creating the companionable rapport between the two young men.

  Maggie had the presence of mind to drag Lizzie to their room to repair the wind damage before they presented themselves for tea.

  “Lizzie Seacombe, how shocking you are,” she said, taking down her hair and brushing it vigorously. “Such public displays of affection!”

  “To you and the sea birds.” Lizzie twisted up her own heavy mane around her head in a French braid and rammed pins into the knot at the back. “And neither of you are going to tell on me.” She clasped her hands rapturously. “I still cannot believe that
Tigg cares for me.”

  “I know—his taste in female company is definitely lacking.”

  Lizzie stuck out her tongue, then the smile returned as if she could not keep it away. “I feel quite dizzy with it—with him, Maggie. It is as if I had never seen him before the pocket watch bomb in Munich—and now I cannot see him in any other way but as that man who called me ‘Lizzie-love’ when he thought me unconscious.”

  Maggie’s heart seemed to contract with longing. What would it be like to feel this way about someone? To be so happy that it permeated you through and through?

  “I am glad you do,” she said, squeezing Lizzie’s hand and pulling her out the door. “Tigg is a fine, intelligent man, and he has the Lady’s permission to treat you as rather more than a companion, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, he told me so. Not that it would have mattered if he didn’t.” She clattered down the stairs, laughing, and was still smiling as they reached the sea parlor, where Tigg and Mr. Polgarth were waiting for them.

  The Lady and Mr. Malvern were already in conversation with the Seacombes as Tamsen bobbed a curtsey and ushered them in.

  Grandmother glanced at the watch on its pearl brooch at her breast. “Was I not clear that tea was at four o’clock?”

  Goodness. They were only ten minutes late. It was Hobson’s choice anyway—if they had not taken those minutes, they would have had a lecture on the state of their hair and dress.

  “I’m sorry, Grandmother,” Lizzie said, when Maggie did not reply. “We climbed the cliff path and it was rather more of a walk than we all expected, having not gone that way before.”

  “In future you will be more considerate of others and mind the time. Howel, please ring and we will have the tea brought in. Again.”

  Grandfather did so, and the Lady stepped forward. “Mr. and Mrs. Seacombe, may I present Maggie’s escort from the company offices this morning? This is Mr. Michael Polgarth. He—”

  Grandmother dropped the plate of cakes, sending petits fours bouncing and rolling about on the low table and scattering crumbs on the carpet.

  “Grandmama!” Claude started forward. “Are you ill?”

  Breathing deeply, Grandmother bent forward as though she had been struck, her fingers wrinkling her pearl-gray taffeta skirts. Maggie turned in appeal to Grandfather, but he stood near the bell pull, as rigid as the cliff face below the house. What could be the matter? Had they both recognized Michael as a lowly clerk, and were so offended by his presence in their home that they were one step away from an apoplexy? Oh dear, this was dreadful!

  The Lady controlled her own surprise and glanced at Tamsen in a manner that made that young lady jump to her duty and begin picking up the little cakes at top speed. The girl brushed the crumbs onto the china platter and hustled it from the room—and still the Seacombes had not spoken.

  “Mrs. Seacombe, are you sure you are quite well?” Claire inquired. “Shall I call someone? Send for a doctor?”

  Grandmother came out of her fixed stare rather like a swimmer coming up from a great depth. “No,” she said hoarsely. “There is no need.”

  “Perhaps some smelling salts? Or lavender from the garden? Maggie, do run down and pick some. I understand it is most calming to the nerves.”

  Grandmother, her attention thus directed exactly where Maggie did not want it, said, “I never expected this to happen, but I am not in the least surprised that you are the engineer of it.”

  Maggie’s jaw sagged.

  “Get out of this house,” Grandfather rasped.

  “I beg your pardon?” the Lady said, the astonishment in her tone glazed in the thinnest layer of ice. “To whom are you speaking?”

  “Him. That bounder there.” Grandfather jerked his chin in Michael’s direction, and in response, Tigg stepped a little closer to the other young man, as if offering his support. “No one bearing that name shall ever set foot in this house. Take your leave at once.”

  “Mr. Seacombe,” Lady Claire remonstrated in horror, “Mr. Polgarth is here at my invitation. There has been nothing in his conduct that would elicit such a degree of incivility. In fact, he has been kind enough to do you a great service in looking after Maggie when she became separated from our party.”

  “That’s because like attracts like,” Grandmother snapped. “You have been deceived, Lady Claire. Your remarks do you credit, but they will have no bearing on my husband’s wishes. Mr. Polgarth, Nancarrow will see you out.”

  But Maggie had had enough. “That’s all right, Nancarrow,” she said to the butler. “I will do it. I find myself quite in need of some air.”

  Michael Polgarth’s manners did not desert him. He bowed to the Seacombes, and then to Lady Claire and Mr. Malvern, whose jaw was working in a manner that Maggie had only seen a very few times, usually in connection with the underhanded activities of Lord James Selwyn. Then, head held high, he strode from the room, Maggie at his heels.

  14

  What must he think of me?

  Maggie did not have the courage to unlock and open the big front door, used only on formal occasions, so she directed Mr. Polgarth through the empty drawing room and out the French doors onto the terrace.

  What must he think of all of us?

  “Mr. Polgarth, I am so sorry.” Tears of mortification threatened to well up, but she held them back. “I do not know what came over them. I had no idea they were capable of such—”

  “You have nothing to apologize for, Miss Margaret.”

  “Please, I beg you, call me Maggie. They call me Margaret and it takes all the pleasure out of knowing my mother had a reason to give me that name, even if I do not know what it was. And I must apologize. I have never been so humiliated in all my life—and considering the last day or two, that is saying something.”

  The length of this speech took them through the rose garden and out onto the lawn and the cliff-top. Just at the place where the order of the mowed grass was disrupted by wildflowers and tussocks of sea-grass and thrift, Mr. Polgarth stopped and turned to her.

  “You have been nothing but kind to me, so please do not abase yourself for something you have not done. And if I am to call you Maggie, then you must call me Michael. If you do that, I shall tell you a story.”

  The dam broke, and a fat tear rolled down Maggie’s cheek, to be dried almost instantly by the wind. “Do not patronize me, too. I cannot bear it.”

  “Patronize you!” In agitation, he took her hand and pulled her along the cliff path, heading west, in the direction from which she and Lizzie had seen the red lamp flashing in the night. “That is the last thing I would do. I have put it badly. I mean only that I have information about my family that may be of interest to you—and give you some little understanding of your grandparents’ behavior.”

  Maggie stopped dragging on his hand like a boat anchor and took a skipping step to catch up.

  He released her, and her fingers felt a little chilled in the absence of the warmth of his. “Come,” he said over his shoulder. “I cannot speak of these things while the windows of Seacombe House look down on us.”

  She followed him along the path for nearly a quarter of a mile. The house was lost to sight behind them, and when the way was split by a huge fissure in the cliff face and it meant going inland some distance to continue around it, he clambered down the slope a little way and into a copse of trees that spilled into the gap. At the foot of the cliff, waves lapped on a tiny beach, but he did not walk down the zigzag path.

  Instead, he found an outcrop of flat granite, worn smooth by the action of hundreds of years of weather, and folded himself onto a shelf of stone. He patted the warm surface next to him, and Maggie joined him, folding her skirts decorously around her so the wind would not pluck them up and expose her knees.

  “I used to come here as a child,” he said. “My parents had a cottage there.” He pointed to the other side of the gap, where a collection of snug stone cottages spilled down the gentler slope and had access to the sea. Colorful fishi
ng boats bobbed on the water, the ones closer in beached by the outgoing tide.

  Was this where the red flashes had come from? Maggie could swear it was—but at the same time, it had been at night and she and Lizzie couldn’t see landmarks or judge distance with any accuracy.

  However, that was a question for another time. There were more urgent questions to be asked now. “Is that when you became acquainted with my grandparents?”

  “No, I have never spoken to them before this afternoon.”

  “Then how—? Why—? I don’t understand.”

  “When we lived here, my uncle lived with us as well for a few months. We children thought it a great lark—he was home from university and he was our favorite of our various relatives—dashing and funny and always willing to spare a moment to hear a child’s confidence. He had a tremendous store of terrible riddles, too, some of which I still remember, after all this time.”

  “Tell me one.”

  “Very well—what has a foot but no arms?”

  Maggie thought for a moment. “A ruler?”

  Michael laughed. “You are much better at it than we ever were. He stumped us every time, and the sillier they were, the more we were stumped. Of course, it didn’t help that he was a tremendous mimic, and half the time was telling them in someone else’s voice. Part of the joke was to figure out who he was playing, and then what the riddle meant.”

  A little piece of herself fell into place, and the question uppermost in Maggie’s mind began to solidify into certainty. “What was his name?”

  “Kevern. Kevern Polgarth—born and raised on the tenant croft at Gwynn Place. When my father and mother married, they came down here to Penzance so Dad could ply his trade as an animal doctor. Uncle Kevern was studying science and engineering at the college in Truro, and he would stay with us on his vacations while he worked on the great steam engines in the mines.”

  “Wheal Porth,” Maggie breathed.