18
“Hallo, the tower,” came a familiar voice from the door. “Are you all in here?”
Evan and de Maupassant whirled with identical expressions of surprised annoyance. “Margaret?” de Maupassant managed at last, blinking as though his eyes and ears played tricks on him.
“The same,” she said cheerfully, coming in wearing her smart brown traveling suit with the velvet facings on the jacket, her eyes sparkling with pleasure that had certainly not been there on the occasion of her first visit. “Kennidge said you were all here and that Lizzie was to help you test the dream device. Have you begun? What have I missed?”
You would think she had merely overslept, not journeyed all the way from London and probably climbed out of the trap two minutes ago.
“Margaret, first, you are just in time to view the first set of plates along with Elizabeth, and second, what on earth are you doing here?” Evan asked. “Surely you haven’t gone all the way to London and back so quickly?”
“I have, actually. I attended Lady Claire’s investiture—which was terribly exciting for her and Mr. Malvern and terribly dull for ordinary mortals like me—and then I found I missed my cousin so much that I re-packed my valise and set off. I do hope my unexpected return is not an inconvenience? I would have sent a tube, but the decision was rather sudden, and—”
“No, not at all.” De Maupassant had recovered his manners, pulling them on like a cloak. “In fact, the scientists we had been expecting were delayed due to the weather, so you find us happily en famille.”
“But where are Claude and the others?”
“Gone to Newquay,” Lizzie said. “Maggie, do help me sit up. I cannot lie here and speak to the glass globe above us.”
But try as she might, Lizzie could not master her disobedient muscles well enough to sit up, and finally Maggie and Evan were forced to let her relax upon the table again, her shoulders against the bolster.
“Would you like to see the plates?” Evan said eagerly, thrusting them under Maggie’s nose before she had a chance to reply. “Lizzie says that this one depicts you. Can you credit it?”
Maggie peered at the image rather as one might peer through the fog on a particularly bad London night. “Not at all. Me? I do not believe it.”
“Like dreams, I suspect the images may be subject to interpretation,” de Maupassant said easily. “Now, Evan, we cannot leave poor Elizabeth lying here indefinitely. I suggest we remove her to a proper bed so that she may recover in comfort. The Queen’s Tower is nearest.”
“The Queen’s Tower?” Evan said blankly, dragging his attention away from his plates with difficulty. “Why not simply take her to her room?”
“I believe I just explained why. Come, boy. You are young and strong and you may devote five minutes to the well-being of your cousin, surely?”
Evan’s cheeks flushed above the youthful growth of beard he had clearly forgotten to shave this morning. “Of course. I do apologize. Lizzie, if you will pass your right arm about my neck, I will endeavor to lift you.”
Lizzie had been close to many a young man—in dance class one could hardly avoid it—but it was a different sensation to be cradled against someone in a relatively supine position. She was not altogether sure she liked it—or rather, she would like it more if she were surer of his motivations and knowledge.
Maggie followed them inside the house and along the corridor to the Queen’s Tower, which, since it had usable rooms for guests, had not had its doors bricked up in the same way as the science tower. “We could not have house guests opening the wrong door at a crucial moment in the experiments,” Evan explained. “Here we are. Just one more stair and your journey will be over, Lizzie.”
“I fear it is much more work for you than for me,” she said as Maggie preceded them up the stone stairs, which wound around a central pillar. At the landing, Maggie pushed open the heavy door and Evan carried her inside.
“So this is the room where Her Majesty slept,” Maggie said, turning in a circle as Evan laid Lizzie upon the embroidered coverlet and plumped up the down pillows behind her head and shoulders. “It is very fine, is it not, Lizzie?”
It was indeed. Midnight blue curtains embroidered with stars hung on either side of a curved window. An easy chair was pulled up next to the fireplace—laid with wood ready for the match—and curved shelves filled with books and curios had been fitted cleverly along the walls. On the side opposite the bed with its rich hangings was another, smaller door. “Where does that go?”
“Up to the parapet,” Evan said. “It is of a height with the other.”
“You may leave it closed, Maggie,” Lizzie told her. “I shall not be exploring parapets anytime soon.”
“There is a water closet in this alcove here behind the curtain, which was once used for storing arrows. Maggie, perhaps you might get Lizzie another glass of water? I must return to my plates and see what else I might bring you to look at.”
He clattered down the stairs much more quickly than he had come up bearing her, and when Maggie brought her a glass, she drank the water gratefully. At this rate, she was going to need that water closet—but her headache was gone, and she was feeling much less fuzzy.
“How long before you can walk?” Maggie asked. “I must say, I don’t like the idea of you being laid up.”
“Nor do I.” Lizzie tried her knees again, and this time, they both bent together. “Look, I could not do this a few minutes ago.”
“Try sitting up.”
But no, the muscles in her back would not allow it. She would have to be patient, no matter how much the inactivity—and the risk—irked her.
“While you’re lying there,” Maggie said, sitting on the edge of the bed, “you might as well tell me what is going on.”
“We’re in trouble,” Lizzie began. “It started with—wait, someone’s coming up.”
“Kennidge, maybe, to see if Your Majesty would like tea in your room?”
“If I drink another drop, it will be you carrying me to the water closet.”
The door opened and Lizzie’s stomach plunged once more at the sight of de Maupassant. “I see you are comfortable,” he said from the threshold.
“As comfortable as one can be when one cannot move, and is in a strange room.”
“I thought you would enjoy seeing the Queen’s Tower while you recover. I hope you enjoy your surroundings for as long as they are necessary.”
“I’m sorry—what?” Necessary? What was necessary was that the last of the recovery process should not take much longer. As soon as her legs would bear her weight, they were getting out of here.
He gazed around the room, settling at last on the narrow door up to the parapet. “When she and the Prince Consort stayed here, Her Majesty had just survived one of the several attempts there have been on her life. She found it very comforting that there is only one way in and out of this tower. With a guard on the parapet and one at the base of the stairs, it was quite possible to give the royal couple complete security at very little expense.”
“Well, fortunately, no one wants to make an attempt on us,” Maggie said with a smile.
His gaze moved from her to Lizzie, and held. “Quite. What a shame you will not be able to tell your relations in Penzance that you slept in the bed of a queen.”
“What on earth do you mean?” Lizzie tried once more to sit up, and found that she could lean on her elbows.
“I informed the servants you are staying up here for a lark, before you leave to see your mother’s family,” de Maupassant said. “It will mean fewer questions, particularly since His Highness is expected to arrive at his estates tonight. In mathematics, this would be called an elegant solution—solving the greatest number of problems using the fewest number of operations.”
Maggie gazed from him to Lizzie. “I am afraid I am completely lost, Uncle Charles.”
“You are no such relation to me,” he told her with blunt, careless cruelty, and Maggie’s breath caught.
Rage ignited in Lizzie’s helpless bosom. How dared he take that tone with Maggie, who was a thousand times the better person!
And in that moment, as though the fizzing fury inside her had ignited her mind, all the pieces fell into place and the reason for the cannon on the roof became clear. “You are going to try again,” she whispered. “I am surprised you didn’t do Her Majesty in while she was sleeping here.”
“It would be difficult to explain that away satisfactorily,” he said. “However, given the fact that His Highness’s arrival is typically feted in grand style, with fireworks in the village and a seven-gun salute in the park of his estate, the situation will be quite different. Made to order, in fact.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Maggie demanded. “Lizzie?”
She had nothing to lose now by playing dumb. Her father intended to do away with them both no matter what she said. “He is going to shoot the Prince of Wales’s airship out of the sky when it flies overhead this evening,” she told Maggie in a voice devoid of anything but contempt. “That is no telescope on the roof of the science tower. It is a cannon, and he is going to use it to murder the prince and his son under the cover of the fireworks.”
De Maupassant’s moustaches twitched in a smile. “Clever girl. Climbing about like a kitten on the drapes, were we? Poking our whiskers in where they don’t belong?”
“I was bored.”
“You’re very much like your mother. She was not bored, but curiosity certainly killed that cat.”
“It did not. You did. I saw it all.”
Maggie’s face was a study in horrified confusion as she looked from Lizzie to de Maupassant.
“Yes, I know. What luck that you volunteered for the dream device. I should not have liked to force you against your will—it would have been very difficult to explain to Evan, whose scruples are rather deeply entrenched.”
“You wanted me as a test subject, then.”
“Oh, yes. From the moment I saw you in Munich and realized that the girl I thought safely at the bottom of the Thames was not only alive, but grown up, it was necessary to know how much you remembered. A perfect subject for the dream device. When you spiked my guns the first time, I realized that force must be replaced with guile. How fortunate for me that your need for family was as great as my need to draw you close to me.”
Maggie’s eyes widened. “The pocket watch.”
“Yes. I did not expect you to use the skills you developed on the street. One doesn’t, does one? Getting it into your hands proved easy, but still you eluded me.”
Lizzie was finding it difficult to breathe. “That bomb was intended for me?”
“I had originally planned to offer it as a graduation gift. Clumsy, I admit, and with unfortunate collateral damage, but it was all I had in my possession on short notice.”
If she had opened it that evening, in her room with Maggie and the Lady, all three of them would have been killed. Her choosing his pocket to pick instead of any other man’s had saved their very lives—and the bully-boys had met her intended fate instead.
“I shall do better this time,” he added.
“In a pig’s eye!” Maggie lunged for the door, but he was ready for her. Stepping outside, he slammed it shut, and she crashed against it. They heard the lock turn, smooth and well oiled.
“Good-bye, my dears,” he said through oak planks at least an inch thick. “You shall have a fine send-off this evening.”
Lizzie roared, low in her throat, and threw herself from the bed to go to Maggie’s aid.
One leg worked. One did not. She fell awkwardly on the carpet, blinded by tears and rage at her own stupidity. Why had she not seen it sooner? Why had she not run this morning, when she had the chance?
But if she had, then Maggie might be the one all alone up here, waiting for the moment of her death.
Lizzie crawled across the carpet to her, and together they huddled against the door. In fact, it felt very much like the night they had crawled out of the water and crouched weeping on the river steps, helpless and wondering where their happy lives had gone.
19
It took all of the next hour to tell Maggie everything she had learned and remembered—and nearly all of that time for her body to restore itself to its normal working order. But Lizzie had had a day to come to grips with the knowledge that de Maupassant had already tried to kill her twice. Maggie was making a valiant attempt to recover, but it was clear that her loving heart was having a difficult time accepting it.
“I cannot believe it,” she whispered every few minutes, pacing from one side of the tower room to another. “How is it possible for him to conceal from people that he is raving mad?”
“Not mad,” Lizzie said with withering scorn. “A patriot.”
“And your mother found him out after his first attempt on the princes, and took us away.”
“Perhaps the attempt confirmed what she could not believe—that somehow, he had killed Claude’s mother, too. In any case, she fled, he followed in the velocithopter, set the airship afire, and flew away to safety like the coward he is.”
Maggie stopped pacing and came to sit next to Lizzie on the window seat, which gave a fine view of the surrounding country. “And the most amazing thing of all is that I do not remember any of it.”
“Nor did I, until I picked up one of the books in our room and realized it was one of our own, from that life.” Aesop had revealed much more than proverbs to live by. “My dreams told the truth—and unmasked a villain. As soon as he saw the plate showing Mother on the floor of the airship, my hours were numbered.”
“We must stop him.”
“I agree. I am not sure just how yet.”
“What about Evan? Surely once he knows the facts, he will help us.”
Lizzie ran a finger along the seam of the window, which was fixed in its frame and did not open. Naturally. “Much as I like him, I do not know how much he knows. And until I do, I cannot trust that he won’t betray us—even inadvertently.”
“So we are on our own, then.”
“We have been in this position before. Or have you forgotten Resolution?”
“In Resolution, we were not locked up in a tower like a pair of madwomen.”
“Well, we’ve managed to evade him twice so far—the third time is the charm.”
Maggie got up. “Right. If the Lady were here, she would tell us to catalogue our resources and then use our imaginations.”
“If the Lady were here, we wouldn’t be in this position,” Lizzie admitted grimly. “I was stupid to tell you not to tell her. Utterly stupid—on that and several other counts.”
“It’s all right.” Circling the room, her cousin smiled at her. “One doesn’t expect one’s father to be a murderer. It’s not something you can plan for.” The smile faded. “Oh, Lizzie. I’m so sorry. That was a horrible thing to say.” Maggie’s eyes filled with tears—not at the thought that they had only a few hours to live, but at the idea that she might have hurt Lizzie’s feelings.
Lizzie crossed the carpet—rejoicing in the simple fact that she could, with working legs—and hugged her. “It’s only the truth. I’ve had a little time to see him for what he is … and me for what I’d let myself become. How could you have put up with me?”
“Because I know you. I know that you would cry into the rag-pile years ago, thinking that I didn’t hear, because we had no mother and father. I saw how you looked at the other girls’ families in Munich—your longing for that kind of life was plain on your face.”
Lizzie clutched her hand. “Oh, please tell me the Lady doesn’t think I—”
Maggie shook her head. “She doesn’t have a father, either, remember? And her mother spent how many months trying to marry her off to Lord James Selwyn against her wishes? The Lady understands about family—warts and all.”
“She is our family,” Lizzie said fiercely. “We chose one other. We are a flock and nothing is going to change that ever agai
n.”
Maggie fingered the hangings on the bed as though estimating their weight. “What about Claude?” she asked. “And Evan? If they prove to be innocent of this affair, will you claim them?”
“If they prove to be as deceived in de Maupassant as I was, I will be happy to claim them as family, and so will you. Claude is my half-brother, and Evan is our cousin, after all. But never again will I live with them, or think of them the way I think of you and the Lady and Snouts and—and Tigg—” She choked at the thought of Tigg, who was somewhere in Scotland with miles of wind and moor between them. Tigg, who was laboring under the delusion that she had chosen any number of people over him.
“Lizzie, do not break down on me now. We must be strong, and consider our resources. Look. Do you think we could pull these hangings down and use them to let ourselves down the wall?”
Self-control had never been one of her virtues. Maggie was right. If she went to pieces with grief and fear and disappointment, then Maggie would, too, and they would never be able to think their way out of this situation.
“It’s a two-hundred-foot drop, Mags.”
“And these are only twelve-foot drapes. Is there anything in the water closet?” She emerged a moment later, crestfallen. “Nothing but a commode, and a bowl and ewer with water. At least he was that considerate.”
“And there isn’t so much as a pair of compasses or a tweezer on these shelves with which I might pick the lock.” Lizzie searched behind the books and curios. “Though if he comes back, we could use this chunk of amethyst to conk him on the noggin.” Getting that close to the madman was only a last resort. She opened the narrow door onto the equally narrow stair up to the parapet. “Come on. Maybe there is something up here.”
They emerged onto the stone circle of the parapet, where the wind grabbed their hair and tossed their skirts behind them. “The sun is going down,” Maggie said. “When is the Prince of Wales’s ship expected?”
“When it is dark enough for fireworks?” Lizzie wished she had paid more attention to the dining-room conversation of Claude and the Sorbonne set. “I don’t know. All we know is that it’s this evening.”
Magnificent Devices [5] A Lady of Resources Page 17