Lady of Spirit, A (3 page)

“You damnable wretch!” he shouted. “You’ll be sorry for this! You’ll—”

Mr. Malvern closed the doors in his face and locked them, leaving the other man with no choice except to return to the house via either the servants’ entrance or the front door, both of which would ensure his complete mortification.

Maggie smiled as he took the third option. He vaulted over the garden wall and took himself off, and good riddance, too.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Maggie?” Mr. Malvern said, laying his hands on her shoulders and examining her for damage. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“No. He wanted a kiss, but I was not prepared to give him one.”

“I am glad to hear it. His reputation is not one I’d be prepared to have associated with you.”

“Maggie? Andrew?” The Lady stepped into the study and glanced from one to the other, then to the rug, which was rucked up, and a small occasional table, which had been knocked over. “What has happened?”

“It’s all right, Claire,” Andrew told her, releasing Maggie after a brief hug. “Justin Knight made a poor assumption about our girl here, and she corrected him as Mr. Yau taught her.”

“Did she?” The Lady’s face cleared and a sunny smile dawned upon it. “Well done. Has he gone?”

“He needed to change his clothes and get some medical attention, so yes.”

“Even better.” She hugged Maggie in her turn, and Maggie wrapped her arms around her waist, pressing her nose into the crook of the Lady’s shoulder. The lace of her high collar felt scratchy upon her cheek. Claire’s perfume warmed her gently, that mix of roses and cinnamon that had come to mean safety. Security. Approval and love.

“What were you doing in here in the first place, my darling?” the Lady asked softly. “Lizzie said you didn’t feel well?”

The moment for courtship had passed, and to be honest, Maggie felt a little queasy now that the danger had been ejected from the room. So she nodded.

The Lady wasted no time. “Emilie and Peter have gone, so there is no reason for us to stay, either. Andrew, if you would be so kind as to begin the landau’s ignition sequence, I will collect our party and meet you outside.”

So their plans had come to nothing. But despite that, Maggie took heart. For Mr. Malvern had come to her aid, and the Lady had treated him as though he was one of the family. That had to count for something.

“Up ship!” the Lady called out of the open hatch, and the ground crew—including Lewis and Snouts, who had come to see them off—released the ropes that tethered
Athena
and
Victory
to the airfield in Vauxhall Gardens.

The property had once been their home before Toll Cottage had burned to the ground. But now there was a cluster of snug little homes that housed the families of the men who ran the airfield for the Lady. Since it was the only airfield on the south bank, tolls for airships had become much more lucrative than tolls for boats had once been. And upriver, their nearest neighbor, the Morton Glass Works, ran efficiently under the ownership of Snouts—beg his pardon, Mr. Stephen McTavish—using modern steam and automaton technologies that did not spew chemicals into the river and spoil the swimming for the children.

In
Victory
’s fanciful gondola, with its baroque trim painted gold, Lieutenant Thomas Terwilliger manned the engines, since unlike
Athena
, the airship had to be manually controlled and required a crew. And assisting him was Lizzie, the reason for which Maggie was quite sure the Lady did not know. Lizzie had not as yet confided in either of them, but Maggie had eyes in her head. From her post at the map table, she had observed Lizzie’s gaze wander to their former squat-mate more than once that morning, to say nothing of the way he had squeezed her hands in greeting with rather more than brotherly enthusiasm.

Lizzie and Tigg were sweet on each other. Who’d have thought?

Though Maggie could hardly discount the truth—Tigg had grown into a handsome young man, his coffee-colored skin smooth and unblemished, his khaki uniform setting it off in a way that a girl might find most attractive. His brown eyes saw much more than a person often wanted them to, and the mind behind them was so sharp that when Tigg was in port, Mr. Malvern appreciated his help and advice in the laboratory he maintained in Orpington Close.

However, he was not in port very much. Tigg served aboard
Lady Lucy
, the personal flagship of the Dunsmuir family, and as often as not was in the air on his way to the Canadas, or the Antipodes, or some secret location on Lady Dunsmuir’s business for the Queen. Aeronauts on private ships were all serving members of the Royal Aeronautic Corps, and should the country declare war, were all required to report to the Admiralty for duty and deployment. But in their glorious Queen’s lengthy reign, there had only been minor skirmishes in the Balkans and the subcontinent of Hind, in protection of Her Majesty’s economic interests there. In Maggie’s lifetime, the closest they had come to war was the annual day of remembrance for fallen airships in November.

The only reason Tigg was with their party now and not aboard
Lady Lucy
was because the Dunsmuirs were enjoying a shooting holiday in Scotland with the Prince of Wales. Tigg had two weeks of ground leave, and instead of the myriad things he might have done or enjoyed on a lieutenant’s pay, he had chosen to come with them to Penzance.

Maggie had not made up her mind whether it was for their protection or simply for friendship. But either way, this would be interesting.

When Windsor Castle had floated away beneath the two ships and they were officially out of London air space, Maggie saw
Athena
pull away slightly. “Full speed ahead,
Victory,
” she called back to Tigg.

She turned her attention to the charts on the navigation table. Assisting her was Holly, a reddish-gold hen who took after her mother Rosie in both looks and temperament. She said to Claude, who was manning the helm, “Bear west southwest until we pass the airfield at Dartmoor, and then two points south to Penzance.”

Tigg called, “Aren’t Lady Claire and Mr. Malvern going to put down at Gwynn Place beforehand?”

“No, she seems to be as anxious to meet our grandparents as we are. They are to be guests at Seacombe House with us for three days.” She removed Holly from the map, where the bird was pecking at the Channel Islands, and lifted her up to roost comfortably upon a bit of pipe. “Is that your understanding, too, Claude?”

Lizzie’s half-brother was gently trying to convince Ivy, Holly’s sister, who clearly hoped he might have a biscuit about his person, that he in fact did not.

He swept out an arm in an encompassing gesture much too extravagant for this time of the morning, and Ivy scuttled out of range. “They’ll be ready and waiting with open arms, I’m sure. It feels like a perfect age since I was there—I’ll be glad to see the old dears myself. I’m not related to them by blood, but they’re still my stepmother’s parents—and the only grandparents I’ve got.” He peered out of the viewing port. “I say, that shabby vessel has quite the spring in her step. Best lay on the steam, old man.”

Indeed,
Athena
was definitely increasing her lead. The Lady was always meaning to have
Athena
refurbished so it looked more like
Lady Lucy
or any other pleasure craft. But somehow
Athena
seemed to resist being made up like a society belle and remained exactly what she was—a lethal ship of war that looked deceptively plain in order to hide both her speed and her maneuverability, to say nothing of her capacity to carry and conceal weapons.

Sometimes Maggie suspected that the Lady felt such a kinship with her vessel that they were of one mind on the subject of a lady’s capabilities.

The engines’ pitch settled into a businesslike thrumming under Tigg’s capable management, and Maggie bent her knees a little as the airship gained headway.

“The pigeons say the weather will be clear until noon, but there is a storm expected off the Channel late in the day,” Tigg said, escorting Lizzie into the gondola. “We’ll be there before it hits, I presume?”

“Yes indeed.” Claude joined them at the table in front of the large viewing port. “It’s a four-hour flight, so we’ll be comfortably drinking tea before a raindrop hits the ground. I say, how do you read this lot, anyhow?”

Tigg looked rather amused. “It’s a map, Claude. You just compare the lines—this river for instance. See it down there?”

Claude looked from one to the other and back again. “How do you know it’s the same river?”

“Because there aren’t any other rivers that big hereabouts,” Lizzie told him. “It’s the Thames, silly.”

Claude passed an arm about her waist with easy affection. “You see why I needed a tutor in geography—and why I prevail upon my friends to fly with me,” he said without a drop of compunction. “I’m no better on the ground. In Paris, if the Eiffel Tower wasn’t there I’d be hopelessly lost all the time.”

The giant iron structure was the largest mooring mast in France. Maggie fancied that most of the population used it to navigate, both on the ground and in the air.

“You’re not going back right away, are you?” Lizzie gave him a squeeze in return. “I’ve barely got to know you. Please say you aren’t.”

“Not for a bit, old girl.” He released her to stand at the viewing port, then started as he realized Holly was balanced upon the pipe over his head. “Deuced disconcerting, poultry popping up all about the place. No, classes don’t begin at the Sorbonne until the second week in September, don’t you know. Before I decamp for more fashionable climes and join Dolly and Cynthia and the others in Venice for one last romp, I count upon a good long visit.” He glanced back at them. “As will you?”

Maggie nodded, wishing he would hug her with the same easy familiarity. But what was she to him? Only a step-cousin. And one he didn’t know nearly as well as he knew Lizzie, who had spent more time in his company.

Maggie had grown up calling Lizzie
sister
. And now this young man, all arms and legs and slang and humor, was the only one who had the right to do so. It just didn’t sit well—and Maggie was ashamed of herself for feeling that way.

“So that will be our plan, then,” Claude said heartily. “Camp with the grands for a week or two and go clamming on the beach. Do a little velosurfing. Take a run up to Newquay to see how the undersea train is getting on—truly, Maggie, you’ll love that.”

“If you say so.”

“Certainly we’ll go,” Lizzie told him. “Now that my memories have returned and I know why I had such a fear of both air and water, I believe I could face an undersea train with equanimity.”

“But do you remember our grandparents, Lizzie?” Maggie asked curiously. For despite what they both knew of that dreadful afternoon eleven years ago when Lizzie’s mother had died at her husband’s hands, Maggie still had no memories of her own of that day, or of anything before that. It was an enormous blank that imagination had to fill in from the dream plates their cousin Evan Douglas had shown them at Colliford Castle, and from Lizzie’s recounting of the tale.

Lizzie shook her head. “I’m sure we will when we see them, won’t we? There will be something familiar, even though we were only five the last time we were all together.”

It would be lovely to have something pleasant from her past come back to her. Maggie picked up Ivy and gave her a cuddle. Then maybe she could look forward, into the future.

The harbor serving the Cornish town of Penzance was third only to Southampton and Falmouth for importance in the steam shipping trade—and, as Claude said, “there are those who would dispute that second to the point of fisticuffs.”

Athena
and
Victory
floated over St. Michael’s Mount, where an ancient castle hosted a contingent of aeronauts on permanent guard duty of the south coast. They had sent pigeons announcing their intent to land, and as they passed, the flag dipped in acknowledgement. The Mount could only be accessed on foot twice a day during the ebb tide. On a wide stone causeway, people far below walked to and from the village nestled around the castle. Maggie hoped that they would leave plenty of time to return—being caught in the middle of the channel when the tide came in was not a very appealing prospect.

At the airfield, a large multi-passenger conveyance was waiting, bearing the emblem of the Seacombe Steamship Company. The driver tipped his cap and he and a boy proceeded to load their luggage onto the roof of the vehicle. When Andrew and Tigg offered to help, he demurred.

“Mrs. Seacombe ’ud have my head, sirs, if I were to treat her guests in such a manner. You have a seat and we’ll be on our way shortly.”

Maggie secured the hens in their cage and took it into her lap for the journey. The driver pointed out the offices of the company down on the harbor, and as they circled to the opposite side, he pointed out the sights—the mayor’s home, the high street, the market. Higher they climbed, and at last, where large homes and terraced town houses overlooked the sea without the inconvenience of commerce cluttering the view, they crested the hill. After passing through a park that set apart this property even from its peers, the conveyance hissed and huffed to a stop on the circular drive outside a stone mansion whose mullioned windows commanded a prospect of nearly the entire harbor and the Mount as well.

Clearly the Seacombes were persons of influence in Penzance. Maggie smoothed her skirts and wished she had done as Claude suggested, and taken a moment to re-pin her hair and change her jacket to the one that matched the skirt.

But it was too late now.

She took Lizzie’s hand as they were ushered into the large, bright room that possessed the mullioned windows. And standing in front of the fireplace, in which a fire had been lit though the day was not cold, stood two people.

“Grandpere, Grandmere, it is so good to see you.” Claude bounded across the thick Aubusson rug to shake hands, and then gave his grandmother a hug. “It is my great joy to present your granddaughters at last—my half-sister Elizabeth and my cousin Margaret.”

Still holding hands, as they might have done when they were small, Maggie and Lizzie approached the older couple. He looked as though he might have been a sailor once, with ruddy skin and a fringe of beard that encircled his face like a paper frill around a ham. He was expensively dressed in a rich waistcoat and wool trousers, and a ruby pin adorned his cravat.

Maggie curtsied, tugging surreptitiously on Lizzie’s hand so that she did, too.

“Nonsense, my dears. We are family.” Mrs. Seacombe—Grandmother—came forward and hugged first Lizzie, then Maggie. She was barely taller than both of them, and so slender that she did not need a corset—though Maggie felt its stiffness in her rigid posture. Her gray hair was arranged in a way that had been fashionable several years before, with a Psyche knot high on the head and curls framing the face. Her gown was fine lavender watered silk, with a cascade of Brussels lace down the breast held in place by a brooch winking with tawny diamonds.

Lady Davina Dunsmuir possessed a parure and tiara made of very similar diamonds, dug from the ground in the far north of the Canadas. Could these have come from the Firstwater Mine as well?

Their grandmother stepped back, still holding Lizzie’s hands. “You have Elaine’s eyes. Her father’s eyes.”

Maggie ventured a glance at her grandfather to see that he did indeed have green eyes, though they were faded now, perhaps from many years of looking out to sea.

“Welcome, my dear,” Grandmother went on. “I cannot tell you what it meant to us to know that you had survived the crash—or how devastated we have been at what we believed to be your loss. When I think of the years we could have had together …”

“Now, now, Demelza,” Grandfather said gruffly. “That’s water under the keel. Welcome, my dear. I hope you will make Seacombe House your home.”

“Thank you, Grandfather. Your welcome means so much to us. But what of Maggie?” Lizzie asked eagerly. “Does she resemble her mother—my aunt Catherine? We know so little of her.”

At last Grandmother’s gaze made its reluctant way to Maggie. “Perhaps, about the mouth and chin. But her eyes, I am afraid, resemble those of no one in the family. Since we do not know—”

Who her father was, nor the color of his eyes.

Her lips closed with the finality dictated by propriety and she looked over Lizzie’s shoulder, releasing her hands at last. “Will you introduce us to your friends?”

Claude introduced Lady Claire, Mr. Malvern, and Tigg.

“Trevelyan,” Grandfather said, dragging his gaze from Tigg, who, after shaking hands, was standing at ease with his hands clasped behind his back. Since he had acted as engineer this morning, he was still in his flight uniform and polished boots—and a fine sight it was, Maggie thought with pride. “You are St. Ives’s daughter, from Gwynn Place?”

“I am,” the Lady said. “The present viscount is my brother, and my lady mother is now married to Sir Richard Jermyn, whose lands march with ours. I have been acting as guardian to Maggie and Lizzie for the past five years.”

“So we understand,” he said. “You have our gratitude—and sometime during your visit we hope to hear all that has passed in those five years, and before that.”

“We will tell you as much as we can,” the Lady said, smiling. “Though Mr. Malvern and I will not be trespassing upon your hospitality for more than a few days—I am most anxious to see my mother and little brothers, so we will be sure to conclude our tale before we lift on Wednesday.”

“Come, won’t you have some tea?” Grandmother waved toward the table set between the two sofas in front of the fire. “Howel, do put another log on the fire. I grow chilled when the flames are low.” The tea service was silver, the cups of porcelain so thin and delicate that Maggie could practically see the firelight through it.

“What a pretty pattern,” she said as Grandmother poured and she took it upon herself to hand the cups around. “What flower is this?”

“It is called a dogwood,” Grandmother said a little stiffly. “A tree that grows in the Fifteen Colonies, I understand.”

“Ah, that explains why it is unfamiliar.” Maggie picked up the plate of sandwiches and offered the Lady one. “We have been in the Texican Territories and in the Canadas, but flowering trees were not a noticeable part of the landscape in either place.”

“Elizabeth, what are your plans once your visit here is concluded?” Grandmother asked her.

Maggie handed the plate to Tigg to hide her chagrin at the snub. What was wrong with talking about flowering plants? She would have thought that their travels would have been of keen interest to her grandparents, after what Grandfather had just said. Or that horticulture might be, at the very least, considering the glory of the gardens around the house. But what did she know of the conversational habits of older people in society? Other than the Dunsmuirs and Count von Zeppelin, and her teachers at the
lycee
, she had not been exposed to it much at all.

Tigg took a sandwich and twinkled at her, as if to say,
Cheer up. None of us belongs in a room sipping tea, do we?

No, they certainly did not. In fact, she’d rather be exploring about this house, or down on the strand crossing the causeway to the Mount. Or better yet, going to Gwynn Place with the Lady to visit Polgarth and the chickens.

She had been corresponding with Lewis over the last year or two on the subject of genetics in connection with their hen Rosie, of dearly beloved memory. It was Lewis’s opinion that temperament and intelligence could be emphasized in a breeding program just as much as feathering and laying capacity, and if Holly and Ivy were any indication, Rosie’s chicks seemed to bear this out. She wanted to discuss it with Polgarth, whose scientific breeding of the Buff Orpingtons at Gwynn Place was said to be legendary in this part of the country.

Perhaps that was what she ought to do—leave Lizzie here with Claude and Tigg and the grands, and go with the Lady.

A woman in a housekeeper’s navy dress appeared in the doorway. “Excuse me, ma’am, but the footman wishes to know what is to be done with the poultry in the hall. It seems to have come in with the young ladies instead of going round to the kitchen.” A squawk of alarm sounded from the front of the house. “I was not aware that you had changed the menus since this morning, ma’am. Did you order chicken for dinner?”

“No!” Maggie shot off the sofa, upending her teacup onto the carpet and staining the front of her skirt. “Holly and Ivy are not to be dinner! They are our companions.”

Lizzie put down her cup and vanished out the door past the housekeeper, and presently her voice joined the indignant tones of Holly and Ivy, dressing down the unfortunate footman.

Slowly, Grandmother raised the quizzing glass on its chain about her neck to survey the chaos.

“Margaret, pick up your cup. Mrs. Penny, would you send in the maid to clean up this mess?”

“I am sorry for the misunderstanding,” the Lady said to Grandmother as, scarlet with shame, Maggie obeyed. “I ought to have told someone that the birds were with us—I simply assumed they would go up to our rooms with the luggage. If it is more convenient, I can return them to
Athena
, where they will be quite comfortable.”

“We’re not in the habit of considering the comfort of farm animals,” Grandfather said. His eyebrows were having trouble settling down with all the excitement. A maid scuttled in with cloths and a bucket, and began to sop up the spilled tea in the priceless carpet.

Who could have guessed that such a small cup could have held such a deluge? Maggie wished she could sink into the floor and disappear.

“Oh, but we are,” Mr. Malvern told him, smiling. “Holly and Ivy are the progeny of a most extraordinary bird who shared our adventures across the ocean. You haven’t lived, sir, until you have seen a hen sailing through the air in a hatbox attached to a dirigible, having narrowly escaped being eaten by sky pirates.”

“A hen concealing twenty thousand pounds worth of diamonds beneath her feathers, to boot,” added the Lady. “All thanks to the quick thinking of Lizzie and Maggie, who did not allow themselves to be captured, either.”

His powers of speech deserted Grandfather entirely, and the eyebrows appeared frozen in the high position.

Grandmother, however, was made of sterner stuff. “Diamonds notwithstanding, chickens are meant to be eaten, not carried about as though they were Persian cats.” The quizzing glass rose again as Lizzie came in bearing the cage, with both Holly and Ivy standing in some agitation not within it, but upon her shoulders. “Remove those birds at once, Elizabeth. I will not have them soiling the floors.”

The maid looked alarmed, and slipped out, presumably before she was called upon to clean that up, too.

“Of course, Grandmother. They needed a moment’s soothing, that’s all.” Lizzie slipped a gentle hand under each bird’s feet in turn, returned them to the cage, and set it upon the window seat, so that Holly and Ivy might look out upon the scenery.

“I meant remove them from the room.”

Lizzie looked up in surprise. “They will not harm anything. The clasp is quite secure.”

“Elizabeth, I do not argue, with you or anyone else. Obey me at once.”

“But—”

“Come along, old thing, and I’ll show you, Maggie, and the chickens to your rooms.” Claude picked up the cage.

“Those birds are not to remain in this house.”

Maggie dug in her heels. “But they’re our companions. They go where we go.”

“They may have done heretofore,” Grandfather said with a glance at his wife. “I do not know what the custom is up at Gwynn Place, but here at Seacombe House, poultry belongs in the kitchen, cats belong in the warehouse, and dogs belong to other people. Please respect your grandmother’s wishes.”

Maggie was beginning to get the faintest glimmer of understanding as to why Lizzie’s mother had been so eager to marry the first man who asked her. Had her own mother had the same experience? Had she run away? But what had happened to her that had resulted in Maggie’s birth nine months later?

Or, as the Lady believed, had she fallen in love and it had ended unhappily?

“Don’t worry about Holly and Ivy,” the Lady said gently. “We do not wish to cause the household more work than six guests already do. Mr. Malvern and I will take them back to
Athena
this afternoon, where I will make sure they have the best cracked corn the larder has to offer—and possibly a bit of cheese as well.”

Maggie’s gaze met Lizzie’s and they communicated in that silent way they had practically since birth.
We cannot fight this battle and win, but we may yet win the war. Patience and humor, as the Lady says. And courage.

“Thank you, Lady Claire,” Lizzie said at last. “That would be for the best.”

Grandmother resumed her seat and poured another cup of tea, then sipped it and made a moue of distaste. “The pot has gone cold. Howel, would you ring for another? Lady Claire, gentlemen, girls … we have invited several guests for dinner this evening to meet you. Once you have rested and changed, we dine at seven. We keep town hours here. When you hear the gong, please be prompt.”

Town hours
in London and Munich meant eight, or even nine. But perhaps in Penzance the sun set earlier.

While Mr. Malvern escorted the Lady and the hens out to hail a hansom cab to take them to the airfield, Claude showed the girls and Tigg upstairs. “I’m on this landing, and Tigg, you’re here, in the bedroom overlooking the rose garden. I’m afraid the grands are a bit stuffy about ladies and gentlemen occupying the same wing, so Lizzie and Maggie, if you’ll follow me along here?”