Magnificent Devices [5] A Lady of Resources (15 page)

Nothing.

Another inch.

Another set of gears engaged and began to turn. Lizzie nearly choked on her own indrawn breath, and pulled on the lever to make them stop.

But they did not. Once engaged, it seemed the process must be completed.

With a whimper, she pushed the lever all the way forward when it began to shake with the demand that she do so. The next set of gears engaged, and then a drive chain, and with a sliding
thunk!
the side of the telescope opened and a gleaming brass arm swiveled in her direction.

She could not have moved if she tried. She was frozen on the leather seat, cold alarm moving over her skin at what she had done.

The arm clamped onto a cylindrical object that had just slid heavily down a chute next to her, removed it, and inserted it into the slot in the side of the telescope barrel. The brass door in the barrel slid shut with a clang and the arm ratcheted back whence it had come. A light glowed in the ocular assembly.

She put her eye to the eyepiece and saw the bright blue of heaven.

She could still hear Evan’s boots on the stone outside as he circled the barrel, trying to see what was at the end of it as it tilted up to the sky. There was no cap. No, whatever had been blocking her view was gone now, because what it needed had been supplied.

In the ocular assembly, on the side of the bright field of vision it allowed, a brass wheel engraved with tiny capital letters clicked into place.

ARMED

Lizzie’s spine lost its ability to hold her up, and she wilted back against the leather seat, immobile with horror.

This was no telescope sitting on top of the tower, waiting for a clear night and a gentleman hobbyist’s leisure.

It was a bloody great cannon.

And she had just loaded it.

Evan must not know that Lizzie knew what the telescope really was. If he already knew, she might be in danger. If he did not, then she did not want to endanger him.

Quickly, she returned the tilt of the barrel to what it had been before, adjusted the ocular assembly to its previous height, and hopped down from the seat. She had just stepped outside and closed the door behind her when he reappeared from around the back of the dome.

“There is no cap that I can see, Lizzie … why … what is the matter?”

She could not help the color of her complexion, nor its clamminess. But she could use it. “I—I did not want to tell you before, but … Evan … I have a terrible fear of heights. I’m afraid I can’t conceal it any longer. I—I need your help to get down.”

“Good heavens, you goose.” He passed an arm about her waist and assisted her over to the trap door. “Pride has gotten many a good scientist into trouble, but I would never have suspected it of you.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She took a few unsteady steps down after him and would have fallen to her knees in thanks when the trap door slid shut above them if there had been anything to fall upon.

“Hug the wall,” he ordered from a few steps below her. “You must be brave, Lizzie. I cannot carry you. All I can do is provide a cushion to land upon, and even that may not save us both if you fall.”

“I shan’t fall.” She concentrated on the cut stones in the tower wall, her shaking hands running over the cold edges where they fit together, feeling her courage return with every step downward toward the ground and away from that cannon.

Did Evan know what it really was? Was he being paid to keep it a secret—to keep people out?

No, that could not be. He had followed her up as blithely as she had gone, more like an older brother anxious for the well-being of a naughty child than a villain determined to keep her away from a terrible weapon.

Her original instinct for silence, drilled into her by her years under Snouts’s protection, did not fail her. She refused his escort into the house, making light of her feminine weakness until she reached the safety of her room. Then she flung herself upon the bed while her legs twitched and trembled with the tension of that climb down the tower wall.

That, and the urge to flee.

If Evan were innocent of the telescope’s true purpose, she would do everything in her power to keep that knowledge from him. The greater question was, what on earth was it doing up there? Why was her father passing it off as a telescope when it clearly could never be used? What if someone heard about the “second most powerful telescope in England” and actually wanted to look at a star or two? One of the scientists coming that afternoon, for example. Would he simply tell them it was undergoing maintenance and could not be used at present?

And for goodness sake, what was it being used
for?

She must find out.

She could not believe that a man as kind and generous as her father would knowingly keep a weapon of that size and power on his roof. Perhaps he had been deceived. Perhaps he thought it was a telescope, and had simply never had the time to climb into the pilot’s seat and actually use it. Perhaps there had been a mix-up in the order, and someone in—in the Texican Territories was presently puzzling over a giant telescope in a crate instead of the cannon they had been expecting.

Oh, how she wished Maggie were here!

The two of them had ferreted out many a secret over the years, and solved a mystery or two as well. Even the Lady had laughed during their first Christmas at Wilton Crescent at her lack of success in hiding the presents from them. With Maggie here, at least she would have someone to talk to. Someone to tell her she was crazy for thinking ill of a man who had done so much for her. Someone to soothe her mind, which never failed to leap to the worst conclusions—a habit she tried hard to break but in which she had seen little success.

No, she could not think ill of her father. It was a mistake, that was all—a mistake of colossal proportions, mind you, but it was the only explanation.

Well, except for the one that suggested her father wanted to shoot something out of the sky.

Lizzie tried to stop her mind from going there, but she could not. She and Maggie had not survived the streets of Whitechapel by blinding themselves to facts. If something walked like a duck and quacked like a duck, in all probability it was a duck. How many times had Snouts told them that? And how many times had he been proven maddeningly right?

Stop thinking in this way. It is disloyal to your family.

But she could not. The image of that cannon concealed on the roof of the tower haunted her.

All right, then, if you must betray by your thoughts a man who has gone to such lengths to bring you back to him … what does one shoot out of the sky?

Pheasant.

Not with a cannon. Try again.

Aeronautic conveyances.

Yes. Airships, rocket rucksacks, pigeons—

Lizzie sat up straight on her bed, and swung her feet to the floor, as if the glossy walnut planking could steady her.

Father had said he’d sent a pigeon to Geneva, telling them of her change in name and requesting a lady’s maid for her. But pigeons did not fly to fixed addresses. That was what the tube system was for. Pigeons flew to moving recipients, like airships and steamships. The only reason
Athena
’s pigeon came to Wilton Crescent was because Lewis had illegally monkeyed with its guidance system to protect the Lady’s most confidential correspondence.

Why had Father sent a pigeon instead of a tube? To rendezvous with a ship bound for the same location? But
Victory
had been moored right here when he’d sent it. Lizzie got up and began to pace the Persian carpet.

You can’t solve that one, my girl. Back to the cannon.

All right, then. One could shoot ships and things out of the sky. But why would one want to? The only ships that passed by this deep in the country—far from the industrial shipping lanes—were private ones, like
Victory
or
Athena
or the one the Prince of Wales would undoubtedly use to come to his estate.

She ran into a wall, both literally and figuratively, and turned for the door. There was no point in thinking this way, ducks notwithstanding. None of it made any sense, just as that pocket watch that was a bomb had made no sense until her father had explained what it had been intended for. She simply did not have enough information—and would not, until she could talk with someone.

She needed Maggie.

If she sent a tube now, her sister would get it this evening, and board a train in the morning. By this time tomorrow, she could be sitting here with her, talking it over and trying to decide if it would be better to sit tight and not think crazy thoughts, or to get down to the business they were both best at—keeping a watchful eye out while poking their noses where they didn’t belong.

Quietly, in as ladylike a fashion as she could manage, Lizzie drifted through the silent house to the morning room, where there was an escritoire, ink, and stationery. The fact that it bore the family crest of those who had lived here previously made her a little uncomfortable, but when one needed paper this urgently, one ignored such niceness.

Dear Maggie,

Please forgive me for being such a toplofty gumpus. It has only been a day, but I miss you dreadfully. I was stupid, and I’m sorry.

Something has come up here at Colliford and I need you with me, as soon as you can get a train. If you get the seven-fifteen from Paddington you’ll be here in time for lunch. I can’t put it in writing, but … bring raiding rig. And my antigravity corset. I could have used it today.

Please don’t tell the Lady. I may be able to explain you to Father, but I will not be able to explain her—and besides, she will only worry, or worse, come like
lightning
rather than harmless as a cloud.

Please, Mags. I believe I may be going crazy, and I should like you to tell me not to be a stupenagel.

All love,

Lizzie

She sealed the sheet in an envelope so it couldn’t be read by whoever happened to collect it at Wilton Crescent, and set the code. With a pneumatic slurp, the tube was sucked away. She checked to see that nothing had arrived in the other slot, and then heard the lunch gong.

She and Evan were the only ones to come to the table, but this time, she refused to sit thirty feet away. She picked up the entire place setting and walked the length of the table to re-set it all on Evan’s right.

“Miss Elizabeth,” Kennidge said, shocked. “Is the setting not satisfactory?”

“When we are
en famille
, Kennidge, I should like to be seated together from now on. How can I get to know my family when I am forced to shout down the length of the room?”

Kennidge permitted himself a smile, and bowed. “Yes, miss. It shall be as you say. And, er—the pickle fork goes to the
outside
of the salad fork, miss. Like this.”

It was the first time she had ever given household instructions. It felt very satisfying—but she must not let the feeling of power go to her head. The Lady had told them often enough that servants were simply men and women like themselves, earning a living, and were to be treated with the respect and civility one would give an equal.

After lunch, Evan returned to the tower and she listened to the servants moving about the silent house. With every hour that passed, she became more and more edgy, listening for the sound of a tube arriving even though she knew it could not come before midnight at the earliest. The thought of the telescope—cannon—gnawed at her, and the sharper the thought of it became, the more it seemed that her father must know what he was housing on his roof.

He dealt in arms. She knew that because he’d told her, in Munich. He’d had that bomb in his pocket to show to Count von Zeppelin. His story seemed wildly dangerous—if not utterly improbable. Looking back now, the Lady had to have been right, and Lizzie had been blinded by her need to believe in him and had not been willing to admit it. What if, as she had suggested, something had tugged the pin out during the dancing? What if he had pulled too hard on the chain or dropped the device? Why on earth carry a bomb about your person when you knew it was live and could kill you and everyone within ten feet of you?

Oh, this way lay madness. She hated not knowing the answers to questions. And what was more, she hated having to ask them. To admit the possibility that she might have been deceived.

Lizzie found herself back on the second floor, outside her father’s study, which was next to the morning room. The door was closed, but she knew he was out on the estate with his manager. Perhaps there was something in here that could shed some light on the subject before she began screaming from tension and sheer frustration.

She went in, careful to close the door behind her. It was the only entrance, but two long windows with burgundy velvet curtains overlooked the front drive. One of them stood open, the curtains gently billowing and brushing the carpet. Outside, the wind was coming up, and clouds scudded across a sky that had been clear before lunch.

She wouldn’t stay long. Perhaps only long enough to glance over his desk.

It was very clean, as though the maids had dusted only moments ago, and held nothing but a blotter and an inkwell.

She’d stay only long enough to open a drawer or two, then.

The top ones held pens, stationery, peppermints, two letter openers, and bits and bobs of pencils and string. Both the middle ones held what seemed to be account books. She riffled the pages and didn’t see anything more exciting than the price of cigars and a replacement propeller for
Victory
. These must be his personal accounts, not those of the estate. Claude’s tuition and books, seven pairs of shoes—seven? Good heavens, Claude was nearly as bad as Arabella. A silk scarf, cufflinks from Bond Street. Yawn. She flipped some more pages, but they were blank.

The deep bottom drawer on the right held a bottle of spirits, though why he should bother when there was a full array there on the sideboard was a mystery. When she shoved the drawer back in with her knee, it stuck.

“Bother. Come on, you.” What was the matter with it? It had come out easily enough. She ran a hand under the drawer above to check the clearance, and felt something soft. With pages. Held to the underside of the drawer above by a pair of thin leather straps. Good grief, did he think this was a particularly good hiding place? Willie could have found a better one. “So, Father, what have we here?”

She drew out a leather-bound book. Another account book, from the look of it, but its contents were utterly different. Metal parts and gears. Gunpowder. Brass barrel, two hundred pounds sterling. Columns of figures that looked like estimates of distance versus velocity, multiplied by several different weights of projectiles.

Outside, she heard the musical chugging of a steam landau and for one crazy moment, she thought the Lady had returned to collect her. A quick look out the window squashed that idea—it was her father, unfolding himself out of the passenger side while a man who must be his estate manager leaned over the acceleration bar to converse through the window.

Lizzie dashed to the desk and slid the book back into its holding straps, then lifted the bottom drawer a little in its track as she shoved it in. It slid into place with a clink of the contents inside. She wasted no more time, but ran out of the room and down the stairs, and was waiting with a smile when her father came in the front door, removing his gloves and hat and placing them in Kennidge’s care.

He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Now, here is a sight to warm the heart. What have you been doing with yourself today, my dear?”

The Lady said that the truth was always the best course—except when it might result in bodily harm or the betrayal of a friend. But one did not have to tell the entire truth—or even the majority of it. “Evan showed me the dream device, and I have volunteered to be a subject for him before the week is out.”