Magnificent Devices [5] A Lady of Resources (8 page)

“Being a mother is far from ornamental. And there is no reason why, as I said before, you cannot go from nursery to laboratory in the course of a day. Though I hope you would put our children first.”

How small he made the sphere of her influence sound! Perhaps the future would not be too small for her, but the present, the reality, the day to day, certainly would be. “Will you do the same? After a life spent traveling the hemispheres, will you be content to live as a country squire, your days devoted to lambs and crops and stock prices rather than world events and political influence?”

“I welcome it,” he said emphatically, releasing her hands. “I am ready for a quiet life. Ready to devote myself to family, friends, and farms.”

And because he was ready to end his career, she must be ready to give up the beginning of hers? “Oh, Ian, can you not wait?” she said softly, the words a cry from her heart.

She reached out, but he had already taken one step away, his head bowed as if there were something interesting in the grass. “I have been waiting, as I told you. As you have known for these five years.”

“But can you not wait a little longer, until I have had a chance to fly the skies you have flown, to taste influence in the world, to know the respect that you know both as a right of birth and as a result of your own accomplishments?”

At last he turned toward her. “You have had all those things, Claire,” he burst out. “Why are you not satisfied?”

I had not suspected this need for recognition in you, this constant desire to be in the spotlight. It is unwomanly.
Lord James Selwyn’s voice whispered in her memory. She shook her head, as if to dislodge the words from her mind. Did all men think this way, or had she merely been unlucky enough to attract the two who did?

Perhaps Ian was right on the first point. But just because someone had tasted a thimbleful of elixir did not mean she no longer wanted to drain the flagon dry. Why should she not drain it? Why should she be restrained by the random chance of her sex to a quiet life on another’s schedule? What example would that set for Lizzie and Maggie? They may as well all go to finishing school at that rate, and become the ornaments that men seemed to want far more than the happy, intelligent women they had.

“I
am
satisfied,” she replied quietly, and before he could speak further, she added, “But I see what I have accomplished as a beginning, whereas you see it as an end. And there, I fear, the courses we have charted must diverge, though it pains me deeply to say so.”

A few moments of silence ticked by. “So that is your answer, then?” he asked at last.

Oh, she dared not look in his eyes. For if she did, and she saw the love that lay in them, she would wobble and waver and all that she had worked for would be lost in the desire to please him, to know herself safe in his love.

“I am afraid it must be,” she whispered. “For now.” And when he turned away, biting his lips together so as not to show his emotion, she would not allow him to take that first step. She slipped her hand back into the crook of his elbow and tugged him back to her. “Oh, please do not say I have lost your friendship,” she begged. “I could not bear it. No one can fill the place you occupy in my heart, Ian.”

“It must be a very small place, if you are not willing to give me room in your life.”

But he wished her to make her life small in order to occupy it with him. There were some things, she was beginning to learn, on which man and woman could never agree.

“It is not small,” she said. “It is unique.”

“I will not wait any longer, Claire. I value your friendship also, but if another woman is willing to share my life and my responsibilities, I know my duty. I will not hesitate.”

“I understand,” she whispered.

He turned, she found herself in the circle of his arms—and then he kissed her with all the power and passion of which he was capable, as if to remind her of exactly what she was prepared to lose.

Oh, if she did not know it before, she knew it fully now. She closed her eyes and fell into his kiss, enjoying for the last time the richness of what he was willing to give her. Realizing for the first time that she may never have such an opportunity for such a life with such a man again.

It was a wonderful kiss.

And he was a wonderful man.

And then, when he broke the kiss and turned away, she took a long breath … and let him go.

Snouts and Lewis stood beaming upon the step of 23 Wilton Crescent as Lizzie and Maggie dashed up the path and flew into their hugs. “How’s our Mopsies, then?” Lewis said, squeezing Maggie and then releasing her to bow to the Lady. “Though we can’t be calling you Mopsies any more, can we? You’re fine young ladies now.”

“And soon to be finer, thanks ever so.” Lizzie hugged Snouts and led the way into the hall, where she dropped her valise on the black and white checkered marble and spun, arms lifted. “It’s so good to be home!” She was halfway up the stairs when Snouts’s voice stopped her.

“What do you mean, finer?” Snouts picked up the valise and dropped it on the polished step below her. “There’s no footman here to pick up after you, and Lewis has got better things to do.”

Lizzie stuck out her tongue at him and raced up the stairs. What a way to spoil her homecoming, with nitting and picking. He wasn’t her father—or her elder brother. He was just Snouts, and he couldn’t tell her what to do. She had graduated from the fifth form in Munich, and he’d had no education at all apart from what the Lady had given him and what he’d been able to glean from the books in the library and his years at the Morton Glass Works.

“Back in fighting form, I see.” Maggie bumped their bedroom door closed with her hip and dropped both valises next to their beds. This had been the Lady’s room growing up, but when she had moved into her parents’ room overlooking the garden, this one had become their exclusive domain. “You’d never know you’d been blown up by a bomb last night.”

“I know it.” Lizzie lifted her skirt—hems let down to a respectable ankle length when she had turned sixteen—to inspect one shin. “I have bruises on my legs the size of eggs, and I still can’t hear properly in my left ear.”

“Oh, is that why you ignored Lewis at the door and I had to carry up your valise?”

“A gentleman would have brought it up for me.”

“And our Snouts isn’t a gentleman, is that it? Or our Lewis?”

What a thing to say! “Of course they aren’t.”

“And you’re not a lady, so I suggest you leave the airs and graces to those that are born to them, and treat your friends as they ought to be treated.”

Lizzie stared. Since when did Maggie speak to her like this?

“I don’t mean to sound like Mademoiselle Dupree, but you hurt Snouts’s feelings, too.”

Lizzie flushed and turned away. “I nearly died last night. Some might think my feelings ought to be taken into account.”

“I think some have. Our Lewis was so glad to see you he nearly burst, and you barely said hello.”

“Are you quite finished?”

“Yes. Though I can’t speak for everyone else.”

“Then have the goodness not to.”

Her only answer was the closing of the door, as Maggie left her alone and went down to the others, where Lizzie could hear the excited clamor of conversation and news.

Hmph. Well, she was above feeling sorry for herself. Why not think of something happy?

The letter had been burning a hole in her pocket the whole voyage, but since both she and Maggie were needed as crew along with the four automaton brains still obediently working in
Athena
’s hull, there had been absolutely no chance to read it after the footman had handed it to her.

The paper was thick and creamy—the kind that gentlemen bought, not schoolboys, or even the Lady, whose taste ran to the thinner sheets that the pigeons carried.

My dear Miss de Maupassant,

It is with great relief that I heard from your guardian that you had emerged relatively unscathed from your terrible experience of last night. I hope you will soon return to health, and that society will have the pleasure of meeting its newest ornament.

I hope your guardian has told you of my invitation to Colliford Castle. It is situated in a pretty valley in the Cotswolds not far from the Prince of Wales’s summer estate, and is a lovely sight when the rays of the late-afternoon sun turn the stone to gold. I am told that the original keep dates back to Norman times, but most of it was demolished to build the wall of the larger castle in King Charles’s day. The two towers are the first thing one sees rising above the oaks of the valley—in fact, I have fashioned a large telescope atop the western one so that I may indulge my bent for astronomy. It is said to be the most powerful in England save for that housed in the Greenwich Observatory.

I am patron of a young scientist, Evan Douglas, who has taken over the interior of the tower for his experiments in the new field of mnemosomniography. He is a connection of my late wife’s, and his brilliance has already made him a name in that burgeoning field.

If the delights of science are not an attraction to a young lady of vivacious temperament, there are plenty of social goings-on planned for our summer stay. I will let my son enclose a note giving that account.

In the meanwhile, Miss de Maupassant, I very much hope that the estimable Lady Claire will permit herself a few days to enjoy a beautiful setting and good company. And, if you will forgive the liberty, I cherish the hope that we can overlook an inauspicious start and begin afresh as friends.

Yours sincerely,

Charles Seacombe

What a kind man! And how perceptive he was, to realize that, while the Lady’s focus on changing the world was admirable, it could also be exhausting. A few days devoted to nothing but fun could only be good for them all, especially after the slog of final examinations and the excitement of graduation.

Eagerly, she ripped open the note enclosed, which ran to only one sheet and was covered in a slapdash hand with lots of underlines and flourishes.

Dear Lizzie—

Are you shocked that I have not Miss-ed you? You know you think of me as Claude and I think of you as Lizzie, so let us dispense at once with these tiresome honorifics, shall we?

Do prevail upon Lady Claire and the Dunsmuirs to come to Colliford. I shall be in quite the pet if you do not, and then we shall all descend upon you in London like a pack of harpies and she will regret her hard-heartedness!

Must dash—we’re stopping in Paris on the way back to pick up my new skiff for the races, and I’m in the mood for a jolly razzle at the Moulin Rouge. Are you jealous?

Ever your

Claude

Laughing, shaking her head, Lizzie folded the letters one into the other and slipped them into the book she had been reading during the Christmas holidays.

Her friends might not appreciate her as much as they could, but at least there were
some
people in this world—knowledgeable, powerful people—who did. She was not such an immature fool as to believe the occupants of Wilton Crescent discounted her, or even that they did not love her. She had ample proof to the contrary, and perhaps she had been a bit of a snipe to the boys a little while ago. She would set that right and they would all be jolly again.

She smiled at herself.

Claude’s slangy way of speaking was rubbing off. It must be the way the young, rich set spoke in Paris—the way the girls would speak in Geneva, at Maison Villeneuve. That was one more reason why she wanted with every fiber of her being to go to this country house party—she would watch Claude’s friends and learn and practice the things they did and said. She was a good mimic. Not as good as Maggie, but good enough to pass herself off as one of the Paris set, careless and rich and ever so slightly blasé about the world.

Oh, yes, she could do this.

All she had to do was convince the Lady.

*

Lady Claire regarded the pile of correspondence upon her desk the next morning with some dismay. “Good heavens. There must be a month’s worth of letters and invitations here. Lewis, why did you not forward them to us in Munich?”

“That lot’s just come in the last week, Lady,” he said. “Once it came out in the papers that the empress had shook yer ’and, it started, and it ent let up yet.” As if to put a full stop to the sentence, the hydraulic system gave a whoosh and another tube dropped into the slot in the library wall behind them.

“We shall be inundated. Lizzie, call your sister. We must sort the urgent from the mundane at once.”

Lizzie slipped past Lewis with a smile, and he stood aside a little stiffly, as if he had not quite forgiven her despite the pretty apology she had made to him and Snouts last night.

Ah well. His feelings always had been a little touchy, probably from the less kind of the boys perpetually calling him Loser, though no one did that now. He had become a sort of general factotum to the Lady, who introduced him as her secretary upon the occasions that called for it. Snouts no longer held that position, having bigger fish to fry at the Morton Glass Works. She would chivvy him out of his sulks and they would be good friends as they had been before, just you wait.

She fetched Maggie from her unpacking and the two of them pulled up chairs around the great oak desk.

“We must sort these, girls. Invitations shall go to Maggie, letters to me, and Lizzie, you take everything else and sort it by type.”

Within the hour, Maggie’s pile was much higher than either of the other two. “How popular we are,” she said in a wondering tone, waving one that possessed engraving and a red seal.

Lady Claire looked up from a letter that bore a schoolboy’s scrawl and the St. Ives family crest. “Maggie, darling, that one is from Buckingham Palace. Do be careful. What does it say?”

“Her Majesty the Queen requests the honor of your company at a garden party.” She peered at the date. “This afternoon.”

“Good heavens. Really? We must send our regrets—our trunks haven’t come and unless Her Majesty wishes the honor of our raiding rigs as well, we have nothing to wear.”

“Here’s another, Lady.” Maggie picked up a similar invitation, with a slightly smaller seal. “His Highness the Prince Consort, in his capacity of patron of the Royal Society of Engineers, requests the honor of your attendance at the investiture of the newest members of the Society. Is that like getting a knighthood?”

Claire laughed. “No indeed. More like a stamp of approval. Who is being invested this year? There should be a list.”

Maggie read through the names, then stumbled. “Lady Claire Trevelyan, Carrick House, London. Lady, that’s you!”

Claire’s face flushed with pleasure. “I did receive notice of it some weeks ago, but thought I would be included next year, at the earliest. How lovely! When is it?”

“The twentieth of July.”

“Oh, no, Lady,” Lizzie blurted before she thought. “We’ll be at Colliford Castle still. Don’t you remember? We’ve been invited for the fifteenth to the twentieth.”

Claire took the invitation from Maggie to read it again, and Lizzie had the distinct impression that she was not listening.

“Lady? I said—”

“Yes, I heard you, Lizzie.” She clasped the invitation to the embroidered bodice of her blouse in delight. “It is a dream come true, girls. I shall be a member of the Royal Society at long last—and by invitation of Prince Albert, too!” Claire laid the invitation down and smoothed her fingers over the engraving. “There will be other opportunities to visit Colliford Castle this summer, I am sure, but only one to be invested as a member of the Royal Society. Unless you would rather I wait until next year for this honor, so that you may spend a week boating with your new friends?”

Lizzie tried not to wilt under the pleasant inquiry in her tone and the steel gray in her eyes.

It wasn’t easy.

“I only meant … I’m sure they would not be offended if we cut our visit a little short. Four days are almost as good as five.”

“You are assuming that we are going to begin with. I have not yet decided.”

“When will you decide?” Oh, she could not wait to be eighteen, when she would never need to say those words again.

“After I confer with Davina. I would rather be part of a larger party, and not put Mr. Seacombe to the trouble of preparing his home for only three guests.”

“Oh, there will be more than just us,” she said eagerly. Here was a point on which she could give positive information. “Claude’s friends from the Sorbonne will be coming. I don’t know how many there are, but we won’t be the only ones there.”

“It is immaterial in any case, Lizzie. We are three unmarried women, and the Seacombes are unmarried men. We could not accept such an invitation on our own, school friends notwithstanding.”

This had never occurred to Lizzie. “But—but Mr. Seacombe is
ancient!
”

“When it comes to propriety, age does not matter, I am afraid.” But she did not look very sad about it. “We must go in the Dunsmuirs’ company, or not at all. And really, on such short acquaintance I would prefer not at all.” At Lizzie’s indignant squeak, she went on, “At least, not until we get to know the family better. Lord Dunsmuir, for one, seemed to be of very mixed opinions on the subject.”

“Bother Lord Dunsmuir,” Lizzie muttered.

“I heard that. But I have my own misgivings. Does it not strike you as alarming that Mr. Seacombe concealed a bomb upon his person to wear it to a party?”

“He brought it to show to Count von Zeppelin!”

“I am sure he had complete confidence that it would not go off during the dancing,” the Lady said with some irony. “But the fact remains that between the two of you, you are responsible for the deaths of three men.”

“Those bully-boys intended to hurt us, Lady.” Lizzie could not believe it—she had barely escaped with her life, and she was being blamed for the explosion?

“I realize that. I also realize that the matter is in the hands of the magistrates now, and that it is entirely possible you had more to fear from the bully-boys than from Mr. Seacombe, and I am being unfair to him. Now let us change the subject. What is in your pile?”

“Nothing of interest.” And there wasn’t. What good did court circulars and notices of art exhibits and subscriptions to scientific periodicals do anyone? Even if she wanted to go to an art exhibit, the Lady probably wouldn’t let her.