A Gentleman of Means (7 page)

She smiled, hoping he would smile, too, but he merely gazed at her, puzzled.

“And what of the department head?” he asked. “Should not the notice of these improvements be directed to him?”

“They were, but after I found my reports in the rubbish bin, I’m afraid that in a fit of pique I sent them to the managing director.”

“Did you?”

He might have sounded a
little
more encouraging. “He called me into his office earlier in the week and, well, I shan’t be writing any more reports.” She brightened. “But he did not tell me I must stop improving things, so that is some comfort.”

“What improvements are we speaking of?”

“The cable that runs between the engine room and the navigation gondola in the A5 model, for instance,” she said eagerly. “I spliced in a communications wire so that commands might be given simultaneously, as we do in the newer models. Such a simple adjustment, yet so much more usefulness and efficiency! And then—”

“Claire, let me understand you correctly. You have made engineering changes to parts that are already in production?”

“Yes, because—”

“But this must not be.”

She stopped walking, and at the drag on his arm, he stopped as well. “Why not? I have documented everything, despite my so-called superiors’ choosing to ignore it.”

“Changes such as these must come from the Office of Quality Control on the third floor and be disseminated correctly.”

“I sent them to the third floor for that very purpose. And they were tossed in the rubbish bin.”

“That is because you are a junior engineer.”

“Then they are fools. Had you treated my modifications in such a manner, we should both be dead under a snowdrift in the Canadas.”

“That was different.”

“How so?”

“Lives were at stake.”

“If the A5 plummets to earth because the engineers and the bridge cannot communicate efficiently, lives would be similarly at stake.” With an effort, she remembered his many kindnesses, and attempted to rein in her distress at his lack of understanding.

“My ships do not plummet to the earth, and that is because men of talent and skill take care that they should not.”

“But sir, what of my talent and skill?”

“It is a raw, untried talent that needs cultivation and discipline,” he told her kindly. “It needs to be tended by men of greater knowledge, who have come up through the ranks and learned just as you will learn.”

“So Herr Brucker said.”

“I am glad to hear it.” He gazed at her. “I know how you feel, Claire.”

Did he? Could he possibly—a man with a Blood heritage, who managed his own empire without let or hindrance, with the possible exception of the odd command from the Kaiser himself?

“I once burned with ambition, too,” he went on, “and fate conspired to place me where that flame would do the most good. There is a reason the hierarchy operates so well at the Zeppelin Airship Works, my dear. You will see. You will rise quickly through the ranks and prove to one and all that you deserve every promotion—and that your improvements ought to be taken seriously.”

At last the truth was borne in upon her. “So you can do nothing to change my situation? I cannot work on the automaton intelligence system, as I had expected when I accepted the post?”

“If you were to do so, you would be like that rose there.” He pointed to a spindly-looking specimen. “It has not had the benefit of sunlight on all its petals, and is therefore lopsided. We do not want our best engineers to be one-sided, only working on projects that appeal to them. Our best engineers can turn a hand to any project in the hangar. Can manage any ship, any engine. That is what I see for you, Claire, if you can only be patient.”

What could she do but nod, smile at him with affection, and squeeze his arm in thanks for his encouragement?

It was consequently a very good thing that he did not see her once she regained her own bedroom, where she flung a cushion at the wall with such energy that it split all along the seam. Feathers drifted gently to the floor.

They had not the means to fly any longer, either.

Restless and dissatisfied, and unwilling to take the customary Sunday afternoon nap, Claire walked out to
Swan
. Andrew had gone to call upon a colleague, and the girls were walking along the river with Tigg and Jake. The walk across the park did her good, and she was able to board with something approaching calm, if not good humor.

“Claire,” Alice said with some surprise, coming along the gangway from the saloon, having clearly felt the slight dip and recovery in the ship’s trim that told her someone had boarded. “I didn’t expect to see you—I thought you might go with Lizzie and Maggie.”

“And provide an unwelcome fifth wheel to that merry gig? I think not.”

“I hardly think you’d be unwelcome.”

“I’d rather spend a little time with you. How is your patient?”

The corners of Alice’s blue eyes pinched a little, and Claire felt a dart of anxiety. “Come and see for yourself.”

Ian, while dressed in trousers, clean shirt, and waistcoat, was sitting on the edge of his bunk, gazing at something invisible on the floor beyond the hands that hung between his knees. He looked up almost with relief when Claire peered in.

“Claire. You look like an English garden.”

Surprised, she smoothed her green walking skirt with its wide band of floral embroidery at the hem. Perhaps her color was a little high, both from emotion and from exercise. “Thank you, Ian. I have come to ask Alice to take a turn around the park with me, but perhaps you are pining for gardens yourself and would like to join us?”

“Around the park?” The expression of gallant politeness he wore cracked so suddenly that Claire saw it for the sham it was. “You ladies must go. A gentleman can only be an intruder in such a party.”

“Not likely,” Alice said. “You need to get outside, Ian. You’re beginning to frighten me.”

“I do not wish to go,” he said stiffly. “I have—things to take care of here.”

Alice’s chin firmed in a way that almost made Claire feel sorry for the poor man. “Nothing will happen to you in broad daylight. If two ladies can walk around the park, then you can, too.”

“I do not fear something happening to me.” He almost sounded like the old Ian.

But he was not.

Claire knelt next to him—for he had not risen on her entrance—and laid a hand on his knee. “Please, Ian. I have a matter to discuss with Alice, and I would value your opinion also. It is a lovely day—and who knows how much longer this weather will hold?”

In his eyes, she observed that his fear had a death grip on all the rules of gentlemanly behavior. Valiantly he struggled, silent and still, until generations of good breeding won out. “Very well. Give me a moment to locate my jacket and I will join you in the saloon.”

Alice gripped her hand silently as they retreated down the corridor. “Thank you,” she breathed when they reached the main saloon, which would have comfortable chairs and possibly even a dining table some day. “He hasn’t been off the ship since that night. I’m at my wits’ end.”

“My dear friend, I am so sorry.” Claire stood with her in a warm beam of sunlight falling through the viewing port … which had the unfortunate effect of showing her just how little sleep Alice must have had. “I’ve left him entirely to your care and have been so wrapped up in my own concerns that I’ve hardly spared a thought for anyone else’s. I am ashamed.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of. He’s a grown man. I’m just so worried.” Her voice dropped. “It isn’t natural. He’s not the same person he used to be, and I don’t know how to bring him back.”

“Perhaps time is the only thing that will heal him?”

Alice shook her head, and a curl fell out of today’s attempt at a chignon. “Jake is worried, too. He says there was a man in that prison who went stark raving mad, and it began in just this way.”

“But Ian is far from the prison, and he was incarcerated less than a week.”

“For some men, I think, even a day of being treated as less than an animal, of being starved and beaten and expected to work for hours and hours in a situation where one false move could mean death, would be too much.” Alice’s lips trembled before she swallowed and regained control. “He is a baronet, Claire. A man of renown, given respect across the skies. Such treatment as he received would have been inconceivable until he was faced with the reality of it. I am very much afraid that being witness to the cruelty this world is capable of has damaged his soul.”

Claire gazed at her, at the grief in her eyes, at the ravages of a sleepless night—perhaps more than one—on her face. At the softness of her mouth as she spoke of him.

And suddenly every suspicion she had ever had on the subject of Alice and Captain Hollys formed a conviction.

“Alice … can it be … do you have feelings for Ian? Finer feelings that those of a colleague or even of a friend, companion, and nurse?”

Alice’s face turned bleak. “Am I so transparent?”

“No. I only this moment realized it, and we have been together for weeks.”

“You mustn’t tell anyone,” she said urgently. “Especially him. You mustn’t tell him.”

“Whyever not?” Alice loved Captain Hollys. Why, this was wonderful. If ever two brave, capable, stubborn, impossible people were meant for one another, it was they.

“Because—because—oh, you know why, Claire!”

“I do not. Enlighten me at once.” Claire barely restrained herself from waltzing her friend about the saloon.

“Because—”

“I do apologize, ladies, for making you wait so long,” the subject of their conversation said, stepping over the raised sill of the doorway. “I could not find a hat to save my life, so Alice, I have appropriated one of yours. I hope that is all right?”

“Of course,” Alice said so breathlessly that Claire was sure she had no idea what she was agreeing to. “Shall we be off?”

Alice would have gone on ahead had not Claire had the foresight to tuck an arm into both of theirs, which placed her companionably between them and gave neither the opportunity to escape. They set a leisurely pace down the linden walk, which led away from the fountain and the airfield, and would branch into two directions about half a mile farther on. She fully intended to make them walk the entire perimeter—or as long as it took to put some color in their cheeks and find at least a little relief from the fears that beset them both.

After some one hundred yards of remarking upon foliage and several species of birds, Alice became restless and pulled away. But at least she did not leave them.

“What was it you wanted to talk about, Claire?”

Propriety dictated that she should release Ian’s arm, as well, which she did, but that did not prevent her from bending to look at a leaf, and then resuming her pace with Alice now in the middle. What a good thing these gravel walks were wide enough to accommodate a carriage … or a threesome.

“I hope you will give me your counsel,” she said, “and then I hope you will allow me to give you mine.”

“That seems a fair bargain,” Ian said. “How may we help?”

So Claire told them—of her reports, the rubbish bins, being called upstairs into the managing director’s office, and finally, of her conversation with the count earlier in the rose garden. “I am finding it very difficult to resign myself to a career so different from what I expected,” she concluded on a sigh. “I hoped you might tell me either that my expectations were wildly exaggerated and I should fit in as others have done before me, or that I ought to tender my resignation at once so that someone more fit for the post might have it.”

“Well, there isn’t anyone more fit for the post that I can see,” Alice remarked. “There are probably many more less fit.”

“I speak more of a fitness of the mind and temperament, I suppose,” Claire said. “Certainly there are many junior engineers graduating from the university who are perfectly capable of sweeping floors and making tea, and have most of the skills I possess.”

“I doubt that last point.” Alice’s grin seemed to encompass their like-mindedness, and reminded Claire that the two of them had perfected the automaton intelligence system together without assistance of any kind from managing directors or memoranda.

“So now you are on the horns of a dilemma,” Ian mused. “You have arranged your life, and that of the girls and Mr. Malvern, to support a career with Zeppelin, and now you wonder if you have made a monumental mistake.”

The man did not mince words, even in his emotional extremity. “In a nutshell, yes,” Claire said with a fair approximation of grace. “Have I? What do you think? I value your opinions.”

“What does Andrew say?” Alice asked. “For of course you must have discussed this with him.”

“I have, yes. And he told me that to be in my situation would be insupportable. He has not the temperament to be happy in a hierarchy, preferring to be the master of his own ship.”

“I cannot blame him there,” Ian put in.

“What do you mean?” Alice demanded. “You work in a hierarchy yourself. More than one—first, the Royal Aeronautic Corps, and second, your own family and way of life.”

For a moment, he seemed taken aback at being thus contradicted, but then Claire realized he was acknowledging the truth. “You are quite right,” he said. “It is strange I never thought of it in those terms before. Perhaps I am comfortable in the Corps because I am used to categorizing people according to rank—and therefore it is no hardship to categorize myself.”

“But I come from the same background, and I do not,” Claire said. “So that is no indication of suitability.”

“But how can there be only two choices?” Alice said. “One’s life isn’t like that path up there, with either a right turn or a left. Which will we take, by the way?”

“Let us go to the right, through the copse,” Claire suggested.

She was half afraid that Ian would turn back, but he was still grappling with the question Alice had posed, and passed under the branches without difficulty. “Of course there are not merely two choices for you,” he agreed. “To return to London or to stay and be unhappy—such cannot be your only options.”

“Let me tell you what I thought, but did not want to consider further,” Claire told them. “I could do as Andrew does, and strike out on my own. Metaphorically speaking. Of course I would not leave my friends and my home.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Alice said. “It seems sensible. Look at me. I would die in that place, even though it fascinates me in an odd way—rather like watching an enormous difference engine and wondering how on earth all those moving parts produce an answer in the end. But the problem with being on your own is that you tend not to know where your next meal is coming from. Just ask Jake.”

“I could always fall back on cowboy poker if I were an utter failure.”

“Let us hope it would not come to that,” Ian said. “So are you resolved, then?”

“How can I be?” Claire asked in despair as they paced under the maples, red and orange leaves burning as they fell through the dappled, low afternoon light. “How can I renege on the bargain I made with Count von Zeppelin? How can I face his disappointment in me?”

“How can you pay back four years’ worth of tuition?” Alice asked a nearby fir.

“The family would be happy to make you a loan to do so,” Ian said at once. “It would be an honor to assist you.”

“Thank you, Ian, but I have resources that would be up to the task if the count were willing. But somehow I feel that our friendship and camaraderie would end were I to treat his gift in such a manner. He believed—still believes—that he is helping me to make my dream come true.”

“But what if it turns out to be a nightmare?”

Alice had just voiced Claire’s secret fear. “A very good question. I wonder if I have the fortitude to find out the answer.”

Ian bent to pick up a fallen stick, and swished at a pile of leaves. “We have not been very successful in counseling you, have we? Perhaps you will be better at counseling us.”

Claire took the cue, though she and Alice ran the risk of walking back alone. “I understand that the count’s physician recommended you return to England, Ian.”

The stick whistled through the air and thwacked the leaves. “He did.”

“And shall you take this recommendation in the spirit in which it was given?”

“I shall not.”

“Might one ask why, when there is nothing holding you here, and there might be many benefits to being at home, with familiar things around you and all the care that others can give?”

“I do not need to be cared for.”
Thwack
. “I am not ill.”

“You are not entirely well, either,” Alice pointed out. “You and I have had this conversation.”

“And I say now what I said then—I am on temporary leave, and when that is ended, I shall return to my command. When
Lady Lucy
goes to Scotland, I expect.”

“When is that?” This was the first Claire had heard of it, though she had wondered more than once when the Corps would demand that its captain return to its service.

“Next week.”

Alice made a derisive sound rather like the air rushing out of a balloon. “That’s far too soon. You’re not fit for duty—and I’m speaking as a fellow captain, not as your blasted nursemaid, so don’t give me that face.”

“I have never asked you to be my nursemaid.”

“Your friend, then, who comes in the night when you scream, and who picks you up when your knees buckle.”

Ian, whom Claire had never heard use vulgar language, used it now, with relish and some variety. “Must you say such things in front of Claire?”

“I have stood with you and been shot at for my pains,” Claire pointed out calmly, choosing to ignore the outburst and stick to the point. “I do not think either of us is easily shocked or dismayed by simple human responses to dreadful events. You must not be ashamed. We are your friends, and you deserve our loyalty and respect.”

“You would not say so if you knew the weakness—this
wretched
weakness that overwhelms me.” He threw the stick away with such force it broke against the corrugated bark of an oak.

“My point exactly,” Claire said, taking his arm now. “You must allow your mind and heart to heal. Some wounds of that kind need as much time as a broken bone. Even more, perhaps, since one cannot observe their physical improvement.”