Her Own Devices (12 page)

He struggled with incredulity on one hand and necessity on the other. But his situation was so dire that necessity won.

“Yes. In theory, it should work. But in reality, the application of current simply disintegrates the coal, or burns it up. I’ve tried every possible method and nothing has produced results. My partner is already soliciting interest from the railroad men, but without a working prototype it will remain just that—interest. And no orders that would give us our start.”

Dr. Craig nodded. “My young colleague and I put our heads together yesterday and may have a solution for you.”

How on earth had Claire convinced the finest mind in three generations to apply itself to his little problem? Andrew hardly knew whether to laugh or fall at her feet babbling his thanks.

From the pocket of her coat Dr. Craig drew a folded piece of brown paper, and spread it on a nearby workbench. He recognized Claire’s neat hand—and then his mind snapped to full attention as he realized what the lines and curves meant.

“I’ve been going down the garden path all this time,” he breathed. “It’s not electricks that will solve it at all.”

“Our conclusion exactly,” Claire said. “You must rebuild the chamber.”

“Tigg.” He glanced around wildly. “Where is Tigg?”

“’Ere, sir.” Tigg popped up at his right hand.

“We must begin immediately,” he said. “I’ll draw up a list of supplies we’ll need. We won’t wait to order them—I’ll visit the metalworks myself. In the meantime, I want you to disassemble the chamber.”

“Shame to waste that brand-new glass cylinder, sir.”

“Oh, we’ll need that. It’s the acceleration engines that have to go. We’ll need to make room.”

“Mr. Malvern.”

“Once we have the switches and cells, then I’ll—”

“Mr. Malvern!”

He realized Claire was standing on the other side of the bench, arms akimbo, that schoolmarmish look upon her face. The look that always made him smile. In the excitement, he had managed to forget his pain, and now it swamped him all over again. “Yes?”

“Dr. Craig was speaking to you.”

“My apologies, ma’am.” It was a relief to look at the scientist instead of Claire. “I’m afraid in my enthusiasm I forgot my manners.”

“That is quite all right. Enthusiasm has carried many a scientist forward. I would offer you my help, but I’m afraid I cannot.”

“You cannot?” Claire’s eyebrows rose. “Aren’t you going to assist us? This new chamber will be based on your device. There will be papers to be written, patent applications to file—”

“You have my permission to do all that. Since the sketches are yours, and the construction of the chamber will be yours, the papers and patents should be yours as well.”

“I don’t understand.” Claire’s voice sounded almost plaintive. Disappointed. “The theory—the concept—those are yours alone. One look at this device and everyone will know where it came from.”

“Let me clarify my situation. The same gentlemen who would be reading those papers and approving those patents are those with whom I dealt most recently.” A look passed between them that Andrew couldn’t read. “Do you imagine that they would receive them now without the same consequences as before?”

“Oh,” Claire said faintly. Her face had gone pale.

Andrew began to feel a little uneasy. Something was amiss here.

“However, if you present the device and the chamber works as we believe it will, then regardless of what it
looks
like, my name need never come into the conversation. I will not sully the waters by becoming involved even at these early stages. I have set you on the path, and I know that your minds are equal to the task.” She smiled at Claire with approval and—could it be true?—fondness. “I consider you the heiress of my past achievements. You are welcome to them. But it is time for me to move on to other fields.”

“What fields?” Andrew couldn’t help himself.

“Far-off fields. Those in the Canadas and the Americas, perhaps. I should like to see New York, and even Edmonton. I hear the diamond mines have made it nearly the equal of San Francisco for elegance and society.”

Claire’s mouth opened and closed, and finally words came out. “But your financial situation—I can assist to a certain degree, but a transatlantic airship ticket is no small matter.”

“You have done quite enough to assist me,” Dr. Craig said. “I am in your debt always, and if you should ever need anything, you have only to ask. But as to your kind concern, when things began to deteriorate all those years ago, I took the precaution of depositing a certain sum that my devices had brought me in a French bank. If I can get to Paris, I will have all the money I need.”

“The packet leaves from the airfield at Hampstead Heath every day at noon,” Andrew said, speaking automatically while his mind spun. Why should a scientist of her caliber flee the country? Why was she in Claire’s debt if the latter had merely called upon her during her incarceration? Why should she not stay and reap the fame and benefits of her inventions? Times had changed. She was no longer the only woman in the Royal Society of Engineers—in fact, there were some among the younger generation who venerated her in the same way people venerated the Queen.

As for her time in Bedlam, well, it was quite clear that however she had gone in, when she came out she was perfectly sane. Such an ordeal could only add to her mystique.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand either,” he said at last. “Your career was brilliant. You could have all of Wit London at your feet. In fact, once the newspapers find out that you’re free, I have no doubt you’ll—”

Dr. Craig’s hand came down on the drawings with the sound of a pistol shot. “The newspapers must not find out. The price of my help is your silence. No one must know I have been in London until I am well out of it. I must have your word.”

“But—but why?”

“My reasons are known to Lady Claire and young Tigg here, and go no further. Your word, sir.”

“You have it, of course,” he said slowly. “I shall tell no one of your presence here, and we will present the new device as if it were our own. Though something in me balks at misrepresenting your work in that way.”

“You may represent it however you like. Your discretion is all that matters to me.” She turned to Claire. “I should like to return home now, please. I do not feel safe in a place where anyone might walk in.”

“Of course. Mr. Malvern, I shall be back directly. Tigg, you stay here.”

“Sure, Lady. I ’ave my work cut out for me anyways.”

And so Andrew stood there as Claire and Dr. Craig wound their scarves about their hair, and watched them walk away—the greatest scientist London had seen in years, scurrying out of town like a thief, and with her the young woman he had not had the wits to court when he had the chance.

The door closed behind them and he turned to find Tigg already in apron and gloves, hard at work on the great brass cowling that held the glass chamber in place. “You aren’t going to tell me what’s going on, are you?”

Tigg shook his head. “It ent worth the risk, sir. Would you like either of them two on your tail, mad as hornets and with ten times the sting?”

Andrew had to confess that he would not.

*

Claire slipped into the laboratory after having returned Dr. Craig to the cottage. She had left her in the hands of the Mopsies, who, upon hearing of her imminent departure, claimed her remaining time for the walking coop. Claire had no doubt that by the time she returned for dinner, the coop’s leg mechanisms would have been constructed and would be lurching around the garden, followed by a squawking and deeply offended Rosie.

The sounds of clanging and tinkering told her that Tigg and Mr. Malvern were engrossed in adapting the chamber to its new purpose, so she climbed the stairs and seated herself at the desk with pen and paper.

Purchase airship ticket to Paris. (Safe to travel under own name?)

Visit bank for loan of traveling cash.

Underground to airfield or landau (recognition)?

Disguise? (Hair color? False padding?)

While at ticket office, inquire re self and 5 children to Cornwall.

A scrape of boot heels on the stairs brought her head up, and she smiled as Andrew emerged. He looked startled, and she hastened to reassure him. “I am not trying to usurp your place, I promise.” She stuffed the paper into her reticule and capped his fountain pen. “I was merely making a list.”

“You looked perfectly well behind the desk, and you know you may do as you like up here.” He picked up a book teetering on a stack, then put it down again.

“Those are to go on the shelves, there, as soon as I find somewhere to put the stacks of treatises.” But he did not seem concerned with her organizational abilities, though he had hired her for them. “Mr. Malvern, what is it? Are you disturbed by Dr. Craig’s essentially giving away her devices to us?”

He gazed at her a little blankly. “What? Oh, yes. Yes, I am. Singular, I would say. I have so many questions, I hardly know where to begin.” He seemed to come to a decision. “But I suppose the first one I must ask is, is it really true that you are engaged to be married to my partner, Lord James Selwyn?”

This was so far from what she’d expected him to ask that for a moment she couldn’t think of the correct answer. “Oh, dear.” James really was broadcasting it far and wide. All of a sudden her corset seemed very constricting, and she stood to try and get a breath.

“Oh, dear? My assistant engages herself to my partner without telling me about it, and all she has to say is ‘oh, dear’?”

“James told you?”

“
James
, is it? Strange how I never thought you two were even on a first-name basis, much less making wedding plans.”

“We have made no plans. The wedding is four years off at least.”

“I should hope so,” he muttered furiously to the bookcase. “He’s robbing the cradle otherwise.”

Is that how he saw her? As a helpless schoolgirl who couldn’t be trusted to know anything about the world? “I shall be eighteen in two months. I’m hardly a child.”

I am the Lady of Devices, and I broke Dr. Craig out of Bedlam two nights ago so that we could help you in your blasted experiments, and this is the thanks I get? To be berated and belittled by a scientist who wouldn’t be able to complete his dissertation without me?

She ground her teeth together in an effort to keep her temper. “He very properly asked my mother for my hand, and proposed to me at his home last week. No robbing of any kind took place.”

“Oh, no?” He gave a bitter laugh. “And why so extended an engagement? When two people are in love, they usually want to be bound for life immediately.”

Why on earth did the news displease him so? Why was he being so unkind? “I told him I would be applying to enter The University of London in the fall, and would do my best to complete the four-year degree in three.”

“You’re engaged to a baron and you’re going to
university
?” He dropped the folio he was pretending to leaf through, and it landed on the stove with a splat. Fortunately, no fire was lit.

“Of course. You knew that.”

“But Claire, when a woman’s future is assured, she hardly needs that kind of education.”

“I don’t understand you. Of course she does.”

“So that on those occasions when you’re not entertaining members of parliament and their wives, or drinking tea with Her Majesty, you can putter with your fleet of landaus out in the garage?”

This was interesting. “James has a landau?”

“No!” he practically shouted. “I’m speaking metaphorically, you aggravating creature. The point is, Lady Selwyn doesn’t need a university education. She doesn’t have to make her living like the rest of us, and it’s a waste of time to pretend she does. Some other deserving person should have that seat.”

“Metaphorically speaking,” she said crisply, “Lady Selwyn will do as she likes. James has already agreed to it.”

He gazed at her in utter perplexity. “What leverage did you use on him?”

“None at all. I merely stated what my goals were, which was to work for you so that you could provide a letter of reference for me, and to apply for the engineering program, beginning in the fall. I will need that letter by the end of the month, in case you are wondering.”

“And if I don’t give it to you?”

She leveled a long look at him. “Is my performance lacking in some way?”

“Of course not.”

“And my collaboration with Dr. Craig, is that not going to be of use to you?”

“You know it is.”

“Then why would you threaten me with such a thing?”

“Because—because, deuce take it—” He crossed the room in one stride, yanked her up against him, and—

Kissed her.

Desperately—deeply—

Ohhh.

Claire’s knees went weak and she clutched at his lapels, her hands moving of their own volition while she fell into his kiss, spiraling into the delicious darkness, tasting him, opening to him, surrendering to him ...

This is what it’s like.

This.

This is what I have been waiting for, and never knew.

He broke the kiss and she gasped for air, stumbling back to fetch up against the heavy desk. He turned away, breathing as though he had just run from one end of London to the other.

“I’m sorry, Claire. That should never have happened.”

She could not speak. She was dazed with wonder and with her first taste of pleasure.

“It was a mistake, and I’ve dishonored both you and James. Please accept my apology.”

A mistake? How could something so wonderful be a mistake?

Of course it was. She was engaged to James, whom she could not imagine kissing.

Committed to a man she did not love, and for what? To use him as a cloak? A social disguise so that she could carry on her nocturnal activities without reprisal?

For the first time, Claire realized the price that she would be required to pay.

No. I will not pay it.

There must be some other way.

She would extricate herself from her engagement at once, and then she would be free to kiss Andrew again.

The Lady always found a way.