Her Own Devices (14 page)

It wasn’t until the steward explained that they could not all sit on one side (“The gondola will not trim, young sir. You must counterbalance the lady’s weight by sitting in the corresponding seat on the port side.”) that Jake grudgingly left her.

He did not relax his vigilance for the first hour, even during castoff, when he resolutely kept his gaze on Claire and not on the ground as they fell up into the sky. Tigg could barely keep his seat, straining against the leather harness as he pressed his nose to the window. “Lady, it’s like a map down there, all laid out so tiny. Look, there’s Windsor Castle!”

Claire had made this trip a number of times with her parents, but there was nothing more delightful than the awe of a child.

“Lady,” Lizzie said faintly, “my stomach feels funny.”

As James made a disgusted sound, Claire unharnessed herself and knelt by Lizzie’s seat. “Come, dear. The ladies’ lounge is to the rear of the gondola.”

The steward appeared as if by magic. “Milady, you cannot move about yet. The captain has not given the all clear.”

“You will have an unfortunate job of cleanup if my young charge does not reach the ladies’ lounge in the next ten seconds, I fear.”

His eyes widened. “Oh. Yes. In that case, let me escort the young lady.”

Lizzie did not appreciate the novelty of a man offering his arm. Speed was of the essence, and they barely made it through the carved door and over to the gleaming metal sink in time. Lizzie rinsed her mouth and Claire gave her a peppermint. “When they serve lunch, I recommend eating lightly. Some soup and crackers, and perhaps a little fruit.”

“But Lady.” Lizzie’s eyes filled with tears. “Those people behind us said there’s to be chocolate macaroons! I ent never had such a thing.”

“That, my dear, is what reticules are for. When we are on the ground again, the macaroons will be waiting for you.”

Color began to return to Lizzie’s pale face. “That ent stealin’?”

“Certainly not. Lord James paid your fare, and lunch is included. When you actually eat it is immaterial.”

“I don’t like ’is nibs, Lady.”

“I hope you will not call him that to his face, Lizzie. His proper address is
his lordship
.”

“I know it. He don’t like us, so we don’t like ’im.”

“But if you were to give him reason to like you, then perhaps you might change your mind.”

“He don’t much like you, either, Lady. Leastways, not as we can tell.”

This was a highly improper conversation to be having with a ten-year-old. But then, the Mopsies were not ordinary children. From what Claire had been able to discern, they had been living on the streets since they were knee-high. Self-preservation was a finely honed instinct, and the girls had not liked James Selwyn from the first.

“Lord James is used to the company of men, not ladies. He is brusque and wields authority, which we are not used to. He has asked me to marry him, though, so he must hold me in some esteem, wouldn’t you say?”

Lizzie gazed at her while Claire adjusted her hair ribbon. “He don’t show you respect, Lady. You gots to have respect to keep order.”

Claire could hear the echo of Snouts’s voice. “I have him in order, never you fear. Now, if you are feeling better, shall we return to the main salon before that poor steward is forced to come in after us?”

Lizzie clutched at the sleeve of her silk twill jacket. “Don’t marry him, Lady. What will become of us?”

Ah. Here was the crux of the matter. It was a question that had teased Claire herself in the dark hours of the night. And now the answer came to her.

She knelt again, so that their eyes were on a level. “No matter what happens—whether I remain with you at the cottage, whether I marry James, or whether I take ship for South America to build bridges in the jungle—we will stick together for as long as we need to. We are flock mates, Lizzie. You, me, Maggie, Willie, the boys, Rosie ... all of us. Do you understand?”

It took a moment for her to nod. “Even if you marry ’is ni—his lordship and go to live in a castle?”

“I do not believe Selwyn Park is a castle, but yes. Even if it were.” Some might see such a promise as rash. But Claire saw beyond that to something greater. She and these children were in the process of becoming a family. If Lizzie—stubborn, willful, disobedient Lizzie—cared enough and was afraid enough to show what she really felt, then there was no way on earth Claire would promise or intend anything less.

To do so would make Claire herself less than she had been. The loss of this child’s faith would mean a loss more terrible than she could repair.

A loss more terrible than that of James’s regard.

“I’m—I’m feeling better now, Lady,” Lizzie whispered.

“I am, too.” She rose and took Lizzie’s hand. “And I’m not talking about airsickness, either.”

“D’you mean your mum ent got a steam landau, Lady?” Tigg asked, aghast, when he caught sight of the carriage and four waiting for them outside the airfield at Truro. “And there’s not a steambus in all of Cornwall?”

The shock of such provincialism kept him silent during the entire journey along the Carrick Roads, the great waterway that enabled seagoing ships to come and go between Falmouth and Truro. The north wing of Gwynn Place rose from the trees, and through the open carriage window they could hear the mewing of the gulls as they flashed and swung above the ocean.

When the carriage stopped under the portico, the great double doors opened and there stood Lady St. Ives with Nicholas upon her hip. Claire dropped reticule and traveling case and covered her little brother with kisses, then gave her mother a more dignified hug.

“Mama, it is wonderful to see you.”

“And you.” Lady St. Ives ran a critical eye over her. “You’ve grown. Filled out. Changed, somehow, and yet it has only been a matter of weeks since I left you in town.”

“More like two months, Mama. And here is James.”

Her mother dimpled like a young girl and handed Nicholas to Claire so that she could envelop James in a hug. “I am so glad to welcome you to Gwynn Place. Do come in.”

“Mama, I should like to introduce my young charges,” Claire said firmly, the weight of her baby brother a comfort against her chest.

“Charges? I thought these were the tenants’ children, being given a ride. What do you mean, charges?”

“I mean the young people for whom I am responsible. These young men are Jake, Tigg, and Willie. And the girls are Margaret and Elizabeth.”

To Claire’s astonishment, Lizzie and Maggie both dropped perfect curtsies, and Tigg bowed from the waist, as he had seen Andrew do that day in the Crystal Palace. Willie stood stock still, staring at Lady St. Ives as if seeing a vision.

Jake made a choking sound and turned away to haul Lord James’s suitcase off the rack on top of the carriage before the coachman could swing it down to him.

“Do they not have—my goodness!” Lady St. Ives staggered back one step as Willie launched himself at her, hugging her legs through her voluminous skirts and bursting into tears. “Dear me, child, what on earth is the matter? Now, now. Dry those tears. Heavens, can you not—? Claire, what has possessed him?”

Try as she might, she could not detach the little boy from her mother’s skirts. Even Jake stopped his busy work, his brows wrinkling in concern, as if he were half undecided as to whether Willie needed rescuing or not.

“Willie, darling ... it’s all right.” With the baby on one arm, Claire tried to put her other arm around the little boy. “You’re quite safe. We’re home now, at Gwynn Place, where I was born. You shall see Polgarth the poultryman, and the hens, and we shall picnic on the beach tomorrow and try not to have our toes pinched by crabs. Would you like that?”

Hiccuping, his face wet with tears, he gazed up at her mother. His mouth worked, but no sound came out. Claire had never seen anything quite so distressing. At last, Willie backed away and turned his face into Claire’s collarbone as she knelt on the flagstones. His chest heaved with the effort not to cry—as if he were struggling with some disappointment too great to be borne.

“Ah, my little man,” she whispered, the tears merely a breath away in her own throat. “What have you been through that you cannot speak of it?”

He merely clutched her tighter and did not answer.

“Dear me, such a perplexing group,” Lady St. Ives said weakly, rescuing Nicholas and firmly affixing her best hostess smile. “I would ask why you feel responsible for them, but then we would be standing out here until dinner. Do come in. Lord James, Penhale will show you to your room. Claire, come with me and we shall sort out rooms for your ... charges.”

Claire put on her best smile and led the little group up the grand staircase, along whose walls portraits of long-dead ancestors hung. There were more in the gallery, but these were of lesser importance. They merely welcomed guests; they did not impress them.

She had no doubt that she would be questioned within an inch of her life as soon as her mother got her alone. She’d been prepared for that. Having made the decision on the airship about the children’s future went a long way to strengthening her resolution.

Along the gallery, then, through the sitting room and the morning room and the library, and up another staircase to the third floor. Male voices told her that James was being installed in the Blue Room, so called because of its bed hangings and its view of the sea. Her own room overlooked the rose garden, the orchard, and a piece of the poultry yard, just visible past a corner of the house.

“It’s fairyland,” Maggie breathed, turning to gaze from the yellow sprigged bed hangings to the sofa and chairs with their upholstery the color of a spring leaf. Gold trimmed the curlicues of her French Provincial dressing table and the matching mirrors on the wall, and the drapes were the same sprigged fabric as the bed, hanging the length of the double French doors that acted as windows. A balcony outside contained nothing but a bird feeder, broken and empty after a winter of disuse. She would have to fix that. “Does her ladyship sleep here?”

“Heavens, no,” Lady St. Ives said from the doorway. “Our—my—room is the suite at the end, with a view of the sea. This is Claire’s room.”

“All this?” Maggie encompassed the space with both arms. “All for one person?”

Claire swung open a cabinet filled with books and papers, pencils, ink, and compasses. Good. Nothing had been removed. “Yes. I grew up here, remember.” She moved to the bookshelves that flanked the bed, both containing the books that had been the companions of her lonely childhood. “See? We can read these stories at night. They’re the ones I loved growing up.”

A broad figure appeared behind her mother and Claire smiled. “Hello, Mrs. Penhale.”

“Good evening, Lady Claire. I am happy to see you looking so well. Polgarth bids me tell you that Seraphina hatched sixteen chicks day before yesterday, and he hopes you will come to see them.”

Lady St. Ives firmed her lips. “Not now, Claire. Mrs. Penhale, if you would be so good as to take these children upstairs and find beds for them?”

“Upstairs?” Claire left Maggie and Lizzie leaning over the balcony and crossed the room. Upstairs was where the servants slept, and no one would thank her for making them share their beds. “They are my guests, Mama. The girls can sleep here with me, and the three boys will all fit in the Raja’s Room with acres to spare.”

“Certainly not.” Her mother eyed Jake, who had ranged to the end of the corridor and was gazing out at the sea as though he’d never seen it before. Perhaps he had not. “When was the last time that young man had a bath?”

“Last night, as it happens,” Claire said tightly. “These children are our guests as much as Lord James is. I will not have them sent upstairs as though they were bootblacks and scullery maids.”

“That young man could pass for a bootblack.” Her mother lowered her voice. “And is the shorter one a
blackamoor
?”

“What?”

“The one you call Tigg—such an extraordinary name. The one whose skin is the color of coffee.”

Claire stared at her in utter perplexity. “Tigg has the mind of an engineer and the quickest at that. What on earth has the color of his skin to do with anything?”

“Calm down, dear. I was merely remarking upon it.”

“You would do better to remark upon something sensible, then, such as how well he maintains the steam landau. He can take it apart and put it together again as quickly as I can.” Too late, her mother’s eyebrows began to rise, and Claire realized what she had said. Well, there was nothing for it now. “Gorse taught me.”

“Then I am devoutly thankful it did not come with you. Honestly, after visiting these children upon us, nothing you do will surprise me anymore. Fine, then. The girls will stay with you, if you insist. But upstairs the boys will go, and that is that. The second footman has engaged himself to that redheaded cook of Sir Richard’s, so he has left an empty room. They can use that.”

“Mother—”

By this time, Tigg and Jake had heard the fuss and hovered in the hall outside. “It’s all right, Lady,” Tigg said. “We c’n sleep on a pallet in the stable, if it comes to that. We done worse.”

“Certainly not. You are my guests.”

“If it’s all the same to you, Lady, I wouldn’t catch a wink in a room like this.” Jake gazed at her dear sprigged curtains as though they might billow out and wrap themselves around his neck. “Upstairs might be less’n you want, but it’s better’n we’ve ’ad lots of places.”

“A sensible young man,” Lady St. Ives said. “I don’t know where you found that coat, but if you do not want to be mistaken for a bootblack, you must find another. You’re about the size of my late husband’s younger brother, who was lost at sea. Let me see if I can locate something of his for you.”

Jake looked as though he wasn’t sure about wearing the clothes of a dead man, but he had the sense not to argue. “Thank you, milady.”

Another revelation. Claire had never before heard him thank anyone, either.

*

Since they were to dine
en famille
in the conservatory, there was no need for evening clothes. All the same, Claire looked through the dresses in her closet since tomorrow they were to go to Sir Richard’s and she had nothing suitable. Everything looked impossibly young, not to mention short in the hems. She had grown since she was down last summer—grown and changed in mind as well as body.