Brilliant Devices

chapter 5



Andrew kept glancing at her sideways as they made their way to the Crown and Compass, the honkytonk that the ground crew around the Lass insisted was the place to begin inquiries about anyone. Finally, as if his curiosity could not be contained, he said, “You brought fancy d goress all this way?”

Claire thought back to what must be the only occasion he had ever seen her in her rig—the costume ball she had attended with James at the Wellesleys, when James had upbraided her for showing her legs in their striped stockings in public. “It isn’t fancy dress,” she said briskly. “It is a very practical rig, and the corselet provides a foundation for the rifle’s holster.”

“Which you do not intend to fire, I hope.”

“Certainly not. Unless we find ourselves in some danger.”

“If we do, I will handle it and you ladies will seek safety.”

Claire and Alice exchanged a glance of amusement. “That is very gallant of you, Andrew, but you must know by now that Alice and I are quite capable of protecting ourselves.”

Andrew cleared his throat and held the Crown’s door open, nearly shouting over the roar of the crowd and the notes of the pianoforte playing something fast and loose. “When it comes to fisticuffs—if it does—I insist you leave the protecting to me.”

Alice leaned close to shout in Claire’s ear. “I ain’t never had a gentleman offer to protect me before. Maybe I’ll start a fight just to see it.”

“You shall not, you rascal. We are here to gather information, not start fights.”

Smiling, Alice bellied up to the bar and ordered tawny-colored drinks that came in tiny glasses. Claire would have preferred lemonade, but to order such a thing in here would have negated the effect of her raiding rig and drawn unwelcome attention.

As it was, the rambunctious crowd ignored them. A table full of airmen sang along with the songstress next to the pianoforte. Men at several tables played cards—cowboy poker, if she wasn’t mistaken. Ooh, what an excellent opportunity to strike up a conversation—and gain some ready money in the absence of a bank!

“I’m going to join a card table,” she told Andrew, and swiped the third drink.

“You’re what?”

But she didn’t wait to explain—or ask his permission. While Alice dragged him, protesting, toward a crowd of airmen on the far side, she pulled up an empty stool and smiled beguilingly at the dealer. “Deal me in?”

“What’s your stake? Here at the Crown we take gold and diamonds, and paper if that’s all you got.”

“I have none, unless—” She pulled the raja’s emerald off the fourth finger of her right hand. “This is gold. Will it do?”

“Close enough.” The dealer tossed her legacy from her grandmother into the center of the table and dealt her in.

Within a few minutes, Claire realized that she might be just the tiniest bit out of her league. Of all the variations of cowboy poker that she and the boys in the cottage had fabricated, she had not yet seen this one. She must remember, when things calmed down a little, to diagram it out and send it to Vauxhall Gardens on a pigeon. Snouts and his merry band of gamblers would make a forctid make tune and confound the denizens of Percy Street in one fell swoop.

But she must not think about London. She must concentrate.

Too late, her ring met its doom in the person of a fat man in a tweed suit of a particularly obnoxious pattern. He raked in a pot of at least two hundred dollars—two thousand if you counted the ring and the sprinkle of tiny cut diamonds that glittered on the green felt table covering.

“Ante up,” the dealer said. Cash and gold clinked into the pot, the fat man smiled with anticipation, and the dealer looked at her.

“My rifle,” she said.

A flick of his gaze took in the lightning rifle from stock to sights. Then he shrugged and dealt her in.

“And the ring. It goes back in the pot.”

“You think you can win it back, little lady?” the fat man said, still smiling. He slipped her grandmother’s emerald onto his thumb as if to test the size.

“I know I can.”

“I don’t know … I kinda like it.” His fist closed around the emerald and Claire’s temper ignited.

“Are you afraid of my skill?” she asked, her tone so cool and silky it might almost have been rude.

His eyes widened. “What skill? You lost the hand.”

“Ah, but I have the measure of my opponents now. If you do not throw the ring back in, I shall know your true measure, too.”

His companions snickered, and his cheeks reddened. “You calling me a yellowbelly, missy? You know what happens to people who backtalk Sherwood Leduc?”

“I know what happens to people who walk away from a display of cowardice.” She smiled sweetly, as if he were a drawing-room dowager who must be placated and plied with cakes. “I’m sure they return to their ships and talk about it, don’t they? Tsk. It’s so difficult to stop people talking, particularly on an airfield the size of this one.”

He flung the ring so hard it bounced off the table. A cowboy in a brand-new hat caught it one-handed and tossed it back in the pot. “Deal,” snarled Sherwood Leduc.

With a sunny smile, Claire accepted her cards and fell to her task. She did not see Andrew and Alice talking with the airmen, or hear Alice’s offhand questions. She did not see the cowboy in the new hat swipe her drink and down it himself. Instead, the shape of the table formed in her mind’s eye, and mathematical probabilities, and patterns, all shifting and changing as the minutes crept by.

And when the cowboy and two others folded, only she, Leduc, and one of his cronies laid their cards on the table.

Royal flush.

She had won!

“Thank you, gentlemen,” she said with real gratitude, raking the pile of gold, the half-dozen diamonds, and the bills toward herself. The ring went back on her finger in the twinkling of an eye, and the rest went into the square leather pouch chained to "+0 chaineher leather corselet. The rifle had not left its holster—nor would it now, to her great relief.

“Another game,” Sherwood Leduc demanded. “I’ll have that rifle and the ring both.”

“I think not,” Claire told him. “I have other business that calls me away. I’m out.”

“Who’s the yellowbelly now? You haven’t heard the last of me, missy,” he called as she pushed in the stool with one foot and turned away.

“Neither has the rest of the company here, I’m sure,” she said sweetly, and headed for a door with a silhouette of a dancer burned into it.

Once locked in the ladies’ retiring room, which consisted of a hole in the floor with a noxious smell emanating from it, and a broken mirror on the wall, she opened the leather pouch. She redistributed her winnings about her person, since only a fool would walk about the field now with a full purse and Sherwood Leduc’s threats ringing in her ears. Her skirt had two hidden pockets in the bustle that fastened closed with snaps, so in those she secreted the gold and small stones. The paper she stuffed down the inside of her blouse, to be held in place by the corselet. Last, she removed the ever-present ivory pick in her chignon, threaded the ring on it, and worked the jewel deep into her hair. Even if Leduc made good on his threats and cut the purse from her, all he would find in it was a few silver coins.

Then she sallied forth to rejoin Andrew and Alice.

Who were no longer at the airmen’s table.

Well, goodness, this was no time to be left on one’s own. She sidled up to the table and propped her hands easily on the chairs of two airmen.

“Excuse me, but do you know where the two mechanics who were just here might have gone?”

The nearest crewman pushed his goggles higher on his cap and looked her over with appreciation. “No, but if you’re looking for one, will I do the job?”

His friends laughed, and she smiled into his eyes. “I have no doubt you would, but it’s rather urgent I find them. You see—” She leaned a little closer, and hoped he didn’t hear the crackle of paper under her blouse. “—I confess I was rather insulting to Sherwood Leduc over the matter of the pot, and I’m very much afraid he intends to take it back … by force.”

“You don’t say.” The smile went out of the airman’s eyes. “What’s a little rose like you doing insulting a coyote like him?”

“I did not know he was a coyote,” she said. “And he refused to give me the chance to win back my property, as a gentleman might. I rather lost my temper, I’m afraid, and he took offense.”

“We ain’t all like that, missy,” someone else piped up from across the table. “There’s plenty here who would hand over a pot for the chance to insult Leduc. George, walk her over to the Tiller to find her friends. And don’t try no funny business, neither. It’s obvious to a blind man she’s a lady, not one of yer prairie partridges.”

George the airman straightened and gave his companion a hard look. “What do you take me for? Contrariwise to what some might think, I’m a gentleman.”

“Thank you, sir,” Claire breathed, with such a gaze of admiration that two others left their drinks to join the little party.

As they stepped out onto the hard-packed gravel of the airfield, Claire’s gaze swept from left to right to take in her surroundings—equipment, the gentle, swelling curves of airship fuselages, mooring masts, the occasional crewman tightening ropes and inspecting landing wheels. Nothing out of the ordinary.

But she had not dealt with the dockside bullies who worked for the Cudgel without learning a thing or two.

“Gentlemen, I appreciate your protection,” she said softly, which had the effect of making them close up around her in order to hear. “How far is it to the Tiller?”

“Half a mile or so,” George said. “Ten minutes if you don’t dally. We might catch your friends if we pick up our pace.”

Claire obligingly matched his long stride, and the two others hustled to catch up. “So, missy, this here’s Elliot and I’m Reuben,” one of them told her.

“And you may call me the Lady.”

“Lady? You don’t got a Christian name?”

“She’s from the old country, you dope,” George said. “Can’t you hear it? That’s a title, not a name.”

“Oh. A real ladyship? I ain’t never met one of those before.”

“Title notwithstanding, I am honored to be among your company,” Claire said warmly. “But with the likes of Sherwood Leduc about, perhaps it would be best to keep my real name concealed for now.”

“Not meaning to alarm you or nothin’, Lady, but ain’t nobody gets away with insulting Leduc,” Reuben said in a low tone. “We got a couple of his brutes on our tail right now, matter of fact.”

“I saw them,” Claire said. “They are lurking under that enormous fuselage with the Iron Cross upon it, are they not?”

“More fool them,” George said with a snort. “Ten to one the count’s men bag ’em before we go another hundred yards.”

Claire put crest and title together. “That ship belongs to Count von Zeppelin?”

“Yep. Never seen him, myself, and his crew don’t mix, but that ship arrived two days ago.”

“Why would they not mix?” Claire felt a little breathless at the prospect of a chance meeting with the man who had invented the modern airship. What an honor that would be! Not to mention she could ask him some rather troublesome questions about converting a steam engine to one that harnessed lightning.

“You can’t understand ’em, for one, hawking and spitting in that Kaiser tongue. And for two, me="d for taybe they think they’re better’n us.”

“I doubt that very much,” Claire said, reining in her excitement. “They are likely military men, and hence would put their duty before fraternizing with potential friends such as yourselves.”

“How would you know that?” George said curiously.

But before she could answer, a shout came from the direction of the mighty Zeppelin ship, and three shadows detached themselves from the darkness under it, outrunning and losing their pursuers on the far side of a pair of small cargo vessels.

“They’ve sussed out where we’re going and plan to circle around to meet us before we get there,” Reuben said in a low voice. “Look clueless—and look sharp.”

Sure enough, they could hear music in the distance—a horn of some kind, maybe two. And in a lamplit space at the base of an empty mooring mast three men jogged into the circle of light between their party and the Tiller.

“Why, those are two of the men gambling with Leduc,” Claire said just loud enough to be heard. “Do you suppose they are anxious to retrieve his—and their—property?”

“I suppose any sore loser would try. What’s the matter, Paxton?” George called as they emerged on the near side. “Surprised to find the little lady ain’t alone?”

“Don’t matter if she is or ain’t.” Paxton cracked his knuckles. “We aim to take back our property. She cheated at cards.”

“I did not,” Claire said indignantly, and reached behind her to unholster the rifle. “I suggest you use what few brain cells remain to you and leave while you still can.”

“Or what?” Paxton laughed, and his companions moved a few steps closer. “These airbrains will slap us with their gloves?”

Elliot growled and Reuben offered a few most uncomplimentary speculations about the man’s lineage. Claire pushed the switch forward and the lightning rifle began to hum. Startled, George stepped to one side just as a rock whizzed past his ear from the darkness behind them and clocked one of Paxton’s companions on the side of the head.

He howled and George shouted, “Who’s that?” All three of Claire’s erstwhile protectors whirled, and Paxton saw his moment. He leaped forward, aiming for Claire, his arms raised as though he intended to bull his way through and grab her.

The rifle hummed happily at the prospect. She raised it to her shoulder, sighted, and fired. Paxton screamed as a bolt of lightning sizzled across the fifteen feet between them and engulfed his fisted right hand. Tendrils of blue light danced down his arm and his coat caught fire. His men tore it off him and stamped it out, but there was nothing they could do about the cauterized remains of the hand that would have beaten her bloody had she allowed it.

“You may take that back to Mr. Leduc as a warning,” she said politely as he wept and howled. “I dislike hurting anyone, but if he interferes further with me or mine, I must and will prot

“You’d best listen,” came a voice out of the dark behind them. “Tell ’im the Lady of Devices sends ’er regards.”

Claire rolled her eyes as the two men still on their feet helped Paxton away. “Jake, there is no need to be theatrical. You sound as though you’ve been at the flickers.”

Jake emerged from under a neighboring fuselage. “Couldn’t resist, Lady.”

“What on earth are you doing out at this time of night? I thought you were safe in your berth on the Lady Lucy.”

“Wait—you know this rascal?” George had finally found his voice, although the whites of his eyes still showed as his gaze swung from Jake to Claire. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that? And what kind of a gun shoots lightning instead of bullets?”

Claire patted the rifle affectionately and holstered it. “Did you think it just for show?”

“I don’t make no assumptions about a man’s ordnance,” George said. “Guess there was a few I shouldn’t have made about a woman’s, neither.” He grasped Jake’s shoulder and shook him. “I’d best not find out that rock was meant for me.”

“Course not,” Jake said. “You stepped practically in its path. I were aimin’ at that miscreant, obviously, or I woulda hit you instead of ’im.”

“Do unhand my navigator, George,” Claire said.

“Navigator?” the man snorted.

“Assumptions, George,” she reminded him gently.

“Fine. Fine. You’re her navigator and—” He swung to Claire. “—you need about as much protection as a wolverine and—” He set off. “—I’m going to the Tiller right now and ordering up the biggest whiskey they got.”

“I shall stand you all the first round,” Claire called after him, and then pointed up ahead. Two people were ducking into a low door in a long building that appeared to be half of a giant pipe embedded in the ground. “Look, isn’t that Alice?”