Lady of Devices

chapter 11



What a relief it was to send mail tubes that didn’t contain stationery rimmed with black. By Tuesday Claire had arranged four interviews—two families wanted a governess, a scientist wanted a secretary, and the British Museum needed someone to catalogue artifacts.

On Wednesday, she heard from Lady St. Ives.



My dear Claire,

We arrived safely Saturday evening and have settled in to life in the country. We are all well and your brother has gained another two pounds. Polgarth begs me to tell you that the chickens send their best greetings and look forward to your arrival.

As does your loving

Mama



Claire had to smile. As a child, she had loved the flock at Gwynn Place, which gave the best eggs in the parish. Polgarth the poultryman swore that she had a natural gift with them, and they used to follow her about the garden as if she were an exotic sort of rooster. The companionship of birds may have been all she needed then, but at nearly eighteen her requirements were substantially more. The hens would have to do without her some while longer.

By Thursday, she had decided that governessing was not the career path she was meant to take—not unless she was desperate and starving in the streets. The gentleman at the British Museum seemed more interested in cataloguing her anatomy than in her qualifications for cataloguing his artifacts, which left her feeling as though she needed a bath when she left that afternoon. Whatever her father’s faults, at least his protection had been real. No man would have dared to treat her that way if he had still been alive.

Of course, if he had been alive, she would not be piloting carefully through the crowded streets of London, sweating in her duster and jumping out of her seat every time a horse shied upon seeing the landau. Silly creatures. She made the turn onto the Blackfriars Bridge and proceeded across it in a stream of drays and carriages. The scientist kept his laboratory in a warehouse on Orpington Close, which turned out to be little more than an alley running down to the mud on the south side of the Thames. She parked the landau at the foot of an exterior staircase, as instructed by tube, and released the valve. Steam hissed into the air like a sigh of relief at their arrival, and she set the brake.

She was just raising her hand to knock at the lower door when it swung open. The apparition within looked as though it had come up from under the sea. Out of its leather helmet snaked a series of rubber tubes, while a pair of glass-fronted eyes stared at her with alien blankness. The rest of it was covered in a leather apron of the sort butchers wore, and the hands reaching for her were encased in leather gloves.

With a squeak, she stumbled backward, bumping hard against the post that supported the staircase. How far was the landau? Could she get inside and get it fired up before the thing caught her?

“Miss Trevelyan? Don’t—what are—oh, blast it all!” The monster tore its head off and tucked it under its arm. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I forgot that—Miss Trevelyan? Are you quite all right?” A young man with hazel eyes and tousled hair the color of Brazil nuts took off his glove and extended a hand to her. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. It would serve me right if you turned and left this moment.”

Slowly, she extended her hand. “Is—what is that, sir?”

“It’s a gas mask. I devised it myself, you see—so that I could enter a large compression chamber without breathing in the gases. Look, these tubes attach to a flask of air at the back.”

“Ah.” She craned her neck to see. “Air, you said? Not compressed oxygen?”

A smile dawned, reaching all the way to his eyes. “Been reading the scientific journals, I see. Last month’s Illustrated Science article on Dr. Weathering’s undersea bell?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” She tilted her chin. “Not all of us find our entertainment in Lady’s Home and Garden .”

“You’ll find neither home nor garden here, I’m afraid. Do come in. Watch your step. These boards are uneven.”

She followed him across a huge warehouse containing what appeared to be pallets of various metals and glass, along with an enormous heap of lumber, to an interior staircase that brought them up to a spacious loft. “Am I to assume you are Mr. Malvern?”

He stopped in the act of clearing a stack of diagrams off the chair in front of the desk, and smacked his forehead. “Good grief. You will think me an ill-mannered ass. Yes, I am Andrew Malvern, A.B.D. Member of the Royal Society of Engineers. Part owner of this warehouse and in dire need of someone to keep me organized.”

“A.B.D., Mr. Malvern? Is that a new scientific society? The Association of Biological Diversity or some such?”

“No, no. It means all but dissertation . I would have a Ph.D. to add to my string of initials if I could only get this da—er, excuse me, this wretched theory of mine to work.”

Claire opened her mouth to ask him what was wrong with his theory, and closed it again. He might not appreciate her nose in his business. And anyway, if she got the job, she would find out eventually, wouldn’t she? She seated herself in the chair he had emptied, and regarded the blizzard of papers and drawings on the desk. Oak filing cabinets stood against the wall, papers sticking out of the drawers as though they were trying to escape the crowded conditions within. Here and there, instruments and devices held down stacks of drawings and columns of figures on the floor, and the woodbox next to the cast-iron stove was full of still sealed mailing tubes instead of kindling.

He followed her gaze around the room. “You see why I’m in need of an assistant.”

“I do, sir. Were I to be your choice, I should start with the mailing tubes and then work in concentric circles in a clockwise direction, from filing cabinets to loose papers.”

“Would you?” His chair swiveled as he followed this thought. “I supposed it’s as good a method as any.”

“What is your field of research, sir?”

His circumnavigation of the loft completed, he folded his hands on the desk and regarded her. He had very nice eyes, with long lashes and a twinkle that was most distracting. “You make it sound so formal. My interests are in the railroad industry at present. I’m working on a way to make coal go further more cleanly, reducing costs and increasing the engines’ ability to use it more completely. As it is, there’s too much waste without enough return in speed and efficiency.”

“Ah.”

“Are you familiar with the workings of engines? Was that your landau I saw out there?”

She may not know the first thing about locomotive engines, but the landau she knew inside and out. “Yes, it’s a two-piston Henley Dart, with a five-gallon boiler and a top speed of forty-five miles per hour.”

“Did you drive it here at that speed? If so, I salute you.”

He was teasing her, the rascal. “No, I topped out at twenty. It is very crowded on that bridge.”

“What do you say to taking it for a spin? I’ve never been able to afford such a thing, and the Dart is a very pretty model.” His gaze rested briefly on her hair, then moved to her eyes.

Claire shifted in the chair, and checked that the clasp of her pocketbook was firmly secured. “Did you mean to drive it yourself, sir?”

“Heavens, no. I want to expand my sphere of experience, that’s all. I’ve never seen a woman drive. It would be very useful to have an assistant with such skills. Consider it a test—much more useful than handwriting and typing samples, wouldn’t you say?”

Below, a door slammed and footsteps thumped across the boards to the staircase. “Andrew, are you here?”

“I’m conducting an interview. Come on up—my prospective assistant may as well know what she’s getting into.”

“You’re interviewing someone?” A reddish head appeared in the stairwell, then the rest of the speaker’s frame. Recognition sparked a moment later, and Claire drew a breath of surprise as Lord James Selwyn stepped into the light from the aperture overhead. “Good heavens. Lady Claire, what are you doing here?” He turned to Malvern. “I thought you were interviewing an assistant.”

“Lady Claire?” Malvern glanced down at her letter of application, as though puzzled he’d missed this fact.

“We are one and the same.” She rose and extended a gloved hand to Lord James. “I thought it prudent to use my family name and not my title in my correspondence. Lord James, this is unexpected.”

“Not half as unexpected as you interviewing for a job.”

She lifted her chin, even as the hot blood scorched her cheeks. Blast. She would blotch again, and in front of her prospective employer, too. “My circumstances demand flexibility, my lord. And you agreed yourself the last time we met that a lady makes her own luck.”

“Making one’s own luck is one thing, but reducing oneself to trade is quite another. Is this a joke you’re playing on us?”

“James, what a thing to say.” Malvern frowned. “Miss Trev—er, Lady Claire. Please excuse my partner’s forthrightness. He has been too long in the American Territories.”

“Believe me, my circumstances are no joke,” she replied in as steady a tone as she could manage, considering her temper was fast approaching a rolling boil. “I am seeking employment, and believe I could contribute to Mr. Malvern’s operations here.”

“Not to mention the fact that she can drive,” Malvern put in. “That’s tipping the scale right there.”

“Andrew, don’t talk nonsense. Lady Claire is a society belle barely out of the classroom. What can she contribute here? What does she know of science or business?”

“If you would address me directly, Lord James, I could tell you that I graduated with firsts in mathematics and languages, and I plan to apply to the engineering program at the university this fall.” She enunciated each syllable so crisply that each word cut the air. “This position, besides keeping me in bread and butter, would go far in recommending me to the admissions committee. If that were any of your business, of course, since it is Mr. Malvern who is interviewing me at present.”

Lord James stared. “The girl has a spine after all.”

Malvern pushed his chair back. “James, what has got into you? Miss Trevelyan, perhaps we should go for that drive now. I don’t know what bee my partner has in his bonnet, but it’s embarrassing both of us.”

“I just find it amusing, Andrew, that the lady who turned down the offer of my regard is now forced to seek employment in a venture I’m financing. I’m merely appreciating the irony of it all.”

“What?”

“The offer of your regard?”

Claire and Malvern spoke simultaneously. Then Claire controlled her tongue, gathered her courage, and bid farewell to her hopes. “Mr. Malvern, I regret taking up your time today, but I thank you for seeing me. Good afternoon.”

“Wait. Miss Trev—er, Lady Claire. Our interview is not finished.”

“I believe it is. If I am to be dependent on the financing of Lord James, then I prefer to seek employment elsewhere. In any case, he does not believe me capable of carrying out my duties.”

“But he’s not—Miss Trevelyan, wait—”

She reached behind and twitched the hem of her grey suit out of any possible reach of Lord James’s patent-leather shoes, and swept down the stairs. Malvern darted after her, but Lord James caught his arm and their raised voices followed her out of the warehouse, muffled only by the slam of the exterior door.

She ignited the landau and drove back to Wilton Crescent as fast as she dared, where she found Mrs. Morven in the kitchen preparing dinner.

“Mrs. Morven. Are you still set on taking employment with Lord James Selwyn?”

“Yes, miss.” The cook eyed her disheveled state, for she had not stopped to put on her motoring duster at the warehouse. “Why do you ask?”

“My advice has changed. Ask for twenty-five percent more, Mrs. Morven, not ten. And you have my congratulations and my deepest sympathy should you get the job.”