Lady of Devices

chapter 2



As was his habit, Gorse piloted the steam landau up to the steps in the mews behind St. Cecelia’s at precisely three-fifteen. Claire ran to meet him and waited impatiently while he set the brake and went around the front to pull open the thin brass door for her. She allowed him to hand her inside and, with a practiced eye, checked the pressure gauges, the switch positions, and the indicators that told the pilot the levels of coal and water in the boiler.

A hopelessly old-fashioned carriage with the Wellesley family crest on the door rolled up behind them, pulled by two fine chestnuts. Claire could practically feel the stares of envy as Lady Julia and her friends were handed inside.

“Gorse, please, may I—”

“No, miss. The Viscount would have my head were I to allow you to drive this beast in front of those ladies.”

What a triumph it would be! “But Gorse—”

“Miss, do not press me, I beg you.”

Only consideration for his feelings kept her silent until they were around the corner and halfway down an alley more suited to the collection of trash than the driving of the latest in engines. “Now may I, Gorse?”

“Yes, miss. Remember what I told you about releasing the brake. She’ll leap ahead because she’s been parked and had a chance to build a bit of a head up.”

Claire stepped out without assistance and collected her canvas driving coat from under the folding seat in the rear. Dear Gorse. He insisted on referring to the landau as she , as though it were an elegantly built horse made of brass, iron, and glass. But then, people referred to airships as she , did they not? The steam landau did have a mind of her own, like a woman of independent thought, that was certain.

She settled into the driving seat as he climbed in on her left. “Gorse, it’s a lovely day. We must have the top down.”

“Of course, miss.”

She braced both feet on the floor and grasped the lever on the side of her seat. As she leaned her weight on it and drew it back, the articulated top of the landau ratcheted back with the whispering sound of a train pulling into a station. It folded itself into a slot behind them like a golden metal fan, and she and Gorse let the glass windows down.

Ahhhhh. Freedom and the wind in her face.

“Mind what I said about the brake, miss. And don’t forget these.” He handed her a set of driving goggles with a tilt-down telescopic lens to see at greater distance should she need to.

“I remember.” It was the work of a moment to remove her broad-brimmed hat and slip the goggles over her eyes to protect them not only from the fug of London’s coal fires, but from the very wind of their going. Hat once more in place, she released the brake and the needles on the gauges jumped. Working the brake and the acceleration pedals simultaneously, she controlled the landau’s urge to surge ahead until it worked off its head of steam, bowling smartly down the alley and using the horizontal steering lever to turn the corner onto Curzon Street as smoothly as if she hadn’t learned to make turns just two weeks ago.

“Well done, miss. Mind that covered conveyance, there. He’s stopping.”

“I see him.” She steered around the enormous lorry filled with lengths of wood for the hotel being constructed on the corner. A cacophony of sound rose around her, from the hammers of the carpenters to the shouts of drivers warning off other people’s horses, to the ting of a bell on a shop door opening as they passed.

Their progress slowed to the point that a gaggle of ragamuffins was able to surround the landau and jog alongside it. “Please, miss, have you a halfpenny to spare? Please, miss, we’re hungry.”

Gorse’s jaw set. “Shove off, you lot,” he snapped. “Get your grubby paws off this engine!”

To her horror, Claire saw that two of the filthy children were girls of not more than ten. Had they parents? Anyone to look after them? She applied the brake and the landau slowed even further. Digging in the bottom of her school bag, she located a few pence and tossed them to the girls. With shrieks of delight, the little crowd vanished into the warren of alleys behind the construction site.

“Begging your pardon, miss, but you should not encourage beggars.” Gorse gazed in the direction they had taken. “It only encourages them to steal from you.”

“I gave those pennies voluntarily.” She applied steam to the accelerator and they resumed their pace. “And they did look very thin.”

Gorse was far too polite to argue with her, even if he was probably right. Didn’t the Good Book say that if a person gave a cup of cold water to someone in need, it was the same as giving it to our Lord? She wanted for nothing ... well, nothing of a material kind, at least. Those pennies rolling around in the bottom of her bag would make themselves useful in filling a hungry stomach.

Claire kept a wary eye on the broad avenue in front of her. Large intersections such as the one at Park Lane still intimidated her just a trifle, but with Gorse’s patient coaching, they had become easier, especially as she learned to look for spooked horses and impatient young men coming in the other direction. She collected hoots and greetings from one or two of these, but as long as they weren’t swearing at her for cutting them off, she was content to blissfully ignore their shouts for her attention.

Not many women knew how to pilot an engine, much less one as pretty as her father’s.

And not only pilot it, but suss out the secrets of its operation. Every Saturday morning while the household slept, she and Gorse would examine the inner workings under the landau’s gleaming covers. She learned how to fill the coal hopper and top up the boiler. How to clean out the piping and grease the hard-working pistons. She even learned how to balance the delicate platforms that took the weight of coal and water and informed the gauges how much each contained.

Gorse, being a man of intellect and inner resources, knew as much about the physics of steam as any professor at St. Cecelia’s. “My grandmother’s first cousin on her father’s side was Richard Trevithick, the great Cornish engineer,” he’d told her one day at the beginning of their secret association. “Engineering runs in our family, you might say. I’d rather tinker with this fine piece of work than run one of his lordship’s tin mines, and that’s a fact.”

Claire deeply regretted the inanity of St. Cecelia’s curriculum, which dictated that young ladies should learn dancing, deportment, languages, and the chemistry of the kitchen and cookery rather than practical things like engineering and the operation of steam engines. Who cared how the cake rose? It would do so despite your knowledge of its chemistry, as long as you put the right ingredients into it and applied the right amount of heat. Getting oneself around the country under one’s own power—flying upon the ground at the speed of the wind itself—now, that was something worth teaching.

But of course her opinion signified nothing, at school or at home.

A block from Wilton Crescent, the elegant street in Belgravia where Carrick House was situated, she piloted the landau to a grassy verge, where the tracks of wheels told the educated eye this was where such an engine had stopped before. Divesting herself of her driving rig, she and Gorse exchanged places and a few minutes later, arrived with the utmost decorum at the shiny black rear doors of Viscount and Lady St. Ives’ home while in town.

“Thank you, Gorse. See you tomorrow.”

“Yes, miss. And may I say, well done.”

Glowing, she climbed the scrubbed steps and let herself into the rear hall. To her right, swinging doors opened into the kitchens, already bustling with preparations for dinner, which was served precisely at eight on the evenings her parents were at home. To her left were offices and the quarters of the senior staff. The housemaids had their rooms on the fourth floor. She climbed the stairs to the second level, where cool marble floors gleamed and the scents of wax and the freesias in their Chinese vase on the hall table greeted her in a silent benediction.

There was much to be said for silence. Perhaps Mama had not yet returned from paying her afternoon calls.

“Claire? Is that you?”

Claire’s chest deflated in a sigh. It had been too much to hope that she could escape to her room unnoticed. “Yes, Mama.”

“I wish to speak to you. In the morning room, please.” The tightness in her mother’s tone was her first warning. Like the yellow arc on the pressure gauge, it indicated that if something were not done immediately, the consequences could be dire.

The happy glow of a fine afternoon’s drive faded. In point of fact, the second brightest spot in this otherwise dreadful day had been the explosion.

Which she had no doubt at all was to be the subject of the next quarter of an hour.