Lady of Devices

chapter 26



Over the next week, her motley household settled into its own peculiar rhythm. Mornings were dedicated to market, with accompanying lessons in economics and mathematics. Afternoons were devoted to sharpening the skills of the card players and to the introduction of chemistry and physics. Here Jake’s photographic memory proved invaluable—and it was he who, on the Wednesday after their arrival, finally returned her engineering notebook, her pencils, and dear Linnaeus to her.

“I figure you ent gonna cut out on us now, Lady,” he said gruffly as he handed them over.

“No.” She clutched the books to her chest, resisting the urge to check that no pages had gone missing. “I’m glad to see your confidence in my character is improving.”

He shook his head, and his chocolate-brown eyes met hers. “You either keeps yer word or I goes to the bobbies and tell ’em it was you what kilt Lightning Luke.”

Clearly she did not have to look as far as the road or the river for justice to be meted out to her. She was harboring it right here.

Since the kitchen was now the sole domain of Granny Protheroe, with occasional incursions permitted by Claire and the Mopsies should they be bearing groceries, the front parlor became the laboratory. No more did boys lounge on sofa and floor, drinking rotgut, smoking, and staying out of range of Luke’s gun. Instead, glass tubes and flasks appeared, along with retorts, Bunsen burners, and cells for the creation of electrick current.

Claire had no idea who had built Lightning Luke’s gun, but he or she had obviously been a genius. Her first task was to discover the source of its power. If she could replicate it, then they could make other devices and sell them. She would not be so silly as to replicate the rifle itself—she was neither metallurgist nor fool—but there were other mechanisms that might be devised.

In the meantime, her sketches and equations had to be translated into terms that her ragged compatriots could understand. Some gave up and joined Snouts at the card table. But some, like Jake, persevered even in the face of repeated failure, stubborn as stones and unwilling to allow capricious numbers and persnickety measurements to defeat them. Jake had the makings of a fine chemist. What a pity she had to fight his mistrust at every turn. Ah well. If she could not create a friend where none had been, then at the very least she would create a capable assistant.

In the evenings the poker players scattered to their chosen fields of labor. There they learned variations on the venerable cowboy poker, or invented them, and taught the others when they returned. One of Snouts’s variations in particular, Old Blind Jack, suddenly became the rage in even the most fashionable of London’s card rooms, to the point that strategy diagrams began to appear on the back page of the Evening Standard where illustrations of classic chess moves had held court for years.

Snouts just chuckled and bought his very first velvet waistcoat, tailored to fit.

Upon seeing it the Mopsies immediately demanded their own finery, and Snouts magnanimously handed over twenty pounds as though it were nothing. Claire had seen the account book they’d cobbled together out of the end papers of her books from Wilton Crescent, and in comparison to the money flowing through the boy’s clever hands, twenty pounds was next to nothing.

On the next sunny Saturday, Claire took the Mopsies, Tigg, and Willie to Fortnum & Mason to have them outfitted. Never again would she allow the likes of the chemist in the Haymarket to look at her charges in that manner. And once the salesladies had removed the children’s old clothes to the dustbin, their mouths pruned in disgust, and dressed them from the skin out in clean linen, cotton, and lace for the girls, and practical navy wool for the boys, Claire beamed at them proudly.

“You look as though you were visiting from Buckingham Palace itself.” She smoothed Willie’s sailor collar so that it lay flat across his shoulders. “Even Her Majesty’s grandchildren don’t look as fine.”

“The Princess Alice chose that very dress for her youngest,” the saleslady confided, nodding in Lizzie’s direction. “She took the blue hair ribbons, though, instead of the coral.”

Lizzie wavered visibly.

“Have the blue as well, if you like,” Claire told her. “Snou—I mean, Mr. McTavish would approve.”

Upon their return to the river cottage Claire discovered that Lizzie was in unrepentant possession of the saleslady’s purse, having picked her pocket as the lady was dressing her.

The chill of disappointment warred with the heat of anger as Claire fought to keep her voice steady. “This is unacceptable.” Her tone was deadly quiet—so quiet, in fact, that Lizzie made the mistake of believing Claire was not serious.

“’Twere easy,” she said, swinging the pitifully small purse back and forth. “She leaned over to tie me sash and there it was, in front of me nose.”

“You will return it immediately.”

Lizzie gave her a look of disgusted disbelief. “Shan’t.”

Before the girl could do more than whip the purse back into her own pocket, Claire had snatched her off her feet and again applied the laws of physics in vigorous fashion. In the resulting uproar, the chemists reached protectively for their vials of liquids, and the card players froze with their cards pressed to their chests.

Unfortunately for Lizzie, her fine new underclothes were no match for the force of Claire’s temper, and when the girl was reduced to a sniveling, just barely repentant huddle on the floor, Claire said in a tone not one note removed from the one she’d used previously, “We shall leave immediately for Fortnum’s, where you shall return that purse.”

Mumble.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Elizabeth?”

“What’m I to tell ’er?”

“The truth, of course.”

“She’ll call t’bobbies for sure and it’ll be your fault if I land up in the clink.”

“You could say you found it on t’ground,” Maggie put in helpfully.

“And add lying to thievery?” Maggie quailed at the control in Claire’s voice. Claire would never have believed that of all the things her mother had taught her, how to infuse deadly force into one’s voice without raising it was the last she would have expected to find so useful.

“No, Lady.” Maggie’s lips trembled, both from shame and from fear for her sister’s liberty.

“You are young ladies now,” Claire said, allowing a touch of gentleness to creep in. “You make your way through the application of intelligence, grace, and consideration for others. You do the right thing, not the easy thing. I suggest you use the time it takes to drive back into town to compose an appropriately humble and truthful address to the purse’s owner.”

When they had located the young lady in question, it was clear she had just discovered the absence of her purse. “I beg your pardon, miss, but I’m all of a flutter. I—I seem to have—that is, I’ve lost—and I was just paid, too.” Her enormous brown eyes filled with tears before she got herself under control. “Is there something else you wished me to help you with?”

“My young charge has something to tell you.” With an inexorable hand between her shoulder blades, Claire pressed Lizzie forward.

The girl held up the little leather purse and the sales lady gasped as she took it. “Oh, thank you! What a precious child! You have given me such relief!” She swept Lizzie into her arms and hugged her so hard that Lizzie’s cheeks turned bright pink.

“Miss, I—” she tried to speak, but the saleslady covered her face in kisses. With a final “Thank you!” she bustled through a door in the back, leaving Lizzie with her fine speech trembling on her tongue, unsaid. She turned a beseeching face to Claire. “I tried, Lady, but she wouldn’t let me.”

“You have received thanks you did not deserve, and forgiveness that you did.” Claire touched the wide ribbon in her hair. “It took courage to make the attempt, and I salute you for it.”

Lizzie and Maggie shared the front seat all the way home, holding hands and considerably lighter of heart than on the trip in. Claire was no judge of how to bring up children, but she was a fair judge of character. The tension of that ride to town would go a long way to preventing Lizzie from exercising her light fingers again. At the very least, she’d seen the effect thievery could have on someone who was barely more fortunate than herself. The loss of a week’s wages would have hurt that young woman deeply, and Lizzie was headstrong, not heartless.

Dear me. Mathematics and chemistry are so much more straightforward. How have I managed to become a ramshackle sort of mother when I’m mere weeks out of school myself?

But there was no use wondering about the strangeness of her lot. She had killed a man, even if she hadn’t meant to. If she could turn these ragamuffin children into useful young men and ladies, maybe it would go some way toward paying back that debt. She may as well play the mother. After all, with every day that passed here on the wrong side of the river, the likelihood that any man would want to wed her faded further away. She had no prospects and now possessed what could only politely be called a “past.” If with God’s aid she could help these children, maybe she would have done as much good as any real mother in London.