A Gentleman of Means

by Shelley Adina

  Lady Claire Trevelyan clasped her velvet handbag in front of her and turned slowly, taking in the drawing room with its white moldings and cool green walls. The agent, a tweedy gentleman given to smoothing his hair as he passed a mirror—any mirror—gazed at her hopefully.

  “Is madam pleased?”

  “It is very nice,” Claire told him gently, “but I am afraid the drawing room is too small for our purposes. If we were to gather here with twenty friends, we should have to seat some of them in the bookcases.”

  He gazed at her, perplexed, and she realized his grasp of the Queen’s English might not extend to the whimsical. She repeated her remark in German and his brow cleared.

  “Ah, I see. So madam expects to entertain extensively?”

  “Not extensively, no.” She glanced at Andrew, who was prowling about in the dining room. “But fairly often, I should think. And to be quite honest, I see no possibility of a laboratory in which Doctor Malvern might conduct his experiments. The cellar is damp and the attics too low. I suppose that is the price one pays for being so close to the river.”

  “Experiments!” The agent looked horrified. “You cannot conduct experiments in the house, madam. What if there should be an explosion?”

  “Precisely,” Andrew said, coming in. “For the safety of the neighborhood, we must decline this fine domicile and direct our attention to the outskirts of the city. Perhaps a farm?”

  The man’s face turned pale. “A farm, sir? I do not know of any farms. I am the foremost purveyor of houses in Munich. If you desire a town house, I am your man. If you desire a palace, I know of no fewer than three, any one of which I might show you instantly. But a farm?” His expression wrinkled in disdain, as though a cow pie had been deposited at his feet on the gleaming expanse of empty floor. “I do not transact with farms.”

  Claire glanced anxiously at Andrew. “Perhaps we ought to consider living in town and driving to a laboratory.”

  But Andrew shook his head. “I am not a gentleman of unlimited means, and your income is earmarked for Toll Cottage, Carrick House, and the girls’ education.” He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her to his side. “I am afraid that I may have been rather rash in promising a salon and laboratory when I proposed, having never actually looked into what might be available here.”

  “Never mind.” He should not be downcast on her account. She would live in the attic of a warehouse, as he had done in London, if it meant their being together. “Perhaps there is something closer to the girls’ lycee, so that they might walk to school.”

  But the agent was already shaking his head. “I have shown you every available property suitable for a gentleman and lady of your position and connections. There are no more houses.”

  “What about the unsuitable ones?” Claire asked with interest. “What about Schwabing? It is within the city limits now. And I should love to look at something in the Hohenzollernstrasse.”

  Oh, dear. She should not have mentioned that bohemian quarter, though she had only been half serious. For he ushered them out with the air of a man seeing his duty through though it killed him, was silent during the ride back, and decanted them outside the gates of Count von Zeppelin’s palace with rather more efficiency than completely necessary.

  “I believe we’ve been given the bum’s rush,” Andrew remarked as the agent’s steam landau puffed rapidly away. “Never mind. We shall find someone who specializes in farms. Then I may cause explosions to my heart’s content.”

  “So you shall, without let or hindrance,” she told him fondly. “Come, let us have some tea. The girls will be home soon and I want a piece of cake before Lizzie commandeers the lot.”

  After she removed her hat and gloves, Claire picked up the post from its silver tray in the hall, and followed Andrew into her little sitting room. Count von Zeppelin had allowed them to stay here in this comfortable suite on the ground floor of Schloss Schwanenburg for the past four years while she had attended the University of Bavaria in pursuit of her education. Now that she wore the tiny steel ring on the smallest finger of her right hand that told one and all she was in possession of a degree in engineering, and a trio of pearls set in gold on the fourth finger of her left that informed the observer she had entered into an engagement, it was time to fly the nest and find a place in which to make their home.

  Her first home as a married woman. It was a good thing they’d begun the search early. She’d had no idea it would be this difficult.

  Had they only wanted to entertain, there were houses aplenty with large, airy rooms. Had they wanted merely a laboratory, there were legions of those in a city that was the intellectual capital of Europe, second only to Edinburgh for the number of engineering minds needing space for experiments.

  But a house with both these requirements? That narrowed the pool of possibilities to … well, they had just frightened off the third agent.

  So distressing. She and Andrew were to be married at Christmas. They needed a home by then or they would be reduced to living on her airship. Not that Athena wasn’t comfortable. She could accommodate a fair number of visitors. But an explosion was not to be thought of.

  She poured Andrew’s tea, and while he settled in with the newspaper and the estate listings, she secured a piece of cake and sat back to open the post.

  An envelope bearing a cramped, spiky hand that she had only seen once before, more than a week ago, made her sit up. A chill settled in her stomach that even a sip of tea did not help.

  Dear Lady Claire,

  Thank you for your prompt response, which, if it can be possible, has made me more anxious and perplexed than ever.

  Upon receipt of your letter informing me that you, Dr. Malvern, and my daughter Gloria briefly voyaged aboard Neptune’s Fancy, an undersea dirigible belonging to my fleet, I immediately sent a message to its captain. The message was returned unopened. I consulted with my other captains and learned that Gloria had requested a small ship in order to take a short sightseeing trip to see the gearworks. Thus far, happily, your accounts match.

  They diverge, however, following your departure from the vessel. No one has seen or heard from Neptune’s Fancy, and repeated hails by all members of the fleet have had no response.

  I issued instructions to the fleet to comb the Levant for any sign of her, to no avail. If she had been vaporized by a lightning strike, she could not have disappeared more completely. I am at a loss. Further, I fear something nefarious may have taken place.

  Once again I must ask for your help. Is there a location where you, a young lady of respectability and some fortune, believe she might go? Even if it is only a guess and not a certainty, I beg you will impart the location to me.

  Lady Claire, if you can assist in any way in allowing me to discover my daughter, I will be in your debt forever. You have merely to ask and, if it is remotely in my power, your smallest wish will be granted instantly.

  I remain your servant,

  Gerald Meriwether-Astor

  She must have made some sound, for Andrew lowered the paper and frowned. “Is it bad news, dearest?”

  “I cannot say.” She handed him the letter, and when he reached the three-quarters mark, he made a similar sound. Disbelief. Distress. And perhaps a little confusion.

  “Nefarious?” He handed the letter back, and she folded it up. “This from the man who has taken the word to unheard-of depths?”

  “My sentiments exactly.” She hesitated, then made up her mind. They had been through so much together, had seen each other in the best and worst of circumstances. It made no sense to be anything but utterly honest with the man who was to be her husband. “I must confess, Andrew, that I have been struggling with Gloria’s desertion for some days now—since we left Geneva, in fact, and the full import of those moments under the sea was increasingly borne in upon me.”

  “I can hardly blame you.” His hazel eyes, usually so full of humor, held hers with some solemnity. “If we ever see the girl again, I hardly
know whether I ought to embrace her, cut her dead, or have her arrested.”

  Claire nodded. “On the one hand, I cannot believe it of someone who gave her help so unstintingly, without hesitation, when she saw the need. She was just the same in the Canadas, once she realized that a man’s life was at stake. On the other hand, we must remember whose daughter she is, and that blood will out.”

  “But our lives were at stake in Venice,” Andrew objected. “The last we saw of Neptune’s Fancy was its stern, vanishing into the gloom and leaving us at the mercy of the diving bells—and the kraken. Blood notwithstanding, I cannot believe that the girl who could commandeer an undersea dirigible for our benefit would allow it to leave without us unless she was under some form of duress.”

  Here was the unhappy conclusion Claire herself had reached. For the girl she had gone to school with had grown into a young woman who could be counted on in a pinch, as Lizzie might say. She had given every appearance of sincerity and friendship—so much so that both Claire and Alice Chalmers had offered her theirs in return, though with perhaps a little more reserve on Alice’s part.

  “I wonder what Alice would make of it?” she mused, finishing up her cake and wiping her fingers on a napkin.

  “You might walk out after dinner and ask her,” Andrew suggested. “With Ian on medical leave, Alice is finding far too much amusement in bossing him unmercifully. He would likely thank you for a few moments of respite.”

  Claire smiled at the thought of dignified, lordly Captain Hollys allowing himself to be bossed by an air pirate’s daughter. But she could not help but see that it seemed to be having a good effect on him. He was certainly not the man he had been after he emerged from the dreadful experience in the Venetian underwater prison. No one could. Even Jake, whom Claire would have expected to brush off the months in gaol as being nothing worse than being on the wrong side of the Cudgel, their old nemesis on the south side, was uncharacteristically silent and moody, and given to violent starts at sudden noises. He was just as happy to scrub and strip and paint as the captain, as though the simple, homely actions of bringing Swan, Alice’s ship, back to life and beauty again were like a tonic for his own harrowed soul.

  Claire could not speak of the nightmares that brought her awake in the small hours, gasping, her face wet with tears. She and Lizzie had been within a breath of death in the kraken’s coils, and the memory of it plagued her still. She could hardly blame Jake for keeping mum about the horror of his own trials, which had lasted much longer.

  Eventually, she hoped, he would speak. Perhaps to Maggie, to whom he seemed closest, or perhaps to Tigg, his old comrade in arms. That would be the best thing to lance the boil and let the poison out.

  The door banged closed and Lizzie and Maggie came in, taking off their coats and hanging them in the hall, chattering like magpies about classes and their friends. Lizzie was making a joke about her antigravity corset as they came in.

  “—see her bouncing off the Victor Tor before I’d let her—ooh, is that cake?”

  “Poppyseed and lemon,” Claire told her. “Do have some. I hope you are not bouncing people off the Victor Tor—your shoulder has only just healed.”

  “Oh, just one of the girls in my mathematics class. She is more annoying than a mosquito at a picnic. And my shoulder is perfectly well.”

  Maggie, true to form, had taken in the tenor of the room under Lizzie’s chatter, her amber eyes moving from Claire to Andrew and finally lighting upon the folded letter in Claire’s lap. “Is everything all right, Lady?”

  Claire had never kept anything from them save her most personal moments with her intended. A woman’s greatest aid was often the truth, so she did not withhold it from these girls, even to protect them. They had proven up to the task of absorbing and understanding the most shocking things, and she would not leave them ignorant now.

  So she handed over the letter, which Lizzie read in one hand while she demolished a piece of cake with the other, Maggie hanging over her shoulder from the back of the sofa.

  “Do you think something has happened to her?” Maggie took the first cup that Claire poured and handed it to her cousin, then accepted her own. “For I have never believed that she would just abandon the four of you in that dreadful place.”

  “I know what happened,” Lizzie said with such confidence that Claire lifted an eyebrow in surprise.

  “You do? Enlighten us at once.”

  After a swallow of tea, Lizzie said, “It’s obvious. She has eloped with the captain of the vessel. You said yourself he was very handsome.”

  Claire narrowly prevented herself from throwing the contents of the sugar bowl at her ward. “Honestly, dearest. I am half tempted to forbid your seeing Tigg in any capacity but that of friends and comrades if you are to bring such spoony comments into the conversation. We are trying to be serious.”

  “I am perfectly serious.” Lizzie reached for the cake once more, and Claire moved it out of her reach. “Lady, just one more?” she wheedled. “It’s my favorite.”

  “Anything with frosting on it is your favorite,” Maggie observed. “Your corset won’t meet in the back anymore if you keep this up.”

  Sulking, Lizzie subsided into the corner of the sofa with her tea. But she was not yet finished with her theory. “It makes perfect sense, Lady. What else but a handsome man would cause a woman to abandon her friends?”

  “You do Gloria a grave disservice, my dear,” Andrew said, taking for himself the last piece of cake, thereby forestalling all arguments on the subject. “She is made of finer stuff than that. I would no more believe her capable of such a thing than I would believe you capable of abandoning Claire for Tigg.”

  “I will someday,” Lizzie muttered, clearly unwilling to concede the point.

  Claire smiled at her to let her know she had not taken offense. “But it is not likely that you would do so if my life hung in the balance. If indeed you and he are to make a match of it, it will be less a case of abandonment than of a joyful leave-taking, with a lot of cake and throwing of rice besides.”

  Which sent Lizzie off into a romantic dreamland and made Maggie sigh and roll her eyes. “You should not encourage her, Lady. She is difficult enough to live with when Tigg is right here with us. Heaven help us when he returns to the Dunsmuirs. It will be all dramatic sighs and melancholy gazing at the moon until we are all fit to scream.”

  “Just wait until your turn,” Lizzie said, snapping out of her reverie with vigor. “I shall take great pleasure in pointing out each of your sighs and vapors—preferably in public.”

  Maggie seemed unperturbed at this dire threat, though Claire wondered if she was, in truth. “I hope you do not expire of old age while you’re waiting. I have nary a prospect in sight to entertain you with, thank goodness.”

  The pink that stained her cheeks made Claire wonder if there was indeed someone who made Maggie sigh, or if it was simply brought on by general feminine modesty about speaking of such things in front of Andrew. She herself had been both unkissed and untried at the age of sixteen. By the next year, however, her life had been turned upside down, not the least because Andrew had given her her very first kiss.

  What might the next year bring for Maggie? Claire could only hope that there would be much more peace and far less adventure—if only for her own sake. Claire did not think she could survive another summer like the one just past.

  3

  Dear Mr. Meriwether-Astor,

  I was saddened and perplexed to receive your letter with its news—or lack thereof—of Gloria. I had absolutely no idea of her leaving when last we spoke—in fact, we had made plans to see one another again following our brief sojourn to see the gearworks in Neptune’s Fancy.

  I am very sorry to inform you that I have no idea where she might have gone. Did she take luggage with her? A change of clothes? She carried only a reticule onto the vessel, which might have held a change of unmentionables at best, a little money, and perhaps her sketchbook and some pencil
s.

  One member of our party seems to think there may have been an attraction between Gloria and the captain of the vessel, who introduced himself to us as Barnaby Hayes. I cannot vouch for this myself, as the interaction between them was as civil and cordial as might have been expected between any two persons only recently introduced. He showed no signs of dishonorable conduct in our short acquaintance, and certainly no propensity for kidnapping.

  I find myself distressed at the idea that she may not have left of her own volition. But we must keep a positive view of the matter. I will write to some of our school friends in London. There is a possibility, however remote, that she may have contacted one of them and they may be willing to confide in me. If this turns out to be the case, I will inform you immediately.

  Gloria is a young woman of resources and intelligence. Whatever has happened, you may be sure that she will do what is right.

  Yours sincerely,

  Claire Trevelyan

  Claire laid down her pen, folded up the letter, and sealed it. A pigeon waited on the balcony outside for it, but she took a moment, in the stillness of her room with its lace curtains and Baroque writing desk, to consider what she was doing.

  It felt decidedly odd to be offering comfort, however small and stilted, to Gloria’s father—a man who had backed a French invasion of England—who was so evil and heartless that he did not balk for a moment at the prospect of trafficking in human lives and misery. Surely a man who owned one of the largest fleets in the world, who had business connections on every continent—though England and Prussia were forbidden to him—had the resources to find his own daughter.

  Why should he waste his time inquiring of Claire? She could only hope that once she had heard from Catherine and Julia in London, their correspondence would come to an end and he would turn his investigations elsewhere.

  Certainly she was concerned for her friend. But there had to be a reasonable explanation for her behavior. Perhaps Lizzie might even be right. The memory of the dirigible swimming away and leaving her and her friends in abject peril triggered a bubble of anger in her chest, swiftly doused by a surge of compassion.