“But …” Claire’s forehead creased a little in a frown. “Does it not strike you as odd that she should write to Alice—since she did not know I was alive—in her desperation, and not to her father? I never thought of it before this moment, but why should she do so?”
“Because I’m her friend?” Alice suggested. “It’s clear that her forced desertion of you and Ian in Venice was weighing heavily on her mind. If she only had a moment to send a message, sending it to me would kill two birds with one stone. She could reassure me as to her motives, and ask for help all at once.”
“Of course she would have meant for us to notify her father as well,” Ian said. “That stands to reason.”
“Does it?” Claire asked. Alice could practically see the wheels turning behind that thoughtful brow. “Unless she feared her father was somehow involved.”
“Nonsense,” Ian said. “You have shared his letters with us. They do not have the tone of a man who has engineered the kidnapping of his own daughter. To what end?”
“To get her out of Venice secretly?” Alice ventured. “What if the Famiglia Rosa was blackmailing Meriwether-Astor and he had her spirited away so they couldn’t get their hands on her?”
“But why not tell her, then?” Claire asked. “Though the matter of leaving us to manage our own escape from the lagoon must still be accounted for.”
“I should say so,” Alice said. “If the Fancy’s captain had orders to get Gloria away, though, he wouldn’t stand upon too much ceremony in his departure. I wouldn’t, if I were he.”
“But then why agree to take a pleasure party at all?” Claire asked. “Why not tell us it was not convenient, see Gloria aboard, and then quit the country? No, I am convinced there must be some deeper motive afoot here. It would seem almost as though Gloria does not trust her own father enough to reveal her whereabouts to him.”
“I do not believe it,” Ian said. “We saw no sign of that in Venice—they seemed civil enough. When you write to tell him about Gibraltar, I am sure that it will all become clear. And now I believe we must change for dinner. The sun has quite gone and the lamps have been lit.”
Claire bade them farewell and walked off toward Athena instead of to her suite in the palace, her head bent in thought.
And watch as carefully as she might through the viewing ports, Alice saw no sign of a pigeon’s departure.
She wasn’t sure what worried her most—that Claire was going to tell Meriwether-Astor his daughter had been kidnapped … or that she had no intention of doing so at all.
*
Rather abruptly, Claire realized she had boarded Athena while hardly being aware she had done so. She was nearly perfectly certain that she had intended to return to the palace to change for dinner, and yet here she was, wandering into the comforting embrace of her own ship and climbing the stairs into the saloon.
Andrew looked up from the disarray he had created on the dining table, which he was using as a temporary office until they found a suitable house for their first home. “Is it time to dress for dinner?”
In order to have a home together, one must be married first. And to do that, one must plan a wedding. Oh, why could they not simply take a steambus down to the city registry office and be married there? Or why had she not delegated the wedding preparations to her mother and Sir Richard, who had offered Gwynn Place as the natural location for the upcoming nuptials as soon as she and Andrew had become engaged?
Because she enjoyed her own way too much, that was why.
In her joy to see her only daughter married—even if it was to a man with neither title nor property—Mama would make a spectacle of the entire affair. Twelve bridesmaids from the neighboring families, enough flowers to keep an airship on the ground without benefit of ropes, and a wedding breakfast that would pay off every social obligation she had managed to acquire in the five years since she had returned to Cornwall a widow.
Claire realized belatedly that Andrew had spoken, but before she could formulate a reply, he said, “Dearest, what is the reason for such a sigh, and such a downcast expression?” He let his drawing roll up and crossed the saloon to take her in his arms. “Something has happened, hasn’t it?”
She laid her forehead on his shoulder. “Several things—one of them being the fact that there are five weeks between now and our wedding, and I do not have a dress, to say nothing of a church, flowers, or so much as a biscuit for the wedding breakfast.”
By his stillness, she sensed that she had surprised him. “I had no idea that this was presenting a difficulty.”
“We should have let Mama take everything in hand when she offered. I fear I have been rash—and arrogant—and self-aggrandizing, Andrew.”
“Nonsense. Rashness I will grant you, but not the others. Is it so necessary to have a dress, flowers, and a wedding breakfast?”
“Well, unless we propose to elope to Gretna Green, one usually observes the social niceties. We have not even inquired of Reverend Peabody if the Belgrave Square church is available on Christmas Eve morning. If we were to be married at Gwynn Place, we could have used the chapel on the estate and not even had to ask.”
“We still can, if that would remove one worry from your mind.”
“But what of our London friends?”
“What of them? Load them all into Athena’s cargo bay and take them down to Cornwall.”
“Andrew, be serious.” Between the uncertainty of Gloria’s situation and her own failings as a bride, Claire felt very close to tears.
And Andrew saw it. “My darling,” he said softly, “I cannot believe that our wedding is causing you such distress. Nor can I allow it. We will be married in the registry office here in Munich, and people may throw us as many parties as they like when we return to London as man and wife—as long as you do not have to arrange them.”
She raised her head. “Do you mean it? Not have a church wedding?” Then she collapsed against him once more. “Mama would never live it down. The gossip in London would be dreadful. We must have that at the very least.”
“Then we will, if that will make you happy. At Gwynn Place?”
“No,” she said slowly. “What do you think of the mermaid’s chapel in Baie des Sirenes? The one where Maggie was baptized as a baby?”
He paused for a moment, as though his thoughts had been taking a different path entirely. “It is very small.”
“Intimate.”
“We could not invite many people.”
“Your mother and mine. Snouts, of course, and the children from Carrick House. The Polgarths. And Alice, Jake, and Ian.”
“Ian?” Now he did more than merely pause. He set her away from him just enough to gaze into her face. “Is that not rather unkind, since he once cherished hopes along that line?”
“Not at all.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, in case Jake and Tigg had returned to the ship. “Alice is in love with him, and I believe he is half in love with her. He just does not know it yet.”
Had Andrew been in the dreadful habit of wearing a monocle, it would have fallen out in his surprise. “Are you sure?”
“She has confided in me—but you must not let on that I have broken her confidence. I have never been a matchmaker, but weddings, you know, are an excellent environment for experiments of that kind.”
“My word.” He took her hand. “I believe that when we are eighty, you will still continue to surprise me.”
“It keeps life interesting,” she said, feeling rather better, and kissing him in thanks. “Speaking of interesting—and appalling—this came to the palace and was delivered to Alice just now.” She produced Gloria’s note from her pocket and handed it to him.
When he had read it, his hazel eyes met hers with concern and a measure of shock. “Abducted?”
Rapidly, she told him of her discussions with Ian and Alice, and the conclusion she herself had reached. “Do you think I am completely mad? Do you think it possible that the reason she wrote to Alice rather than her
father is because she does not trust him?”
He fell into his chair rather suddenly, and she pulled up another next to him. “I feel we must certainly entertain the possibility,” he said at last. “But Claire, Ian may be right. The letters we have received from Meriwether-Astor are the letters of a father frantic with worry for his daughter. We have no right to interfere—or to hesitate in sending him news of her.”
“But what if that is not her wish?”
“Then she would certainly have said so in her note.”
“What if she had no time? One doesn’t always, you know, in the midst of an escape.”
“You would certainly be the authority on that subject. But dearest, think how you would feel if it were Maggie or Lizzie—if those in Cornwall or the Baie des Sirenes had known of their whereabouts and deliberately not told you.”
“I would have been beside myself. More than I was at the time.”
“Then …?” He set the note on his pencil box and took her hands. “There comes a point at which you must realize you cannot save everyone, my darling. You are the most loyal and brave of friends, but this is not your fight. It is Gerald Meriwether-Astor’s.”
“But—”
“He is her father, and regardless of what we might read into or out of this note, he has a right to know of her situation. And goodness knows he has the resources to find her and return her to safety.”
“But—”
“Claire.” He squeezed her hands with gentleness, and she raised her gaze to his. “Promise me you will write to him tonight. It is the right thing to do, and in your heart you know it.”
Logic and every familial expectation told her his counsel was sound. But what if logic was wrong? What if there was some missing bit of information that would make everything clear—and in its absence any such action would endanger Gloria?
The grip upon her fingers became yet firmer. “Claire? Tell me you are not thinking of doing something rash.”
“I am not.” And she was not.
Yet.
“Family ties aside, you are in no position to act in any case. We have been through this before, when Jake was in danger.”
“That turned out well,” she pointed out. “It was manifestly the right thing to do.”
“Because Jake had no one to help him. The cases are different. Gloria does—in spades. Besides, think of your career, if nothing else. The count might have acceded to the last sudden departure, but I would not lay a silver schilling on his being willing to do so a second time, not a month later.”
At this, she released his hands and stood. Crossing to the viewing port—which showed her nothing but her own shape in the reflected lamplight—she said, “Perhaps that would not be such a bad thing.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If I were to pull up ropes and go in search of Gloria, and he did sack me. Perhaps that would not be such a calamity.”
“Good heavens.” He rose, too. “Certainly it would be—not least because all my efforts on your behalf would have gone for nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
He unrolled the drawing on which he had been working for days now, and weighted its corners with paperweights—two bolts, the pencil box, and a whiskey glass—that sat on the table for just such a purpose. Wordlessly, she gazed at it.
“Andrew,” she breathed at last. “It is the Helios Membrane for Athena’s fuselage.”
“Precisely.”
“Have you been stealing glimpses at my engineering notebook?”
“I have,” he said brazenly. “Do you approve?”
What a relief it was to leave her troubled thoughts for a moment and concentrate upon something purely theoretical. She pointed to a cluster of lines. “I believe this collector ought to go on the top of the fuselage, not in the bow.”
“In the bow, it will be closer to the controls of the navigation gondola.”
“But it will be less exposed to the sun.”
He considered it, then nodded. “You are quite right. This posed some difficulty in the case of the steam locomotive, but of course the vessels are quite different. I will make the adjustment. At this rate I must remember to buy stock in pencils.”
She turned and hugged him about the ribs, pressing her face to his shoulder once more. “You are lovely to do these drawings for me. Thank you.”
“I look forward to the day when you can present them to the count. To see his face will be worth the price of admission.”
Instead of replying, she hugged him again.
For she had grave doubts that the future she contemplated held any such day.
9
“Miss Meriwether-Astor,” Captain Hayes said on the other side of her prison door, “you will be relieved to know that we are leaving Neptune’s Fancy here and taking to the air. Gather your things, please, and be ready to depart in ten minutes.”
The air? Ten minutes?
The air!
Gloria had been locked in this noisome cabin for only twenty-four hours, but there was an enormous difference between sleeping in it and being able to open the door, and attempting to sleep with the knowledge that no matter how hard you banged upon it or how loud a fuss you made, no one would unlock it until the times appointed. She had been allowed out to make use of the privy and to eat with Captain Hayes and the officers, as before, but that was all. Afterward, she was marched back in and endured once more the sound of the bolt crashing home.
It had only been twenty-four hours, and yet she had been reduced to utter gratitude at the prospect of another prison, as long as it wasn’t this one.
How pathetic. Claire would never behave like this. She would have picked the lock with a hairpin and swum to safety … or at the very least have secreted a paring knife about her person to be used at the first opportunity. Gloria had tried both, and succeeded with neither.
Accordingly, ten minutes later, she stood ready, the hated walking suit and blouse donned once more, her hair neatly coiled in its customary braided coronet, her hat pinned upon it. This time she had taken the precaution of stashing her money and few valuables inside her corset, so she need carry nothing in case the opportunity presented itself once more to escape.
Four bathynauts escorted her to the chamber under the bow where one of the Fancy’s chaloupes bobbed, its top open to receive passengers. Captain Hayes was already within, handing her down into the round body of the vessel as though she actually had a choice as to whether or not to place her hand in his.
“Am I permitted to ask why the change in prison?” she inquired with icy politeness.
“Certainly,” he said. “Do sit down on this side, with me. As you know, these little vessels will not trim unless the passengers’ weight is distributed evenly.”
“Yes, I know. I assume we are going ashore in a location inhospitable to the Fancy?”
“You assume correctly.” The remaining bathynauts boarded, and then the one with an officer’s bars on his collar ignited the chaloupe’s steam system and minutes later, it submerged. Instantly they were bathed in a wavering green light that told Gloria the water was shallow and the seabed sandy. Her knowledge of geography was greater now than it ever had been in school, but she could not imagine what coastline in the Mediterranean might match this description.
Except one.
“Have we not left Gibraltar?” In the time she had been locked in, they might have gained the west side of the Iberian Peninsula, at least.
Captain Hayes gazed at her with admiration. “In fact we have not. We had rather a little excitement with the port, you see, upon the Fancy’s being recognized. As you know, your father’s ships are not permitted in any English port, and Gibraltar being a territory, the authorities were anxious to uphold Her Majesty’s will in this matter. So we are forced to come in through the back door, as it were, and approach the airfield with rather more subtlety.”
“You are going to beach us in the chaloupe, then, and hope that you can withdraw before you a
re discovered.” She nodded, as if this were business as usual.
Inside, hope was bubbling like a cauldron. If she could only escape and smuggle herself aboard a ship bound for the Kingdom of Prussia, she could bring herself that much closer to her friends. Surely there would be a vessel flying the Iron Cross here. It was almost impossible that there should not be. Oh, this was good news indeed!
“We are,” the captain said. “An airship is waiting to take us to England, where you will be accommodated with every comfort.”
“What part of England?”
But he only smiled that charming, self-deprecating, maddening smile that conveyed nothing but regret at his inability to answer.
Gloria gritted her teeth and pinned her hopes on the next few minutes.
But to her dismay, the phalanx of bathynauts disembarked with her once the chaloupe had trundled its way up the beach. And there, on the extreme edge of the airfield closest to them, was moored the most unremarkable, plain, innocuous airship she had ever seen. It flew the dragon of St. George, however, which meant an unremarkable exit and an easy arrival in England.
The bathynauts had grips of iron as they took her arms and escorted her up the gangway. Not even a second’s opportunity did she have to run—or to scream, for that matter, because the stiff offshore wind blew any sounds other than the flap of canvas and the singing of ropes out to sea.
She was shown into a cabin, cheerfully informed by Captain Hayes that dinner was at eight o’clock, and before she could even judge the width of the porthole and whether she would have to disrobe before worming her way out of it and dropping the considerable distance to the ground, she felt the floor pressing up against the soles of her feet.
“Blast!” The very word choked in her throat with disappointment as she pressed her nose to the isinglass. Gibraltar and the dozens of possibilities for escape moored in her airfield dropped away at a dizzying rate and soon all she could see were empty expanses of sky.
It was, she supposed, better than empty expanses of water, but not by much.
A Gentleman of Means Page 8
