“Andrew—now that I am free—I must—oh, you will not like it.” He looked positively alarmed now, but the words must be said. “I must find out what has happened to Gloria.”
Those beloved eyes gazed into her own in a moment of disbelief before his face slowly darkened.
She hurried on before he could contradict her. “I know that you said her father must be informed about the note—”
“And was he?”
“No.”
“Claire!”
“Andrew, listen, please. She sent that letter to Alice—to us—in her extremity. To us, not her father. I cannot avoid the conclusion that she did not want him to know her whereabouts. And the only reason for that must be because she does not trust him.”
“Ridiculous.”
“Perhaps with the threat from the Famiglia Rosa, he had her removed for her own safety—but that does not seem right. Why not tell her? So I must conclude that either they are behind it, or some other nameless party is using her as a pawn in a larger game.”
“You are boxing with mist—and moreover, it is none of your affair. Claire, for the love of heaven, tell the girl’s father and be done with it so that we can get on with the planning of our own lives.”
Her lower lip trembled at his tone. She had seen him angry with her before, but that had been motivated by fear for her safety. What was his motivation now?
“I cannot,” she whispered. “My friend is in danger and she has no one to help.”
“If she is, then she has asked for help in the wrong quarter. Whether or not she trusts her father is immaterial. It is his duty to rescue her, not yours. He is a man of enormous resolution and nearly limitless resources. You are a young lady with responsibilities and prospects of your own that have nothing to do with Gloria Meriwether-Astor.”
“She is my friend.”
“She is my friend also, and Alice’s, and Ian’s … and you do not see us haring off to fetch her when others are better equipped to do so.”
“Andrew, you do not mean that.” He could not be so heedless of the plea for help that Gloria’s letter had contained.
“I do mean it!” As if unable to sit still for another moment, he leaped to his feet and began to pace. “Claire, I do not understand you. Time after time you have put aside your own welfare and that of those who love you to fly off into danger. Time after time we are left behind wondering when it will ever be our turn to enjoy your full attention. Time after time we wonder if indeed you love the adventure and the risk more than you care for those whose hearts you hold.”
She stared at him, her cheeks prickling as the color drained from them. “Of whom do you speak?” she managed at last.
“Of Maggie, of Lizzie, of Alice … and of me.”
“I do not fly off without you. We go together, if we go at all.”
“Perhaps I speak metaphorically. For if we do not go physically, we run the risk of never seeing you again.”
“That is not true.”
“Perhaps it has not been. But that is no guarantee of the future.”
“The future is never guaranteed.”
“Do not split hairs with me. The point is that your life is being left behind while you dash off to save someone else’s. I do wonder if you do it on purpose. I do not want to, because that would make you unnatural and unwomanly … but I do wonder.”
How could he say these things to her? How could he be so cruel? “On purpose? What on earth are you talking about?”
He stopped and turned, his face as colorless as her own—and his eyes—
“Do you really want to marry me, Claire?”
“Of course I do! How can you say that after all we have been through together—after all the plans we have made?”
“Then prove it.” He took a breath and pressed a fist to his heart, as though it pained him. “Abandon this plan of going to Gloria’s rescue and let her father handle it, as I advised you. Then turn your attention to our wedding with a heart undivided and free—just the way you were when you accepted my proposal that day on the cliffs.”
That day on the cliffs, she had had no inkling of the dangers that awaited—dangers brought on almost exclusively by and encapsulated in the person of Gerald Meriwether-Astor.
In one blinding sweep, Claire saw the truth behind all the events that Maggie and Lizzie referred to as their adventures. In the Canadas, he had attempted to start a war by assassinating Count von Zeppelin. He had sold Lizzie’s father the massive telescoping cannon with which the latter had planned to assassinate the heir to the throne. He had cozened the Bourbon pretender into an invasion of England, selling him his guns, his underwater dirigibles, and his war machines. And he had bargained with the Famiglia Rosa for the lives of English men and women—no matter that they were convicts—and condemned them to a short life and a watery grave.
Claire had not brought their adventures on herself out of a mad need to dance on the edge of danger. Gerald Meriwether-Astor was the architect of them all—the reason she could not lead the kind of life she wanted with Andrew. And he was undoubtedly the man who had prevented his daughter—her friend—from living the life she was capable of and deserved as a woman of resources and potential.
If she, Claire, could find Gloria, perhaps together they could put an end to his machinations and his maniacal desire to rule—women, convicts, countries, kings—it did not seem to matter. Gerald Meriwether-Astor was out to rule the world, and he did not seem to care that his daughter and her friends had been drawn again and again into the massive gearworks of his ambition.
The end result, unless they extricated themselves once and for all, was that they would be ground to powder.
Unless someone became the spanner in his works.
Andrew was waiting for her answer, his face solemn, his eyes filled with pain. “I cannot abandon her,” she said simply, her distress causing tears to start in her own eyes. “It is only for a few weeks. Not forever.”
“And if something happens to you? Will that not be forever?”
“Nothing will happen to me. I am well armed and have—”
He made a pushing gesture with one hand and turned away so that she could not see his face. “Claire, I cannot bear it.”
“Then come with me.”
“That is not the point.” He dragged in a shuddering breath.
“Then what is the point? Andrew, surely you must see—”
“No. All I see is that once again you choose someone else over me and a life with me.”
“I do not! I gave you a promise and I intend to keep it.”
“You say that. But Claire, my darling, your actions put the lie to your words every time.” Slowly, he turned to face her. “Who will it be next time to delay our wedding, our happiness, our prospects of a family? Willie Dunsmuir? Young Mr. Stringfellow? No, I cannot put myself through this.” He choked, then gained control of himself once again.
Cold water was running through her veins, loosening her limbs with fear. No. He could not mean it. Not Andrew.
“I release you from your engagement,” he said at last, when he had mastered himself. “I wish you every success in your venture, but I cannot be a part of it. My heart will not survive, and so I must cut it out entirely and attempt to make a life without it.”
“Andrew—please, you do not mean it—you cannot mean it.”
He crossed the room to the dining table, and rolled up the drawings for the Helios Membrane—what was to have been their first project together as husband and wife.
“I mean every word. Good-bye, Claire. I will move over to the crew’s quarters on Swan and bunk there until Alice is ready to leave. I am sure she will not object to an extra passenger as far as London.”
“Andrew … please …”
But he merely put the drawings under his arm and collected his coat from the back of the chair. And then he walked out of the saloon, leaving her standing there wondering how it was possible to lose nearly everything she valued in the course of a single day
.
11
Lizzie and Maggie settled themselves opposite Claire at the little glass-topped table where they were accustomed to take breadfast. With a pang, Claire was reminded again how very quickly they were growing up, and how soon it would be before they were making wedding plans themselves.
And until then, what kind of life would she be able to provide for them, after her disastrous conversations with the two most important men in her life? A wave of grief rose in her chest, towering and threatening to fall like the massive combers on the coast at home, which could throw a person up on the beach and knock the breath from her as easily as if she were an empty seashell.
“Lady, what is it?” Maggie said, her amber gaze becoming concerned as she examined Claire’s face. “Have you—have you been crying? And you are so pale. Have we had bad news?”
She had a number of very hard things to tell them. She may as well begin with that. “Mr. Malvern and I have decided that … we will not be married after all.”
There. That was the bald, horrible truth of it. And the words tasted like bile in her mouth.
Lizzie gasped, and Maggie’s eyes filled with tears. “Lady, how can that be? Why, only yesterday—”
“Yesterday belonged to a different world,” Claire said with uncharacteristic harshness.
“But how—”
“Girls, if you do not wish me to sink altogether under the crushing pain of this experience, you will not question me. Suffice it to say that we have parted, and he will be going with Alice and Captain Hollys to England tomorrow.”
“Oh, Lady,” Lizzie whispered, a single tear escaping despite obvious efforts to control it, and tracking down her cheek. “You were so happy.”
Claire could not prevent the sob that clutched her chest and caught her by surprise. “I cannot speak of it,” she gasped. “Do not make me.”
Wordlessly, Lizzie and Maggie rose and wrapped their arms around her. Claire could not help it—her body shook with the force of her sobs, their loving embraces taking her grief into themselves and offering only warmth and comfort in return … just as she had done many a time in the old days at Toll Cottage.
When at length the storm passed, they did not take their seats at the table, but instead curled up together on the sofa. Claire tucked her sodden handkerchief into her sleeve and sniffled.
“There is another, less personal matter I must discuss with you both, and it must be done without delay,” she said. “As if today could be any worse, I have also resigned my post at the Zeppelin Airship Works.”
“Because your superiors are dolts?” Lizzie asked, the sympathy of her tone marred somewhat by interest in the answer.
Claire would have remonstrated with her for using such a disrespectful term, but frankly— “Yes. Because they are dolts, and because the count and I do not see eye to eye on how exactly my career is to begin.”
“Does he know you have resigned?” Maggie asked. “Because if he does not, he will be dreadfully upset when you tell him.”
“I am afraid he was informed by tube before I even arrived home at the palace this morning. He sent for me, and he was dreadfully upset. He feels I have betrayed him.”
“How can refusing to work for a dolt be a betrayal?” Lizzie wanted to know. “I should do the same myself.”
“Because he has paid my tuition on the condition that I should spend at least the first part of my career with him,” Claire told her. “When I offered to pay it back, I merely added insult to injury. Today, it seems, I am doomed to make everyone I see angry with me.”
“You shan’t make us angry,” Maggie told her, leaning comfortably against her shoulder.
“I would not hold my breath, my dear one. For we must come to some decisions about your educations rather more quickly than I had anticipated. You see—” She hesitated. Perhaps she might keep this part to herself. But no, she had never lied to them, no matter how difficult it had been to give them facts rather than comforting fancies. “You are young women now, and able to withstand the truth, so I will not insult you by attempting to protect you. The count is very angry with me. So angry that he has asked us to leave his house.”
Maggie gasped. “I do not believe it! Uncle Ferdinand would never be so cruel.”
But Lizzie’s keen gaze had already penetrated the shock and seen right to the difficulty. “He is hurt, and is striking out at the source of his pain. Is he not, Lady?”
Claire nodded. “Perhaps at some time in the future we might be able to be friends again—some very distant time—but for the moment, we must pack up our things and take them out to Athena.”
“Will he continue to allow us to moor in the park?” Lizzie asked.
“I hope so, or we shall have to remove to the Theresienwiese and pay a fortune to rent a mast,” Claire said. “The question is, do you wish to finish out the term at the lycee and return to London with me over Christmas—” Oh, how was she to face London at Christmas with no wedding? How was she to endure Christmas next year, or the year after, or any year after that for the rest of her life? Claire struggled to get a grip on her emotions. “—and take your final term at St. Cecelia’s? Or remain in Munich to finish sixth form entirely and matriculate?”
“Return to London with you … or stay and matriculate?” Maggie’s gaze was puzzled. “Would you not be coming back after Christmas and staying as well?”
“Here is the part where you will be angry with me,” Claire told her. “I have resolved to do my best to find Gloria. This resolve, in fact, is what finally caused Mr. Malvern to—” Never mind. “He does not agree. But I cannot leave it to her father when she wrote to us looking for aid.”
“We will come with you, of course,” Lizzie said promptly. “We can help you find her.”
“It is not so easy as that, darling,” Claire said. “If you do not finish sixth form, you will not matriculate and be eligible to attend university, should you choose to do so.”
“I don’t care.”
“But I care, deeply. We have made any number of sacrifices and accepted the count’s help without reserve so that you and Maggie might have this opportunity. I would not like to see you throw it away for the sake of a task that may be completed in as little as a week or two.”
“As you have thrown away your engagement to Mr. Malvern?” Lizzie asked.
“Lizzie!” Maggie exclaimed, shocked. “How can you be so unkind?”
“I can see how he feels, if she is going to fly off without him,” Lizzie said defensively.
Claire sighed. “I told you that you would be angry with me.”
“We are not angry, Lady,” Maggie said. Then, with a glance at her cousin, “At least, I am not. So what you propose is that we board at the lycee, like Katrina Grünwald and some of the others do, until you find Gloria and return to bring us home for Christmas.”
“Precisely.”
“And then we will return for our final term and entrance examinations while you do … what?”
Claire touched Maggie’s cheek, and brushed a tendril of her dark hair behind her ear. “How very like you to settle upon the very question I have been unwilling to face myself. For I do not think I am well suited to being a lady of leisure, making calls and taking tea with people I do not particularly like.”
“You could go down to Gwynn Place.”
“And face my mother’s wrath at being once more unattached and on her hands? I think not.”
“You could go and visit Lady Selwyn.”
“I could, and I may yet … but one cannot haunt one’s friends indefinitely.”
“You could go into business with Alice and Jake,” Lizzie said. “Sign on Athena with the Royal Aeronautics Corps and request Tigg as your first engineer.”
For the first time, the ghost of a smile came to Claire’s lips. “That is a capital plan—the best I have heard all day.”
“A first engineer is going to need a wife with an education,” Maggie said to no one in particular. “A wife who do
esn’t quit, who sees something through in order to achieve larger things.”
Lizzie’s eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
“I am simply pointing out the obvious,” Maggie said airily. “How will you hold your own at all those dreadful Admiralty teas and balls if you quit? Lady So-and-so will say, Oh my, I hear you were educated in Europe, and you will have to say, Well, I was, partly, but I couldn’t stick it out and so I abandoned it. And she will say, Dear me, what does this say about Lieutenant Terwilliger’s ability to choose a proper wife, and you will say—”
“None of your bloody business,” Lizzie said crossly. “What do you know of Tigg’s career?”
“I know that were I you, I would want to be a woman he can be proud to take into that ballroom on his arm. A woman of conversation, and taste, and accomplishment, like the Lady. Like the woman you were so determined to become once upon a time. Have you lost sight of her, Liz?”
Lizzie glared at her, but even so, she was the first to admit she could see through a grindstone when there was a hole in it. “No, I have not, and you know it. You think we ought to abandon our posts, and stay here safe and warm while the Lady flies off into danger?”
“I think that if Jake and Alice have anything to say about it, she will not be alone. I think that we have a job to do, and we should not grieve the Lady further in our hurry to abandon it.”
Lizzie’s lower lip took on a mutinous cast.
Claire knew when to speak, and when to remain silent. She had been speaking all day, and had received nothing but blow after blow for her trouble. If Maggie could not convince her cousin to do the right thing, then nothing Claire could say would help the situation—and might even hinder it.
Lizzie might be stubborn, and headstrong, and even heedless sometimes, but she was not stupid. They had cut it rather fine with their headmistress over the Venetian adventure. There would be no second chances along the same line. Why should she risk years of work for a voyage that might not even end in success?
Claire saw the moment when Lizzie answered this question for herself, and raised her eyes to meet Claire’s gaze. “Is this really what you want us to do, Lady?” she asked softly. “To stay here while you do this alone?”
A Gentleman of Means Page 10
