A Gentleman of Means

by Shelley Adina

  “And maybe he’s an impostor who wants to cosh you on the skull.”

  The captain said, “He would hardly go to the trouble of making inquiries about the ship Tigg serves on if that were his aim.”

  Tigg almost thought she was going to cosh the captain, but at the last moment, she recollected herself.

  “I’m just saying, he might not have Tigg’s best interests at heart. Perhaps he’s down at heel and looking for a handout.”

  “If he was, I’d give him what I had and wish him well,” Tigg said, though as the words passed his lips, he wondered if he would. What was the man’s business with him? It made no sense to disappear, leaving your wife and son with nothing but a one-room flat and her skill with feathers and furbelows, and then just as suddenly reappear wanting to get acquainted. Had he even wasted a thought on them in the fifteen years since he’d vanished?

  Tigg hardly cared. He had long ago set aside any resentment he might have had at being abandoned, once he’d seen what fathers could do to other children. Snouts and Jake had given him quite the education on that score.

  His mother had died before he was seven, the hard life she had fallen into having taken its toll. The madam of the brothel had had no patience with the all-too-common results of the trade, and had booted him and another boy out onto the street. If he hadn’t fallen in with Snouts and the gang, Tigg was quite sure he’d have been dead by now, his father blissfully plying the skies without a single clue as to what might have happened to the family he’d so cavalierly left behind.

  All told, Tigg would be more likely to cosh the blighter himself … but that wouldn’t be becoming to a man in his position, with his prospects. And the Lady wouldn’t like it.

  She was the first person besides Snouts and Lizzie to whom he’d given his complete trust. He’d come to love her like a mother—or an older sister, really, since she wasn’t so very much older than he was. Her opinion mattered more to him even than the captain’s, his actions guided by an internal question: Would the Lady like it?

  Somehow, coshing this unknown Nubian aeronaut would probably fall on the negative side of that ledger.

  But that was not until tomorrow. Today, they had other fish to entice into their net.

  Tigg had thought they might have to inquire at a counter of some kind—to consult ledgers and perhaps even cross someone’s palm with a bit of blunt. But he hadn’t reckoned on Captain Hollys … and his rank.

  “Come this way, Sir Ian, Lieutenant, madam,” the clerk said, leading them through a warren of offices and audience rooms to an upper floor, where they were shown into a room resembling a library—except the shelves were lined in small, neat metal boxes, not books. “I am the Clerk of Records, at your service. If you will make yourselves comfortable, I will consult the records for you.”

  As Tigg sank into a navy-blue plush chair, the man slid back a section of the wall to reveal a cavernous space beyond—several floors of it—entirely filled with movement. Gears, grates, arms—the mighty difference engine that recorded every movement of Her Majesty’s vessels, their flight plans, their crews. Suddenly Tigg realized that deep within that glimmering, busy brass edifice were bits and pieces of his own life. His enlistment, his promotions, his examination results … his marriage to Lizzie would even be recorded there, some day.

  Perhaps he’d best not mention that to her.

  With a happy whirring of cables and tapping of arms resembling the insides of a piano, a number of long cards fell into a slot. The clerk carried them over and presented them to the captain with a flourish.

  “Allow me to interpret our rather cryptic shorthand, Sir Ian,” he said. “The officer you inquired about, Barnaby Aloysius Hayes, joined Her Majesty’s service at the age of fourteen aboard the Galaxy, a ship of the line, serving the route between London and St. Petersburg. He rose through the ranks, becoming a midshipman and then lieutenant at twenty-two, when he purchased his commission and was assigned to the colonial route at twenty-six. We have no official record of his career following his departure from the service three years ago, of course.”

  “A moment, sir,” the captain said. “You say he purchased a commission?”

  “I did. Or rather, it was purchased for him. By old Lord Mount-Batting—the current duke’s father—before he died. This enabled him to take the lieutenant’s examinations, and upon passing them, to take up his new post as an officer.”

  The captain snapped his fingers. “I knew I had heard his name before. Captain Hayes is the old duke’s—” He glanced at Tigg and Alice.

  “His illegitimate offspring, sir.” The clerk was obviously a man who dealt in facts, not the sensibilities of unmarried young men and women. “That is correct. He was born in 1864, when the old duke was nearly sixty years of age.”

  The captain had gone rather red over the pristine white of his cravat. “Er, quite so. There was a scandal, if I remember. Something to do with … oh, what was it? My mother always hustled me from the room when it came up among her friends.”

  “If you are referring to the property transferred into his name, sir, that is also here, in the record.” He shuffled the card to point to it, but Tigg could not see it from where he sat. “The scandal you refer to occurred when the old duke conveyed one of the family estates into his bastard’s name. The heir—the current Lord Mount-Batting—raised quite a fuss, but since it had come into the family through the old duke’s first wife, it was all quite legal.”

  Tigg found his voice. “And where is this estate located, sir?”

  The clerk perused the card, his spectacles low on his nose. “It was formerly known as Aldercroft Court, eight miles east of Bath, but it was renamed in 1891 as Haybourne House, no doubt in remembrance of the family who raised him. Hayes, of course, is their name. He is not entitled to any of the old duke’s titles and honorifics, naturally.”

  “Naturally,” the captain murmured, his mind clearly sailing well before the wind. “Thank you, sir, for your assistance.”

  He began to rise, but Tigg took his fate in both hands and gave the tiller a metaphorical push. “Sir, if I might be so bold, could you make one more inquiry of the—the difference engine?”

  “Certainly. You wish to know the name of a man who served?”

  “I do. One Thomas Terwilliger. Not I,” Tigg added hastily. “My father. I know nothing about him and should appreciate as many facts as the records might supply.”

  The man smiled kindly. Perhaps he was not the automaton he seemed to be—perhaps he was just more used to engines, as Alice was sometimes. “It would be an honor, Lieutenant. Facts are my bread and butter.”

  Once again the gears whirred, two storeys of little arms clattered up and down, and a series of cards spilled into the tray.

  Once again they were politely presented; once again the clerk was obliged to interpret.

  “Terwilliger, Thomas John, born 1861. Entered Her Majesty’s service as an airman—a ropemaker, to be specific—and rose to the rank of sailswain, whereupon he left service in 1880.”

  “Left service?” His father had left the family in the same year. The two events had to have been connected. “Why, I wonder?”

  “The records do not indicate the reason, only the fact.”

  “Quite so,” the captain said. “Is there any further information?”

  The clerk shook his head, his attention upon the cards as intently as any fortune-teller Tigg had ever seen separating fools from their money at fairs. “Only the date of his marriage to one Nancy Drake in 1874.”

  “They were married?” Tigg said in some surprise. He had no memory of his mother wearing a ring, or of speaking of his father in such terms. “Then that means I have a right to my name?”

  He remembered Lizzie’s and Maggie’s pain over the question of their surnames—and of their legitimacy. Tigg had never given it much thought. He had known his surname, but when the boys couldn’t get their tongues round it, he had simply become Tigg—and since being nicknamed was
a mark of acceptance in the gang, he had preferred that by far.

  “Certainly, if you are Thomas Drake Terwilliger, born in 1875.”

  “Drake?” Tigg exclaimed. “I never knew I had a second name. Drake. Well, burst your balloon and dance a jig upon it.”

  “Tigg!” Alice said. “Mind your manners.”

  “I beg your pardon.” He directed the apology to the room at large. He hadn’t meant to blurt that out—but sometimes surprise made the jaws flap whether the brain wanted them to or not.

  But it seemed the captain had taken no offence. “Are you satisfied with this information?” he asked. “May we return this gentleman to his duty?”

  With a nod, Tigg offered his hand to the clerk, who shook it heartily. “May I be so bold as to make these corrections to your enlistment records, Lieutenant? We strive to be as thorough as possible.”

  “Why, yes, I suppose you ought to.” He would then be linked for eternity with Thomas John, in the mind of the difference engine, at least. It remained to be seen what other links existed in the world.

  He was still turning over in his own mind what he had learned, half in a daze, when he became aware as they paced down a different corridor that the captain and Alice were in the midst of a quarrel.

  “Dadburn it, Ian, mind your own business. I can ask a question of these folks without you poking your nose into it, thank you very much.”

  “But you will get answers much more quickly if I am with you.”

  “So you can pull rank again and make them scurry about to do the baronet’s bidding? What if I don’t want you to know my business?”

  Tigg had to admire the captain for keeping calm under high winds. “Alice, my friend, you know all there is to know of my business. I had hoped that in this matter, at least, you would allow me to help you, and repay in small coin what you have done for me.”

  That put a hole in her gasbag, for true. Alice looked as though he had struck her. “You don’t owe me anything.”

  “Perhaps not, in monetary terms.” The captain dropped his voice so that it might not be heard in the busy offices they passed. “But if friendship has a value, then I must repay you in that coin. Please let me do so.”

  For a moment, pride and independence struggled with something deeper. Tigg was no fool. Maggie and Lizzie had briefed him thoroughly on the subject of the two captains—one commissioned by Her Majesty (and blind where women were concerned) and one commissioned by her own intelligence and survival skills (and shy about revealing her feelings). He waited to see which way the wind would veer.

  “Very well,” Alice said at last. “But only because we are short on time and Claire is waiting for us.” Another moment’s struggle. “Thank you, Ian.”

  The captain’s face reminded Tigg of someone who has received a gift he hadn’t been looking for. “It is my pleasure. Come. The Registry is this way.”

  At the Registry, where all airships—commercial, private, or military—were commissioned into Her Majesty’s service, and staffed with trained aeronauts, any difficulties they might have encountered were magically made to evaporate in the brilliance of the captain’s name and family connections. They were shown into the office of the registrar himself, and offered tea, which they declined.

  “In what way may I assist you, Captain Hollys?” he asked, the gold on his epaulettes winking as brightly as his teeth.

  “My colleague, Captain Chalmers, has a number of questions, sir,” the captain replied. “She will take the helm from here.”

  If the registrar was surprised, he only showed it by a rapid blink. “Certainly. Captain Chalmers?”

  Alice was sitting very straight, her spine not even touching the ladder back of her chair. “I wanted to inquire about the commission procedure for an unregistered vessel,” she said.

  “Unregistered, Captain?”

  “As yet unregistered,” she amended. “I have a decision to make. I am a citizen of the Texican Territory, yet I contract my ship to Lord and Lady Dunsmuir—”

  “Ah!” The registrar seemed to relax. “Yes?”

  “My ship, Swan, is of Prussian origin, one of the original B2 cruising vessels. Its ownership was transferred to me and my navigator, Jake Fletcher McTavish, last month by Count von Zeppelin.”

  She had the registrar’s complete attention now. “The B2? The military vessel constructed for speed over long distances?”

  “Yes.”

  “Transferred to you … by the count himself? How very singular.”

  “We have had several business dealings, and I have the honor to call him friend.”

  “It is an honor not vouchsafed to many, I understand.”

  “So you see my difficulty,” Alice said, inclining her head. “I can choose to register it here, or in Prussia, or in the Fifteen Colonies.”

  The man looked as though he could barely wait for her to finish speaking. “Might I presume for a moment upon your kindness, madam, and urge you to register this vessel in Her Majesty’s fleet. For I can tell you now that any captain worth his salt would be honored to serve aboard her.”

  It was not possible for Alice to straighten further, but Captain Hollys did. Tension filled the air between them, blowing up as suddenly as any tropical gale.

  “I am sorry, I do not understand you,” Alice said at last. “If I were to register Swan in England, I would captain her.”

  “You?” The registrar’s gaze took her in from hem to lacy jabot. “But a woman cannot serve in the Corps. Surely you see that.”

  “I do not. Why shouldn’t she?”

  “Because—well, think of the crew’s quarters, for one. And the disruption and distraction among the men. No, no. It is impossible—to say nothing of the vagaries of the female mind, which is simply not designed for the mathematics of flight.”

  Tigg waited for her to snatch up an ink pot and throw it at his head, but she merely took a breath as if preparing to plunge into a pool.

  Then she leaned forward, as if to make sure he clearly understood. “I’ve been flying for most of my life. Captain Hollys can tell you I’m as conversant with the Daimler and Mercedes steam engines as I am with the Crockett—more so, since I wouldn’t fly a Crockett if you paid me—and in fact I codeveloped the automaton intelligence system that Zeppelin is installing in all his ships. So I have already proven that nonsensical prejudice you hold to be false—as has my co-engineer, Lady Claire Trevelyan, of whom you may have heard.”

  From his blank look, this was clearly not the case.

  “I congratulate you on these achievements,” he said at last. “But regulations do not permit females in the Corps.”

  “Then perhaps regulations should be changed.”

  “I am afraid it would take more than the wishes of you or I to do so. But, madam, this does not prevent you from registering the B2 as its owner. Most of the private entities do. It is the rare military man who both owns and captains his ship.”

  “This woman does both.” She straightened once again. “And until I am permitted both to own it and to fly it in Her Majesty’s service, then I suppose I shall have to register it elsewhere.”

  The loss of the B2 was clearly a greater catastrophe than Tigg had imagined, for as Alice rose, the registrar came around his desk to take her hand.

  “Please, madam—”

  “Captain. Captain Chalmers, as I believe Captain Hollys said when he introduced me.”

  “A colonial captain, excellent,” he said, babbling now. “Please allow me to make an appointment for you with the Registry, so that we might welcome the B2 into—”

  “Sir, I believe I made the conditions of my registration clear.”

  Tigg resisted the urge to cheer. Good for her for not backing down. He couldn’t wait to tell Lizzie about this in his next letter.

  “But we simply cannot—”

  Alice pulled her hand from his and strode to the door. “Good afternoon, sir. Thank you for your time. It has been most instructive.”

 
“Captain Chalmers, please—”

  But Alice did not wait.

  Captain Hollys bowed to the registrar and Tigg did the same. And then they both practically scampered out the door.

  Alice had already reached the end of the corridor, bearing down on the exterior door like a ship with vanes set full horizontal. They didn’t catch up with her until she was halfway across St. James’s Park.

  14

  Alice was closeted with the Lady for a very long time that afternoon, and even Robbie and Dickie looked nervous at the sound of raised voices not quite muffled by the office door.

  “She’s in a proper temper, she is,” Jake murmured to Tigg that evening as Charlie brought in the tea and Kitty helped everyone to a cup and a slice of fruitcake. “I haven’t seen the captain like this since the Famiglia Rosa told her the Stalwart Lass was to be impounded at the Venice airfield. That were a proper Donnybrook, it were.”

  Quickly, Tigg filled him in on the details of their visit to the Registry. If he had thought Jake would be surprised, he was in for a letdown, for he only laughed instead. “I have to give her credit for trying. Our Alice ent afraid of nothing—I never seen her back down from man nor beast. And some of the folks we met have been both.”

  “I hope it doesn’t make her fly off to the Fifteen Colonies in a temper,” Tigg said. “Not with Captain Hollys still on land leave and Christmas coming.”

  “If it does, I’ll spike the automatons so they don’t do as she says, and ground us.” Jake grinned. “I picked up a trick or two in my travels.” Then he sobered, and held Tigg’s gaze. “Which is why you ent going to the Sea Horse alone tomorrow night.”

  Instead of taking offense, Tigg nodded. He’d already planned to ask for help, but it was nice to have it offered without asking. “I’m not that stupid. Without Liz and Maggie for scouts, I suppose I’ll have to make do with your ugly mug.”