A Gentleman of Means

by Shelley Adina

  “Because they expect to be besieged,” Andrew said slowly, nodding. “My money is on Meriwether-Astor.”

  “But that makes no sense,” Claire objected. “The poor man is desperate to know where she is. He isn’t going to put up a fight, or risk her being hurt.”

  But Andrew shook his head, and she felt a twinge of disappointment that even in this they should disagree. “This is all speculation,” he said. “Let us stick to the facts we know. Gloria is there against her will. The house is armed to the rafters, so getting her out on the ground will be next to impossible. Therefore, we must consider getting her out by air.”

  “What—from the roof?” Jake asked. “We’d only have a few minutes before someone noticed there was a ship hanging about like a ruddy great cloud over the chimneys.”

  “Do you have another idea?” Andrew was not being rude, it was clear. He was deeply interested. But the sad truth was that the unknown assailant had complicated matters dreadfully.

  “What about the rocket rucksacks?” Jake said with an air of one producing the ace of spades, which was understandable since no one had brought it up before.

  “Left in Venice, I am afraid,” Claire said, “at the bottom of the Grand Canal.”

  “But that is an idea,” Tigg told them. “We need something smaller than an airship, but larger than a rucksack, and capable of flying far enough to get her and the pilot out of the danger zone.”

  “I have a touring balloon in the carriage house, I think,” Ian said with a smile. “But it hasn’t been used since before Her Majesty came to the throne, of that I am quite sure.”

  “Is it a steering model?” Andrew asked.

  “Yes, complete with propellers, but no vanes or steam propulsion. My sisters and I used to go up and down in the meadow while my mother begged us to land and not endanger the line of succession.”

  “Has it a fuselage?”

  Ian laughed. “Heavens, no. They were silk then—and long rotted away. I expect the basket has, too.”

  Claire gazed at the man she had loved for so long, who was now as far out of her reach as any balloon. “Andrew, what is in your mind?”

  He cleared his throat, and for a moment, she almost thought he looked … guilty. “I left a large parcel at the train station in Bath, with orders that it be delivered as soon as possible. I brought it to show you and Alice, but I had no idea—it is quite impossible—and yet—”

  “Malvern, old man, stop babbling,” the captain said. “What is in this parcel, and how will it help us?”

  Andrew looked up, and Claire found time itself slowing under the intensity of his gaze. “I completed a prototype of the Helios Membrane for a small vessel,” he said to her, as though they were alone in the room. “If the basket and rigging for Ian’s touring balloon are still serviceable, I thought you might take it up on its maiden voyage.”

  *

  Claire thought it odd when Ian and Alice suggested they take her steam landau to Bath in order to hurry the parcel on its way. But she became downright suspicious when Tigg and Jake vanished in the direction of the carriage house to, so they said, unearth whatever was left of the touring balloon and make any necessary repairs to it. Before she could offer her assistance or even a suggestion, she and Andrew had been left in the library with a scattering of maps and drawings … and the ghost of what they had once been to one another standing in the room like another living being.

  Finally, after several agonizing minutes of pretending to be absorbed in the drawings for the Helios Membrane, which he had fetched down from the Turkish room while everyone else was rabbiting off, she decided that the silence must be broken. Heaven forbid that he should think she had engineered everyone’s disappearance in order to be alone with him.

  “If I had not been in the room myself, I might have believed they had all rehearsed their departure.” She straightened and dared to look him in the face. “Do you not agree that it looks suspiciously like they planned to leave us alone?”

  The smile she loved broke briefly on his lips, then disappeared, as fitful as the sun on a March day. “It does, though I do not believe we weigh so heavily on their minds as to deserve such a complicated consideration. I am certain it was only coincidence.”

  Now he must truly think she had engineered it. If she was not to die of mortification, she must change the subject. “These plans are a work of art,” she managed, moving the inkwell so it sat exactly in one corner of the drawing on the library table. “How clever of you to adapt my original concept of the ribbing along the fuselage, and weave these small conductive channels into a fabric that is the next best thing to chain mail … though much lighter, of course.”

  He nodded, as though he was as eager not to speak of themselves as she. “It works out very well, since the threads themselves absorb the energy, channeling it through your ribbing to the automaton clusters containing the power cells, where it is directed to the engines. It is essentially a combination of your work with the energy cell and mine with the Helian batteries on the locomotive, turned inside out, if you will.”

  “Have you tested it with something smaller than a touring balloon?”

  He nodded, and when he smiled, it was the smile of someone presenting a gift, and hoping that it will be welcome. “Young Willie Dunsmuir told me about your firelamps, so when he came to visit me at the laboratory the other day, we constructed one with a smaller version of the Helios Membrane. And much to my astonishment, it worked.”

  “I hope you didn’t lose it over the rooftops, like the firelamps. I always hated having to sacrifice them for the greater good.”

  “He warned me about that, and so we knotted a long tether with which to bring it down again.”

  She smiled, too, at the thought. “I have not seen Willie in weeks. When I return to London, a visit to Hatley House must be the first thing in my diary.”

  “He misses you.”

  “Does he? But he must be very much occupied with school and travel. If the Dunsmuirs are in town, they will want Ian soon, I imagine.”

  “How is he, by the bye?”

  She lifted one shoulder in the French manner. “I am not a physician, but I believe he is better. Being at home, here at Hollys Park, seems to have made a difference. And having someone else to think about has made even more. This affair of the death medallion has brought out the protective side of his nature with a vengeance.”

  Andrew looked completely at sea—a sea with a kraken surfacing in it. “The what?”

  With relief at having another subject to discuss that did not involve either of them, she told him what Tigg had discovered, both about his father and his certainty about the man’s mission in England. “He does not say much,” she concluded, “but it must be dreadful for him. He is as focused on Alice’s safety as Ian is, but for different reasons. If Terwilliger is killed during an attempt on her life, how will he feel then? How could someone feel, so recently reunited with a parent—only to find out he has been coerced into being a villain?”

  “Slightly better than if Alice were killed, I should imagine,” Andrew remarked dryly. “But you are right, it is a dreadful situation, and one not easily solved. Is there any indication that this Terwilliger senior is anywhere in the neighborhood?”

  She shook her head. “Aside from one shot aimed at Gloria for reasons we cannot fathom by someone we cannot identify, it has been as quiet as the frost forming on the lawns. We suspect he remains in London. If it were not for the need to extract Gloria from Haybourne House, I should rather enjoy it here.”

  A pause. “No regrets?”

  “You sound like Alice. Of course not. If there is anything positive to be gleaned from her situation, it is that Ian may finally see that she is the woman for him.”

  “Do not tell me you are still playing matchmaker.”

  “Not I.” At last she was able to smile a little. “But I cannot speak for Jake and Tigg.”

  “Do you really think they will suit one another? I cannot
imagine two people more different.”

  “On the outside, perhaps. But during his … illness … she has become more motherly, and he has become less arrogant and commanding. Somehow it has brought them closer to the middle, where they can see one another’s good qualities without the trappings of family and rank—or the lack thereof—getting in the way.”

  He gazed at her over the drawings. “You have become very wise in the ways of your friends, I see.”

  “I wish I were as wise about myself,” came out of her mouth before the thought had even formed in her mind. She turned away, lest he should see her blush and think—oh, never mind what he might think. He was perfectly free to think whatever he wanted. She must bring the discussion back to a more practical subject.

  “So if we are to perform a rescue from the air, we must come up with a way to get Gloria up to the roof. Do you have any thoughts in that direction?”

  He was silent as she walked to the fire, holding out her hands to the flame, though the room was not cold. At last he said, “We could send a message. Dress it up as a telegram for her.”

  “We cannot guarantee someone would not open it before giving it to her. Or that they would not simply throw it into the fire. Besides, we have already sent a letter with an encoded message that she should be ready for a rescue late tonight.”

  “Burglary is always an option.”

  “The risk of discovery is too great. Particularly with firearms propped next to every window.”

  “You could always slide down a rope from the balloon, open a window, and fetch her out.” From the smile in his voice, it was clear he meant it as a joke.

  She turned slowly from the fire. “I could,” she said slowly.

  “Claire, you must not be so literal. Even if I were serious, I would not put you in such a dangerous position.”

  “I have been in dangerous positions before.”

  “If anyone is aware of that, it is I, believe me.”

  “But consider, Andrew. Ropes and windows aside, we have no idea where Gloria’s room is. We do know that at least one lady is staying there, and servants come and go. For the fifteen minutes it would take to locate Gloria and spirit her up to the roof, who better than I to play the part of imperious lady and frighten off anyone asking questions?”

  “Impossible. They would see through you in a moment.”

  “Andrew, you are clearly not familiar with the inhabitants of country houses. There is a very good chance that the staff is not familiar with all the guests, having been brought in from elsewhere to handle a large party. I do not know who this other lady is, but I could certainly impersonate a member of the party for the brief moments I would need.”

  “No, there must be a more practical way. We must wait for Ian and Alice to return and talk it over with them.”

  “We have been doing nothing but talking since yesterday, and have come up with nothing.”

  “But now I am here, which might spark a different train of thought.”

  “There is none. My logic is sound, and you know it.” She faced him, hands on hips. “Who better to make the attempt than I?”

  Something seemed to break in his eyes. “Who better? And here we are again, Claire, exactly where we were in Munich, with you about to dash off to save someone, and I left behind to worry about you!”

  His vehemence took her aback, until with a rushing of the blood in her veins, her temper flared. “That is the crux of the matter, is it not? You worry. And you worry because you do not trust me to succeed!”

  “I have never known you to do anything but succeed! The crux of the matter is that you do not appreciate the feelings of those who love you!”

  In the sudden silence, the last two words rang as though a trumpet had sounded in the room.

  Andrew lifted his chin. “Yes, love you. I am not ashamed of my feelings, though you have spurned them.”

  “I haven’t—I—”

  To her utter horror, the strengthening elixir of anger drained out of her as fast as it had come, and her lips trembled. Tears welled up in her eyes—tears, when she thought she had cried them all out night after night in the comforting embrace of her pillow and the dark. Oh, how could her physical being betray her in this way—now, of all times?

  “I haven’t spurned them,” she managed with a gasp. “You walked away.”

  “Because if I had not, I should have had my heart broken again and again instead of only once. Every time you left to go and save someone, it would have broken. Every time you put someone else before me—before us—no matter how worthy, it would have broken. How can any man gaze upon such a future and not quail before it?”

  He had said these things in Munich, but now it was as though a different woman was hearing them. How could she not have realized—how could she have been so blind to his point of view? Was it because of Tigg, who had had his father restored to him in body and then been brutally torn away in spirit? Was it because of Alice, who had borne up under the threat of death with a toss of her unruly mane and a sure finger on the ever-present pistol at her side—knowing that her chance for love might be snatched from her at any moment?

  Or was it because in these last weeks, she, Claire, had drunk the bitter gall of separation from the one man who completed her, who made her better than she was because of his love?

  He had walked away, yes. Hurt had driven him from her. But she had inflicted it and then allowed it to do so. She, who could have stopped him, who could have listened, had let him go and thereby wounded herself beyond hope of healing.

  Or … almost beyond hope.

  For the trumpet call still rang in her ears—calling her to an adventure even greater than those she had experienced already. She had not been truly prepared for it when they had become engaged, or even as recently as Munich. But his absence from her life had created such a hollow within that she could not bear to live with it any longer.

  She unfasted the top two pearl buttons of her lacy blouse, and Andrew’s eyes widened in shock at her impropriety. “Claire!”

  Slowly, she pulled up the fine gold chain upon which hung her engagement ring with its three pearls. She unfastened the clasp and slid the ring into her palm, then refastened the chain around her neck and did up the buttons over it.

  The ruddy color drained from Andrew’s face, and he set his jaw. “There is no need to return the ring, Claire. You may keep it in remembrance of happier times.”

  “I do not wish to return it,” she said softly. “I would like you to restore it to its rightful place upon my finger.”

  His gaze met hers and locked. “If I do, it does not mean that you and I shall never be parted. It will mean that if we must part, we do so in faith and trust.”

  “It could also mean that we will not part at all—that we will do what must be done together.”

  “It could,” he allowed. “For I must tell you that parting holds no charms for me. The last weeks have held more misery than I ever believed possible.”

  “They have for me as well. I do not want to live through such misery ever again, Andrew. I want to live with you, as your wife.”

  He took a step forward, and so did she. They met in the middle of the rug before the fire, and he took the ring from her palm.

  “For as long as we both shall live,” he said tenderly, and slid it onto the fourth finger of her left hand.

  She went into his arms, and it was like coming home after a very long time away.

  19

  The air held the kind of cold silence that meant snow was on the way, if Alice knew anything about weather, and so she convinced Ian to put the top up on the landau despite his preference for the wind in his face. “You’re on the ground now,” she grumbled as she pushed the acceleration bar out as far as the potted road would allow.

  “I miss the air,” he said simply. “Don’t you?”

  “Sure, but it’s not going anywhere. It will be there when Swan and Jake and I are ready for it.” She swerved to miss a pothole, a
nd Ian gripped the leather seat to steady himself.

  “And when will that be?” he asked.

  She slanted a sidelong look at him, then focused her attention on piloting Claire’s pride and joy. “When we get the refit done, I suppose. I’m quite prepared to pay a moorage fee for your airfield, if that’s what you’re wondering. I don’t take something for nothing.”

  “Certainly not. You are my guests for as long as you care to moor there. Look.” He pointed. “There is Haybourne House—or its wall, at least. I just glimpsed the plaque upon the gate.”

  She didn’t dare slow down, in case there were watchful eyes in the woods, but that didn’t stop either of them from getting a good gander at the lie of the land. Not that there was much to see—the wall had to be six or eight feet tall, and made of old stone covered in lichen and moss. But it didn’t encircle the entire estate, it only seemed to enclose the forest—what the nobs called a park.

  “Is it meant to keep people out of the woods?” she wondered aloud. “Look, you can just see the house through those trees.”

  “It seems rather that they are trying to keep the deer in,” Ian said, looking while trying to make it appear as though he was not.

  A shadow passed over them, and out of habit, Alice looked up. She gasped, and they practically ran up on the bank until she remembered where the braking lever was and hauled on it.

  “Great Caesar’s ghost, Alice, are you trying to kill us? It’s only an airship.”

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I thought it was—something else.”

  He waited until they were bowling along again at their previous pace before he asked, “It is heartening to think that this time it is not I ducking in fear and gibbering upon the floor boards. What did you imagine it was?”

  “I don’t know—so close to the ground—I thought it might be—”

  Realization dawned in his eyes. “You thought it might be the assassin? Terwilliger?”

  Miserably, she nodded. “I don’t like to think about it, but sometimes—I remember the three in Munich, and how they must have come—”