Airborne - The Hanover Restoration

by Blair Bancroft

  “She will do better without you,” I returned, well aware I was committing several dreadful social solecisms, but the last thing a terrified Lexa needed was her nasty mentor hanging over her every moment of the flight.

  “Rochefort will never allow—”

  “Would you care to place a wager?” I inquired, even as I wondered at the temerity of a jumped-up baroness taunting an aristocrat of Lady Carlyon’s rank. If we could have harnessed the tension in the room at that moment, we might have flown to the moon.

  “Carlyon will put you in your place, you middle-class termagant!”

  “Not as long as Lexa is my friend.”

  She gabbled. In truth, the look on Lady Carlyon’s face was almost comical. As if she’d swallowed her tongue. I think, until then, she had thought me ignorant of the facts.

  “Ladies.” I inclined my head, then swept out, Phoebe and Lexa trailing in my wake.

  “Oo-oo,” Phoebe cried the moment we reached the top of the staircase, “that was stunning, Minta. Positively stunning. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “Neither did I,” I admitted, “but I’m tired of seeing Lexa treated like a nobody.”

  “I wish I had half your courage,” Lexa said as we took refuge in the sitting room that Julian and I shared.

  It was a pleasant room, with windows that caught the eastern morning light and avoided the heat of the afternoon sun. Done up in beige and brown, with accents of light and dark peach, it offered comfort and ambiance suitable for both sexes. So far, I’d spent little time here, but I liked to dream of better days when Julian and I might share a few moments, reading, writing, lazing before a winter fire . . .

  Enough! I was here with Phoebe and Lexa, and we had plans to make.

  “Lexa,” I said as gently as I could when we curled up on settees that faced each other, “you are going to have to do it, you know. Flying seems to be necessary to the restoration of the monarchy—a beau geste, if you will. But Phoebe and I will stand by you every inch of the way.”

  Lexa had been sitting, eyes fixed on the clasped hands in her lap. Now she raised her gaze to mine. “It’s not . . . I don’t think it’s the airship,” she confessed. “It’s what it means. What comes next.”

  Of course it was. Silly me. If I had half the brains I liked to think I had, I would have realized that long since.

  What to say? Words failed me, for the truth was so very daunting. And though I knew the plan in general now, I didn’t know all the many details, so how could I find the right words to reassure her? I could scarcely tell her nothing would go wrong, when it seemed the most hare-brained scheme since Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament.

  “It’s like a chess match,” I said at last. “Each piece plays a role, whether pawn or queen. And each must do his or her part for the whole to succeed.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs,” Phoebe declared.

  “No more than a military campaign,” I returned.

  “At which Wellington excels,” Lexa pointed out..

  “And our far-flung elements are less disciplined than an army,” I conceded , “with no way to keep a firm hand on all the reins.” Surely I hadn’t said that. No matter how true, this was something Lexa didn’t need to hear.

  “They tell me nothing,” she said sadly. “Of the grand plan, nothing but silence.” She regarded me with burgeoning hope, as if I, a few months her junior, had become the Oracle.

  “Rochefort is exceedingly cautious,” I admitted. “Like yourself, I know only the vague outline. But I do know you must adapt to flying, Lexa. The airship seems to be a pivotal part of the plan.” Reluctantly, she nodded. “And you also need to remember that from now on, no one orders you about.”

  “What about Lord Rochefort?” Phoebe inserted.

  “I stand corrected. When the moment comes, Lexa, you will obey Rochefort’s every command. After that . . .” I smiled. “After that, everything changes. The country is yours.”

  Lexa steepled her hands before her face. The moments ticked by. Then her fair head lifted, her blue eyes flashed. “You are right,” said Alexandrina Victoria, rightful queen of Britain, Ireland, Australia, and the Empire’s growing number of colonies and protectorates. “After that, everything changes.” Her lips curled in a wry smile. “Though I am far from certain whether than means Buckingham and Windsor or the chopping block at the Tower.”

  Our thin sprigged muslin gowns did nothing to disguise the goosebumps on three pairs of arms.

  That night, after a satisfying hour thinking of nothing but each other, I told Julian about my confrontation with Lady Carlyon and Lexa’s determination to go through with the plot, no matter how terrified she was.

  “Ah, I wish I might have heard you set the Carlyon in her place.”

  “I was overly bold.”

  “No. You were defending the Princess Royal, soon to be queen. Lady Carlyon, as well as Victoria’s mother, forgets she is of age. They no longer have a hold on her.”

  “Victoria?”

  “The name she has chosen. Perhaps because her mother prefers Alexandrina.”

  “Queen Victoria,” I mused. “It has a fine ring to it.”

  “Indeed, but continue to call her Lexa. She is not Victoria until her people proclaim her so.”

  “And the very walls have ears.”

  “Never forget it.”

  “Julian?”

  “Um?”

  “What did you do with the man who was taking pictures?”

  “He is secured in the wine cellar, where hopefully he’ll crack a bottle or ten and not mind the wait until are plans are fulfilled.”

  “You’re going to keep him there?”

  “Would you suggest I set him before a firing squad? I cannot let him go, Minta. And, besides, he’s being particularly stubborn about who hired him. It is most likely one of our aeronautical rivals on the continent, though it’s possible the government may have sent him. After all, Aurora’s existence is no longer a secret.”

  “How long until—”

  “Sh-sh,” he breathed. “Not a word.” Then, softening a little, Julian put his lips to my ear and whispered. “Not long.”

  Perhaps this moment of intimacy was the right time to bring up another matter. I snuggled into his side. “Julian, I know your thoughts are elsewhere, “but I miss having workspace of my own, a place to further the plans for my own flying machine. Nothing compared to yours, of course, but—”

  Julian groaned and I cringed. He must think me perfectly horrid to bring up my personal desires in the midst of a revolution. “I planned it for a wedding surprise,” he said rather obscurely. “We were on our way there when we were shot. And since then . . . my apologies, Minta. You would think it was I who was shot in the head.”

  Though I had no idea what he was talking about, I leaped to counter his apology. “Who can blame you of thinking of nothing but your airship?” I was, after all, accustomed to men who treasured their machines above all else.

  Rochefort made a gurgling sound. “My airship? My wife is shot, and you think I was worried about my airship?”

  Oh. Warmth flooded through me. “Julian?”

  “Um-m?” He traced a finger along the rim of my ear and I almost forgot my question.

  “You said something about a wedding surprise?”

  “First thing in the morning,” he promised. And promptly fell asleep, leaving me to wonder what was first thing in the morning.

  I liked being married, truly I did. But there were times . . .

  Chapter 15

  The next morning, well before our guests had ventured from their rooms, Julian and I made the trek from one side of the Abbey’s considerable length to the other. As the Mono stopped outside the door to his workshop, I recalled my wonder, and my misgivings, the first time I had come this way. Not quite three weeks past, yet it seemed a lifetime. Araminta Galsworthy, virgin, expecting the conventional, restrictive life of an English gentlewoman, dropped instead into a seething cauldron of
conspiracy. Araminta Galsworthy—now a wife, an aeronaut, and up to her neck in treason.

  Julian helped me off the Mono and escorted me into the workshop, where Matt waved and flashed a smile before returning to whatever he was working on. Two other men were bent over a silent machine on the far side of the room, presumably analyzing why it was lifeless. We continued past the worktable that held the welding mask and tools, past the machine that ran the lift. Up three steps and . . .

  “Voilà! Minta’s workshop.” Julian waved his hand, encompassing a space some twenty by thirty feet.

  Paused on the threshold, I heaved a sigh of pure joy. Mine, all mine. A worktable, at least fifteen feet long claimed the center of room, More worktables hugged the walls on two sides, with a bank of cupboards on the third. Above the worktables, thin panels of wood, inset with rows of hooks, held every tool any inventor could possibly need. And along the fourth wall, the one with the door, was my very own trunk, the one I had asked Drummond to put in storage. The trunk that held my drawings, my scale models, my leather apron with multiple pockets, and my personal set of tools. All I had left of those halcyon days in London with Papa and his protégés.

  Best of all, taking up one corner of the workshop was my pride and joy, the white wicker swing that would hang beneath the balloon of my personal flying machine. I dashed across the room to run my hands over its barrel-shaped back and sides, as if not quite believing it was here. I had planned to send for it later, when I hoped my guardian would grant permission.

  How very different reality from the childish worries of the girl on the train.

  “I hope it will do,” Julian said. “You may, of course, have space in the outside workshop as you need it.”

  “Why? ” I asked around emotions threatening to close my throat. “Why are you being so good to me?”

  Julian’s dark eyes clouded for a moment, as if the question hurt him. “I realize our marriage has come as a shock, Minta, but I have had six years to plan for a wife. For you as my wife. And it is important to me that you be happy.”

  I was the veriest beast. I’d shared a bed with this man and somehow I was still giving the impression I was indifferent to him.

  Then mind your tongue, my inner voice snapped.

  Mend matters quickly, my common sense urged.

  “You mistake me,” I said. “It’s just that most husbands would be horrified by my interest in building things, yet you encourage it. That is the reason for my question.”

  “I am not ‘most men.’”

  He certainly wasn’t. “You really don’t mind if I don a leather apron and—”

  “I’ll even show you how to use the welding pipe.”

  My face crumpled, the tears flowed. And the nicest part was, Julian didn’t seem to mind me turning into a watering pot. He took me in his arms, kissed away my tears, and I knew that even if our fate were death, I would go to the hangman knowing I was loved.

  “You’ve missed something,” Julian whispered into my ear.

  Quickly, I scanned the room, finding only one item not readily identifiable. A mound of black velvet, perhaps eighteen-inches-square, rested on the central worktable. I’d been so thrilled to be reunited with my flying swing that I hadn’t even noticed it.

  “Aren’t you going to look?” With a soft smile, Julian urged me forward.

  Slowly, very slowly, because I wanted to prolong the moment, suspecting this might be the solution to the problem that had kept my swing earthbound, I moved toward the object on the table. I touched the cloth, savored its soft richness, then carefully pulled it off, dropping it in a heap on the table.

  One good look at the engine of my dreams, and after that I had to view it through a sheen of tears. I had tried so hard, model after model, each one smaller than the last, but with each miniaturization the fueling became more difficult. By the time Papa’s long illness required my complete attention, my work had already trailed to a frustrated halt. And now . . . Julian was offering resurrection. A perfect lightweight engine I never doubted would work. The ultimate wedding gift for Araminta Galsworthy.

  “Clockwork,” he said. “And, yes, it has a handle so it can be wound while moving. There’s still work to do—we have to devise a way to attach it to your swing, balance the weight—”

  I buried myself in his chest, managing to tell him, between sobs, “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!”

  I felt his rumble of pleasure through all our layers of clothing. Glowing, I raised my lips to his.

  “M’lord! M’lord!”

  Not again! I stifled a moan as Julian looked over my shoulder at the man who had just burst into the room.

  “The bloke with the picture machine. He’s dead!” Julian turned me around, holding me tight against his chest. “Went to take him breakfast, and there he was, dead as a doornail. Bloody great butcher knife sticking out of his back.”

  “My apologies, Minta,” Julian said. “Kindly keep this from our guests.” And he was gone, loping off behind the guard.

  Stabbed to death in a locked wine cellar? Obviously, we had a traitor in our midst. Someone with access to keys, not just household keys but the special ones that were usually the sole province of the butler. Like the wine cellar. Three names leaped immediately to mind—Drummond, Mr. Soames, and Mrs. E. Or someone who could walk through walls.

  Or perhaps it was as simple as someone who knew where the key rings spent the night. For even in the midst of a monarchist conspiracy, I doubted Julian had considered the possibility of disloyalty within the household.

  The why of it, I thought as I sank down onto one my workshop’s wooden chairs, was more clear. Whoever hired the daguerreotypist did not want to be identified. Whether airship rivals, the government, or revolutionaries with a different monarch in mind, they could not afford to be identified. Public opinion still mattered in Britain, and spying was frowned upon.

  As was murder.

  I wanted to blame one of the rival factions in Germany or France—anything to avoid laying murder at the feet of an Englishman. But governments could be ruthless; nor was it beyond imagination that one of the sons of George III had set a spy among us.

  Were we no longer safe in our beds? It seemed our enemies were legion, rearing their monstrous heads in every direction I looked.

  Merde! (Of all the profanities overheard in Papa’s workshops, this one, nicely disguised in French, was the worst I allowed myself.)

  I sulked for a bit, feeling horribly young and impotent, before the family never-say-die spirit revived sufficiently to bounce me to my feet, my boots kicking up a spurt of dust from the hard-packed dirt floor.

  I waved to Matt on my way through the workshop, settled on the Mono with the ease of experience, and pressed 1. Time to begin my day as chatelaine of Stonegrave Abbey.

  Oddly enough, our “female flight” over Hertfordshire was strangely anticlimactic. Except for Lexa looking a bit like Ann Boleyn on the way to the chopping block—at least I thought that’s the way Henry VIII’s second wife must have looked—all went well. I sat next to Lexa in one of a pair of well-padded seats and showed her how to belt herself in. Phoebe sat across the aisle from us, her nose to her very own porthole. Lady Thistlewaite occupied the row behind Phoebe, her skirts spread wide. I grumbled a bit as Matt slipped into the seat next to Julian. Though I was pleased to accept the duty of helping Lexa through this ordeal, looking out the small round porthole to her left was not at all the same as the view through the broad window up front. Nor was sitting next to Lexa, as much as I liked her, the same as sitting next to Julian.

  A sad case, hissed my inner voice.

  Do be quiet!

  He’s using you. You’re naught but another one of his tools.

  I jerked my seat belt so hard, the whalebones in my corset stabbed me. I gasped.

  “Minta?” He’d heard me! And why shouldn’t he when I was sitting no less three feet behind his captain’s chair?

  “’Tis nothing,” I repli
ed hastily. “I nicked a fingernail on the buckle.”

  Julian flashed me a highly personal grin before getting up and examining each lady’s seat belt. Satisfied, he returned to his pilot’s chair and checked the instruments in front of him. “Ready, ladies?” he called. A rhetorical question. Replies died on our lips as the airship rose. I squeezed Lexa’s hand and urged her to look out. I checked the older ladies to find my mama-in-law peering out the porthole, even as her fingers clutched her reticule so tightly her knuckles were white.

  A squeal from Phoebe brought my head around, only to discover it was a squeal of pure glee. “I’m flying,” she cried. “I love it. I could stay up here all day.”

  “It’s lovely,” said a soft voice, as we soared over the Abbey’s outer wall and looked down on the farms and fields below. I stared at Lexa, who, most amazingly, was smiling. “I like your machine, Lord Rochefort,” she called. “It will do very well.”

  Julian turned, inclined his head. “Thank you, Miss Smythe. I promise it will serve you well.”

  We spent an hour aloft, but the battle was won in those first few minutes. Now Julian’s plans could go forward. Except, that is, for the traitor and a murderer in our midst. Julian had set guards outside Lexa’s door, but we were now living under siege, tension mounting by the moment. Whatever the monarchists’ plans, they needed to happen soon. I was quite certain rumors of the plot had gotten out, even before the airship’s first flight. Even Julian now admitted the bullet that hit me might have been intended for Lexa, whose size and coloring I so closely resembled.

  With these thoughts pounding through my head, I missed a good deal of the last twenty minutes of the flight. Phoebe’s excited chatter bounced off my occupied brain as we walked back toward the house, surrounded by a ring of armed guards. I could hardly wait to get to the peace and quiet of my bedchamber.

  With the excuse of changing my clothes for luncheon, I lingered in my room, snuggling into one of the comfortable chairs before the marble fireplace while I attempted to sort it all out. The fire and the attempt to get into the workshop housing Aurora were most likely the work of a rival airship group. The shot had to have come from someone who knew about the monarchist plot and was determined to end it before it began, though whether by killing the rightful queen or by killing Julian, the brains behind her descent from the heavens into the heart of London, remained a mystery. The ring of armed guards which swiftly followed had made us feel secure. Falsely so, for a traitor lived among us.