Houses for the hens.
Ah. He was in the presence of the famous Gwynn Place hens, outside enjoying the day in all their golden splendor, and there, digging joyfully in the grass, were two small red specimens he recognized. “Holly? Ivy? Where is your mistress, ladies?”
Hearing their names and recognizing him as someone who might have cracked corn about his person, they raced across the grass to dance about his feet, looking up in expectation. He knelt to stroke their feathers. “Sorry, girls, I forgot to stock up. Have you seen Claire hereabouts?”
Holly and Ivy did not reply except to express their disappointment in his unreliability, but a voice came across the grass instead.
“If you’re looking for the young lady, she was here.” A man stepped out from between two of the houses, his hair shining white in the sun, his keen eyes the color of strong tea, wrinkles fanning out from their corners as though he laughed often and made a habit of looking to the horizon.
“But she is not now?”
“No. But she’ll be back. I believe she went to that airship of hers that’s moored in our paddock.”
“Ah. Checking for pigeons, most likely. Do I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Polgarth?”
“Aye, you do.”
“I am Andrew Malvern. I accompanied Claire and the Mop—and her wards down to Cornwall. They were to stay with their grandparents in Penzance, so we left the girls and their cousin in their care and came up here yesterday.”
Mr. Polgarth shook his hand with a strength and vigor that belied the white hair and wrinkles. “And did our Mopsies find their grandparents well?”
Andrew dropped the man’s hand in surprise, and Polgarth smiled. “Young Maggie has been corresponding with me off and on since she first came down here as a little ’un. She’s told me what you call her and her cousin. She has quite an interest in the Gwynn Place hens.”
“So I’ve heard,” Andrew agreed. “I believe she plans to study genetics in the future, thanks to your conversations with her during their summer holidays here.”
“Does she, now?” Polgarth pushed his tweed cap back with a finger as satisfaction wreathed his face. “That makes me happy. My feathered ladies have much to teach us.”
“In answer to your question, though … yes, they found their grandparents well, though I am afraid a period of adjustment might be necessary when it comes to personalities and customs.”
“The Seacombes are set in their ways, are they?”
“You could say so.”
“Did they treat our girls well?”
Andrew hesitated a moment too long.
“I see you’re a gentleman, unwilling to criticize your acquaintance to a stranger. My grandson Michael has told me of the goings-on in that house, and why he lost his position at the Seacombe Steamship Company. Shameful business.”
“I quite agree,” was all that Andrew would allow himself to say.
“I wish they had come here instead.”
“I do, too, but Claire believes them old enough to make their own decisions. And to be fair, it is right that the girls acquaint themselves with their grandparents—the Seacombes are their only family now.”
The moment the words were out of his mouth, Andrew realized he had said the wrong thing.
“That is not true, sir.” Polgarth’s face darkened and Andrew remembered the strength of that grip.
Andrew was not the kind of man who would take a step back in retreat or take one forward in challenge. Instead, he sensed a puzzle and committed himself to ferreting out the truth. “I’m dreadfully sorry. I meant no offense. I am not familiar enough with the girls’ parentage to make that kind of pronouncement. I see that you have information that I do not.”
“I do, sir. Maggie is my granddaughter, too. My own son Kevern’s child. Everyone hereabouts knows it—except them Seacombes, who will deny it to their last breath. They’d rather throw mud upon his good name and call him traitor than admit their girl could fall in love with a poultryman’s son.”
Andrew’s knowledge of the situation at Seacombe House underwent a rapid reassessment. Claire had told him nothing of this—but then, she was protective of the girls and the less said on some subjects, the better. “Then Mr. Michael Polgarth—how does he fit into this?”
“He is Maggie’s cousin. My son Myghal’s boy, and a more honest, hard-working young man you won’t find. But that don’t hold water with Seacombe. After turning him out of the house, he found out he was telling our Maggie about her other family and gave him the sack as well.”
“So he did not know the young man was in his employ—it must be a larger concern than I thought. Well, I understand the situation now, where I did not before,” Andrew said slowly. “Where is young Mr. Polgarth?”
“He’s hereabouts.” Polgarth looked around the enclosed garden, as though Michael might step out of one of the hen houses at any moment. “Spending a few days with his family to get his feet back under him. But tell me this, sir—will the young maids come here after their visit in Penzance is concluded?”
In Polgarth’s eyes Andrew could see so much longing that it almost hurt to look. It was with a sense of relief that he was able to say, “Yes, I believe so. We are all flying back to London together in Athena—that ship out in your paddock.”
“I am glad,” Polgarth said on a long breath. “It will be the first Maggie and I will have seen one another since we learned of our connection. I am anxious to know her as my own flesh and blood, not merely the visiting wards of my young lady.” His keen eyes flashed as his gaze met Andrew’s. “You’re the second young man who has come down here with Lady Claire. She’s told me much more of you than she ever did of the other one. I understand you’re good friends as well as being her employer at one time.”
Andrew heard the question under the polite observation. “We are good friends. But with Claire, it’s dashed hard to get her attention long enough to become anything more.”
Polgarth regarded him for a few seconds, as if making up his mind. “You won’t think I’m stepping out of my place if I say a thing or two?”
“I wish you would.” The chance for honesty felt like a cup of fresh water to Andrew’s spirits. “When I applied to Sir Richard for her hand, he referred me to her mother. Lady Flora essentially wished me luck, by which I inferred I was on my own. To be quite honest, Mr. Polgarth, I never would have suspected proposing to a woman would be this difficult.”
Polgarth smiled, his eyes warming with humor. “Is it so difficult to tell a woman you love her?”
“I haven’t had much experience along that line, but one would think not. However, Claire is noticeably unlike any other woman I have ever met.”
“She is,” Polgarth agreed. “But then, perhaps you’re unlike any man she has ever met.”
“She turned down a baronet’s offer a few weeks ago—a fine man, and an excellent match. I hope her mother never hears of it.”
“And this doesn’t give you hope?”
“It might, if I didn’t know about her ambition and her prospects, both of which fly as high as the airships she loves.”
“They are not all she loves,” Polgarth pointed out. “And when my young lady loves, she’s all in—no holding back.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“You strike me as the same, if you’ll pardon my saying so. Just tell her, Mr. Malvern. She has not had so much love in her life that she’ll turn it down out of hand. She’ll see it for the gift that it is—even if she has a difficult time believing the gift is for her.”
And with a feeling rather like an explosion in his heart, Andrew realized why Claire held the poultryman in such high esteem.
But before he could speak further, Polgarth pointed toward the gate in the wall. “Speaking of my young lady, here she comes.”
But Claire was not strolling back from the paddock, reading her mail and not looking where she was going. Instead, she came flying through the half-gate, slamming it shut and scattering h
ens right and left as she dashed across the lawn.
A piece of paper fluttered from her fingers, and Andrew’s heart constricted in sudden fear.
24
The Baie des Sirenes might as well have been named the Baie des Baleines, so deep it was. In any case, nothing resembled a sounding whale more than these undersea dirigibles, and Maggie could see why sailing- and steamships went elsewhere for their moorage. Cliffs plunged straight into the sea, much as they did across the Channel in Cornwall, but in a notch in the landscape, the pretty town of Baie des Sirenes tumbled from a church at the top to a promenade and long stone quays, where fishing boats were moored on lengthy lines to accommodate the tide.
They had not docked at the stone piers like normal vessels—oh, no. For deep under the water were undersea caverns, where the navires could come and go practically undetected by anyone watching from the town or up on the bluffs, where a lighthouse warned of the rocks.
Neptune’s Maid surfaced inside one of the caverns that held two other navires, and her passengers disembarked on a stone jetty within that led to passages up to the surface, worn smooth by feet and wheels.
Claude was still the next thing to unconscious, and had been removed with his arms flung over the shoulders of two bathynauts, his feet dragging and stumbling as his mind struggled to shake off the haze of drink and resume its functioning once again.
Maggie needed to find a way to stifle him until she had the opportunity to apprise him of her deception. It would be just like him to greet her by her real name and ask a lot of silly questions, which would put them both at risk—herself more than he. For what value did Maggie No-last-name have to these smugglers? None. They’d probably drown her in a weighted sack like a kitten, and with the depth of these waters, no one would ever know.
Her search of the captain’s cabin had been as thorough as it was tidy. She had found several sketches of the navire called Neptune’s Fury, which appeared to be a much bigger version of the Maid, with a hold that might just be able to contain a whale, if such a thing were necessary. She could only imagine how many crates of Texican cigarillos had voyaged under the Atlantic inside it—and how much money must be possible in the smuggling trade. That rascal Meriwether-Astor was getting his revenge on Her Majesty for her temerity in shutting down his shipping lines, and no mistake.
But why bring the French into it? Or rather, why allow the French to bring him into it, which was what it had sounded like. Maggie could find nothing in desk or bookcase to tell her the answer, except a long and rather dull treatise on the lineage of the current Bourbon and all the countries he was supposed to be king of if his ancestors hadn’t had their heads chopped off in the previous century.
They emerged from a carved arch in the rock of the cliff that reminded Maggie strongly of the Seacombe sawan, except it was quite a lot larger, and were decanted onto the broad stone quay outside. Their procession along the promenade and into the town would have been rather like the Seacombes’ procession through Penzance to Grandfather’s offices, if it hadn’t been for poor Claude. The burliest of the bathynauts finally slung him over his shoulder and carried him along to the stone inn and tavern that presided over the landward end of the quay.
They deposited him in a comfortable chair in a parlor with a crackling fire in the hearth. Maggie held out her hands to the blaze as Jean-Luc bowed. “You will be comfortable here while a room is prepared for you, Mademoiselle Meriwether-Astor.”
“And what of that poor boy?” She nodded over her shoulder.
“We will look after him until his grandparents agree to work with your father.”
“To what do they object?” Maggie asked. “I can hardly imagine Papa in partnership with such people at all. They seem rather … small.”
“It is not they but the land they control that interests him. Or should I say the landing—for the beach that runs along their so many acres is perfect for the coming ashore of Fury’s cargo.”
“Ah, I see,” she said, though she did not. “It must be enormous.”
“It is indeed,” Jean-Luc said in delight. “Have you seen it?”
“No, not yet.”
“Then you must permit me to give you a tour while we await the arrival of your esteemed father. My brother had a pigeon sent the moment we surfaced.”
How long did it take to fly from Cornouaille to Paris? Not long—perhaps an hour or two? “I shall be so glad to see him. My stay at Seacombe House was only to be a few days, but it seemed like weeks.”
“Sadly, we do not anticipate his arrival until sunset. The crossing of the Atlantic is no small matter.”
Gerald Meriwether-Astor was coming from the Americas, not Paris? On the one hand, whatever they were planning had to be more than a mere smuggling job. On the other, she had a little time to figure out how to get herself and Claude out of this mess.
Maggie didn’t give two figs about Texican cigarillos. But her cousin must not be used as leverage against two old people who were probably quite justified in not letting this lot use their beach to illegally import whatever it was. Once she got them away from here, they’d make a brief stop at the cemetery and prove once and for all that it was Michael Polgarth’s story that held the truth, and not the horrid tale that the Seacombes believed…. Well, maybe Claude had resources here in France that she didn’t know about. She’d welcome even that snobby Arabella de Courcy if the girl came with an airship.
The moment Jean-Luc bowed himself out of the room, Maggie leaped upon Claude and shook him the way a terrier shakes a mole. “Claude! Claude, wake up!”
“Mmph? G’way. ’Smiddle of the night.”
“Claude, it’s Maggie. We’re in desperate trouble and you have to wake up!”
One eye slitted open, then closed again as the light of dawn on the sea outside pierced it painfully. “Maggie? D’you have the key?”
“What key? Honestly, Claude, you have to sit up and listen.” She cast around the room, spotted a pitcher and ewer on a side table, and tossed a cupful of the contents in his face.
“Bless me!” He sat up, scrubbing his face with his sleeve. “What’d you do that for?” Then he got a bleary look around. “Didn’t I leave the tavern?” With a groan, he fell back. “Be a love and ask the maid for a good strong coffee, would you?”
“There isn’t a maid, there’s only me. You have to listen. We’re in France, Claude. You’ve been kidnapped.”
He snickered. “Bollocks.”
A second cupful of water in the face got his full attention. “Steady on, old girl. No need for violence.” His right sleeve being soaked, he wiped his face with the left.
“There is need. You have to sober up and listen. We are in captivity. Our grandparents have refused to let a lot of French and Colonial smugglers land cargo on their beach, so they have kidnapped you in order to force our grandparents to do it.”
He goggled at her. “The devil you say. You, too?”
“No, they think I’m someone else. Their boss’s daughter, whose name is Gloria Meriwether-Astor—and don’t you dare forget it. My life depends on it.”
“Gloria who?”
“Never mind. Just Gloria. We’re supposed to be friends. Can you remember that?”
“Righto. Gloria.” He squinted at her, the light still obviously paining him. “France, really?”
She filled the cup a third time and ignored the way he flinched as she handed it to him properly this time. He drank it down as she said, “Yes, really. A place directly across the Channel from Penzance, called Baie des Sirenes.”
“Never heard of it.”
The door opened to admit a young girl bearing a tray with a coffee pot, cups, and a plate of croissants.
“It is France,” Claude said on a sigh of happiness, and heaved himself out of the chair.
“Can I get you anything else, m—” The girl stopped, and the tray tilted at an alarming angle.
“Watch out!” Maggie dove for it and stopped the coffee pot from taking a hea
der onto the carpet just in time. The girl did not move, only stared at her, so Maggie gently removed the tray from her hands and put it on the table next to the half-empty ewer. “Are you quite all right?”
“Do I know you?” the girl asked in the accented French of Cornouaille.
Just in time, Maggie remembered who she was supposed to be. Would Gloria have gone for the tray, or just let it fall and demanded that the maid clean it up? She would never know.
“I think not,” she drawled. “I’ve never been here before—and if I had, it’s unlikely we would have met socially.”
“I say,” Claude said to the maid between gulps of coffee. “Jolly kind of you. Café au lait is excellent.”
The girl retreated, never taking her gaze from Maggie’s face. “Pardon, mademoiselle,” she said. “I must have made a mistake.”
When the door closed behind her, Maggie murmured, “That was odd. I hope to goodness Gloria hasn’t been here before, or that girl will be haring off to tell the powers that be that I am an impostor.”
“Nice bit of acting, step-cousin mine,” Claude said, having moved on to the croissants. “Like watching a different person.”
He offered her a pastry and she took it. “I am a different person. What’s my name?”
“Gloria. In excelsis deo.”
“And I’m not your cousin, step or otherwise.”
Jean-Luc was as good as his word. He returned for them in the company of the two bathynauts who had assisted Claude off the ship, both visibly relieved that their burden had recovered his wits and they would not be required to repeat the performance.
“I’ve received permission to show you about,” he told Maggie, ushering them out the door of the inn and into the sunshine. “Monsieur Seacombe will not be locked in a room in the inn, as I had been led to believe, but he will be in the company of mes amis Serge Lavande and Gilles Gilbert at all times.”
Magnificent Devices 6: A Lady of Spirit Page 17
