Only five? Andrew sagged, then straightened as he jounced sideways and back with neck-snapping suddenness.
They topped the hill and the country spread itself before him. The road wound down in long, looping steps to a river valley far in the distance. To the east were low, beetling mountains that probably had never seen a piton or pick, and to the north were endless ranks of spindly trees that seemed to become even thinner with distance. To the west, the sun had dipped below the tree line, and with it went what little warmth the day had possessed.
Movement caught his eye—not the movement of bird or beast, but a flash of gold.
“Look!” He pointed out the viewing port, which was made of isinglass. “Is that their landau?”
“Sure enough.” The man on the lever made some adjustments, and a great billow of steam issued from the stack, like a signal. “That should let them know we’ve seen them.”
The driver hunched over his wheel, peering into the distance. “Hey. That look like a herd to you? Light’s going. It could just be one of those big flocks of geese.”
Andrew half rose from his seat, peering down the long slope and past the first loop in the road, where the landau was now laboring upward toward them.
“That ain’t geese.” The lever operator spun a pair of wheels, and the engine groaned back into life. “That’s a herd, and that landau is dead in its path.”
He kicked a pedal as the wheelman spun his wheel, and the great engine turned down the face of the hill, its continuous track grinding stones and plants and small trees under and spitting them up into the air at the rear.
“What are you doing?” Andrew yelped, grabbing onto the first things that came to hand, namely Errol’s shoulder and the back of the bench. “We’re off the road!”
“Won’t make it in time if we stay on it,” shouted the wheelman. “Hang on!”
They plunged down the slope at a precarious angle. All Andrew could see was the earth rushing up at them, as though he were falling out of the sky instead of rolling over the surface.
They crashed onto the last loop in the road for about ten yards, then took the next plunge over. And still the landau made its steady way up the first loop and into the second.
Now Andrew could see them in the distance—a thundering wave of animals, galloping, running, tossing their heads in the headlong joy of the moving herd. A herd that would break against the fragile landau with its precious human cargo, overturn it, and whirl it away in pieces, treading bodies into the earth under their galloping hooves.
No rifle could stop this tide—no man could throw himself in its way and hope to survive. The only thing that could save Claire and Alice and the children was this great lumbering behemoth of a vehicle, if it could wedge itself between animals and humans in time.
“Faster!” he cried.
“We go any faster we’ll overset,” the steam operator roared. “Sit down and shut up!”
The continuous treads bit into earth that was not quite frozen, and chewed its way down the hill.
“We’re not going to make it,” gasped Errol, his eyes bugging out of his head in horror. “The herd is almost upon them!”
What was wrong with Claire that she didn’t see the approaching maelstrom of hooves and antlers and thousands upon thousands of pounds of hurtling flesh? Could they not feel the drumming in the ground? Or see the grinding progress of the mining engine laboring toward them on its elephantine track?
“Claire!” he shouted, though of course she couldn’t hear. “Alice!”
The herd burst over the shoulder of the hill and poured onto the loop of the road, a hundred feet from the landau.
And now, when she should have been accelerating, the foolish female brought it to a stop!
“What are you doing?” he screamed.
Fifty feet.
The top folded back and Claire stood, the lightning rifle on her shoulder.
Forty.
Bracing herself against the steering lever, she aimed the rifle straight toward the center of the herd and fired.
A bolt of lightning leaped into the clear air like a pheasant exploding out of cover. It sizzled through the atmosphere, burning oxygen as it went, a foot above the sharp antlers of the lead animals.
The enormous males snorted, bobbed, and in a move that was almost balletic, bounced to either side of the road. The herd parted like the Red Sea, one half washing up the slope between the landau and the mining vehicle, the other half pouring down the lower side. Then everyone stood—children, too—and waved their arms, making themselves a large, strangely colored organism that the caribou had never seen. Smoke puffed from the animals’ nostrils as they bounced out of reach of this strange apparition, and the pouring tide passed around them, then past them, and before Andrew could even think to draw his next breath, a thousand animals had regained their joyous momentum and were receding down the valley and into the distance.
The last cream-colored, bouncing caribou behind vanished into the trees and Andrew fell onto the bench as though it were he who had been shot.
“Who is that girl?” The steam tender recovered himself and got the vehicle moving again.
“She’s a dadburned fool,” the wheelman groused. “Putting eight people in danger, and for what?”
Errol gripped the bench, his eyes still wide. “Did you see that? Did you see her fire over their heads? What kind of rifle does that? And what kind of woman fires it?”
“A lady of resources,” Andrew said, feeling as winded as he sounded. “Just don’t ever ask her to dance.”
Chapter 17
Claire drove the landau carefully up the loading ramp into Lady Lucy’s cargo bay, and began to shut down the boiler as Tigg leaped out to stuff sandbags against the wheels so it would not roll about during flight.
Not a minute later, Andrew came striding up the ramp under a full head of steam. “Claire, you lunatic, what on earth were you thinking?” he shouted.
The landau ticked softly to itself and settled onto its axles with a sigh. She turned, raising an eyebrow at his disheveled appearance and red face. Lunatic? Really. He of all people should know better than to call a woman such a thing, when a woman’s invention had just saved their lives.
“Can you be more specific?” she inquired coolly.
“At every point!” he shouted. “What possessed you to go to the village unescorted?”
“I had Alice and Tigg and the girls with me. Any more and we should have had to requisition a second vehicle.”
“You put their lives in danger, to say nothing of your own.” Andrew took a long breath, as if he were reining in his temper before it ran away with him. He gripped the top of the landau, his fingers tightening in a most alarming way. “I have never been so afraid in my life—not even in the pinnacle cell, or during the crash in the Idaho Territory. Claire, for the sake of my heart, please think before you do such a thing again.”
“She was helping me.” Alice came to her side and helped her disconnect the boiler, then replace the bonnet. “I went to find my pa, and since Claire is the only one who can pilot a landau, she took me.”
“We promised you lessons,” Claire remembered. “I must keep my promise.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry about me going out there again,” Alice assured her. “In fact, I’m going to pull up ropes shortly and be in the sky by sunset.”
“That’s exactly what Isobel Churchill said, and she was disappointed, too,” Andrew told them both. His tone still held an edge, but at least he was no longer shouting.
In fact, his gaze as he watched Claire was so intense that it almost looked as if he wanted to pull her into his arms. A sign, a look, the merest softening, and she was certain he would do it.
And then she remembered Alice’s face as she had confessed her feelings for him, and the moment passed.
“Cheer up, Mr. Malvern.” Maggie came to his side and took his hand. “The Lady wouldn’t ’ave let us be run over by them ruddy great creatures.
It were touch and go there for a bit, though.”
He gazed at her for a moment, then sank to his knees and pulled the little girl into an embrace that was half relief, half …
Well, sometimes a gentleman could relieve his feelings by hugging a child, without other emotions being ascribed to it, could he not?
He released her and stood up, leaving Maggie looking both puzzled and pleased. “Just promise me that the next time you go rabbiting off into the wilderness, you’ll let someone know.”
“We did,” Lizzie said. “That boy wot was our guide, he drew us a map.”
“Someone in charge,” Andrew said. “Someone in a position of responsibility.”
“Oh, they prob’ly would’ve told us not to go,” Lizzie informed him with airy unconcern. “Say, d’you suppose Mr. Andersen ’as food on the sideboard? That grassy tea were nice, but it didn’t go far and me stummick is stickin’ to me backbone.”
They scampered up the ladder to the A deck, dragging Tigg with them.
Alice roused herself out of a brown study. Claire felt rather brown herself. The adrenaline of their near escape, the pell-mell journey back to the airfield with the mining engine practically climbing up into the steampipes, and Andrew’s show of temper, had worn off rather suddenly, leaving her nearly exhausted. Claire couldn’t blame the Mopsies for wanting to raid the sideboard. She could think of nothing better than to do the same—and seek her quiet cabin and Rosie’s soothing company immediately thereafter.
“I’d best be going, then,” Alice said.
“Please don’t,” Claire pleaded. “It’s nearly sunset, and you don’t want to fly at night.”
“Night, day, it’s no nevermind to me. I want to put this place to my rudder and get as far from it as I can.”
“Alice, what happened?” Andrew asked her, his eyes calming now, and filling with concern. “Did you find your father?”
“I did, and now I’m done.”
“But—”
“Andrew,” Claire said quietly. “Do not press her. We must instead convince her to stay at least until morning. Better yet, until after Count von Zeppelin’s reception.”
“Absolutely not.” Alice backed away as if they were about to forcibly restrain her. “Fine, I can maybe see the sense in waiting to lift until morning. But I ain’t sticking around for that hoedown. You can show him Nine and be done with it, if he wants to talk about automatons.”
“It would be most unwise to snub the count, you know.”
“Why? I ain’t ever going to see him again.”
Claire took her arm and shot Andrew a speaking glance as they made their way over to the ladder. “Do you not see what you are doing? You are cutting people dead right and left—people who could mean something to you.”
Alice went up the ladder like a monkey, as if she couldn’t wait to get away from the sound of Claire’s voice. But Claire could climb a wall with or without a rope. A ladder was nothing. She emerged onto A deck at practically the same moment, so that Alice could not escape.
“Please, dear, reflect upon what you are doing. This is a harsh land,” she said as they entered the dining saloon. “We all need friends if we are to survive here.”
Lizzie turned from the sideboard. “Alice, you said the same to them crewmen on t’cargo ship,” she said around a mouthful of fruitcake and marzipan. “Oh!”
“What’s wrong, Lizzie?” The girl was digging in her pocket. “Did you bite down the wrong way on a nut?”
“No, I forgot about this.” She handed over a gleaming cylinder of brass. “It’s like them other ones. I meant t’ tell you, I found it underneath that cargo ship. There’s a lot more ships now, but I mean t’first one, that were ’ere when we landed.”
M.A.M.W.
Claire handed it to Andrew. And a pair of facts settled into place in her mind, like sparrows landing together on a twig.
“Why didn’t I see this before?” she murmured. Then, “Does it not strike you as strange that Mr. Meriwether-Astor and his entourage should journey all the way here as part of his world tour?”
Andrew gazed at her thoughtfully while Alice nabbed a piece of cake for herself. “It does,” he said. “But I try not to comment on the vagaries of the wealthy. They are often beyond the understanding of mere mortals.”
She held up the casing. “This is the second time one of these has appeared where it does not belong. Do you suppose M.A. stands for Meriwether-Astor?”
Andrew blinked at her. “As in Meriwether-Astor Manufacturing Works? But Claire, they do not make bullets or arms. They make parts for steam engines, and rivets for ship hulls and connectors for train carriages. I’ve ordered one or two parts from them myself, in the course of my experiments.”
“What if there’s a smaller group?” Alice asked, her mouth as full as Lizzie’s had been. “Meriwether Astor Munitions Works, say?”
“Who buys bullets, then?” Claire mused aloud. “There cannot be enough hunters and sportsmen in all the Territories to make such a division profitable.”
“Armies,” Andrew said. “Countries at war.”
“Or about to be,” Alice added, and swallowed.
And suddenly Claire understood why Count von Zeppelin had nearly been assassinated.
*
Gloria Meriwether-Astor’s hat defied the laws of gravity. Perched upon her forehead, its rear tilted up nearly to the vertical by virtue of its resting on her piled-up blond curls, it seemed on the verge of sliding down her face and coming to rest upon her petulant lower lip.
Claire smiled and extended her hand. “Gloria. How lovely to see you again. You have not changed one whit since last we met.”
Gloria took her hand, her gaze puzzled. “And when was that? Have we been introduced?”
Lizzie snorted like a horse who has unexpectedly met with a groundhog in its path. “O’ course you have. At the Crystal Palace, wi’ Lord James Selwyn, when me and Maggie was skating.”
Gloria stared at Lizzie, her brows raised in affront. “Really. Forgive me. I do not recall.”
Claire could not hold back her laughter. “Oh, Gloria, do give over. Your town manners will not win you any points here. But to refresh your memory, we also saw one another at Julia Wellesley’s costume party last month.” She smoothed the folds of her raiding skirt with affection. “I believe I wore this very rig.”
“I’m sure Miss Meriwether-Astor will have no trouble remembering both occasions if she puts her mind to it, won’t you, dear?” Lady Dunsmuir slipped an arm around Gloria’s waist and the air exploded in a flash of light and the smell of phosphorus as a phalanx of journalists recorded the moment for posterity. She steered Gloria and her father toward the dining hall and the welcoming party followed. “Lady Claire is our honored guest. She has been touring the Americas with us and sharing our adventures.”
“Lady Claire, is it?” Mr. Meriwether-Astor puffed along behind the women like a steam train. “Better mind your manners, Gloria. She might have a brother.”
“I do, in fact,” Claire told him, trying not to show her amusement at the poisonous glare Gloria threw him. “But as Lord Nicholas is not even two, he is more interested in his stuffed giraffe than he is in young ladies.”
“Ah well, it never hurts to know these things.” The poor man’s short legs could barely keep up with Lady Dunsmuir’s effortless glide. “Don’t want to cut ourselves off from possibilities, do we, girl?”
“Father, please,” Gloria said softly, her head up and slightly turned away, as if she could not bear the sight of him and was admiring the view instead.
For the first time, Claire felt a pang of sympathy for the girl. Though the days immediately following her graduation from St. Cecilia’s Academy for Young Ladies now seemed as if they had been lived by another person altogether, she distinctly remembered how uncomfortable she had felt, being on display at the few parties she had attended, and dreading her presentation at court.
It was one thing to travel across the ocean as
a Buccaneer and set one’s cap at a title in exchange for a Fifteen Colonies fortune. It was quite another to be bullied and bossed into it by one’s father, whom one might expect to take one’s tender feelings more into consideration.
Though, if what she suspected was in fact true, Julius Meriwether-Astor, who appeared to be merely a blustering, insensitive buffoon, was nothing of the kind. Could this man now talking with such animation with Lord Dunsmuir really be the one behind the attempt on Count von Zeppelin’s life?
It hardly seemed possible. And yet …
She had sworn her friends to secrecy on the matter. Secrecy, and vigilance. Though how they were to watch out for the count’s wellbeing without actually telling him what they suspected was a puzzle she had yet to work out. Because of course they had no proof of anything, only mad speculation hanging by the thinnest of threads. If she accused Gloria’s father of such a heinous crime, and was proven wrong, they would all be disgraced, and Claire could not bear the thought of any taint upon the Dunsmuirs—not after they had shown her and the children such kindness and support.
Nor could she risk Tigg’s future as a midshipman on the Lady Lucy for the sake of mere speculation. So for now, they must keep an eye peeled, as Maggie would say, and be alert for the slightest hint that this visit was not as it seemed.
“Lady Dunsmuir, a photograph opportunity, if you please?” called one of the journalists. “If we get a group shot, we can send the plates by pigeon and get the pictures in the Sunday papers.”
“Very well.” She turned to Claire and Alice. “While we are doing that, you girls might like to change for dinner. Count von Zeppelin’s invitation, you know, aboard the Margrethe.”
Alice looked as though she was going to be sick. “I thought that was tomorrow. And anyhow—”
“Tomorrow we shall host a dinner for the entire camp, and a ball. But tonight is a smaller, more intimate party.”
“No, I can’t,” Alice said, a little desperately.
“Please, dear.” Davina put a hand on her arm. “You and Jake. As a personal favor to me.”
Brilliant Devices: A steampunk adventure novel (Magnificent Devices) Page 15
