“The children are my source of information.”
He selected a scone and slathered cream on it while he recovered. “They are mistaken.”
“Aren’t!” Lizzie lifted her chin, affronted. “I ’eard the captain tell you so meself.”
“Then you should know that eavesdropping is most unladylike.”
“So is takin’ a stone to a knife fight.” Her tone dripped with scorn. “I don’t aim to carry stones if I c’n ’elp it. I aim to be prepared.”
He regarded her with raised brows. “I see I have underestimated you, young lady.”
“If I were to wager who would succeed in a contretemps with sky pirates, my lord, I would put my money on Lizzie,” Claire told him. “We do not mean to displease you, but any of these children will tell you that the secret to beating a bully is to be ready for him. That is all we are trying to do.”
“I hope it does not come to that. Both vessels are struggling with the storm, which has pushed us far off our course. We have evaded miscreants before with success, and shall do so again, I trust.”
It was a thin comfort, but it was all she had to keep warm with during that fitful night.
That and her raiding rig. If one were to face danger, it would certainly not be in a nightgown.
Chapter 4
Claire woke to a crack like a buggy whip, and the sound of feet pounding down the corridor. Her internal clock told her it was past dawn, but the gloom outside the porthole cast her cabin in darkness.
Something was missing.
A moment later, when she heard Rosie cluck a sleepy inquiry from the back of the guest chair, she realized what it was.
The engines had stopped.
She leaped for the porthole and looked out into the slashing silver of rain. Lightning flashed in the belly of a cloud—they were surrounded by clouds—buffeted to and fro at the whim of the weather. She could no longer see the ground.
What was going on? They were to have avoided the storm, not sailed smack into the middle of it! And where were the pirates? Were they at the mercy of the winds, too, or were they using them to their advantage while the Lady Lucy wallowed, helpless without her engines?
“Go back to sleep, Rosie,” she said, pocketing a moonglobe. “I’m going to find out what has happened.”
Another crack of thunder shook the ship—at least, she hoped it was thunder. Claire ran down the corridor and was forced to use the moonglobe. All the lamps were out. At the door to the main saloon, she found Tigg.
“What has happened?”
He turned, his eyes wide with distress. “I can’t tell, Lady. They locked us in.”
She tried the handle. Stupid. Of course he was correct. She peered through the circular window, trying to see through the gloom. “This is maddening. Where are the Dunsmuirs?”
The family had its own set of staterooms further aft. A dash to the other end of the corridor ended in a locked door as well. Claire set her teeth.
“If we cannot go out, we must go up. Tigg, if I give you a boost to the top of the wall, can you remove the paneling and go through to the catwalk?”
“Quicker’n you can think of it, Lady.”
It took a moment and some unbalanced staggering to find a loose enough panel, but once through, Tigg’s feet disappeared and Claire was left to wait. She went to Jake’s room.
“Jake, I fear we must—” The room was empty, the bed mussed as if he’d just climbed out of it. “Jake?” He had not been in the corridor. Maybe he had gone to wake the girls.
“Mopsies?” The twins peered down from the top bunk, where it was clear they’d gone to sleep together fully dressed, with only a heavy tartan blanket over them. Clutched in Lizzie’s hand was the heavy silver carving fork that usually attended the roast at dinner. “Good heavens, Lizzie. You might have put an eye out while you slept.”
“Not likely.” Lizzie slid to the floor and jammed the fork in her sash. “Are we boarded?”
“I cannot tell. I don’t think so. We are, however, locked in. Tigg has climbed up to the catwalk to reconnoiter. Have you seen Jake?” They shook their heads. “That’s a puzzle. Perhaps he had the same idea.”
“Perhaps we all ought to go up an’ out,” Maggie suggested. “Why’d they locked us in?”
“Don’t much like that,” Lizzie said. “I’m for up an’ out.”
The words were barely out of her mouth when the floor jerked out from under them as though it had been a rug yanked by a giant. All three landed in a heap next to the wall.
“What was that?” Claire said on a gasp.
“We’re goin’ down.” Lizzie’s face held all the conviction of one who has long known men were not meant to fly.
“If we were going down, we should know it by the angle of the floor and the weightless feeling in our stomachs.” Claire struggled to her feet, rubbing the bruise that was surely forming on her hip. “Come, we must—”
Another jerk of the fuselage sent them to the floor a second time.
“Either the wind has risen, or we’ve just been bumped by something.” With caution, Claire got up, hanging on to the wood opening of the double-decker bed, and peered out the porthole.
“Oh, dear.”
They had indeed been bumped by something. A ship rode the air currents next to them—a ship with dual fuselages, one of which had clearly struck their own, considering its close proximity. Between the fuselages like the downstroke of a letter Y hung a gondola, with a spiderweb of catwalks and ropes that at present were swarming with men.
Armed men. Men with ropes over their shoulders, and dangling from those were large versions of the grappling hooks she had used herself.
“We are being boarded. In midair. By sky pirates.”
The thing his lordship had assured her would not happen.
Where in the name of heaven was the family? Had she and the children been locked behind sturdy teak doors for their own safety? Or had everyone fled in the equivalent of a dinghy and left them to fend for themselves?
The floor jerked again as the two ships collided, but it was gentler this time—as though the Lady Lucy were snugging herself up to a dock. Claire came out of her horror-filled trance with a jolt.
“I don’t know what is going on, but we must prepare to defend ourselves. Maggie, find a weapon. I’m going back to my cabin for the lightning rifle.”
“But you said—”
“I would rather an explosion and a long glide to earth because of a ruptured gas bag than to be taken and held for ransom by a pirate. I’ll be back in a moment. Keep an eye out for Tigg.”
In her cabin, she filled her pockets and pouches with every device she had brought with her. Her notebook went down the front of her leather corselet, her grandmother’s emerald ring on an ivory pick slid into a hastily assembled chignon. She rammed the lightning rifle into its holster on her back. She put Rosie on her shoulder and cast an affectionate glance at the evening gown hanging in the closet. It was not likely she would see it or her favorite blue hat again.
The twins met her in the corridor. “Now what, Lady?”
“We go topside. We must find the crew and make our stand with them.”
A thump sounded above their heads and the panel in the ceiling wiggled back and forth.
“Tigg? Maggie, put your foot in my hands and help him move the panel.”
Thump. Scratch. A small blond head popped out of the opening and Maggie reared back and practically fell to the floor. “Willie, you gumpy, you scairt me.”
Above her, Willie’s tear-filled gaze found Claire’s.
“What is it, darling? Did Tigg send you?”
Wordlessly, he shook his head, and Claire’s stomach sank. “Have you seen him?”
Another shake.
“Willie, it’s safe to speak. You must tell us what has happened.”
But it seemed he would or could not. Something had frightened him so badly that his recently regained powers of speech had deserted him, and he had reverted
back to the condition in which she had found him.
A condition directly related to being forcibly removed from his mother and father.
“Darling, I fear we have been boarded by sky pirates. Have they taken mama and papa?”
His face crumpled and he nodded.
Nausea and fear rose in her stomach and she struggled for control. “Did they lock us in?”
A shrug.
“Do the pirates know we are here?”
Willie hesitated, then slowly shook his head.
“Well, that’s something, at least. How did you escape?”
He withdrew into the opening, and motioned with one hand that someone should come up and join him. “Aha. Your papa had the same idea as we did. He stuffed you in the ceiling, did he, to—”
Willie’s small hand appeared again, and from it dangled the countess’s diamond parure, fully two feet long and worth the price of the Lady Lucy at least. Even the gloom in the corridor could not disguise its brilliance.
“Dear heaven.” Claire struggled to reconstruct the scene through which they had all managed to sleep. “He stuffed you and the family collection in the ceiling. What quick thinking for a man under siege. We shall follow his excellent example immediately. Maggie, Lizzie, up you go.”
“Are we going to find the crew?” Maggie hefted herself into the hole and turned to pull her sister up after her.
“If the earl has not been able to make a stand, it is not likely his crew has, either.” At the far end of the corridor, she heard a shout. “He means us to stay hidden if we can. Here, take Rosie.”
But Rosie did not want to be taken.
“Rosie, this is no time to give us trouble. Someone’s coming!”
The bird flapped and fluttered and took off down the corridor. With a moan of frustration, Claire dashed into her cabin, snatched up the hatbox, dumped her beloved blue hat out of it, caught the hen and put her in. “You’ll thank me when we get out of this.” Slamming down the lid and tightening the cord, she passed the hatbox up to an anxious Maggie.
Someone kicked the door, and she heard a burst of raucous laughter.
There was no one here to give her a leg up. She would have to manage it herself, without benefit of rope or hook.
Using a candelabra on the wall, she pulled herself up on the railing.
Bang!
They were kicking in the locked door. Teak was a sturdy wood, but it would be no match for the combination of strength and greed.
She got both elbows inside the opening.
“We’ll pull you, Lady.” A twin knelt on either side.
Claire pushed off from the railing as hard as she could. She landed on her chest. With the girls pulling, and by bracing one knee on the next panel, she kicked her way up and through.
Another shout, this time of triumph, as the brass locking plate gave way.
Footsteps pounded down the corridor as Claire whisked her black skirts up after her, and together she and the girls slid the panel into place right over the heads of half a dozen pirates.
“Don’t move,” Claire whispered.
The children froze. The only sound was the scritch of Rosie’s claws in the hatbox, but their pursuers couldn’t hear it. They were too busy carousing through the cabins, exclaiming about bits of plunder.
Blankets. Pillows. Her hat.
Claire closed her eyes and wished it a fond farewell.
The pirates thundered back down the corridor and in a moment they could hear them clearly in the dining saloon. Up in the ceiling, sound seemed to distribute itself equally, as though there weren’t much in the way of barriers to stop it.
“How many are there?” Lizzie whispered.
“Besides these? No telling,” Maggie said.
“There were hundreds in the rigging of the other ship, it seemed,” Claire added. “Shh. Let us listen. I believe they are arguing about my hat.”
“That’s all you found?” a deep voice roared—a voice that reminded her of the booming sea in the smugglers’ caves, far below Gwyn Place. “A hat? Where’s the girl?”
“There weren’t nobody there, captain,” said another voice. “Doors locked on both ends and not a soul to be found.”
“They will be found, or it’s a long step off a short board for the lot of you. Where’s that kid? I want some answers.”
The sounds of scuffling ended in a thud, as if someone had been tossed on the floor.
“You. Kid. You said the other lady was in the guest cabins. So where is she?”
“She’s there. Where else would she be?”
Maggie gasped. Lizzie clapped a hand over her sister’s mouth.
They knew that voice well. Jake’s voice.
“I locked the doors,” the boy went on in a tone halfway between defiance and a sulk. “She’s just hidin’ is all.”
“You two. Take our friend here back in there and don’t show your windbitten faces unless you’ve got her. Why ransom two when you’ve got three?”
Claire and the children sat frozen in horror as they heard the footsteps return below them, and the systematic sounds of a search.
Jake had done what Claire had always secretly feared he would.
He had betrayed them all.
Chapter 5
Claire huddled in the crawl space with the children, thankful for one very small mercy—that the sounds of the search in the distance masked the sniffles of misery close by.
“I can’t believe it of ’im,” whispered Maggie, her voice clogged with tears. “Our Jake.”
“’E ent our Jake no more.” Lizzie’s voice might have been barely audible, but her rage came through loud and clear. “It’s every man for ’imself wi’ that one, an’ no mistake.”
“Shhh.” Claire sat up. “They’re coming back.”
“How many rooms does one nob need?” growled a voice directly below them—right outside her room, in fact. “Looks like she spent each night of the voyage in a different cabin.”
“Who knows ’ow nobs fink,” Jake said. “Wot’re we gonna tell t’captain?”
“I’m gonna tell him she ain’t here. And then you’re gonna take whatever he dishes out, and hope it’s not that long walk.”
“But it ent my fault she scarpered.”
Claire couldn’t help it—Jake sounded so young and frightened that she could almost pity him.
Almost.
“It’s your fault you didn’t find out where she was first and save us all a bunch of time. Me, I’d send that pigeon pronto and get the Dunsmuir relatives coughing up the ransom. But the captain, he’s a businessman. He’s got other plans, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll find that girl before you go back in there.”
Other plans? For her? Claire’s stomach did a dip and twist that had nothing to do with air currents.
But maddeningly, the pirates said nothing more, just hotfooted it out of the guest quarters, presumably to widen the search.
“I don’t understand,” Maggie whispered. “Why did he say you were sleeping in all those rooms?”
“Easy, silly billy,” Lizzie said. “Jake squealed on t’Lady cos she’s worth summat. But we ent. ’E’s keepin’ mum about us, for all the good it’ll do us or him. We can’t creep about up ’ere forever. They’ll find us when we fall out of the ceiling from hunger.”
“Then we must make them call off the search,” Claire said with dawning realization. “If they don’t know you’re here, and they’re not looking for you, maybe you can help us.”
“Fine by me.” Claire couldn’t see her in the dark, but she could tell by the grimness in the girl’s tone that she was already planning to start her help with Jake. “How you gonna get ’em to call it off?”
“By surrendering myself.”
Maggie sucked in a breath, and behind her, a whimper escaped Willie’s throat. “Lady, you mustn’t. We’re a flock. We gots to stick together.”
“It’s the only way. The sooner they stop looking, the safer you and Willie a
nd Tigg will be. And you will not starve up here. I’ll find a way to get food to you, and if that fails, there is always thievery.”
Dear me. If mama could only hear me now.
“I’ll leave you the rifle,” she went on. “If you’re cornered, you must have a way to defend yourselves.”
“Can’t, Lady, beggin’ yer pardon.”
“Why not, Lizzie? I can’t leave you with nothing.”
“We ain’t defenseless.”
Claire was reminded again of how much she did not know about the twins’ early years on the streets. How much, perhaps, she did not want to know.
“But Jake knows you got that gun, and he knows you always give it to yer second. If it don’t show up wiv you, he’ll make ’em keep up the search.”
“Her second would’ve been him if he weren’t such a blackguard.”
Lizzie paused a second to acknowledge her twin’s brokenhearted bitterness. “After ’im, it’s Tigg. You got to take it or they’ll hunt him sure. It’s ’obson’s choice, Lady, but you got to make it.”
Claire swallowed the obstruction in her throat. “You will on no account allow yourselves to be captured,” she said huskily.
“No, Lady.”
“You will protect Willie and Rosie at all costs. They are the least able to defend themselves.”
“Yes, Lady.”
“And if the opportunity arises to save them at the expense of the Dunsmuirs or me, you will take it as though it were an order.”
A pause.
“Lizzie?”
“Yes, Lady,” Lizzie said at last. “But it best not come to that.”
Claire took this in the spirit in which it was meant. “I hope not. As Maggie says, we are a flock and I do not mean that we should be separated.” She took a breath and willed herself not to cry. Then she took off the St. Ives pearls and wound them about Maggie’s neck, under her voile blouse. The raja’s emerald went on Lizzie’s thumb by feel in the dark, and she replaced the sharpened ivory hair stick in her chignon. “Now, then. Let us move the panel. On three.”
She slipped through the opening and dropped lightly to the Turkish carpet. Then she shook out her skirts, lifted her chin, and ...
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