“Your information is biased by the self-interest and criminal intent of your informants.”
“Claire!” Davina had gone as pale as her cream silk gown, which, Claire now saw, was streaked with brown stains and what appeared to be half the contents of a punch bowl. “Explain yourself.”
Too late, she realized she had let her fear and her temper get the better of her. She had no proof. All she had was the goodwill of her host and hostess, and if she did not step very, very carefully now, she would lose even that.
“Please, my lord, forgive me. I only meant that it is impossible. Frederick Chalmers was dancing with his daughter only moments before the explosion occurred. He could not have done it.”
“Are you here again, meddling in matters that don’t concern you?” Reginald Penhaven appeared to be on the verge of striking someone. She took a prudent step back. “Your lordship, this girl has already importuned me with the same ridiculous story. We don’t have time for this nonsense.”
“Claire, I am very sorry, but the evidence suggests that Alice’s father is behind this terrible destruction.” Davina’s voice trembled. “You must be brave—and so must Alice.”
“He is not!” Claire said in desperation. “And neither are those poor Esquimaux boys with him. It’s all a plot to discredit you!”
“The poor girl is hysterical,” Meriwether-Astor said, his face arranged in lines of pity, his eyes measuring, calculating. “Perhaps the medics should administer laudanum?”
“A good suggestion,” Penhaven put in.
“At least wait until morning to do … anything … and allow him to tell you himself,” she begged the earl, feeling the cold of approaching doom on her skin.
“Claire, if you do not have proof, you must see our position.” John Dunsmuir visibly controlled himself in an effort to be civil.
“I do have proof. Perhaps if we speak privately—”
“Dunsmuir, this is a waste of time,” Meriwether-Astor snapped. “I have fifty injured men, a damaged convoy, and an injured daughter, and I want to know what you’re going to do about it, since it’s clear your mismanagement of this operation has been the cause of this disaster.”
“Mismanage—!”
“I said mismanagementmanPerhaps , and I meant it. If any of those men succumb to their injuries and—God forbid—die, I am holding you personally responsible along with that Chalmers madman.”
Over by the window, she saw now, two journalists had their notepads out and were scribbling furiously. She and Alice and Lizzie had been right. Meriwether-Astor had timed his moment perfectly, for what better time to strike at the heart of an enemy than when he was staggering from a blow?
Claire felt as though she was caught in the middle of a street with two steambuses bearing down upon her. No matter in which direction she chose to run, one bus or the other would strike her.
But Lord Dunsmuir was an experienced man of the world. If he and Davina could not handle Meriwether-Astor, then no one could.
And they were not in imminent danger of being hanged, either.
For the second time in ten minutes, she made Hobson’s choice.
As a towering argument broke out between the Dunsmuirs and Meriwether-Astor, no one but a tearful Willie noticed as she gave the world’s most abbreviated curtsey, turned, and hurried from the salon.
At the bottom of Lady Lucy’s gangway, Gloria Meriwether-Astor had finally caught up to her. She brushed past the girl. “I’m sorry, Gloria, but I don’t have time.”
Gloria grabbed her arm in a grip surprisingly strong for such a languid person. “Is my father up there?”
“Yes. He is attempting to ruin my friends. You’ll forgive me if I do not have much to say to you at present. I must save a man’s life.”
“I’ll come with you.” Breathlessly, Gloria matched Claire’s pace.
“Your place is with your father,” she told Gloria with the calm of despair. “Go away and keep it.”
“I’m not responsible for what he does, you know. You don’t have to treat me like I am.”
In a sudden spike of rage, Claire swung on her. “I’m not treating you as anything at all. Much the way you treated me at school. Now get out of my way.”
In the light from the lamps on the mooring masts, Gloria’s eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I suppose I deserve that. But Claire, wait. I want to help.”
“You want to help?” She couldn’t control her own voice—it was shrill with impatience and fear. “Why should you, when your father has contrived to blow up the Firstwater Mine to discredit the Dunsmuirs, cover up the assassination of Count von Zeppelin, and provoke an international incident?”
Gloria’s mouth fell open. “Are you insane?”
“Not in the least. I just can’t prove any of it. So go on, take that tale back to your father and he can feel free to assassinate me, too. But while you’re about it, I have work to do.”
She whirled and began to run.
And to her outrad tfonged dismay, her plain speaking still did not dislodge the cocklebur that was her former classmate, who seemed determined to stick to her no matter what unpalatable truths she flung in her face.
“All right, so you’re insane,” Gloria panted. “But I could almost believe you. Insanity is the only thing that can explain why I’m even here. And maybe it explains some of the things I’ve heard him say—things that made no sense.”
“Everything makes sense if you have the right point of view.” Claire dove into the shadow of a building and flattened herself against the wall to catch her breath before the next leg. “Gloria, I mean it. You cannot be here.”
“A man’s life is at stake, I know. Is Father trying to have him killed?”
“He is using him as a scapegoat. He will take the blame for the explosion and be hanged in short order if we do not prevent it.”
“You need help.”
“If you are going to insult my mental capacities, you may save your breath to cool your—”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I meant, you need reinforcements. Surely you’re not taking on that mob by yourself?”
“I tried that, and failed. So now I must resort to stealth. What I need is for Penhaven to have locked him in a room to which I can gain access, like—like his lordship’s private dressing room, or Davina’s powder room, in the building where the management offices are.”
“I can do that.”
Claire stared at her with astonished contempt, but in the dark of course she could not see it. Just as well. She moderated her tone so that her utter disregard of this mooring-rope of a girl did not leak through. “Now who is the crazy one?”
“I’m serious. I’ll simply tell them I’ve a message from my father and Penhaven, and tell them to lock him in one of those places. It’s not like they have a gaol here. We’re not in the Wild West.”
“Why should they listen to you? They didn’t listen to me.”
“You haven’t been yawning through all those meetings with the management. Father doesn’t think I have a single feather in my brain, and maybe I don’t, but he makes me sit with him anyway. Family solidarity or something. But the directors know me. They might believe it—at least, for long enough that you could do … whatever it is you plan to do.”
Now it was Claire’s turn to grasp Gloria’s elbow and drag her into the light from the main square, so she could see her face properly. “Or for long enough for you to tell them to trap me, too, once my back is turned?” A spasm passed across Gloria’s pale, elegant features. “Why are you suddenly being so helpful, when it means betraying your own family?”
For a moment Gloria gazed at her, as though she were trying to remember where she’d seen her before. “You aren’t really governess to those Cockney children, are you?”
Dear heaven, the girl was unbalanced. “I really don’t have time for—”
“How did you meet them?”
Impatiently, she said, “They accosted me the night of the Arabian Bubble riot
s. I accosted them right back, and we came to an agreement—I would teach them their numbers and letters, and they would teach me how to survive in—in less comfortable circumstances than I had been used to. I am now their guardian—we are family. But what has that to do with Mr. Chalmers?”
“I never thought I’d learn anything from an alley mouse, especially one so rude, but …” Gloria shook her head. “Never mind. For once in my life I’m going to do what’s right instead of what’s expected of me.”
Perhaps Gloria meant to betray them all. Perhaps she was deluded. But the truth was bleak: Claire had no plan other than to trust to chance that four girls could save a man’s life. And for that, chance was not good enough.
Gloria was a gamble of a different sort.
So Claire dealt her the cards.
Chapter 22
Andrew Malvern had been dancing with Davina when the pressure wave engulfed the Margrethe, sending them both sideways and toppling over a potted plant. He had managed to roll so that her ladyship’s slender form landed on him rather than the other way round, to be followed immediately afterward by a shower bath from the punch bowl, which circled away under a table after it had deposited its contents upon them both.
His first thought, while picking orange slices off her ladyship, was for Claire, his second for Alice. Since then, both those thoughts had remained uppermost and urgent in his mind as he tried to find them in the chaos.
Then, out of a porthole, he had a glimpse of Claire—no longer in evening dress, and with the lightning rifle out and ready, tearing across the field with the Mopsies—which galvanized him into action. He had left the young officer he was tending to the medic who had finally arrived, and sprinted after Claire, only to lose her in the shouting, panicked crowd at the gates of the mine.
Then, to his horror, he heard a man’s name taken up with chants of “Hang him!” and realized who the man in the middle of the crowd must be. Tall, blond, one eye, and with the same wide mouth and firm chin—it could only be Alice’s father.
“Get Isobel!” Chalmers shouted into the screaming crowd—and a second later, Andrew tripped over a pair of booted feet and fell to his hands and knees with bone-jarring force.
“All right, sir?” Someone hauled him up by one arm. Someone with a familiar voice.
“Jake?” He got to his feet to see that the crowd had moved on, dragging Chalmers deeper into the circle of buildings. “Jake, what is going on? Is that Alice’s father?”
“It is. They’re going t’blame the explosion on ’im and ’ang ’im for it. I just saw T’Lady run off—I ’ope she’s gone t’fetch ’elp.”
“Is she all right? I must find her.”
“Ent nowt you c’n do fer her, but you c’n give me a hand.”
“Jake, you don’t understand—she will be hurt.”
“The Lady?” The boy snorted with derision. “Not likely. She’s armed and in a fine uproar of a temper. Don’t you worry about ’er—worry about yer own self. She gave me a job and I can’t do it and do wot Alice’s dad said, too. You gots to ’elp me.”
Was he ever to be useful to Claire on this benighted journey? How was she to see him as a man she could trust with her life and future if she kept leaving him behind to go and save people? Andrew reined his emotions in with an act of will and focused on the boy in front of him, whose desperate eyes belied the curl still on his lip.
“All right, then. What can I do?”
“The Lady bid me follow Alice’s dad and report back to ’er when I found out where they’re goin’ wiv ’im. But he needs someone t’find that Isobel Churchill, and I reckon that’s you.”
“I heard him shout. But why—”
“Dunno, and it don’t matter. A desperate man shouts for ’er, seems a bloke ought t’find ’er.”
Privately, Andrew thought that a desperate man might call a woman’s name if he were having a love affair with her and wanted to see her one last time before he met his doom, but that was none of his business. “Right. I shall do that, and bring her … where?”
“You ought’nt to ’ave much trouble ’earing where ’e is, ’specially if they’re to ’ang ’im. Folks tend to get loud on such occasions.”
“I trust you have not learned this from experience?”
“Mr. Malvern, sir, wiv all due respect, we ent got time.”
“Quite right. To the Skylark, then, as quick as may be.”
Andrew had only had the briefest glimpse of Isobel Churchill this evening on the Margrethe. He had wanted to ask her to dance, but by the time he had screwed his courage up to the sticking point, he could no longer see her among the dancers or at the buffet. And after the explosion, he did not remember seeing her at all.
When danger threatened, it seemed logical that a woman would take her only child and flee to safety. He would begin with the Skylark.
She did not even have a crewman posted at the base of the steps. “Mrs. Churchill?” he called as he emerged onto the lower deck. “Mrs. Churchill, are you here?”
Peony dropped down the gangway from B deck and landed lightly in front of him. “Mr. Malvern, what a surprise.”
“Miss Churchill, this is no social call. They’re about to hang Frederick Chalmers for sabotage and he is calling foris size=" your mother. Is she here?”
Peony’s flushed cheeks drained of all color. “That can’t be true.”
“I heard it myself. Time is of the essence. Is your mother here?”
“Yes.” She turned and climbed the gangway as nimbly as she had come down it, seeing as she was wearing riding breeches. “She’s sending a pigeon.” He resolutely did not look at the unusual view of a woman in breeches as he leaped up the steps after her. “Mama! Come at once!”
But she did not come. Instead, Peony ran to the stern of the trim little gondola, where they found Isobel Churchill seated on a sandbag, writing furiously, a pigeon with its hold open lying at her feet.
“Mama, they are going to hang Frederick Chalmers for sabotage, and he bids you come at once!”
Isobel signed her name with a flourish, folded the still-wet paper, and stuffed it into the pigeon. A few taps of her fingers embedded the magnetic coordinates of its destination in its small engine. She released it from the nearest porthole with a shove that caused its wings to spring open and catch the night wind as it soared upward.
“I told him to go,” she said in a voice like steel. “As soon as I saw him walk into the salon, I told him Skylark would escort his daughter and meet him in Edmonton if he would only leave at once, but no. He had to do this himself. Had to reveal himself in front of all our enemies, and now all is lost.”
Andrew did not understand, but he did not need to. “He is asking for your help, Mrs. Churchill. He, and the two young Esquimaux men who were taken with him.”
Her eyes blazed. “He has dragged them into it, too?” Her laugh cut the air like an axe. “If he survives this and they do not, he will answer to Malina’s mother, the priestess. They are her youngest sons.”
Why on earth was this woman not—in the Texican parlance—saddling up and moving out? “Will you come to his aid, or no?”
“There are bigger things at stake here than you have any idea of, young man. Frederick Chalmers has been one of the best friends the Esquimaux Nation has ever known, but even he would tell you that the good of the village comes before the good of the individual. He has gone into this recklessly, acting from the heart and not the head, and has put hundreds of people in danger.”
She reached for the airman’s coat lying on the sandbag, and Andrew realized with something of a shock that she had also divested herself of her green ballgown some time earlier, and was now clothed in breeches, boots, and shirt.
“Come, Peony. I shall tell Captain Aniq we lift in five minutes.”
“But Mama—”
“Do not argue. We cannot go charging in there with no weapons and no information and expect to save his life. But we can save the village, if the pigeon gets
there and they lift before that mob decides there are more saboteurs where he came from.”
Peony turned to Andrew as her mother went forward, presumably to command the engineers to fire up the boiler in preparation for lift. “I am sorry. I would help if I could.”
“What did she mean about the village lifting? There were no airships there—I saw the place myself. And what part does Frederick Chalmers play in the lives of the Esquimaux? She made it sound as if they were a government—a country.”
“Why, they are.” Peony gazed at him in some surprise. “He has been liaison between Her Majesty’s government and the Esquimaux Nation these seven years at least. Why do you think the Dunsmuirs have permission to mine here?”
“I understood they own this land.”
“Ownership is a foreign concept to the Esquimaux, as is the European fascination with diamonds. It is more of a … partnership with Lady Dunsmuir. Which is, of course, utterly unacceptable to certain business interests on this continent.”
“Colonial interests.”
She twinkled at him. “My, my, Mr. Malvern. Your quick mind will get you into trouble one of these days.”
“I hope it will get Frederick Chalmers out of it. I am going back to do my best to assist him.”
She laid a hand on his arm. “Be safe. Tell him I am sorry. And give my regards to Claire. I do not know when we shall see one another again.”
*
For a moment, Alice could not place the tiny, muffled sound. Then she realized it was poor Maggie’s teeth chattering.
“Dearling, come close to me.” She sat on the stone steps where they gave onto the narrow corridor chipped out of frozen ground and granite. “Lizzie, you too.” She lifted the voluminous folds of her turquoise gown and wrapped the fabric around both girls, folding them in close like a mother hen with her chicks. “I should have gone to the Lass and changed out of this silly rig.”
“You weren’t thinkin’ of clothes at the time,” Maggie said with some sympathy. “Besides, all these petticoats is warm.”
“Do you think Claire was able to fetch the earl?” Down here, with only a thin yellow ribbon of electricks for light, she was cut off—buried as surely as any corpse in a grave. And for so long a time, it seemed eternity had passed.
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