Her Own Devices, a steampunk adventure novel

by Shelley Adina

  “Nicely done, Trevelyan,” Lady Julia Wellesley whispered. “We have a half period free thanks to you.”

  “I must say, that brown substance suits you.” Lady Catherine’s overbite became more prominent as she smiled. “It’s the exact color of your hair.”

  “Next time, perhaps you’ll be less inclined to show off your superior intellectual powers,” Gloria Meriwether-Astor added, her flat vowels emphasizing a colonial drawl.

  Claire tried to keep silent, but this was just too much. She turned to glare at the new heiress from the American Territories, who had fit in with the other girls from the moment of her arrival like an imperious hand in a kid glove. “I don’t show off at all. I—”

  “Oh, please,” Lady Julia waved her fingers. “Spare us the false humility. But tell me, how on earth do you expect to attract a husband looking like that?”

  “She’s trying to impress old Grünwald.” Lady Catherine giggled. “He’s single.”

  He was also forty if he was a day, overweight, and his receding hairline perspired when he was under pressure, which was nearly all the time. Besides which, marrying anyone below the rank of baron was out of the question, never mind a man forced to earn his living by teaching the next generation of society’s glittering lights.

  Not that these particular glittering lights wanted to be taught anything but how to embroider a handkerchief or pour a cup of tea. Though if there were a class devoted to the art of landing a titled husband, she had no doubt every one of them would sign up for it and never miss a moment. Of course, Lady Julia could probably teach such a class. Rumor had it that as soon as she descended the platform on graduation day next week, Lord Robert Mount-Batting would go down upon one knee on the lawn and propose. Claire rather doubted that rumor had its facts in order. Lady Julia would never miss her presentation at court in two weeks, nor any of the balls and parties to be held in her honor afterward. If there were to be lawns involved, it would probably be the one at Ascot, or the one at Wellesley House, sometime before the shooting season began in August.

  Julia, Catherine, and Claire herself were to be presented to Her Majesty during the same Drawing Room. Claire’s imagination shuddered and refused to venture there. Who knew what fresh humiliation those girls could dream up in that most august company?

  Finally ridding herself of the maddening crowd, Claire went to Administration and sent a tube containing Professor Grünwald’s request down to the offices of the staff. No point in cleaning herself up or changing her clothes if she was to be doomed to pushing a mop for the next thirty minutes. This benighted school hadn’t the wit to obtain the services of a mother’s helper to take care of the worst of the mess. Armed with a ladder, mops, and buckets, it took her and the two chars the rest of the period to clean the sticky foam off the ceiling, benches, chairs, and floor of the laboratory.

  Thank goodness the professor had retired to his office. She was able to laugh at the chars’ comments on his marital prospects with impunity.

  After Claire helped them carry the equipment back to the basement, she changed into her spare uniform in the gymnasium dressing room as fast as she could. Still, she arrived at her French class late with half her blouse’s hem sticking out of the waistband of her skirt, much to the amusement of Lady Julia and Gloria.

  “Never mind them,” Emilie Fragonard whispered from the desk behind her as she reached forward and tucked in the offending article. “You’re all right now.”

  Dear Emilie. Though her friend’s hair was drawn back in an practical braided bun instead of a flattering pompadour, and her spectacles were, in Claire’s opinion, too heavy for her delicate features and hid her fine eyes, she was the soul of kindness. And kindness, heaven knew, was in short supply at St. Cecelia’s.

  After class and before the midday meal, Claire and Emilie took refuge in the dappled shade under a grove of trees on the far side of the lawn. Over the ten-foot granite wall that separated the sheltered young ladies from the bustle of London, the rattle of carriages and jingle of harness could be heard on the road, along with the voices of passers-by and the occasional distinctive chug of a new steam landau. When she heard that sound, Claire could hardly contain the urge to run to the gates and stare. They were such fascinating engines, each one different, yet operating under the same marvelous principles.

  “Don’t even think about it.” Emilie’s tone told Claire she’d been caught. “Ladies do not gawk after steam landaus or those who drive them.”

  “I don’t care about who drives them. I drive one myself. I just like to look at them.”

  “You do not. Drive one, I mean.”

  “I do indeed. Gorse is teaching me.”

  “Claire Elizabeth Trevelyan!” Emilie put a pale hand against the trunk of the largest of the elms for support. “I thought your escapade with the quadricycle was bad enough. You cannot tell me you are actually piloting one of those dangerous things!”

  “They’re not dangerous, if you know their proper operation. Which I do. One’s speed and direction are merely a matter of the correct application of steam. The explosions of the first models are a thing of the past.”

  “That’s lucky, knowing how you are about explosions.”

  Claire’s good spirits cooled like a fire left too long without fuel. “You heard.”

  “The entire school heard. Honestly, dear heart, you’ve got to curb this unhealthy tendency to blow things up.”

  “That ridiculous excuse for a professor wouldn’t tell us what would happen. How can I be blamed for the silly man’s stubbornness? If there’s anything I hate, it’s someone telling me ‘don’t’ without saying why.”

  “And one must know the reason why for everything.”

  “Not everything. But certainly something as simple as why one cannot add a peppermint to dandelion and burdock. One adds peppermint to cookie batter and tea with no harmful effects whatever.”

  “Thanks to you, everyone in school now knows why. And by breakfast tomorrow, everyone over at Heathbourne will, too.”

  Heathbourne was the equivalent of St. Cecelia’s on the other side of the square—and where she would have gone had she been born a boy and her father’s heir. “I don’t care about the opinions of schoolboys.”

  “You will in a few weeks, when you’re at your come-out ball at Carrick House and none of them ask you to dance.”

  “You sound exactly like my mother.” Why had no one told her the bow on the front of her middy blouse was lopsided? She pulled it out and began to retie it.

  “In this she’s correct, and you know it. Claire, please consider.” Emilie’s tone became gentle. “It’s a fact universally acknowledged that a young lady of good fortune must make a suitable marriage.”

  “Do not quote the mores of our grandmothers’ generation to me. Besides, not every young lady wishes that.” Her own appearance taken care of, she reached over to anchor a celluloid hairpin more securely in Emilie’s bun. If it could not be lovely, at least it should be secure.

  “Every one who wishes to be received in good society does. You don’t want to be one of those dreadful Chelsea people, like poor Peony Churchill, do you?”

  As a matter of fact, Claire coveted and envied the intellectual explorations found in the salons and lecture halls of the Chelsea set, known in the papers as the Wits. It was led by Mrs. Stanley Churchill, Peony’s mother, and populated by explorers and scientists from the Royal Society of Engineers as well as artists, musicians, and the most independent thinkers of Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s empire. Their philosophy that the intellect trumped the bloodline flew in the face of most of society. But no one could argue that the Prime Minister himself was one of them. The fact that a scientist or explorer could be granted lands and a title when noble bloodlines were getting more inbred and in some cases dying out altogether was an indication which way the wind blew.

  And Claire had always loved the wind. Was it mere coincidence that the family estate in Cornwall was called Gwynn Place, from
the Cornish plas-an-gwyn, meaning manor of the wind? Perhaps not. Perhaps it was a sign.

  A shadow blotted out the sun and she and Emilie looked up to see not a cloud, but an enormous airship passing far overhead. The eleven-thirty packet to Paris had left its mooring mast at Hampstead Heath exactly on time.

  Deep in the marble and sandstone halls of the school, a bell rang. “There’s lunch,” she told Emilie, turning from the wonderful sight of the ship and neatly evading the answer to her friend’s question. “Come along or we’ll be late.”

  ***

  Enjoy an excerpt of Immortal Faith

  Copyright 2011 Shelley Adina Bates

  In the small, traditional community of Minuit, Idaho, the Brethren pray that God will deliver them from evil. They should have been more specific.

  Sophie Dupont is on the threshold of womanhood, standing in the door between her religion’s way of life and the possibilities of the world outside. She is also torn between two young men: David Martin, whom she has known since childhood, and Gabriel Langford, the new arrival. In a community that only grows when people are born into it, a convert—young, single, and male—is the most exciting thing that has happened in years.

  When Sophie’s uncle is found dead in the barn with his throat slashed and bitten, the community grieves—except Sophie, who has been abused by him for years. And when the local mean girl is killed the same way, Sophie hardly dares to voice what she suspects: that only the worst among them are being weeded out. Under the elders’ approving eyes, it seems Gabriel is dedicated to worshipping God. But his methods may not stand up to too close a scrutiny . . . and Sophie is getting very close indeed . . .

  Immortal Faith, a young adult novel of vampires and unholy love

  By Shelley Adina

  Chapter 1

  The baby chick, hatched just yesterday and half the size of my palm, peeped as I stroked its downy yellow back with one finger. The two halves of its tiny beak crossed at the tips, which was why it had been peeping. It couldn’t pick up the feed and it was hungry.

  Maman would be out any moment, but I couldn’t help myself—I had to do something for it, even if all I had to offer was the warmth of my hands. I knew it had to be culled; if it managed to grow up and have chicks of its own, it would pass on the defect. On a Brethren farm, even a tiny scrap of life such as this still had to do its best and pull its weight, and my mother had no tolerance for things that didn’t pull their weight.

  Unless we were speaking of my youngest brother, Pierre.

  Sometimes you didn’t know until a creature was half grown that it would need to be culled. When one of the young roosters decided it was going to challenge Papa for the rule of the farmyard, and attacked his leg in a fury of male aggression, Papa simply pulled it off his boot and ended that discussion with a quick twist. “I’ll not have that bird passing on his bad seed,” was all he’d said, and we had chicken and dumplings for dinner that night.

  Pierre and Richard laughed and called me softheaded as well as softhearted because I couldn’t bring myself to do some of the things that were necessary on a working farm. And while I knew God had a purpose for every animal and human here—even Pierre—and we all had to fill our places . . . I gazed down at the defenseless fluffball in my hand. We were taught to strive after perfection, but couldn’t there be a little room for mercy, too?

  But questioning was a sure path to a bad spirit, which led to discontent and pride. Father, forgive me for my resentful thoughts.

  “Sophie, are you out here?”

  “Oui, Maman.”

  The sunlight streaming in the barn door darkened briefly, throwing my mother’s body into silhouette and shining through her capote to show the smooth French braid tucked up under itself beneath it. “You’re not mooning over those chicks, are you? You know we can’t keep the ones that aren’t up to standard.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ll have to learn to do this some day.” Her tone softened as she joined me at the pen where the broody hens lived until the chicks were big enough to go out into the barn. “When you’re married and have a fine farm of your own, you’ll be overrun with rickety, good-for-nothing birds if you don’t cull the bad ones.”

  No one I knew kept chickens as pets, but in the rare moments that I sat down on the back steps and one would jump into my lap, I would swear that, like my baby sister, they wanted to be cuddled. I wished I could keep this one as a pet. “She’s not bad,” I said softly. The chick had settled in my palm, and I covered it with my other hand. “It isn’t her fault she’s not perfect.”

  “And would you have a yard full of cross-beaks that can’t eat their food? That grow up spindly and thin and won’t fill the stomachs of your family?”

  “No.” I sighed. We had this same conversation every spring, and every spring I hated it just as much. The part about getting married and having my own farm hadn’t come up before, though. I wondered what had brought that on.

  “Sophie.” Maman held out her hand. Gently, I put the chick into it and turned away. With no sound but a sudden rustle of the dark blue cotton of her sleeves, it was over. “Are there any more?”

  “The one with the yellow spot on its head can’t walk. There, by the Wyandotte mama.” Another rustle of movement. “I’ll bury them, Maman.”

  “Don’t be long bringing in the eggs. I want to speak to you.”

  After I’d done my sad duty, I comforted myself watching the rest of the chicks tumble over each other, nip food away from their companions, and collapse in happy abandon for a nap under their mamas’ wings, which kept them warm on this sullen day in the hind part of April. The chicks could not know what had happened to the others, and their innocence was a joy in itself. But how fair was it that they’d only escaped because they met a standard they didn’t even know existed?

  The chicken barn was sectioned off from the field horses’ stalls and the neat area where the buggies and tack were stored. That part belonged to Papa and the boys. This part belonged in name to Maman, and in reality to me. It was dry, cozy, and safe, and on rainy days the birds made themselves comfortable in the deep bedding of wood shavings or perched on the hay bales stacked along the wall. For me, it felt peaceful and industrious at the same time, as the hens got on with the business of laying, raising chicks, and eating. Once I’d collected the eggs, I walked slowly across the yard, drying now as spring advanced, to the kitchen door.

  What did Maman want to speak to me about? We talked all day long. As the second eldest girl in the family, and since leaving high school in tenth grade last spring as was required of les jeunes, or Brethren young folks, I was her biggest help. That had been my older sister Rachelle’s place, but no longer. Last year, Rachelle had said in her letters that she’d fallen in love with life in Coeur d’Alene and would wait a little longer to come back to Minuit. Why wouldn’t she? She was in the period of life we called “running wild,” where she could stay out all night if she wanted. Talk to a boy without a dozen relatives leaping to conclusions and then into wedding plans. Drive a car like the Outsiders—meaning one with a combustion engine, not a hand-cranked magneto engine—and even finish high school and go to college.

  That was all well and good—for her. But she shouldn’t wait too long to decide whether she was coming back. My father had taken to falling into silence whenever her name was mentioned, and that was not so good. The thought of having to treat my own sister as an Outsider made my skin go cold and coiled a sick knot of apprehension in my stomach. What crazy girl would sacrifice her family and her church just to stay out late and drive a car?

  I ran warm water into the sink and began to wash the eggs while Maman put a couple more sticks of wood in the stove and sliced into the pile of scrubbed potatoes on the counter. Father and the boys were out planting our rocky, unforgiving soil, now that the Idaho winter had released its iron grip on the ground and the days were long enough, and they’d be hungry as bears when they came in.

  “What did you
want to talk to me about?”

  On the rug my grandmother had braided as a bride when she’d come to Minuit, baby Marianne kicked her legs with great energy, and Maman glanced at her to make sure she wasn’t going anywhere. At this rate, she’d roll over and start crawling, without any of the in-between. My mother seemed to be taking an awfully long time to reply.

  Oh, dear.

  I ran the last several hours through my head, and when nothing popped up that would rate a talking-to, I ran through yesterday, too. I’d dropped an egg on the way out of the barn, but the birds had eaten it so fast there couldn’t have been any evidence left to tell the tale.

  This silence couldn’t have anything to do with marriage and new farms, could it? I was only sixteen. I hadn’t even gone to the Assembly of Brethren over in Washington State this spring to meet boys, like several of my friends had. Didn’t even know if I wanted to. Then what—

  “Gabriel Langford helped your father and brothers with the planting yesterday,” she began with a “this isn’t important but I thought I’d pass it on” kind of tone.

  “That was kind of him,” I said, “though I’m sure he has plenty to do in Jean-Baptiste LeBrun’s fields.”

  “He does. Which is why it meant something, Sophie, for him to finish there and then do nearly a full day’s work here.”

  “Why would he do that? Does Jean-Baptiste think that if he works him to death, he’ll be less likely to want to join church?”

  “That boy’s capacity for work puts even your father to shame,” Maman said. “Not to mention his willingness to try his hand at anything, from planting to construction.”

  “Have the men got a competition going to see who can wear him out first?” I was only half joking. My friends and I complained to each other that even if Gabriel Langford was the one we most wanted to bump into, with him it was the least likely to happen. He worked from dawn till dark, and when he wasn’t working, he was taking French lessons with Elder Duvalle, or history lessons from one of the other elders about the Brethren from way back in the 1600s, when our French Huguenot ancestors fled to America to avoid religious persecution. When he wasn’t doing any of those things, he was in meeting. Head bowed, glossy black hair combed, clothes spotless, he occupied his bench in a way that made heads turn.