A Gentleman of Means (5 page)

Gloria was no stranger to the undersea dirigible. Of her five voyages across the Atlantic, one had been entirely under the water … an experience whose novelty had faded once they had left the continental shelf behind and the only scenery consisted of darkness, punctuated occasionally by whales and fish. The fact that her father had used the interminable hours to school her in the workings of his business had not helped the situation, but rather made her feel as though flinging herself out the hatch with the daily load of refuse might be an appealing alternative.

The Mediterranean was much more interesting, being shallow and showing the evidence of long human habitation, even on its submerged shores. But even the archaeological delights of the sunken city of Atlantis and the ancient volcanic ruins of Thera, to which Captain Hayes made a point of detouring to give her some relief from rocks and coral, began to pall after the second week.

She had used every trick and weapon in her considerable arsenal of female wiles to get Captain Hayes to divulge who he was and where they were going—
England
being rather a general term. Even a hint as to
why
she was being taken would have been helpful. But to every blandishment, every subterfuge, he and his crew remained immune.

She had even resorted to burglary and theft, only to find that no papers existed other than those relating to the muster in the Adriatic and earlier orders for shipping in the Mediterranean. No messages had been received by the vessel during its periodic surface expeditions for supplies—unless they had been destroyed promptly after they had been read. The only thing concerning her current situation that she had been able to find was a receipt for the feminine underthings that had been discreetly left in her cabin, when they had surfaced at Sicily.

She supposed she ought to be grateful for such a consideration, for she had nothing to wear but what she stood up in. One thing was certain: When they reached their destination, she was tearing off this particular walking suit and leaving it, for she never wanted to see it again.

Captain Hayes’s courtesy never failed him, no matter how cross or how cold she was. If he hadn’t been kidnapping her, she might have enjoyed his company. Each evening—or what passed for evening in the perpetual gloom of fathoms of seawater—she dined with him and his officers in the canteen set aside for their exclusive use. The small library in his cabin was made available to her in its entirety. She had now read the complete works of Miss Austen and Mr. Thackeray twice through, and had recently begun to plow through
A Mariner’s Guide to Land Forms and Navigation
. Next up was
Astronomy and Exploration
, and after that,
The Fall of the Roman Empire
.

She was leaving that one for last. If she survived that long and did not go completely mad.

The only facts she currently possessed were that their heading was westerly, and aside from the detours, they were traveling at the upper limits of the engines’ capabilities. Why the crew had not staged an airship somewhere so that this interminable journey could be made in three or four days instead of weeks, was a question she had not bothered to ask, for she already knew the answer. Stealth was the most urgent necessity, and airships could be spotted and pursued. Airships were subject to sovereign air space and identification and the filing of flight plans. Undersea dirigibles, being a new technology not yet in use on the Continent, had no such restrictions. And not even her father could track one until it surfaced and a pigeon could locate its magnetic code.

No one knew where she was. And somehow the utter loneliness embodied in that fact was the most horrifying thing of all.

She, who had tasted the delights of friendship, of conversation with active minds and warm hearts, had developed a taste for it that had spoiled her for her previous life. Before she had met Claire, she’d thought she had friends, but now she knew differently. The girls from school understood friendship to be mutual society—and mutual use of one another’s connections and talents. But friendship was not that at all. Friendship was being understood. Being esteemed for one’s talents, yes, but even if one had none, one could still be appreciated for one’s other qualities. The ability to laugh at a joke. The need for solitude on occasion—but not too much. The appreciation of a piece of music or a line of poetry. And most important of all, the ability to offer a hand when a hand was needed—and being able to instantly recognize such a need when words could not be spoken.

After two weeks under the sea, Gloria missed Claire and Alice and the girls and even that outspoken rascal Jake with an intensity that was almost becoming a pain in her middle. And she had had just about enough of moping about and trying to distract herself by reading of other women who had friends and family while she did not.

“We’re a flock,” Maggie had told her once, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Gloria wanted a flock. She wanted to be reunited with her friends, not putting mile after mile of bubbles and water between herself and people whom she was quite sure actually cared about her.

In fact, she realized now, she was quite put out that she had been removed from them against her will under circumstances that would paint her in the blackest of lights, and her days of being complaisant and polite were over. She swung her feet over the side of her bunk, and as she stood, her ears popped.

She gripped the iron rails of the bunk. That meant only one thing—they were surfacing.

A horn blew and feet began to pound along the corridors, in exactly the same manner as they had on the three previous occasions.

But on those occasions she had not yet had enough. Now the Meriwether-Astor temper, which she had thought utterly cowed over the years and groomed into more acceptable forms such as
spirit
and
determination
, and occasionally,
bull-headedness
, flooded her system with a tingling need to act.

Under the bunk was a sea-chest belonging to the cabin’s real occupant, a middy of some fourteen years. She had already rifled it, but now she jerked it from its place with more purpose. Swiftly, she put on the linen pants, blouse, and jacket that identified her as a member of the crew. She flung her hair up and pinned the tail in such a way that it fell all about her face, as shaggy as that of a boy who hasn’t seen a pair of scissors in six months, and jammed the middy’s cap on top. Stuffing the contents of her slender purse—ten pounds in coins, her identity papers, and two rings—into the pockets, she rolled up her skirt and petticoat and stuffed them under the bedclothes, then pulled the covers up.

It might pass for her recumbent form, and it might not. But she no longer cared.

Opening the door, she jogged along the corridor and joined a stream of men heading to the upper deck. As she reached the hatch, it opened, letting in the first sunlight she had seen in weeks. Choking back a groan of anticipation, she went up the ladder like a monkey, took a deep breath, and jumped over the chasm between streaming deck and sturdy wooden dock with as little hesitation as the other middies. Immediately she busied herself with ropes and boxes.

Little by little, she moved down the dock. She had perfected the art of looking productively occupied years ago, and it stood her in good stead now. Only a gangway stood between her and the shore, so she hefted a small barrel to her shoulder and walked down it in as unstudied a manner as she could.

“You there!” someone shouted. “You’re going the wrong way!”

A glance over her shoulder showed her a longshoreman as big as a house, with his greasy hands on his hips. “It’s empty, sir!” she called. “Won’t pass muster wiv our cap’n, so I’m going to fill it.”

“Drink it yourself, more like,” the man grumbled, clearly too busy to bother himself any more.

Her stomach jumping with nerves, Gloria lost herself in the crowd on the dock, dumping the barrel in a pile the moment she was out of sight. The air smelled of rotting fish and tar and overheated steam engines, and she dragged great, satisfying breaths of it into her lungs.

A woman selling fried kraken tentacles, cut crossways and rammed on a stick, looked up as Gloria stopped at her brazier. “Can I interest you in a kraken stick, young sir?” she asked.

“Not at this time, mum, but p’raps you might tell me the name of this port?”

The woman’s eyebrows rose under the kerchief tied about her head. “First voyage, aye? Silly trout. Look up.”

Gloria did so, and saw nothing but a great cliff of rock that seemed familiar, though she was quite sure she had never been here in her life. “What…?”

The woman frowned at her ignorance. “Ye git, it’s the Rock of Gibraltar. How long you been at sea?”

“First time,” Gloria said faintly. Gibraltar! An English colony, one of the largest trading ports in the entire Mediterranean … and the last stop before skirting the Royal Kingdom of Spain and entering the Channel. “My thanks, mum.”

“Sure you don’t want kraken? Plenty tasty, mine is.”

Gloria’s nerves were stretched to the point that any food, never mind the greasy, fried remains of a species that had likely meant the end of her friends, would have come up again immediately. “No thanks, mum. But maybe you might know where a man could send a pigeon?”

“Lawful correspondence here is sent by tube, lad, as anybody knows.”

Gloria eyed her. “And is there another kind?”

“No, but if there was, a man could inquire at the Barnacle.”

“My thanks.” Gloria dug a sixpence out of her pocket and gave it to the woman, waved off a stick of tentacle with a sickly smile, and jogged off down the waterfront in the direction she’d indicated.

In the public house, the pandemonium seemed less the result of drunken merriment than a deliberate screen for the sundry illegal activities going on. Thankful for her male disguise, Gloria inquired and then pushed her way back to a cage where a boy sat sucking a peppermint. “I need to send a pigeon.”

He moved the peppermint from one cheek to the other. “Be a pound.”

A pound! Highway robbery! But she was in no position to quibble. She handed it over, and he pushed a piece of paper and a pencil under the grate.

A note was one thing, but as desperately as she tried, she could not recall the delivery code for
Athena
, nor for Alice’s ship, provided the latter had recovered it. She did not even know if either of them was alive—and if they were not, whether whoever received the note would give a flying fig that she was being kidnapped. But she had no choice. She must try.

In despair, she looked up. “Have you a directory of some kind?”

“Do I look like someone who has a directory? You want one of those, go to the post office and send a tube.”

She cursed—one of the saltier versions she’d picked up in the Americas.

“Where you sending it?”

“To Count von Zeppelin in Munich.” It was the only address she could think of that had any hope of reaching … anyone.

The boy straightened on his stool. “I know that one. Lot of air traffic here. Give it.”

Gloria pushed the message under the grate and he stuffed it into what she had mistakenly believed to be a lantern hanging from the ceiling. Seeing her surprise, he said, “What, you think we have ’em out in the open for the postal authority to pinch?” He spun the numbers, opened a hatch behind him, and shoved the pigeon out into the sunlight, where it rose into the sky and disappeared to the northeast.

She must do the same, somehow. And quickly.

“Where is the airfield?” she asked the boy.

“Out on the point, past the docks, between the Rock and the sea. Can’t miss it.”

In her fear, she’d already managed to miss the Rock of Gibraltar once, so this didn’t mean much. All the same, Gloria thanked him and pushed her way back out of the taproom, keeping her head down and her posture crablike and subservient.

The moment she stepped out on the cobblestones, she heard the hue and cry. It could have been a boiler explosion. It could have been an escaped horse causing the running, shouting, and relaying of information. But she couldn’t take the chance.

She ran along the waterfront, dodging carts and steam drays and even the swinging cargo on a walking crane, which might have decapitated her had she not ducked in time. But the sounds of a chase did not dissipate with distance. Looking over her shoulder, she saw one of the officers from
Neptune’s Fancy
running, his face red and sweating, followed by a cluster of middies and bathynauts in Meriwether-Astor colors.

Blast! No, she would not be taken!

Abandoning caution, she began to run in earnest, feeling her leg muscles stretch and her lungs clutch in a way that told her she might not be as fleet of foot at twenty-three as she’d been at fifteen.

She was no match for the middies, used to haring up and down decks and loading supplies. In moments they surrounded her like a pack of hounds, baying and shouting and closing around her long enough for the officer in charge of the search party to catch up and seize her by the arm.

“Miss Meriwether-Astor, you have led us a merry chase,” he said between breaths as heavy as those of a blown horse. “Enough of this nonsense. You are coming with us.”

“I am not!” She kicked the nearest knee, threw an elbow, and would have broken the circle of her captors, too, if it had not been for the middy whose clothes she was presently wearing, who grabbed her about the waist and swung her around.

He had arms like iron, the wretch.

Cursing like a bathynaut herself, Gloria was soon dragged onto the
Fancy
and shown to the bridge, where Captain Hayes waited, his hands clasped behind his back and an expression in his eyes that was almost hurt.