Exile for Dreamers (22 page)

“He did?”

“Oh, my dear, I always overcharge abominably.”

“Of course, you do. Because our families are willing to pay an exorbitant fee for you to take us off their hands.”

She didn't answer that, there was no need. We all knew it was true, even if it did still sting. She chirped on about what she would put in the letter to my aunt. “And then so that she won't worry, I'll tell her that you are quite happy here. You might want to write and tell her the same.”

“No, you can't say that.” I sat up and shook my head. “It would be doing it up too brown. She'll never believe I'm happy. I'm not the happy sort.”

“I see.” She seemed to take me seriously, but I couldn't tell for certain. There was a little twist to her mouth that made me wonder. “Quite right.”

She tapped the arm of the chair thoughtfully. “Then I shall tell her this: that your embroidery and sewing skills are wretched and still require considerable work, your watercolors are deplorable, and your French lessons are coming along rather slowly. But to encourage her, I will add that your nightmares appear to be less severe than they once were. I wonder if I ought to speculate that perhaps the farther you reside from Tidenham, the less the dreams seem to intrude upon your peace.”

“Oh, yes, brilliant! That would do it.” I stared at my teacher, amazed. Almost every word she planned to say was true,
almost,
except the part about the dreams, and yet it had nothing to do with the important facts of the matter.

“That settles that, then.” She stood and shook out her stiff black skirts. “Come. I need to make haste and compose a message to Captain Grey. We'll stop by my study to write it, and then you can accompany me to the dovecote. The pigeons always behave better when you are there.”

“Because I feed them.”

“Hmm.”

Georgie's favorite room in the house, apart from her laboratory, is Miss Stranje's study. It is my least favorite. I feel trapped here. The bookshelves tower to the ceiling and every inch is filled. Even though she has shelves lining all three walls, books are still stacked on the floor. Miss Stranje claims there is an order we cannot see to her office, and I believe her. Ask her for a book, and she knows exactly where it can be found.

Her papers, however, are a different matter. They are arranged meticulously in slots along the wall behind her and in three bins atop her desk. A cunning woman, Miss Emma Stranje, to have laid a trap so subtle that something as insignificant as a cut pen nib falling out of place would tell her that we had riffled through her papers.

She indicated a chair for me and proceeded to sit at the desk and cut a long thin strip of vellum. She possessed two inkwells, the regular variety of India ink and the invisible ink Georgiana had created. First she would compose a message in India ink and then, when that dried, she would follow with more sensitive information written in the disappearing ink.

While she worked, I fidgeted with the fringe on my chair and then started perusing the books on the shelf nearest to me. One in particular caught my attention, a collection of geographical information and maps of China, and next to it stood a book with Chinese characters etched on the spine.

Curiosity overtook me, and I interrupted her writing. “How long have you known Madame Cho?”

She didn't look up from blotting the vellum. “A great many years,” she said. “She came to live with us when I was seven.” She glanced up and smiled. “Cho was not much older than you are.”

“How?” I blurted. “How did she come all the way from China to here?”

Miss Stranje snapped out of her reverie and frowned. “What has she told you?”

“Only that her father taught her the fighting skills she teaches us. And that she lived in a village where two rivers meet.”

“Ah, yes, the Xi and the Tan.” She bent again over the slender strip of paper and concentrated on making very small, careful strokes.

I scooted my chair closer and folded my arms on the edge of her wooden desk, watching her work. “Why did she come to live with you?”

“My father adopted her. We were raised as sisters.”

“If she was my age, she was rather old to be adopted. How did he come by her? Did he steal her away from her home in China?”

“Good heavens, no!” She glanced up at me, astonished by my question. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

I smoothed my fingers over the soft quail feather on one of her extra quills. “It's just that Madame Cho looked excessively sad when she spoke of the place where two rivers meet. Which made me wonder why she would have left her family and a place she loved to come to England.”

“What a horrid hypothesis, to think my father would do something so reprehensible. Nothing could be farther from the truth. My father was an honorable, caring man.” Miss Stranje bristled at me and waved the small scrap of paper to make the ink dry faster. “You will have to ask Madame Cho. It is not my story to tell.”

“You know perfectly well she won't tell me. It took almost four years before she would tell me about the two rivers.” I reflected again on how closemouthed everyone was in this house.

“Probably not.” Miss Stranje suppressed a sly smirk. “But you might ask if she knows any good stories about pirates.”

Pirates?

I blinked, more curious than ever. And knowing full well that if Madame Cho had pirates in her history, she would keep mum about that unto death.

Miss Stranje dusted the paper with drying powder and the two of us went downstairs. I followed along behind her, heavily preoccupied with trying to figure out how in blazes pirates might fit into Madame Cho's background. We turned the corner into the first floor hallway and saw one of our two house maids, Alice, coming out of the workroom. She held a dust rag and a jar of lemon oil mixed with beeswax in one hand.

Miss Stranje hailed her. “It's awfully quiet down here, Alice. Where have they all gone off to?”

Alice bobbed a curtsey. “I'll tell you, miss, for I know exactly where they are, seein' as they've had me running in and out and to and fro.
Bring a pitcher of lemon water, Alice,
says Lady Jane.
Take that dish back to the house,
says Miss Wyndham. Where are they, miss? They're way out past the garden and beyond the roses, working with that odd gentleman from the Colonies, Mr. Sinclair. But as to what they're getting up to, I cannot say. Building something, by the looks of it. Whatever it is, more'n likely it's dangerous, because the young ladies shooed me away with strict orders to shake my rugs elsewhere. Miss Georgiana tells me I'd best take my rugs and go on over to the far side of the garden or I might get myself blown straight to kingdom come. Although what danger I could be in from that old copper tub is beyond me. Now, if anyone were to ask me, a young lady ought not—”

“Thank you, Alice. We don't mean to keep you from your work. You've been most helpful. And you needn't run any more errands for the young ladies while they are out of doors. They've legs of their own.”

“Just so, miss. I have dusting and polishing to do, that's what I told them. Dusting, dusting, and more dusting.” Alice glanced guiltily over her shoulder and reached back to pull the workroom door shut as if she didn't want us to notice it wasn't quite as dusted and polished as her diatribe suggested.

We left through the side door and found them, just as Alice had said, gathered together on the far side of the rose patch. All of them were there, even Lord Ravencross. He sat stretched out, sleeping in a chair. Sera perched on a bench nearby, working intently on a sketch of some kind. I suspected it was a sketch of Gabriel and experienced a twinge of jealousy. Maya was plucking a small finger harp that lay flat in her lap, while Georgie, Jane, and Mr. Sinclair huddled over some sort of tangled heap of copper and tin.

At any other country house this would have been a perfectly idyllic scene. The weather was fine. Bees hummed. Roses perfumed the air. There was even the odd butterfly fluttering about. Except at any other manor house the gentry would have been engaged in a companionable game of ninepins or shuttlecocks, whereas here at Stranje House, the young people were building a weapon.

Or a prototype for one.

Sera
was
indeed sketching Gabriel. “Must you?” I whispered. She said nothing, intent on rubbing her finger over some shading on the drawing. I strolled quietly next to Lord Ravencross and stared down at him, unable to resist thinking what an intriguing-looking man he was. The contrast of the scar against the Greek god–like perfection of his features and the strength of his jaw, well, I couldn't blame Sera for wanting to draw him. At my approach, his eyes blinked open. And whatever beauty his face contained was nothing compared to the soul-melting glory of his eyes.

“You came back,” I said, swallowing my embarrassment for having been caught gawking at him.

“Thought I ought to give Sinclair a hand with his invention.” He leaned up and squinted at the young inventor.

“Yes.” I nodded in mock seriousness. “I see you are hard at work.”

“I am.” The corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly. “I'm overseeing the work. Can't you tell?” He flopped back against the chair and closed his eyes. “Sinclair appears to have all the manual labor he needs at the moment. What's more, I have donated two skiffs to the project.” He pointed at two long boats resting on the grass next to the conglomeration of copper.

“It's a catamaran design.” Georgie popped up from behind the metal heap with a screwdriver in her hand. “Thank you, my lord, for the loan of your skiffs. It speeds the work along considerably not having to build the pontoons from scratch.” She waved Miss Stranje and me over excitedly. “You really must come see what we're doing. It's quite brilliant.”

I was not impressed. It looked as if a perfectly good tub had been cut apart with tin snips and reshaped into a small furnace. There were screws and bolts of various sizes sitting in dishes on the ground around them, and Mr. Sinclair was piercing metal sheets with a hammer and punch.

I didn't understand Georgie's enthusiasm for this pile of disassembled copper sheeting and tubing. So I turned to Jane for an explanation. “What is it?”

“A small boiler for the steam engine. Or at least the beginnings of one.”

“Why are you constructing it out here in the open?” I glanced with worry toward the woods and then in the direction of Lady Pinswary's manor.

“Why wouldn't we?” Mr. Sinclair asked, still tapping the hammer against his metal punch. “Miss Stranje instructed me not to build anything explosive indoors.”

“Because, Mr. Sinclair—”

“I do wish someone around here would call me by my given name.” He huffed and straightened from where he'd been hunched over his work. “It's Alexander, and I confess I am lonesome to hear the sound of it and heartily tired of hearing Mr. Sinclair this and Mr. Sinclair that.”

“Very well, then, Alexander,” I began again. “I am concerned about you constructing it out here in the open, because there is a distinct possibility one of Lady Daneska's spies from the Iron Crown will see it.”

“Oh well, then.” He swatted my concerns away with the metal punch as if shooing away a gnat. “In that case, you needn't worry. There's nothing sacred about a steam engine, miss.” Sinclair stretched his back and strolled closer to tower over me. “These engines have been around since before either of us were born. Why, back in 1770, a fellow in France made a steam-powered wagon for the army. Trouble was, the folks with the guillotines threatened to chop off his head because they decided science was evil and they hated progress.”

Alexander gave his blond curls a brisk rub, knocking loose a shard of copper. “Interesting people, the French. On the one hand, some are smarter than a pack of hungry foxes. On the other hand, you've got a passel of 'em who are crazier than badgers in heat.”

“
Badgers in
…” Jane exhaled loudly and rolled her gaze to the small fluffy clouds flitting across the sky.
“Please,
Mr. Sinclair. Try not to pepper your speech with bodily functions. A little civility would not go amiss.”

He ignored her. “As far as I'm concerned, if someone from the Iron Crown wants to stand out here and take notes rather than torture me, I'm more than happy to let him have a go at it.”

Jane leaned in and whispered in an aside to me, “When I charged him with that very same question, he told me not to worry. He says he is a
practicalist
. Whatever that might mean. As near as I can tell, it is a philosophy held by American gentlemen who wish to find the easiest way out of a pickle.”

“Ah,” I said, surprised to hear Jane refer to him as a gentleman when his manners were so atrocious.

The American gentleman had definitely captured Miss Stranje's attention, although not for his uncouth speech. “Are you saying, Mr. Sinclair, that this is
not
the contraption the Iron Crown is interested in?”

He stepped back, jammed his hands in his pockets, and glanced down nervously before answering. “That's right, miss. This is not exactly the piece they're after.”

“And what
exactly
are they after?”

“Well, you see, it's not so very difficult to build a steam engine. Not if you know what you're doing. Oh, these boilers blow up now and again. But after you've put one or two together, it's not as risky.” He stopped and rubbed the back of his neck. “However, it is a mite trickier to make a steam engine actually do the work you want it to perform. Like say, for instance, turn a wagon wheel or paddle a warship.”

“I see.” Miss Stranje chewed her lip for a moment. “So that is the information they wanted from you? The connections that would make a paddlewheel turn properly.”