Gilded Lily (23 page)

That left only one option, the one she hadn't wanted to take. Crossing to the closest window, she studied the hasp and padlock that had been installed while she slept, a later discovery that had fueled a good half hour of enraged weeping. But she'd railed more at the symbolism than anything else. If her father had thought to place the lock outside the window, that might have been more difficult, but he'd been foolish enough to put it on the inside. The lock itself was simple enough, thirty seconds' work to pick.

It was the part once she got outside the window that might be tricky. Aside from the decorative sills and lintels at the windows, the white exterior walls of the house were smooth, offering little purchase for questing feet. There was a drainpipe at the corner of the house, and in theory she might shimmy down that, but the pipe was at least three feet from the window with nothing to grab in between. Then three stories down, clinging to the side of the building directly over the garden fence with its wickedly pointy spikes at the top.

She knew the climb would be a challenge, because she had tried it once before and failed, as her father well knew. It was before the household had moved to France. She had been eight years old then, bent on running away from home over some imagined injustice. Her downfall had come at the end, when she tried to spring clear of the fence and drop the last half story or so. Falling clumsily, she'd caught her skirt on one of the spikes, then swung face-first into the fence and concussed herself against the wrought iron, or perhaps against the flagstones when her skirt gave way and she dropped the last few hand spans to her final landing place. She'd also dislodged two teeth in the process. A gardener had spotted her, wandering bleeding, gap-toothed and dazed, and she supposed they must have patched her up and summoned a doctor but she couldn't recall much of that part. Only the long interlude afterward during which Mrs. Pinkerton was her constant companion, and both Mother and Father had perfected what was evidently to be a lifetime of sighing in disappointment.

Father must have known she could easily manage the small padlocks he'd put at the windows. He'd taught her how locks worked in the first place, after all. But he hadn't expected her to try escaping that way, anyway, so he hadn't invested time or money in a more secure solution. If he'd gone for bars, she would have been well and truly stuck. As it was, she had but to fiddle with the lock, slide up the sash, and wait until the coast was clear.

The irony, she reflected afterward, was that they had both been thinking the same way, judging by the capabilities she'd demonstrated as an eight-year-old girl. A woman of twenty-one has a substantially longer reach, stronger legs and enough common sense to spot where the pipe brackets were before she started her descent, so she would know what her toes were reaching for and the approximate distance until the next one. And this particular woman was also wearing trousers, no layers of fluffy skirts to get in her way or snag on the fence.

She had just dropped to the pavement side of the fence and straightened up when a bobby strolled around the corner, whistling and twirling his billy club. Constable Tucker, a friendly sort who had been a familiar sight around the park for as long as Freddie could remember. She bent on one knee and started retying her shoe, heart racing as she tried to figure out what to say if he spoke to her or, worse, recognized her.

But other than a laconic “Evenin'” as he passed, Constable Tucker paid her no mind at all.

“Evenin',” she squeaked back, and took off in the opposite direction at a brisk walk, forcing herself not to look back.

She wasn't sure about her second stop, but she knew where she was headed first. Sophie lived less than two miles away, and it was possible Barnabas was still at her house, nursing an injured ankle. And Freddie knew exactly what to do with a Gordian knot.

“Y
OU'RE GOING TO
kill us both, Phineas.”

“Not if you keep your elbow out of my blasted ear.”

“I can't help it. Your head is in the way. This thing wasn't designed for two pilots, especially not in the dark.”

“If we turn the lights up any further it might attract the cuttlefish. I'm uneasy about the lighted dials being too bright as it is. And you're not a pilot. At the moment you're not even being a very good hydrophonics man.”

Barnabas was attempting to operate the
Gilded Lily
's hydrophone controls from a kneeling position, bracing his side against the back of the pilot's chair so he didn't fall over whenever the submersible changed speed or direction. He was not happy about doing this, but had little choice as he had no idea how to pilot the vessel. He'd at least used the hydrophonic array once before, though only to spot a very large submersible. He had no idea whether he'd be able to decipher the subtler indications of anything smaller, such as a rampaging cuttlefish. And he was trying to do it all through the impediment of a massive hangover, the direct result of his attempt last night to block out every memory of Freddie Murcheson. It hadn't worked.

“This is the location. I don't see any movement. Can you make anything out?”

On the periphery of his screen he saw some of the vague glimmerings that he'd gathered meant something was moving nearby. Nothing substantive, though.

“Not so far.”

“Mord couldn't spot them either at first. Then the sub stirred them up and they moved. Keep looking. I'm taking us closer.”

“Must you?”

Phineas didn't answer right away, but Barnabas heard a sharp intake of breath and pulled his face from the equipment to see what his brother had discovered.

He gasped as well. “Are they . . .”

Phineas nodded. “Blinking, yes. And we're right on top of them.”

“Oh, dear God.”

Through the front and side portholes, Barnabas could make out with his naked eyes what the hydrophone had missed. The creatures were everywhere: curled over the nearby rock formation, spread over the ocean floor, nestled in among the kelp. By their shapes and colors, they would have been invisible to the unsuspecting observer, completely camouflaged. Some dozens of animals, many larger than the vessel that floated among them, and they could have been part of the ocean landscape itself if not for one thing. They were all pulsing, glowing then dimming in a gentle rhythm like a heartbeat.
Blink blink pause. Blink blink pause.
In perfect unison.

The eeriness made him doubt his little brother's sanity anew when Phineas said, “I think it will be all right.”

“How can this possibly be all right?” Nothing would ever be all right again, but least of all this.

“Without the light, I don't think we're disturbing them. It's odd they're not moving at all, though. You'd think the water pressure from the propeller would stir them up. I'm going to try to back out slowly, see if I can get some distance.”

“Yes.” That part, Barnabas could support. “Distance would be a very good idea.”

“Then I want to try something. Get back on the hydrophone array.”

“I don't want to try anything, other than retreating.”

“No, I think this will work. This is far enough. Now I need a light, but something small. With a switch, preferably. Or something I can cover completely with my hand. Do you still have that stupid crank torch, by any chance?”

“If it's so stupid, why do you want it?”

“Are you
positive
you're the elder brother?”

Barnabas started to hand the torch over, reluctantly curious to see what Phineas had in mind. His brother cupped his hand over the end of it, holding it steady with the other hand and pointed at the front porthole, and told Barnabas to start cranking. He wound the gadget dutifully until a halo of light shone on his brother's palm.

Meanwhile, Phineas had started counting, watching the cuttlefish and matching their time until he was matched to their tempo. “On, on,
off . . .
On, on,
off
.”

“Tell me you're not going to do what I think you're—”

“Shh . . .
off
. On, on,
off
.” He uncovered the light and let it beam forth, shifting his hand to cover it at just the right moments. “On, on,
oh my God it's working
. Where are you going? Don't stop cranking! Barnabas, come back.”

The creatures had responded, peeling slowly away from their hiding places and approaching the submersible in slow, undulating ripples of light and color. There was no apparent aggression. If anything, they looked curious, but they seemed to be keeping some distance. Phineas kept his frantic chanting up, keeping himself in time, and Barnabas bent over the hydrophonics array to see what they looked like on the screen now that they were in motion.

“The torch will stay lit for several minutes. Keep going. Oh,
now
I see. You know, I think a few of them may have been moving before, but I thought it was kelp.”

“Barnabas, I just thought of something . . . on,
off . . .”

“What?”

“What happens when I stop?”

“Uh. Well. Don't stop. Damn.”

He would have thought of something eventually, he was certain of it, but it turned out not to be necessary. When he glanced at the screen again, he saw a set of ovals, crisp and distinct, closing in from the south. And just as he lifted his head to share this news with Phineas, the squid stopped blinking, suddenly and simultaneously.

“Cover it up,” he shouted as the creatures began darting this way and that, becoming easier to spot as they grew more agitated. “Cover the light, Phin!”

“Oh, right!” Phineas stuffed the torch under his shirt and wool jumper, effectively blocking the beam while freeing his hands. “Why did they do that, I wonder?”

“Wonder no more. I think the smugglers have arrived. We didn't move quickly enough.”

They had, in full force and with lights blazing. The cuttlefish swarmed toward them, a seething mass of tentacular rage, and Phineas gave chase. The nimble little sub outpaced the cephalopods and passed the enemy subs completely, but then Phineas cranked the controls hard and pivoted to observe the battle taking place.

Torpedoes, it seemed, were not the most effective weapons against cephalopods the size of gunboats. These enemies didn't flee, they charged, and before a single shot had been fired at them they had attached themselves directly to the brightest parts of each of the poppy-bearing submersibles. The portholes, the headlamps, the floodlights that swept the seabed. And they began to rend, and squeeze, and use all their considerable might to extinguish every one of the offending lights.

“Let's back away again,” Barnabas suggested, when it was clear the animals were in no need of their help.

“Right. Turning tail seems like another good choice.”

But just as he maneuvered the craft around, Barnabas spotted one piece of flotsam that distinguished itself from the others. It was bullet-shaped and had propellers, and it sped past them before they were sure what they'd seen.

“An escape pod,” Barnabas realized after a moment.

“I'll wager it's headed to the same place we are.”

Unfortunately, the cephalopods had the same idea.

 • • • 

P
ROVIDENTIALLY, SOPHIE'S PERSONAL
airship was overpowered for the size of its small basket. If it hadn't been, it never would have supported the weight of Sophie, Freddie, and Daniel Pinkerton—even at relatively low speeds, and even the fairly short distance between Sophie's home and the dockside warehouse of Rollo Furneval. But they made it work, Freddie and Sophie squeezed together on the seat and Dan clinging to the back like a small boy stealing a ride on a carriage.

Dan had returned to Sophie's, mournfully repentant, after Freddie's father had dismissed him. He'd done it for Sophie, he confessed. Given up Freddie, the sister of his heart, in the hope of protecting Sophie, the lady of his dreams.

When Freddie had knocked—pounded, really—on Sophie's front door, it was Dan who answered. She greeted him with all the feeling she'd been troubled by that day, in the form of a closed fist straight to the nose.

“I deserved that,” he said from the floor. The punch had caught him off guard, which it shouldn't have, and done more damage than Freddie expected. To both of them.

Sophie's housekeeper
tsk
ed at Dan's profusely bleeding nose and instructed him to hold a handkerchief to it while she tended Freddie's split knuckles. He explained himself in snuffled syllables, pausing occasionally to groan.

“You deserved a lot more than that,” Freddie said when the housekeeper turned her attention to the big man again. “If you hadn't done it for Sophie I would never speak to you again.”

“To protect you too, miss. I don't like to see you running around with that troublemaker. Tinkering is one thing, but the rest of it . . . it's just not fitting for a young lady such as yourself. You don't know what men are like.”

He blushed, ducking his head so as not to meet her glare.

“You've done more to teach me what I have to fear from men than Lord Smith-Grenville ever could, Dan.” It was true. This, the well-meaning assumptions about what was best for her, the taking action on her behalf without consulting her for her own opinion and preference on the matter, this was what she didn't want from a man. Didn't need.

“He's a blackguard.”

“He's a lovely gentleman who's been put in an uncomfortable situation—by me, I hasten to add—and has made the best of it. With a certain amount of gallantry, to boot.” Dan attempted a scornful noise, but it put too much pressure on his nose and he ended in a pitiful whimper. “Yes, gallantry. You could take a lesson or two.”

“Enough bickering, please,” Sophie intervened. “Daniel, I take your gesture in the spirit in which it was made, and I applaud you for that. But you see, I'm well aware of the risks I take by helping Freddie. Always have been. I've chosen those risks, nobody's coerced me. It wasn't for you to take the decision on yourself.”

“Aye. I see that now, my lady.”

“Be still, you,” the housekeeper admonished, before she gave his nose a tweak to straighten it. Dan roared, and Freddie couldn't help the sense of satisfaction she gained from it, like reliving the punch. Mean-spirited, perhaps, but Dan's behavior had been egregious.

“He locked me in my room,” she told him. “A big bolt I couldn't undo from the inside. And ridiculous padlocks on the windows, although of course I managed that part quite easily. I had to leave my own house by the drainpipe, Dan. The drainpipe.”

“I truly didn't know that part of it, miss. What he had planned. Not until he called me in to dismiss me. I thought he'd just lecture at you or send you back to your mother for a time.”

“No. He was trying to force me to go live in the Lake Country, in an isolated house where I could come to no trouble.”

It was Sophie's turn to make a derogatory noise. “I would give that arrangement a fortnight at most before somebody came to grief from it. But Freddie, you silly thing. You know you can come live with me if you need to. You could teach me to be more scandalous. Lately I feel I've missed out on too much of that.”

As Sophie Wallingford was the least scandalous person imaginable, Freddie took her words with a grain of salt. But she appreciated the sentiment and the offer, nevertheless.

“You're a darling, and I love you. But right now I don't need somebody scandalous, I need somebody with reliable transportation. Fast too, by preference. I couldn't get here in time to go with Barnabas and Phineas on the
Gilded Lily
, but this is the perfect time to reconnoiter Furneval's warehouse if he and most of his men are off trying to kill all the cephalopods, so—” She glimpsed their dumbfounded expressions and cut herself off. “Never mind. It's complicated. I'll explain along the way. And hopefully we'll run into the Smith-Grenvilles at some point, because they obviously can't return to your house when they're finished, any more than I can.”

And so as the sun set, they rose over the rooftops of London's most fashionable portion and headed east toward one of its roughest.

 • • • 

E
SCAPE POD MAINTENANCE
hadn't ranked high on the list of duties, and Rollo made a mental note to remedy that if he lived long enough. The thick, mildewy funk in the cramped bubble-sub might not kill him, but the aging fuel ingredients might well have had he not noticed the fast-rising gauge in time and realized the potassium sulfate was burning far too hot and fast.

He'd swiftly adjusted the rate but had no idea if the resulting level would produce enough oxygen to sustain him safely—the controls were not calibrated properly for the new rate—and no way to know if the fuel and oxygen would last him for the race back to the warehouse. The one thing he wouldn't compromise was speed.