Her Own Devices (20 page)

She and Tigg had their lunch, and then she went shopping, since the skirts she had left Wilton Crescent with were getting rather well used. At four she returned to collect Tigg, and found them both upstairs.

Andrew closed the stove door and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. A streak of coal lay upon his cheek, and Claire resisted the urge to use her handkerchief to wipe it away. “Eight hours, and it’s still burning. This is miraculous.”

“Is it safe to say it worked, sir?” Tigg asked.

“I don’t mind confessing to you that I have failed so many times I hardly dare say whether something is working or not. We shall not know for certain until we have a large sample we can test in an actual train. But for now, I will venture to say it looks promising, Tigg. Very, very promising.” He looked up at Claire and stood, dusting off the knees of his trousers under the heavy leather apron. “And it would not have happened were it not for all of you. Claire, I shall write that letter to the university board of regents this very night.”

“But I did not invent the cell, Mr. Malvern. Doctor Craig should have the credit.”

“Doctor Craig shall, when we call a press conference and announce it to the world. But it was not she who designed that movable truss, was it, to create the initial motion? It was not she who made the connection between the walking coop—which I still want to see sometime, by the way—and my ignition chamber. It was you. And believe me, the board shall hear about it from me.”

“Thank you, Mr. Malvern.”

“Claire, I think we know each other well enough now for you to call me by my Christian name.”

“Thank you, Andrew,” she said softly.

She didn’t mean to look at him, then. But when he said nothing, she raised her head to see if something was wrong ... and she saw his face.

The naked longing. The admiration. The softness in his eyes.

She blushed, and felt the heat searing her cheeks in all its blotchy unattractiveness. And then Tigg spoke, shattering the spell into fragments.

“I’ll go shovel a bigger load into the chamber, then, shall I, sir?”

“Yes, thank you, Tigg. I’ll be down in a moment.”

The boy clattered downstairs, but Andrew did not move. And until he did, Claire was trapped between him and the desk.

“I meant it, Claire. I shall write your letter tonight ... if you still plan to use it.”

“Of course I do. Without a letter of recommendation from a member of the Royal Society of Engineers, I cannot apply to the engineering program. You know that.”

“I do, and I also know that you and James came to an understanding while you were down in Cornwall.”

“Is that so?”

“An autumn wedding, he tells me, which under normal circumstances would preclude a university career.”

“My circumstances are hardly normal.”

“Are you going to go through with it?”

She had managed to bury her conversation with James on the beach under larger concerns, except for the times when the thought of it woke her in the middle of the night. “He and my mother have come to an understanding,” she managed at last. “I shall be eighteen in October, but until then, legally I am under my mother’s control.”

“Are they trying to force you?” His fists clenched.

She drew herself up. “No one can force me. I just wish I knew which was the best course. In some ways he is a good match—”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Barons usually are.”

“I didn’t mean in that way. We both have strong personalities and inflexible wills, which may or may not be a good thing. We have a similar upbringing, and a place in society.” She paused. “We share an interest in steam engines and trains.”

“Marriages have been based on less,” he allowed.

“But—” She gazed at him, beseeching.

“But ...?”

“You kissed me,” she whispered.

Now he flushed as deeply as she. “We were to forget that,” he said. “It was dishonorable of me to do it, and dishonorable of you to speak of it again.”

“But it happened. And it changed everything.”

“It did?” Somehow, without her realizing it, she had come to stand in front of him. He reached out to grip her upper arms. “Claire, it was foolish and wrong and we must both forget it.”

“Must we? Can we?”

For a moment, entire futures hung in the balance. In those seconds of loaded silence, Claire searched his face, seeing the truth: that with one word, her life and his could change.

And then the door banged downstairs and James’s voice boomed through the laboratory. “Andrew? I got your tube. Is it really true? Do we have a working prototype at last?”

And the moment scattered into noise and confusion, like a flock of startled pigeons.

Andrew released her and went downstairs, and while he explained the mechanics of the new chamber and Tigg set it in motion, Claire filed papers and cleaned out cabinet drawers as if her life depended on it. It wasn’t until she heard her name mentioned repeatedly that she judged it safe to come down, and by then, James was absorbed in the spectacle of the kinetick charge doing its work on the coal in the chamber.

When the sample lay cooling in the metal pan, James realized that Claire was standing with them.

“I can hardly believe it,” he said. “Am I to understand that we owe this breakthrough to you?”

“Not me,” she said. “To Lizzie and Lewis and—and others.”

“I refuse to believe that a gang of uneducated alley mice could have come up with this device.”

“James, please do not call them that. They are far from uneducated.”

“Their names will not be going on the patent application.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Andrew said hastily. “James, the first sample we created has been burning for eight hours—nearly nine, now. If the burn time is consistent, our next step is to test the samples in a steam locomotive.”

“I shall send a tube immediately to Ross Stephenson.” James paused, and Claire could practically see his mind leaping ahead. “If he can arrange to put a train at our disposal, we could travel with the samples to Birmingham, perhaps as soon as the day after tomorrow. Claire, can you be ready to travel again at such short notice?”

“Travel?” she said blankly. “To Birmingham? Me?”

“You hold shares in the Midlands Railroad, don’t you?” he asked with some asperity. “Ross Stephenson is the chairman, and it is only fitting that as my fiancee you should meet him at some point. If this chamber really works, our association could be of some duration.”

“But what about the—”

“No children this time. It is one thing to take a menagerie down to Cornwall to your family estate. It is quite another to take them to a business meeting with a very influential industrialist.”

“James, I can’t possibly—”

“Give it some thought. I hope you will see the benefits of the plan, particularly if your name is to be recorded on the patent.”

“That should be a given whether she goes or not,” Andrew put in.

“And it just occurred to me,” James went on without acknowledging his partner, “that if you are looking for letters of recommendation, what better signature to have on such a letter than George Stephenson’s? He is, after all, a past president of the Royal Society.”

Claire had not known that. But what was this talk of letters when the last she had heard, she was to be married to him practically the day after she turned eighteen? Was he toying with her? Or had he reconsidered his high-handed plan?

She resisted the compulsion to look at Andrew.

And then she realized what she was in for.

A trip to Birmingham, whether by airship or steam train, in the company of both men—one to whom she was engaged but had very conflicted feelings for, and one for whom her feelings were not in the least conflicted, but who was barred to her forever by her own actions.

Oh, dear.

The coal sample was not the only thing, it seemed, to be placed in a most incendiary position.

The test locomotive, it turned out, would require a ton of the experimental coal in its tender, so the chamber was set to work in fifty-pound increments, around the clock. Tigg trained Snouts and Jake to take alternating shifts, and by late Thursday, the entire amount had been produced and sent to the railyard in an enormous, lumbering steam dray. Mr. Stephenson had a locomotive at Euston Station that was scheduled to deadhead back to Birmingham on Friday, so they were instructed to conduct the experiment on the way.

He attached two first-class salon cars and a dining car with his compliments.

Clearly, there were advantages to hobnobbing with railroad men. Claire wondered whether becoming socially acquainted with the heads of airship companies might not produce a similar result. She made a mental note to instruct Mr. Arundel to buy stock in
Persephone
to begin with, and in the Albion Airship Company, which owned the domestic vessels serving all of England. What a pity Peony had already sailed—Claire would bet a gold guinea that the Churchills were socially acquainted with that raffish lot, the Cunards.

James strode down the platform to where Claire stood next to the tender, watching Andrew and Tigg briefing the fireman on the properties of the experimental coal.

“I thought I said there were to be no children on this trip,” he said, without so much as a “Good morning, dear.”

“Tigg is not a child,” she replied with some spirit. “He is Mr. Malvern’s assistant, and has been since the chamber was re-invented.”

“
You
are his assistant.”

“I am, but Tigg is much more willing to leap about loading chambers and getting covered in coal dust than I am. He thrives on it, in fact.” As she spoke, Tigg was hunkered down next to the fireman, showing him the properties of the new coal while Andrew told him how they expected the substance to behave once they were under way.

“Once again you have outwitted me.”

She couldn’t tell if he meant to be sarcastic or not. The smile that might have accompanied such a statement was missing entirely. “I have not. Tigg is a necessary part of this enterprise—certainly more necessary than I. I am merely window dressing.”

“I disagree. There are more parts to this enterprise, as you call it, than the merely mechanical. There is a social element, too.”

“Which brings me to the second part of Tigg’s usefulness. It would be dreadfully improper for your fiancee to travel with you unchaperoned, in the company of another man. If I travel as Tigg’s governess, then no tongues will wag.”

“That boy needs no governess.”

“My point exactly. He is no child. However, the social niceties must be preserved.”

Having hoisted him with his own petard, she gave him a sunny smile and made her way to the salon car, where her traveling case and engineering notebook rested next to a comfortable chair. A tea service had already been laid out, but she waited until the whistle blew and the train jerked into motion before she poured. Some time later, James, Andrew, and Tigg found her, the latter two ravenously hungry.

“A ton of untreated coal will take us about forty miles,” Andrew said between mouthfuls of egg salad. “I am exceedingly anxious to see what the new material will do. James, we shall have to think of a name for it.
New material
and
treated coal
are cumbersome, to say the least.”

“Kinetick coal?” Tigg suggested.

“Malvernite,” Claire said. What a pity Dr. Craig’s involvement could not be known.
Craig coal
had an interesting ring to it.

“Selwynite.” Andrew snapped his fingers. “That’s it.”

“Now, now,” James said, clearly pleased and trying not to show it, “let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We wouldn’t want the champagne christening to cause the ship to sink, would we?”

At about the forty-mile mark, Claire could see Andrew and James becoming increasingly restive. At fifty miles, they could stand it no longer, and went forward to the tender.

Sixty miles. No news.

Seventy. And eighty. Good heavens. Had they forgotten that she was along for the ride, and had as much interest in the project as any of them? She closed her notebook and packed it away, and located her hat. New skirt or not, danger notwithstanding, she would go forward and find out what was going on.

At eighty-five miles, Tigg burst through the salon doors. “Lady! It works!”

“It’s about time someone gave me some news. I was just about to go forward myself.”

“Mr. Malvern sent me to tell you. One ton of our coal ’as taken this train eighty-five miles. We’re almost to Birmingham!”

“Heavens. Let us go forward, Tigg, at once.”

“No, Lady, they’re right behind me. Lord James says ’e has champagne in his traveling case. D’you think ’e’ll let me ’ave some?”

In the ensuing celebration, Tigg was allowed approximately a thimbleful of champagne—“Oy,” he said, wrinkling his nose, “I dunno wot the fuss is about—there’s nuffink to that stuff.” By the time they reached Curzon Street Station, James was in fine fettle.

He leaped from the salon car the moment it had fairly halted at the platform, and vigorously shook the hand of the man waiting there with his entourage.

“Claire, may I present Ross Stephenson, chairman of the Midlands Railroad. Ross, this is my fiancee, Lady Claire Trevelyan.”

“How do you do?” Claire extended a gloved hand to the man, who shook it with rather more force than Claire expected.

“A pleasure to meet you, Lady Claire,” he said, as bluff as the Prince of Wales himself and at least as expensively dressed. His coat was collared in fox, though it was a warm day, and its facings were velvet. His beaver top hat gleamed with daily brushing, and Claire could practically see reflections in his shoes. “My wife will be delighted to make your acquaintance also. If you will excuse me, I will take his lordship and Mr. Malvern off your hands and down to my offices. My second landau—a six-piston Delage—is waiting to take you out to the house.”

“But I wish to go along and hear the results.”

He looked flummoxed, and glanced at James. “Business talk. No-ho, my dear, it would bore you to bits. Mrs. Stephenson—Lady Elizabeth Drummond as was—will have refreshments waiting for you before we dress for dinner.”