Exile for Dreamers (7 page)

“Here?” Georgie looked about the room strewn with books and maps.

Madame Cho grumbled about it not being proper. She probably would have objected further except Alice hurried into the room with a teapot and tea tray.

Greaves hoisted his nose higher in the air, obviously disapproving of the decision. Before he could leave the room, Philip burst in, hunched over and panting as if he'd run all the way from Ravencross Manor.

Greaves raised one gloved hand and delivered a disciplinary smack to the center of his footman's back. “I will not have you bolting into a room huffing and puffing as if you have just finished a race. Not in front of the ladies.”

“No, sir.” Philip stiffened to soldierlike attention. “Begging your pardon, ladies. I was given orders to run straight here with a message from Miss Stranje, in particular for you, Miss Aubreyson. I'm to tell you to stop fretting. The doctor has arrived, Lord Ravencross is being well cared for, and it looks as if he is going to live. She also said for Madame Cho to make certain you rest, so that you may do the same.” He gathered in another breath. “
Live,
that is.”

“Hmph.” Greaves clamped Philips by the shoulder, turned on his heel, and guided his first footman out of the room.

For the first time all morning I took a deep breath of relief. Then I got to thinking. His message had been worded so carefully. “She said to ‘
tell me,
' but does that mean it's really true?” I looked to Jane or Maya for confirmation or denial. Jane glanced down at the worn Turkish carpet and chewed her lip. She didn't answer, none of them did, because we all knew our headmistress was prone to setting down the truth in ways that most benefited her purposes.

Maya broke the silence. “The doctor is tending to him. Of that much we can be certain.” It wasn't much comfort.

Georgie's hands were clasped tight and her attention fixed on the doorway, awaiting the good news or bad that would arrive at any minute.

Madame Cho handed me a cup and saucer. “Drink your tea.”

I'd barely taken a second sip when Greaves returned and ushered in our guest. I looked up expecting to see someone who would ordinarily carry a message for King and country, someone like Mr. Digby, or one of the other soldier-like men we had met while working with Captain Grey in Calais. My expectations were as wide off the mark as snow in July.

When the visitor stepped into our workroom, I nearly dropped my teacup.

 

Five

MESSENGER

“Mr. Alexander Sinclair.” Greaves enunciated our guest's name oddly, straining to pronounce each syllable carefully. “From the
Colonies,
” he added, in a tone that indicated our guest's origins caused our aged butler a bellyache.

“United States,” the visitor corrected and bowed stiffly from the waist. Clearly, he wasn't accustomed to bowing.

We all stared at the young man whose golden curls were tousled and looked as if they hadn't seen the useful side of a comb in several days. His ill-fitting tailcoat was dusty and hung open, revealing a waistcoat of blue and purple stripes that did not mix well with the brown of his trousers. Not only that, but it appeared to be buttoned incorrectly. He must have borrowed the trousers, or else he'd grown since purchasing them, because they were embarrassingly short. His buckle shoes were so scuffed and worn they looked as if they hailed from a previous decade. One of his stockings had slithered down from its moorings and collected around his ankle.

Madame Cho took in his appearance and sucked disapproving air through her teeth. Jane uttered an audible gasp. Georgie took a deep, steadying breath. On the other hand, I found his disastrous appearance both amusing and interesting. For a moment I forgot about my pounding headache.

Who had we allowed into our midst?

“Welcome, Mr. Sinclair.” Georgie extended her hand to him. “We were told you carry a message for us.”

He took her hand and, rather than bowing elegantly over it, he gave it a firm shake. More and more intriguing, this unruly pup from the Americas. “Yes, miss. I've a letter from Lord Wyatt to be delivered to Miss Fitzwilliam. From his description, I take it you are she?”

Her hand flew out of his and up to her distinctive red hair and self-consciously to her cheek covered with equally distinctive freckles. Then she took a deep breath and regained her confidence. “Yes, I am she.”

Mr. Sinclair reached into his coat and produced a sealed letter. “Lord Wyatt said you'd know what to do with it.”

Georgie's hands shook as she took it and broke the seal. “You must excuse me for a moment. Would you care to be seated, Mr. Sinclair?”

“Thank you kindly, but no. Feels as though I've been sitting for a fortnight. A man needs to stretch his legs now and again or the muscles freeze up like a waterwheel in January.” He demonstrated his need to loosen his muscles by shaking out first one long leg and then the other rather vigorously.

Madame Cho hissed again.

I will admit we stared openly at our peculiar guest. It was rude, but none of us looked away. Me, fascinated. Jane appalled that he would mention legs and muscles, and then proceed to shake said legs as if he had fleas. It's a lucky thing for Mr. Sinclair that Madame Cho didn't have her bamboo cane in hand, because her natural inclination would've been to wallop him for his appalling manners.

Undaunted, Mr. Sinclair continued to regale us with the intimate details of his arduous journey from Paris to England. Much of his tale is not fit to recite in polite company. Although, given his American dialect, I may not have comprehended all of it. It was a bit difficult to decipher his odd accent and phraseology, made all the more challenging because his overly vivid descriptions were frequently interrupted by Jane gasping and Madame Cho hissing like a Madagascar cockroach.

Georgie had excused herself from the room, no doubt so she could apply a developing solution to the invisible ink on Lord Wyatt's letter. She returned to us, studying the contents of the letter. At last, she handed it over to me, Maya, and Jane. We abandoned our study of the peculiar Mr. Sinclair to read it silently:

May 9, 1814

Dear Miss Fitzwilliam,

I am sending you a gift by way of this gentleman. You will need to apply some effort in order to open it properly.

Meanwhile, I am desirous of knowing how you fare. Are you in good health? How fares our Miss Stranje? Is she as determined as ever to transform you into a proper young lady? Please extend to her my sincerest best wishes in the endeavor. Captain Grey also sends his warmest regards and asks if she would please look in at his cottage now and again, to make sure the servants are diligently tending to their tasks. Our business on the continent has met with a few setbacks as you might imagine with Napoleon sitting on the throne of France.

Yr humble servant,

Lord Wyatt

The real letter, the letter that had been written in invisible ink, now lay exposed between those innocuous lines.

My dearest Georgiana,

This fellow, Mr. Alexander Sinclair, like yourself is something of an inventor and engineer. I discovered he was being held prisoner by the Iron Crown in a house outside of Paris. We took the liberty of slipping him out from under their care and are sending him to you for safekeeping.

He is the nephew of a remarkable engineer and artist, Mr. Robert Fulton, of the Colonies. He assisted Fulton in France on the construction of an extraordinary underwater ship. The French were disappointed, but if the flaws were corrected, we might use an underwater vessel to great advantage against our enemy. Not only that, but Sinclair has ideas to improve upon Fulton's design of an underwater bomb called a torpedo. Sinclair also carries by memory the plans for Fulton's warship powered by steam. You will immediately grasp the value of such a ship. I trust you will aid him in his work as he will need to build a prototype. I'm certain that between you and Lady Jane you can harness his faculties and put them to good use.

Although our government originally rejected plans for the warship, with Napoleon back on the throne of France, Lord Castlereagh feels certain there may be a change of mind on the matter. He is desirous of having drawings and a small working model of the warship to present to the council at Whitehall as soon as it can be arranged.

Georgie, my dearest, a word or two of caution: there must be no late-night collaborations. Remember my previous warning about not tempting gentlemen beyond their ability to resist. If poor, unsuspecting Mr. Sinclair should behave toward you in an overly friendly manner, I would have to call him out and beat him senseless. Thus, the world would be robbed of his brilliant mind. Apart from that, I ask that you listen to him with respect and that you and Lady Jane assist him in his work.

Beseech our beloved Miss Stranje to house and keep him from danger. We must not let him fall into our enemies' hands. I rest easy knowing that at least he is at Stranje House and away from the reach of the Iron Crown, for now.

Yours with deepest affection,

Sebastian

Mr. Sinclair shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Madame Cho folded her arms and narrowed her dark eyes at him, so that I'm sure the poor fellow felt as if he were under guard.

Georgie leaned over our shoulders while Jane, Maya, and I read the letter. When we finished, she frantically whispered, “
For now?
What do you think he meant by that? Something is wrong. I know it. And Mr. Sinclair isn't safe here. Not with Daneska back in England.”

Before I could respond to Georgie's question, Jane sprang up to confront our guest.

“This is impossible.” She waved the letter at him, shaking it as if she could not believe the contents. “What kind of game are you playing at, Mr. Sinclair? You cannot possibly be an engineer.
You?
Robert Fulton's assistant?” She looked him up and down, bristling more by the minute. “Impossible. Robert Fulton is one of the finest minds of our”—Jane almost stuttered—“and you … you're … you're an
American.
” She drew out “American” as if it meant he'd been born on the wrong side of the blanket rather than the other side of the ocean.

“Yes, miss. Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.” Mr. Sinclair doffed an imaginary hat. “As was my uncle.”

Jane gathered her wits and proceeded more calmly. “That's not what I meant. I meant to say that I am familiar with Mr. Fulton's work. I studied the locks he made for the Duke of Bridgewater's canals. I've read all about the steamship he is building in New York. But this underwater vessel … there you have gone too far. You would've been a mere child when Mr. Fulton constructed the
Nautilus
for Napoleon.”

“Yes, miss.” He answered her warily. “I was a lad of twelve when I served my uncle in France.”

“I am not a
miss.
” Jane corrected him with a surprisingly indignant tone. Although, to be fair, it was the second time he'd addressed her as a commoner. “I am Lady Jane Moore.” She pursed her lips and skimmed the letter again.

“A thousand apologies,
my lady.
I'm honored, to be sure.” He made a great show of bowing. Too great a show, and I felt sure that wry curve of his lips indicated a bit of covert mockery.

Jane studied the letter as if the answers must still be hidden in the text. “That is preposterous. Why would a man of his intellect bring a twelve-year-old boy to France?”

Mr. Sinclair took a long, slow breath and his easy manner turned as cold as that frozen waterwheel he'd mentioned earlier. “Begging your pardon,
my lady,
but despite all those fine papers you may have read, you don't know beans about my uncle. He is the best of men, kind, generous, and he loves his family. He took notice of how I liked tinkering. He and my ma decided I should benefit by serving as his apprentice. And so, I did. Twelve being the accepted age to begin an apprenticeship.”

She glanced up from the letter, blinked, and looked momentarily chastised. That's something for Jane.

His voice lost some of the stern edge. “I was with Uncle Robert when the
Nautilus
made her maiden voyage on the Seine in July of 1800. If you read the account, you will know that there were four men inside the
Nautilus
that day. It ought to have reported three men and a boy. But to be fair, I was tall for my age.”

He added this last remark about his height with a jaunty grin that seemed to completely unsettle our Jane. She pruned up and refused to look at him.

Mr. Sinclair relaxed then and itched absently at his snarled hair. “A leaky tub, that
Nautilus.
We took her down twenty-five feet. Water pressed against the copper hull, dripping in around the seams, and she creaked so loud I thought she would burst her buttons any second. But we kept her under for seventeen minutes.” He watched Jane for a reaction. When none came, he repeated, “
Seventeen
minutes.” Then as if Jane might be a little slow-witted he added, “underwater.”

She sniffed and straightened her back gracefully.

“Folks watching along the banks were amazed, I can tell you that. They reckoned we had all drowned until we bobbed up and, pretty as you please, steered back to shore as if we hadn't just sailed nearly four hundred feet downriver.”

I watched him, this insolent apprentice engineer from America. He wasn't quite the dunderheaded fool he appeared. There was a spark of mischief in his manner, but he lost interest in Jane when one of our maps caught his attention. Without dismissing himself, he strolled over to our worktable. “Is that … are those the new European borders?”

“No.” Madame Cho snatched up the maps and rolled them. “History lessons. Old maps. Nothing to concern you.”