Magnificent Devices 01 - Lady of Devices

plainly to one other.”
    The cook fiddled with her apron strings and adjusted the set of her pristine white cap. “We were wondering, miss, how you’d be set were we to take other positions before the end of the month.”
    “Have you had an offer from Wellesley House too?” The bitterness rasped at her throat.
    “Oh, no, miss. I can’t abide the nasty biddy they have as housekeeper there. A face like suet pudding and no salt, that one. But young Lord James Selwyn is setting up his own household and has advertised for a cook. It would be light work, seeing as he’s single, and I’m ready to tote a lighter load in my golden years.”
    “Mrs. Morven, your golden years are a long way off yet. But it would be a change to look after a young man instead of all of us. I’m acquainted with Lord James, you know.” She paused. “He is a gentleman of humor and, um, wit.” And a bit of a cad, but Mrs. Morven would likely not be the target of that.
    “Plus he’s offering to equal the wage his lordship—rest his soul—was paying me.”
    Claire saw her chance to even the score. “Negotiate for more, Mrs. Morven. Another ten percent and he can have you by the end of next week.”
    The cook’s flushed cheeks became positively apple-like as she smiled. “You’ll be all right, then, miss?”
    “I’ll be perfectly all right. In fact, I hope to be gainfully employed by then, myself.”
    “Beg pardon?”
    “I’m not going down to Cornwall, Mrs. Morven. I’m going to get a job and go to work, and apply to begin at the university in the fall.”
    “Are you, now, miss?” Mrs. Morven’s eyes widened.
    “Yes, I am, despite what my mother says. I’m nearly eighteen and have nothing but a trunk full of clothes, a steam landau, and my brains to recommend me. So I and they are going to work. Which is why I need the Times . Would you be so kind as to give me some instruction on how one actually goes about answering an advertisement?”

Chapter 11

    What a relief it was to send mail tubes that didn’t contain stationery rimmed with black. By Tuesday Claire had arranged four interviews—two families wanted a governess, a scientist wanted a secretary, and the British Museum needed someone to catalogue artifacts.
    On Wednesday, she heard from Lady St. Ives.

    My dear Claire,
    We arrived safely Saturday evening and have settled in to life in the country. We are all well and your brother has gained another two pounds. Polgarth begs me to tell you that the chickens send their best greetings and look forward to your arrival.
    As does your loving
    Mama

    Claire had to smile. As a child, she had loved the flock at Gwynn Place, which gave the best eggs in the parish. Polgarth the poultryman swore that she had a natural gift with them, and they used to follow her about the garden as if she were an exotic sort of rooster. The companionship of birds may have been all she needed then, but at nearly eighteen her requirements were substantially more. The hens would have to do without her some while longer.
    By Thursday, she had decided that governessing was not the career path she was meant to take—not unless she was desperate and starving in the streets. The gentleman at the British Museum seemed more interested in cataloguing her anatomy than in her qualifications for cataloguing his artifacts, which left her feeling as though she needed a bath when she left that afternoon. Whatever her father’s faults, at least his protection had been real. No man would have dared to treat her that way if he had still been alive.
    Of course, if he had been alive, she would not be piloting carefully through the crowded streets of London, sweating in her duster and jumping out of her seat every time a horse shied upon seeing the landau. Silly creatures. She made the turn onto the Blackfriars Bridge and proceeded across it in a stream of drays and carriages. The scientist kept his laboratory in a warehouse on Orpington Close, which turned out to be little more than an alley running down to the mud on the south side of the Thames. She parked the landau at the foot of an exterior staircase, as instructed by tube, and released the valve. Steam hissed into the air like a sigh of relief at their arrival, and she set the brake.
    She was just raising her hand to knock at the lower door when it swung open. The apparition within looked as though it had come up from under the sea. Out of its leather helmet snaked a series of rubber tubes, while a pair