Magnificent Devices 01 - Lady of Devices

surveyed the ragged, filthy band. Point taken. “Well, if we cannot earn our bread by the skill of our hands, we must earn it by the power of our intellect. How many of you have your numbers?”
    No response.
    “None of you can count? Or do arithmetic?”
    Silence.
    “Dear me. All right. I can see I have my work cut out for me. So let me ask you this—do any of you gentlemen know where the gaming parlors are?” At this, every male hand but Willie’s went up. “Ah. I thought as much. Are we possessed of a pack of cards?”
    Tigg reached over and removed the lid of the stove. He rummaged inside and withdrew a pack of dog-eared and dirty cards, tied into a bundle with a piece of hemp. “Keeps ’em dry in there,” he said by way of explanation. “What does knowing our numbers ’ave to do with the gaming parlors, lady?”
    “Simply this. Unless one knows the values of the numbers, one cannot play cards successfully. And unless one plays successfully, one cannot win the pot. Do you see my reasoning now?”
    Their eyes widened as the bright vista of possibility opened up to them. “Gather round, all of you. I’m going to teach you your numbers—yes, even you, Willie—and then I’m going to teach you a game of skill and strategy. To the inhabitants of the Wild West, it’s known as cowboy poker.”

Chapter 18

    Andrew Malvern had not known that James, always so hearty and hail-fellow-well-met, was a proud man. But it was quite plain that he possessed that vice, and that Lady Claire Trevelyan had injured it, whether she’d meant to or not. The fact that his partner struggled with a vice he did not didn’t bother him. After all, Andrew himself struggled with his temper and a tendency to fall into a glass of whiskey when he was tired and frustrated.
    No, what bothered him was that because James considered himself snubbed by the young lady, he, Andrew, had lost the possibility of a fine assistant. How many gently bred young ladies, after all, were not only possessed of a landau and the skill to pilot it, but read scientific journals to boot? It galled him, frankly, and he was quite put out with his friend even now.
    In fact, he was so put out that he couldn’t stay in his own laboratory, for fear that James would return and he would say more things he couldn’t take back. Instead of sending a tube to place another order of coal and chemicals, he had gone to the coal-yard himself, and then to the manufactory. He’d taken his evening meal with a glass of foamy beer at his mother’s cottage in Stratford, and watched the sun set over the smoke of London feeling full but not content.
    He heard the whisper of her skirts upon the terrace a moment before she joined him. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you and young Lord James on the outs, Andrew. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
    “There is nothing you can do, Mother.”
    “I can listen. It’s clear you need to get it off your chest, and you know it’ll go no further.”
    That was true. A former lady’s maid, his mother had married a policeman who had advanced through the ranks to captain of his own detachment before he’d passed on. As confidante to both, she was the repository of secrets that even he was not permitted to know—such as what really caused the Duchess of Tavistock to divorce her husband, or what might have happened to the infant Lord Wilberforce Dunsmuir, who had disappeared two years ago from his bed under the very nose of his nurse. His mother had been employed in both households in her youth and in the latter case, still kept in contact with the nurse, sending the poor woman a basket of food every now and then to keep her from starvation.
    “Very well.” He told her the whole story and ended with, “So there you have it. A woman’s come between us at last—but not in the way I might have expected.”
    “The poor child,” his mother murmured. “Viscount St. Ives’s daughter, you say?”
    “The very same. Now reduced to earning her bread like the rest of us—though I must say she doesn’t behave like your average Blood. She plans to put herself through university.”
    “It will take more than the wages you can give her to do that.”
    “I know, but I admire her for her ambition, at least. And there are scholarships to be had.”
    “If one has the right connections.”
    “Wit or Blood, I’m sure she does.”
    His mother reached across the glass table for the newspaper that sat folded there. “I thought her