If owning a private airship like the Lady Lucy was a measure of wealth, then the Dunsmuirs were wealthy indeed. For the most part, the family passed the voyage on the A deck, where the staterooms, reception lounge, smoking lounge, and dining saloon were laid out with every attention to luxury and good taste. Claire had packed only one evening gown, but when the countess came in to dinner the first evening in the family diamonds and the last word in Paris décolletage and trained bustles, she realized she would not be wearing anything less than silk to the table.
Even if it was the same silk for seven nights running.
On the B deck, however, one could wear one’s raiding rig and striped stockings, for all the attention the crew paid to such things. There, everyone had his job, from Captain Hollys at the helm to Tigg in one of the two engine cars on either side of the treated-canvas fuselage, watching over the great Daimler steam engines as though his personal attention were all that kept them running.
“Lady Lucy is one of the original Zeppelin passenger airships,” Captain Hollys told her proudly, one hand resting gently on the wheel that controlled the enormous rudder far to the stern. “Even Persephone isn’t as fine a design, though of course she’s bigger.”
Ian Hollys was a former pilot of Her Majesty’s fleet, invalided out after an injury in the war, much to his vigorous indignation. He and the earl had served together briefly, and when the Lady Lucy needed a man at the helm, John Dunsmuir had turned to his dashing companion-at-arms to offer him the position. Claire suspected there was much more to the story than Lady Dunsmuir had told her, but there was no arguing that both men had an air of command that was most attractive.
Most attractive indeed.
“Have you met Count von Zeppelin?” she inquired, forcing her gaze to the vast wrinkled sheet of the Atlantic two thousand feet below. “I have recently bought stock in his company. I do hope that was wise.”
“Very wise. I congratulate you on your perspicacity, Lady Claire.”
Oh dear. It would not do to blush at a compliment. One should save one’s blushes for those one had kissed.
“I have met him, at a gathering of pilots in Paris one winter. He is a force to be reckoned with, and anyone who doubts he will lock up the transatlantic shipping lanes for himself is going to be sadly left behind.”
“Even the businessmen of the Americas?”
“Particularly those. Oh, they have ships, for what that’s worth. But they’re the inferior French design, and the engines simply aren’t up to the rigors of the crossing. Too many accidents, too much hemming and hawing and not facing up to the fact that German engineering is superior.”
“Which manly British opinion has nothing to do with Her Majesty’s family connections, of course,” Claire said slyly.
“I am a loyalist, it’s true. But I’m also a realist. As are you, I suspect.” He took his gaze from the course ahead and she met it with only a tiny blush. At least she did not blotch. The heat in her cheeks was not from humiliation; it was merely the acknowledgement of the presence of a companionable mind.
“Sir, we have a pigeon incoming.”
Captain Hollys turned to the young man whose collar insignia would have told Claire he was in charge of communications, if his duties as they left the airfield at Southampton had not already demonstrated it. “Let the aft control room know to open the stern hatch.”
“A pigeon, captain?” They were four days out on either side. How could a bird have flown this far without dying of exhaustion?
“Not a real one,” he assured her with a smile. “It’s simply what we call them for the sake of convenience. Would you like to go aft and see?”
“I would indeed. And I’d like to pay a visit to Tigg in the engine room. I’ve barely seen him the whole voyage.”
“From what I hear, we’d better keep you out of there, or you’ll be tinkering with the engines yourself.” He gave the helm to the first officer, and accompanied her to the ladderlike stair from the gondola beneath the fuselage up to the B deck. “After you, my lady.”
Claire hitched up her workaday blue wool skirts and climbed the ladder nearly one-handed. The captain, gentleman that he was, may have had more of a view of her ankles and calves than she might have intended, but he said not a word. Instead, he guided her up a second stair and onto a catwalk as delicate as a spiderweb, though it appeared to be made of some metal. “This is the main coaxial corridor that traverses the length of the ship,” he said.
“Corridor?” Claire hesitated the briefest of moments, then bravely stepped out onto the catwalk. Below was the network of piping and the thin partial ceilings of the A deck, where Rosie had been trapped. Above were the huge bags of gas, separate from each other but still bigger than any building Claire had ever been in with the exception of Parliament.
“A practical design,” she said, to keep her mind off the space around her.
“It is indeed. If one bag should get into trouble, there are still five to do the work.”
“And if all five get into trouble?”
“We do not like to think of such things, but each member of the crew is trained in what to do.”
“And what should the passengers do?” Dear me. This was no way to keep one’s mind off the two thousand feet of space beneath one’s feet. Perhaps she should change the subject.
“Each member of the crew is assigned a passenger, my lady. I, of course, am assigned to his lordship, the chief steward to her ladyship and Lord Will.”
“And I?”
“You are under the care of the chief engineer, which I believe to be singularly appropriate.”
“The children?”
“It is unlikely the girls will be separated from you, so I have assigned Mr. Yau to them as well. Young Mr. Terwilliger is unlikely to be separated from him, so you make a party of four. The lad Jake will go with my communications officer.”
“And Rosie?”
Behind her, the captain’s step hitched. “Rosie? Is there another in your party of whom I am unaware?”
“Rosie was spirited aboard the vessel by the twins. She is a red hen of singular ability. Though she can fly, I fear two thousand feet may prove too much even for her.”
“You don’t say.” The captain took a moment to absorb this information. “A hen.”
“She is not to be eaten.”
“Of course not. I will inform Mr. Yau that he is responsible for a party of five, then.”
“And what do these responsibilities include, if I may ask?” If one were falling out of the sky at some horrific rate, she did not see that any action on the part of the crew would help the situation.
She had counted five gas bags. The sixth loomed ahead, so they were nearly to the stern. She turned to get her answer.
Captain Hollys practically ran into her. “I do beg your pardon, my lady.” Now it was his turn to be flustered, as he set her away from him on the narrow catwalk and stepped back a respectable distance. His cheeks were ruddy, but whether it was because she had embarrassed him or because he was used to standing in rushing wind and sunshine, she did not know. “What was your question?”
She had nearly forgotten herself. Dear, dear. “The responsibilities of each crew member,” she finally recalled. “What are they, if we are falling into the sea?”
“Ah. Firstly, you will not fall. Even if all six gas bags come to grief, enough gas will remain to make it more of a long glide, with a gentle landing.”
She frowned at him. “This seems difficult to imagine.” Anyone who read a newspaper knew of the fatal mishaps that balloonists sometimes experienced. Gentle gliding did not seem to be a feature of such stories.
“You are thinking of balloons, I see.” He had regained his composure, and indicated that she should precede him down the ladder. The engine noise was much louder here, and he raised his voice. “The physics are quite different with a zeppelin. It is merely a matter of collecting one’s valuables, strapping on a small rocket pack, and leaping to safety once the ground is within a one-hundred-foot range.”
“Good heavens. Are we permitted to practice with these devices?”
“The Lady Lucy has never gone down in a decade of flight,” he said as he jumped the last of the steps and showed her into the engine gondola. “I do not expect that record to change this week. The rocket packs are merely a precaution. They are tested periodically by the middies, but no one has ever actually had to use one.”
Claire fervently hoped that this was not a case of famous last words.
Mr. Yau, who wore his dress blue uniform with an interesting sash of intricate knots worked in red silk cord, looked up and straightened into a salute as they stepped into the gondola. It was smaller than the control gondola forward, but still held a dizzying array of equipment, including the controls for both engines and all six gas bags within the fuselage.
Captain Hollys returned the salute. “I have brought Lady Claire to see the pigeon and Mr. Terwilliger, Jack.”
Mr. Yau nodded. “I sent one of the midshipmen to fetch it. Tigg?”
A black curly head popped out of the space behind a console. “Sir?”
“Is that pulley assembly fixed?”
“Yes, sir. Good as new.”
“You have visitors.”
Claire smiled at him, conscious of his pleasure at this attention to his duties. “I will not keep you from your work, Tigg. But I hear good reports of you from Captain Hollys.”
His coffee-colored skin suffused with a blush and he ducked his head wordlessly. With a mumble, he vanished through a door. The sound of engines increased and softened as the door closed behind him.
“A good little chap, that,” Mr. Yau said, as a boy in a sailor collar scrambled down the ladder with a device under his arm. “I’d be tempted to offer him a job if he wanted one.”
“He acted as a laboratory assistant until very recently,” Claire said. “I would be loath to lose him, but of course a man must forge his own career.” In point of fact, an opportunity to learn his trade under the care of one of the most powerful families in the land—in the world, if one counted their holdings in the Canadas—merited careful consideration. “If you are serious, I could have a word with him.”
“I’m quite serious,” Mr. Yau said. “All the middies up to the age of sixteen receive instruction in reading, penmanship, navigation, and mathematics from Mr. Skully. His education would not go a-begging because of his duties here. Isn’t that right, Mr. Colley?”
“Yes sir,” the boy piped. “Here’s the pigeon, sir.”
Claire examined the device with interest. A combination of propellers and articulated wings for gliding made up most of it, with a cell on top that in some ways resembled the power cell in her own lightning rifle. “It is not propelled by steam?”
“No, ma’am,” the boy said, evidently under the impression she was asking him. “It’s a sun cell.” At her raised eyebrows, he explained, “It gets its power from the sun, and when it’s cloudy, there’s enough stored to make the props and wings go. The mail’s in here.”
He flipped it over and opened a compartment emblazoned with the emblem of the Royal Mail, now filled with rolls of paper.
“How on earth did it find us?”
“Magnetic signal, same as the land post,” the boy said. “Milady, there’s something here for you.”
“For me?” She unrolled it eagerly. “Poor Lewis has no doubt written to tell me Rosie is missing.” But it was not from Lewis. It was from Andrew, and the news it held made the blood drain from her head.
“Lady Claire!”
The captain, ever gallant, caught her just in time.