Magnificent Devices 07 - A Lady of Integrity by Shelley Adina Read Free Book Online

Venetian ambassador camped upon the doorstep.”
    “So we assumed,” Count von Zeppelin said, “but it does not explain the help she refers to. Will the Dunsmuirs pay the transit tax, or not?”
    “Certainly not,” Ian said crisply. “It is extortion, pure and simple, and they will not be a party to it.”
    “Then how will we get Jake out of prison?” Alice asked, her eyes filling with tears. “Surely you didn’t come all this way just to give us bad news.”
    “Of course not,” Tigg said. “What do you take the captain for?”
    “I hardly know.” Alice’s fear made her tone sharper than it might have been, given her present company. “It appears I have to take him or leave him, when a bag full of money would have done the job faster. No offense.”
    “None taken,” Ian said. Then he smiled—a dangerous smile that Claire suspected put fear into the hearts of air pirates and extortioners alike. “The Dunsmuirs could not send money, and the Queen could not send an envoy that might hint in any way at interference in the Duchy’s affairs. But they could do the next best thing.”
    “They sent us,” Tigg said with satisfaction. “Pulled us both off leave and popped us on the first transport out, quiet-like, so that we could come and help. And the topper to it all?”
    “I can’t imagine,” Claire said.
    Ian took up where Tigg left off. “We have carte blanche from Her Majesty to do whatever is necessary to retrieve ‘her most loyal subject, Jake Fletcher McTavish’ from the hands of these miscreants, up to and including deadly force.”
    Claire’s breath went out of her in a long sigh of admiration at the Queen’s cleverness. Across the table, Alice covered her face with her napkin and burst into tears, as though a terrible burden had just been lifted.
     
    *
     
    “But of course you need not go.” Count von Zeppelin’s grip tightened upon his glass of port, and Claire saw Lizzie and Maggie exchange a glance of trepidation.
    The dining salon and the family salon in which Claire and her guests now gathered after dinner had once been a cargo bay. A little elbow grease and the removal of several years’ worth of packing material, bullet casings, and insects; the laying of a new hardwood floor; and the addition of comfortable furniture, carpets, and books had gone a long way toward making Athena into what she was today: an airborne home. Viewing ports had even been added, but the drapes had been drawn and lamps lit, which now illuminated the count’s lowered brows and tense hands.
    “If Captain Hollys, Lieutenant Terwilliger, and Mr. Malvern make up the rescue party, there is certainly no need for young ladies to go. Young ladies, I might add, who are expected to take up their duties here in Munich tomorrow morning.”
    The Mopsies wisely remained silent, leaving Claire to have the conversation in public that she had most hoped to have in private.
    “Count, perhaps I might walk with you, the Baroness, and the girls to the palace?” she suggested. On Lizzie’s other side, Tigg sat, his fingers entwined with hers. “And Tigg,” she added. He would not stay aboard Athena in any case, if it meant Lizzie crossing the park without his protection to the suite she shared in the palace with Claire and Maggie. Not after what had happened only a few short weeks ago, when Lizzie had nearly been blown up by a pocket watch.
    Well, that meant only half the party would be witness to the lecture she was about to receive.
    The count and his wife made their farewells and in a few minutes, they were crossing the familiar lawn, with its double avenue of linden trees and the fountain playing softly in the middle of the lake. At this time of the evening, though, the swans for which the palace was named were nowhere to be seen.
    Lucky creatures.
    The three younger members of the party melted discreetly away when they reached the French doors of the pretty suite that had been their home thanks to the count’s