Curtsies & Conspiracies (Finishing School, #2)(58)

“That was you?” Madame Spetuna looked impressed. “Very nice touch, missy. And, of course, you could be lying to me about any of this, and I’ve no way of knowing.”

Vieve said, pertly, “I assure you, she is not lying.”

Soap followed this interchange with a look of skepticism. He was fond of Bumbersnoot. “Are you certain about this, miss?” he asked, as Madame Spetuna trotted away, clutching Bumbersnoot under one arm.

Sophronia watched the intelligencer disappear, nibbling her lip unhappily. “No, I’m not. We have to hope that Madame Spetuna and the flywaymen stick close. If they are after the Giffard test, then they’ll be heading to London, like us.”

Vieve was confident. “It will all work out in the end. Only think, Sophronia, how nice it will be to own all my gadgets.”

Soap pursed his lips. “Is that your bargain?”

“The things I do for gadgets,” said Sophronia.

Soap, fond of Vieve’s inventions himself, nodded sagely. “Now, miss, you let me know if you need any help getting that critter back, you hear?”

“Soap, what could you possibly…?”

“Why, miss, you think the flywaymen don’t have sooties on their big ships, too?” He gave her an almost evil smile. “My people are everywhere.”

“Soap, have I told you recently how much I adore you?” Sophronia’s heart lightened, her worries about Bumbersnoot allayed slightly.

Soap looked down at his feet and shuffled them in the coal dust. “Aw, miss, not again.”

Sophronia stood on tiptoe and kissed his dusty cheek. “Thank you. You’re a chum.”


Madame Spetuna departed the ship before breakfast the next morning, Bumbersnoot with her. Sophronia felt his lack keenly. She hadn’t realized how prevalent the mechanimal was in her life—puttering about her feet as she washed in the morning, blundering into the furniture while the girls gossiped, eating discarded gloves while they dressed of an evening. Her shoulder, without the weight of the lace strap from his reticule-disguised form, felt naked. She had only a few days to miss him, however, because they finally arrived in the great city of London.


Around midnight on a fine clear Thursday in mid-March, a lone cloud wafted over west London toward Hyde Park. There it stopped and hovered in a most un-cloud-like manner. It hesitated and then headed purposefully toward the grounds of the Crystal Palace, where the Great Exhibition halls were being torn down. It sunk low enough to touch the top of the center post, where once massive buildings had housed engines of industry.

No one observed this odd behavior except two gin-soaked gentlemen. They watched the cloud slowly part, revealing itself to be, in actuality, a massive dirigible.

“Did we visit one of the opium dens this evening?” inquired one gentleman of the other, trying to explain away this hallucination.

“Dens? Hens?” said the second, tripping over a mulberry bush.

The two gentlemen swayed where they stood, leaning against each other, transfixed while the dirigible undertook a series of transformations. Dark figures swarmed up to the squeak decks and then climbed over the casings of the huge balloons, scrambling about with the aid of rope ladders, but looking, to the befuddled watchers, like so many four-legged ants.

Eventually, the ants unrolled a canvas banner that stretched the full length of the central balloon and read BLENHEIM’S BUILDERS & SAFETY INSPECTORS. FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY. The ants then proceeded to rig scaffolding from the ship’s decks down to the ground. After these adjustments the airship looked quite convincingly as if it were part of the Crystal Palace deconstruction operation.

In Hyde Park the only way to hide something as huge as a floating school was to pretend it was a tradesman’s concern, a business that functioned through the use of day laborers. Anyone of note tempted to look must instantly look away in humiliation. After all, persons of consequence did not pay attention to buildings going up or down—they were too exposed. Anything to do with construction was highly embarrassing.

When Sophronia awoke the next day and trotted out on deck to investigate, she couldn’t read the legend spread above them, but at breakfast they were told what it said.

There were a few cries of outrage from the young ladies. After all, they didn’t want to be associated with builders any more than the aristocrats strolling through Hyde Park.

Monique was particularly upset. “We can’t be seen to be here, on a ship emblazoned with an advertisement! It’s simply too shocking! What if someone observes us disembarking?”

“Well, you’ll have to be careful no one does, won’t you? After all, young ladies shouldn’t be around building sites regardless of signage. You are, as of this moment, restricted indoors. Is that understood?” Mademoiselle Geraldine was firm on this matter.

They all nodded.

Sophronia entertained herself by imagining what kind of disguise might best facilitate escape. She couldn’t, after all, look like a builder. She hadn’t the physicality for it.

“I guess if I want to wander around, I’ll have to pretend to be a sootie,” she muttered. After all, most industries required the use of small wiry boys in some capacity.

Dimity was shocked. “Sophronia, first men’s garb and now lower-class men’s garb? The very idea!”

Sophronia admitted, “It is daring. Luckily, I have no reason to leave the ship. Yet.”