Curtsies & Conspiracies (Finishing School, #2)(60)

Felix said, “In no way are two vampires better than one.”

Especially not if you believe you’ve recently been bitten. “Are you certain it’s not the political power he wields?” Sophronia asked.

“Why, Ria, are you speaking in riddles? That’s sweet. I might almost think you wished to lure me in.” Felix batted long lashes at her.

The meal came to a close, the millet pudding and Norfolk dumplings consumed with gusto, especially by Pillover. Sophronia held back while most of the students crowded out through the door, eager for their brief spate of spare time before night classes began. The teachers let them go, lingering over their sherry or brandy, as nature dictated. In the case of Sister Mattie, nature dictated barley water.

Alone, Sophronia inched her way toward the front of the room. She pretended interest in some leftover nibbles at one of the tables. She watched the teachers out of the corner of her eye.

Professor Braithwope stood to take his leave, and the potentate clapped him on the shoulder in a fair imitation of jocularity. There was no real friendliness to the touch. I suppose they are nervous; one is inside the other’s territory. This ship, after all, belongs to Professor Braithwope by vampire law. So the potentate is imposing, whether invited or not.

She heard the potentate say, “For blood, queen, and country, Aloysius. You take a grave risk, my boy, a grave risk. You are to be commended.”

Professor Braithwope replied, mustache under control for once, “Thank you, sir. I shall do my best.” This was said in the tone of a son to his military father on the eve of battle.

Feeling she was pushing her luck, Sophronia drifted toward the exit, only to find herself accompanied by Professor Braithwope.

“Sir,” she said, politely.

“I don’t like how obsequious they all get when he is around,” said the vampire, as though answering a question she hadn’t asked.

“He is a very important person.”

“More than you will ever know, I hope. Don’t try any of your tricks on him, Miss Temminnick. He won’t put up with them the way I do.”

Sophronia’s mind was whirring. If the school works for the potentate, does that mean graduates are agents of the Shadow Council? “For blood, queen, and country, sir?” she said, softly.

“So he says, Miss Temminnick. So he says.”

Sophronia had always enjoyed the idea of intelligencer work but been worried about who she might be an agent for. Queen Victoria and her supernatural advisers seemed safer than the Picklemen or the vampire hives, but were they really any better? If I want to, will I be permitted to make my own arrangements? Can I choose a patron, or do we automatically go to the highest bidder? And if the latter is the case, how is that a fate better than an arranged marriage?


Sophronia wasn’t certain what instinct drove her to drop by the classrooms that night—but she did.

She saw the light on in Professor Lefoux’s lab and climbed outside to peek in, listening with her trumpet pressed to the porthole. There was only one person in the room, and he wasn’t talking. Professor Shrimpdittle was bent over the large metal suitlike object that he and Professor Lefoux had tinkered with earlier that week. He was working in intense silence, and though Sophronia watched him for a quarter of an hour she got no information. She returned to her room, puzzled, but with a certain sense of anticipation. Soon, she felt, all her questions would be answered. They were, after all, in London.

Her bed was lonely and cold without Bumbersnoot’s hot metal body to warm her feet.





HIGH FLOATING ABOARD





W hen she first saw Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing School for Young Ladies of Quality, Sophronia had been impressed by the size of the airship. But no one would ever make the mistake of calling it pretty. It was a cumbersome thing that seemed to stay up by will rather than ability, like a potbellied pig. One got the impression it didn’t really want to float but was doing so out of a sense of polite obligation.

The same could not be said of Giffard’s aether-current floater, christened the Puffy Nimbus Eighteen. It was a thing of technological beauty. Its bottom half was still barge shaped, but all sleek and elegant. Its blimp was sleek as well, an elongated almond with no patches from cannon fire and no extraneous ropes or ladders. The balloon was made of silk and oiled to a dark midnight purple. The ship glided in over a jubilant crowd and sank to land at the center of Hyde Park, some distance away from the embarrassingly emblazoned Mademoiselle Geraldine’s.

The girls were permitted to visit the assembly area to watch the landing, along with hundreds of others. They were under strict orders to stick together, paired into two long lines. They dressed in their best walking frocks and bonnets, parasols raised against an overcast sky.

“Pretty as a pineapple,” pronounced Mademoiselle Geraldine, waving them off with a lace handkerchief. Mademoiselle Geraldine never left the airship if she could avoid it. “An Englishwoman’s dirigible is her castle” was one of her favorite sayings.

The girls joined in the cheers of welcome. It was a magical event, for Giffard had managed the journey in under an hour. He’d come all the way from Paris, mostly inside the aetherosphere, higher up that any manned float-craft had ever been before. “He must have used the crystalline prototype guidance valve,” insisted Vieve. “He couldn’t have managed those currents any other way.” Then she vanished into the crowd.