Read Magnificent Devices 01 - Lady of Devices for Free Online Page A

guinea on a purple ribbon. It settled against her chest, heavy as validation. She doubted that Princess Alice had actually read her essay, which was an examination of Herr Emil Brucker’s new design for a four-piston steam landau. But it was most gratifying to have won, and to see the pride on her mother’s face as she and young Nicholas’s nanny watched her descend the stairs and make her way back to her seat in the front rows of chairs arranged on the school lawn.
    Her father was supposed to be here. Half the reason she had written about the steam landau was so that he would be tempted to read her prizewinning essay, be astonished at the depth of her knowledge, and allow her to drive his landau with his full permission. She had trodden a long and difficult road of umlauts and consonants and polysyllabic compounds, all for nothing.
    But no. A lady of spirit did not despair. There was always tomorrow, when surely she could prevail upon him to take a moment to read the essay, even if he hadn’t seen her receive the medal. She could always wear it down to breakfast.
    When the ceremony finally ended—Lady Julia having taken the seniors’ prize for congeniality and Emilie having captured the overall academics trophy—she joined her mother and was enveloped in a perfumed hug.
    “I am so proud of you, dearest,” she said, pulling back to look at Claire as though she hadn’t seen her in years and was surprised at how much she’d grown. “I had no idea you’d written an essay in German.”
    “You can read it if you like. It’s about—”
    “Heavens, dear. French was enough for me. German was insurmountable. I congratulate you.”
    “I hope Papa will read it. I had hoped he would be here.”
    A shadow passed across her mother’s face. “Your papa is detained in the Lords. He has been spending many long hours there, working for the good of the country, for which you should be proud of him and not wishing him here for your own selfish reasons.”
    Claire did not think that wishing one’s parents to see one’s graduation was so very selfish. Well, perhaps only a little. “I hope when I graduate from the university he will be able to come.”
    “I’m sure he—what?”
    “The university, Mama. I would like to attend Oxford in the fall and study one of the sciences.” That was a very vague way of putting it. Claire wanted to study engineering.
    Lady St. Ives stared at her as if she’d never seen her before. “What nonsense is this, child?”
    Perhaps she should have led up to this more gradually. Spent some time softening her mother up and getting her used to the idea. But since academics were in the air and it was such a happy day, the words had popped out before she had a chance to consider them more carefully.
    Considered or not, words failed her altogether at the sight of her mother’s face.
    “You will put such ridiculous ideas out of your head at once. You are to have your Season, accept a suitable young man, and be exchanging wedding vows by autumn.” She seized Claire’s arm while the nanny, carrying her baby brother, trailed them across the lawn. “University. Great Caesar’s ghost. What outlandish thing will you shame me with next?”
    “There is no shame in a university education,” Claire persisted with the sinking feeling that she spoke her words into the ether, to vanish forever. “I do not wish to be married so soon. I wish to have a career, like—”
    “Like whom?” At the gate, Lady St. Ives rounded on her. “Like that Churchill creature?”
    “Mrs. Churchill is admired by civilized people on three continents,” Claire said as steadily as she could.
    “Isabel Churchill is a self-aggrandizing, grandstanding woman who deserted her family and prospects to go gallivanting into the wilderness with other people’s money. I will not permit you to use her as a model for success in the feminine sphere.”
    Claire fell back a step, as if the very words had slapped her.
    “You may well be