The Ruby Airship Read online

  Thaddeus spun around to face her, his features just as angry. “I did not,” he said in a harsh whisper, “accuse you of theft.” He paused for a moment, as if hesitating over something.

  “What?” Rémy asked, jutting out her chin and crossing her arms. “What now?”

  “Does he have to stay here? With you, at the workshop?”

  Rémy frowned. “Yannick? Why shouldn’t he?”

  Thaddeus made an annoyed sound in his throat. “I don’t trust him. I don’t think you should either. And besides . . .”

  “Besides — what?” Rémy asked as he trailed off.

  Thaddeus shook his head again. “I just don’t like it.”

  “You don’t like it?” Rémy asked, her voice rising in annoyance. “You want me to turn a friend out on the street because you don’t like it?”

  “He was a friend, Rémy. How long is it since you’ve seen him? When you were both children? Who knows what kind of man he is now? I’ve seen his face somewhere before. I can’t place where, but it worries me.”

  Rémy stepped away from Thaddeus, angry. “Only an Englishman could demand I turn an old friend out on the street when he has nowhere else to go. How can you ask me such a thing? First you accuse me of theft —”

  “I. Did. Not,” Thaddeus hissed.

  “And now you try to tell me who I should keep as my friends. Well, you have no right! You have no right, and I will not listen to you. Go back to work, little policeman. You are not wanted here.”

  She watched as Thaddeus set his jaw, gritting his teeth. “Fine,” he said, his voice stony cold. Then he turned on his heel and was gone, disappearing into the nighttime murk almost at once.

  {Chapter 5}

  CATCHING UP

  Back inside the warmth of the workshop, Yannick was attempting to regale a somewhat downcast J with a tale of their shared past. The boy stood up as soon as she stepped back inside.

  “I fink I’ll go to bed meself,” he muttered. “Lots to do in the morning.”

  Rémy nodded. “Night, J.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, J,” said Yannick with his warmest smile. “And thank you for letting me stay.”

  J half-shrugged a response. The next moment, the door to his room was closing behind him. Rémy expected the sound of hammering to start up again, but all was silent.

  “Well,” said Yannick wryly, “that’s two of your friends I seem to have upset already, and with only one evening gone. Perhaps tomorrow I should make more of an effort and try for three?”

  Rémy sighed as she sat down opposite him in front of the fire. “It’s just that Thaddeus and J are really the only friends I have here in London. The three of us have become very close over the past few months,” said Rémy. “We’ve been through a lot together.”

  “Really?” asked Yannick. “You wouldn’t know it from the way that policeman of yours spoke to you. Let me guess, in that little chat you two had out there, he warned you that I shouldn’t be staying here with you. Am I right?”

  Rémy scrubbed her short thumbnail against the frayed material of the chair’s arm. “Something like that. He says I don’t really know you anymore. I suppose he’s right, though.”

  “Tsk!” exclaimed Yannick. “What rubbish! I know you better than some English boy you met just a few months ago, Rémy Brunel. How many years were we on the road together? Can I really have changed so much?”

  Rémy raised her eyebrows at him. “I hope so. You used to be so clumsy you’d fall over your own feet.”

  Yannick laughed, and then she did too, and Rémy’s discomfort at Thaddeus’s words faded into the background. They had only spent an evening together, but already she felt more at home, more comfortable, with Yannick than she ever had with Thaddeus. Yannick put her at her ease, whereas Rémy always felt as if she had to be better than she ever could be around Thaddeus.

  “I don’t know why you put up with him coming around here,” Yannick said, almost as if he knew what she was thinking. “That sort are never good news.”

  “Thaddeus is a good man, really. He’s — it’s just not . . . I don’t . . .” Rémy sighed and tried again. “It’s difficult, that’s all. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about Thaddeus. I need news, Yannick. Tell me what has been happening in France.”

  “Well, of course everyone’s excited about the Jamboree,” Yannick told her. “Or had you forgotten that it was this year? It’s this week, you know.”

  Rémy stared into the fire, imagining the gathering. Once every four years, circus troupes from all over France — and sometimes beyond — gathered in one place, just outside Paris. It was a chance to catch up with old friends and make new acquaintances, to learn news, and for some, to change jobs. When she was younger, it had always been what she looked forward to, a week-long festival of noise, magic, fire, and fun. Yet this year, she’d hardly thought about it. London was her home and where she was meant to be now. Or so she’d thought.

  “I suppose Claudette and the circus will be living it up there, won’t they?”

  “I don’t know.” Rémy rubbed a hand over her face. “I’m sure it’s nothing, Yannick, but I haven’t had a letter from Claudette for ages. We were supposed to write to each other every week, but . . . she hasn’t returned word for a while.”

  Yannick stared into the fire. “That seems a little strange, doesn’t it? I always remember you two being so close.”

  The well of unease that had been flooding Rémy’s stomach bubbled a little. “I know. To tell you the truth, I am worried. But I don’t know what to do. I can’t keep writing if I don’t know where she is.”

  Yannick sighed. “Ah, Claudette. I will not lie to you, Rémy — when I was a boy, I had a little crush on her. She’s so . . . so different from the rest of us circus folk. Isn’t she?”

  Rémy laughed faintly, thinking of her friend’s beautiful face and chestnut hair, of her way with languages and her ability to write, which was almost unheard of in circus life. “She is. She was beginning to teach Amélie to read when they went back to France. You never met her daughter, did you?”

  “No,” said Yannick, “though I heard about her. Poor Claudette and the baby — to be left like that. The man must have been a monster.”

  Rémy thought back to those months before Amélie had been born. Once Antoine had gone, Claudette refused to speak his name. Her belly had swollen along with her grief, and then Amélie had been born as beautiful as her mother, but as mute as a swan. Though Claudette never said it, Rémy knew her friend blamed herself. Claudette thought that somehow, her grief had poisoned the baby in her womb. Not once had Amélie spoken, in all her six years, not until the day Rémy’s opal had woken and allowed her to hear the little girl’s thoughts in her head. But Rémy hadn’t told Claudette about the opal’s powers. She hadn’t known how to, and while Rémy was still trying to find the right words to explain, they had both gone back to France.

  She and Yannick were silent for a moment, both staring into the flames as the memories swallowed them both. The feeling of homesickness overcame Rémy again as she thought of her friend, so far away. London suddenly seemed a very strange place for her to be.

  “I’m sorry, my dear friend,” said Yannick, his face full of concern. “I did not mean to make you think of worrying things. If it helps, I do have word of a more jolly nature.”

  “Oh?”

  “Indeed. It seems as if the fabled Lost Comtesse may actually be found at last.”

  “Really?” asked Rémy, genuinely surprised. “No, surely not? I thought that was just a silly story, a fairy tale that parents told their children. You know — ‘Don’t run off, you know what happens to naughty children who run off . . . You’ll end up like the Lost Comtesse’ . . .”

  Yannick shook his head. “It’s not just a story. Bits of it might have been made up, but she’s out there somewhere, for real.”
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  Rémy blew out a breath. “Mon dieu. And she’s been found, you say?”

  “Well, not yet, no, but soon, I think. The new Comte Cantal de Saint-Cernin has issued a reward, and he says he’s determined to find her once and for all. He says he has studied his family’s records and she is his cousin. So now that his father is dead and he’s the new head of the family, he thinks it’s time he put all his efforts into finding her.”

  Rémy shook her head, thinking about the old story. It was one all circus children grew up knowing, because it was what marked them out from the rest of the world. In it, circus people were a bad lot, kidnapping unwary children who strayed into their path. The story went that there was once an old circus couple who were desperate to have a child but, year after year, the wife remained barren. This saddened her beyond measure, and the husband could not bear to see his beloved wife bowed double by the grief of her childlessness.

  One day, the rich governor of a city gave a huge party for his wife’s birthday. The entire city turned out for the celebration, which attracted many performers and circuses from miles around and continued late into the night. The governor had a daughter, a young girl who did not go to bed as she had been ordered, but begged her maid to take her down into the town instead. The maid was persuaded but then became distracted and forgot her charge, just for a moment. The little girl wandered off, straight into the path of the old circus performer, who snatched her up at once and gave her to his wife, making her the daughter they couldn’t have. The girl had never been seen since, and was said to still be with a circus somewhere.

  “The story never really made sense to me, even when I was a child,” said Rémy. “Surely the girl could have screamed as they dragged her away. And it’s not as if they could have kept her locked in their caravan forever — she would have been able to run away at some point. So why didn’t she?”

  Yannick shrugged. “Not every girl is as able as you are, Little Bird. I heard tell that they’d built a tall tower in a secret forest and locked the child in it. They bricked up the door so there was no exit except for a high window that was too far from the ground to escape.”

  Rémy laughed. “That’s the fairy tale of Rapunzel, you idiot!”

  “Ah,” said Yannick, waggling his eyebrows and making her laugh even more. “But is it? Seriously, though, Rémy. Imagine being the Lost Comtesse. Imagine having that entire inheritance sitting there, just waiting for you to remember who you were and come forward. How extraordinary would that be?”

  Rémy smiled. “Very,” she said.

  They were silent for a while, staring at the fire and thinking their own thoughts. Rémy’s homesickness returned, and she wondered again where Claudette and Amélie were and what they were doing at that moment. Yannick sighed and stretched his legs out toward the fire, his face pensive and a little sad, as if remembering all their childhood adventures and wishing it were possible to relive them all.

  “Are you sure this is where you belong, Rémy?” he said at last. “What are you doing here, in London? What — who — is keeping you here?”

  Rémy stared at the fire.

  “I don’t know,” she said finally, in a whisper. “I don’t know anymore.”

  {Chapter 6}

  AN IMPOSSIBLE CASE

  Thaddeus sat at his desk, his notes on the case spread out in front of him. None of what he had read, over and over, made sense. Two burglaries, both of jewels, each as inexplicable as the other. Both Lord Theakston’s and Lord Bolsover’s valuables should have been as safe as . . . well, he wouldn’t ever use the saying “as safe as the crown jewels” ever again, not after what had happened a few months ago, but they were as safe as a very safe thing. As he had told Rémy, they seemed to have been taken from locked strongboxes in locked rooms, which had remained locked even after the thefts. Now both men were demanding that London’s police force find the culprit and return their jewels as quickly as possible. Thaddeus had no idea even of where to start. The more he turned the facts over in his mind, the more impossible both events seemed to be. After his argument with Rémy, Thaddeus had known he wouldn’t sleep. So he’d gone back to his desk instead and tried to work it all out in his own head. He’d been sitting there all night.

  Lord Theakston had taken his wife and daughter out to the Adelphi theater. Two of the servants had been granted the night off, but the rest of the household had remained at the residence. All of the servants had exemplary records of service, and neither Lord Theakston nor Lady Theakston would believe that any of their household would steal from them. Indeed, it seemed a remarkably happy home, both upstairs and downstairs. Thaddeus was beginning to agree that the thief must have been an outsider, which only served to make the policeman’s job all the harder.

  As for Lord Bolsover, that case was even more difficult. Those jewels had also been within a safe in a locked room, this time one with no windows and only a single door, which opened into Lord Bolsover’s private study, and for which only he had the keys. And as with Lord Theakston, Bolsover swore blind that those keys had never been out of his sight, not even long enough for an enterprising thief to have made an impression of them.

  How do you steal a jewel through three locked doors? Twice?

  The more he thought about it, the more Thaddeus was convinced that the only person who could truly help him solve the case was Rémy Brunel.

  As her face floated into his mind for the millionth time that morning, the policeman sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. His Rémy Brunel. At least, he’d thought she was at one point, but now . . . now they could barely be in the same room together. Every time he tried to say something about what had happened in that cave — about what he’d said to her when he’d thought she was about to die — something passed through her eyes that made him think he’d be better not saying anything at all. And now, after last night . . .

  Thaddeus stood up and began to pace. There was something just not right about that Yannick fellow turning up out of the blue. Besides, the policeman was sure he’d seen the man’s face somewhere before, and until he could place it, he wouldn’t be happy. And of course Thaddeus hadn’t really thought that Rémy could be the thief he was searching for. Had he? No, not really. It was only that she’d suddenly been wearing that ring — a ruby that, if sold, could buy the workshop and everything in it several times over. It was natural that he should be a little suspicious, wasn’t it? After how they had met and what her life had been like with the circus? But he’d never seriously suspected her. He believed her, unreservedly, when she’d protested it wasn’t her. He’d just wanted her help.

  Because how do you steal a jewel through three locked doors, as if by magic?

  Thaddeus blinked, staring at the mass of notes on his desk. A cog turned in his head. A switch flicked.

  Magic.

  * * *

  Rémy woke with an ache in her head that echoed an even more painful one in her heart. Getting up, she looked in the mirror and saw dark circles beneath her eyes. It wasn’t just the worry about Claudette, or the homesickness that had enveloped her since meeting Yannick again. It was the argument with Thaddeus. Their bitter words had rolled around and around in her head all night. If only she’d not heard what he was thinking in that split second. If only she’d just been able to listen to what he actually had to say — I thought we might work well together.

  But how? she thought. How would we ever be able to do that, when you think I’m still capable of being the thing you most despise?

  Her fingers went to the opal. It hung on a thin gold chain around her neck, just as it always had, ever since Claudette had given it to her as a child, saying it was a gift from the mother she’d never known. The gift has turned into a curse, she thought. Not for the first time, Rémy wished she’d found the time to talk to Claudette about what her newly woken opal could do. Before they’d come to London, it had just been a talisman given in love. Now it
was something entirely different — no, not different, but more. Rémy didn’t know how to deal with it.

  Reaching for the clasp, Rémy took the necklace from around her neck and coiled it into her palm. The opal glinted, a thousand threads of color in a milky sea of white on either side of the great split that had been there ever since the night she had almost died. She had never taken it off before. Without it she felt naked, and yet with it came such a burden now that it was almost a relief to be free. Reaching out, Rémy opened the drawer of the old dresser and hid it carefully in an old matchbox.

  * * *

  When Rémy left her room, it was to discover that Yannick had already gone out. J didn’t know where and didn’t seem particularly bothered by the fact.

  “You don’t mind him staying, do you, J?” Rémy asked as they shared some bread and cheese over a subdued breakfast.

  J shrugged. “I s’pose not. It’s a bit of a coincidence though, innit? Him finding you in the whole of London, like. Some might say he knew what he was about, going to the very theater you perform in, eh?”

  Rémy frowned. “You sound as suspicious as Thaddeus.”

  J sighed. “I’m not suspicious. Well, no more than usual, any case. I just don’t like seeing you and Thaddeus fight, that’s all. And I’s got a feeling that if Mr. Yannick stays around, there’ll be a lot more fighting.”

  Rémy shrugged. “Well, Thaddeus has only got himself to blame for that.”

  J put down his chunk of bread and leaned over the table toward her. “Now, why would you go and say a thing like that? What’s Thaddeus to blame for? Ain’t ’e helped us both out? Ain’t ’e been the best mate we both could have asked for?”

  “Yes, J, he has helped us out — a lot. But he’s still a policeman. And policemen and people like us never mix. Not really. We’re like oil and water. You can swirl us around and it’ll seem like we’re one. But we always separate eventually. That’s just the way of the world.”