Magnificent Devices 01 - Lady of Devices

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 shocked. She is a Wit of the very worst degree, and I very much regret receiving her daughter into our home last week. She is not related to the Spencer Churchills at all. I had been misinformed.”
    “You just don’t like her because she’s not a Blood.”
    “Do not speak as if you were a silly schoolgirl any longer. Come. We must get you home in time to dress for your reception and the salon at Wellesley House this evening.”
    Mutinous, Claire nearly refused to walk any further next to the woman who had foiled all her hopes as carelessly as she might swat a fly. But if she did, she would only have to walk home, and half a mile in heeled dress slippers would be at least as painful as riding home in the carriage across from her ladyship.
    She was still fuming as Silvie, her mother’s lady’s maid, helped her out of her afternoon dress and into her new dinner gown. The last thing she wanted to do was pretend she welcomed anyone to such a backward house. Her parents lived in the previous century, that was all. They couldn’t help it if the things they lived by—blood, breeding, birth—had become an anachronism in the face of the power of the human brain.
    Society had divided itself into Bloods and Wits—the former headed by the Prince of Wales and the latter by the Prime Minister, Mr. Leonard Darwin, son of the famous naturalist—and where one rose to prominence, it was only natural that the other should fade to irrelevance.
    The thought of her mother being irrelevant and not even knowing it was some source of amusement, at any rate.
    This was cold comfort when Claire had to stand next to her and receive their guests. A harpist had been hired and there would be dancing later at Lady Julia’s home, though the affair was called a salon to forestall the gossips from making comments about Lady Julia and her classmates attending a ball before they had been presented. In the meantime, similar parties forming a progressive dinner were going on all over Mayfair and Kensington, the new graduates flocking from one house to another to sip lemonade here, nibble an hors d’oeuvre there, fill a plate with iced cakes and macaroons yet somewhere else.
    Only another hour, and she and Emilie could flit off as well, and during the short walk to Wellesley House she could unburden herself in detail to her best friend.
    “Formulating another strategy to beat all comers at poker?” A male voice rumbled behind her, and Claire turned in surprise.
    “Lord James.”
    He bowed and extended his hand. “My best wishes to the new graduate.” When he straightened again, his lashes flickered. “And congratulations are in order, I see.”
    “Thank you.” She fingered the round gold wafer sitting just below her clavicle, which Lady St. Ives had insisted she wear, and resisted the urge to take it off and tuck it in her bodice. She was wearing her very first low-necked gown, courtesy of Madame du Barry, and she was not yet used to the way gazes felt on