Full Steam Ahead

by Karen Witemeyer

  Boiler plates. He’d fashioned two miniature boilers with the boiler plates he’d taken from his collection. Both in relatively good condition. No noticeable corrosion or fractures. Yet the first stood at one-quarter-inch thickness while the second expanded to three-eighths. He’d constructed the experimental boilers with the same number of rivets, the same soldering. Plate thickness should be the only variable. Should be. Yet since yesterday, doubt had itched beneath his skin until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He was missing something.

  That’s why he’d summoned her. She’d caught his error with the cargo weight during her interview, and she’d proved adept with the schematics, drawing them to scale as if she understood how each piece fit with the others. He hoped her keen mind would decipher what was missing from his current equation. Unfortunately, knowing she’d be in his company again had played havoc with his concentration all morning. Hence the swim.

  He lay there several minutes, emptying his mind of swishing skirts, copper-brown eyes, and . . . feminine penmanship. Darius’s brow wrinkled as he squeezed his eyes more tightly closed against the sun—the sun and the vision of his words in Miss Greyson’s tidy script.

  Bah! He flung an arm over his eyes, but even that failed to banish the loops and flourishes he’d come to associate with his new secretary.

  It was no wonder he saw pages upon pages of her script in his mind. It was the last thing he looked at each night before collapsing for a couple hours of sleep, usually on the sofa in his study. And somehow in those lonely hours before dawn, the evidence that someone understood his words, scratched and ugly as they were, made it easier to pretend that someone understood him.

  Growing uncomfortably cool in his wet trousers and shirt, Darius rolled to the side, intending to push himself to his feet, but a quiet yelp stilled his motion. His eyes flew open. The catalyst for all his concentration complications stood not five yards away, her eyes round and wide, like those of a flushed rabbit an instant before it bounded away from the hunter.

  Neither of them said a word.

  Afraid she’d bolt if he moved, Darius remained on his side. But when her gaze flickered ever so briefly from his face to his chest, he recalled the inappropriate nature of his wet attire. His neck heated. Followed by his temper.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Miss Greyson.” Darius shoved to his feet and glared at her, anger a much easier emotion to wear than discomfiture. “My summons was for three o’clock. You should be working in the study, not out wandering the grounds.”

  Her eyes narrowed and her chin lifted, all resemblance to the scared rabbit of a moment ago gone. “So I’m not to be allowed a break for luncheon, then?” She released her grip on her skirt and stiffened her posture.

  Luncheon? Was it noon already? Darius squinted up into the blue sky and noted the sun’s rather obvious placement overhead. Drat. He never was one to keep tabs on the time. And now his lack of temporal awareness left him looking like some kind of fiendish overlord.

  “Of course you’re allowed a break for luncheon. Don’t be ridiculous,” he blustered, trying to somehow salvage the situation. “But it would be best for you to do so at the house. I run my experiments at the pond, you know. At times, it can be quite dangerous down here.”

  “There were no boilers or machinery of any kind when I arrived,” she protested, her blasted logic blowing holes in his weak-kneed argument. “And I’ve grown quite fond of taking my midday meal here. Surely you wouldn’t deny me such a simple pleasure.”

  Her cheeks reddened at the word pleasure. Darius cocked his head, his blood growing warm beneath his wind-chilled skin. Had she witnessed his swim? He didn’t see how she could have missed it if she’d indeed been lunching by the water. The more intriguing question was, had she liked what she’d seen? Ever the scientist, Darius couldn’t let the hypothesis go unchallenged. Ignoring his boots where they lay in the grass at the edge of the landing, he strode barefoot toward his quarry.

  “So I’m to understand that you lunch by the pond every day, Miss Greyson?” he asked as he stalked her through the shin-high grass. Her chin wobbled just a bit, and she took a nearly imperceptible step back. He’d probably not have noticed it if he hadn’t been observing her so closely. But what kind of scientist would he be if he didn’t attend to the tiniest of details?

  “Every day,” she confirmed, her voice impressively free of tremors. The lady knew how to put up a strong front. “After working indoors for several hours, it’s nice to have the benefits of fresh air and a change of scenery. The pond offers both.”

  He halted his advance about a foot away from her. “I imagine the scenery changed a little more than you were expecting today.” His lighthearted tone surprised him nearly as much as it did her. Her brow puckered as if he were an equation she couldn’t quite decipher. Well, that was only fair, since he didn’t have a clue about what he was trying to do, either. Surely not flirt with the woman. He didn’t have time for such vain endeavors. He needed to extricate himself from this situation. At once.

  Not knowing what else to do, Darius sketched a short bow and begged her pardon as if he were a gentleman in his mother’s drawing room instead of a soggy scientist dripping all over the vegetation. “I apologize for intruding on your solitude, Miss Greyson, and I hope I have not offended you with my . . . ah . . .” He glanced helplessly down at his wet clothing.

  “Dampness?” The amusement in his secretary’s voice brought his head up. “My father used to be a seaman, Mr. Thornton, and I grew up swimming in the Gulf. You aren’t the first man I’ve seen take a swim.” Though the way her gaze dipped again to his chest and the slow swallowing motion of her throat that followed seemed to indicate that she hadn’t been as unmoved by the sight as she would have him believe. That thought pleased him far more than it should have.

  “Be that as it may, I’ll take special care not to avail myself of the pond during the midday hours in the future.”

  He expected her to murmur some polite form of thanks for his consideration, but she didn’t. No, she stared at him instead. Long enough that he had to fight the urge to squirm under her perusal.

  “You know, Mr. Thornton,” she said with a cock of her head that gave him the distinct impression she was testing her own hypothesis. “I believe your . . . dampness has restored your ability to converse with genteel manners.” Her lips curved in a saucy grin that had his pulse leaping in response. “Perhaps you should swim more often.”

  She left him to stew in his own muddy juices, and he watched her go, strangely captivated by the way the wind wrapped her bonnet ribbon around the delicate curve of her neck.

  Darius wrenched his attention away. Taking another cold swim suddenly seemed like a very good idea.

  Later that afternoon, Nicole stood biting her lip outside the storage shed that housed Mr. Thornton’s workshop. She could do this. Just because memories of her employer’s wet, well-honed form had proven incredibly difficult to banish and had kept her from accomplishing anything of note in the last three hours did not mean she couldn’t converse with him in an intelligent manner during this appointment. She was a professional. A woman of education. A Renard. And Renards faced their challenges head on.

  Renard though she may be, her hand still trembled as she raised it to knock on the door.

  “Enter,” came the impatient call from within. Nicole smiled. Apparently their encounter hadn’t altered her employer’s demeanor. Good. She was starting to think she liked him better without his manners. At least she knew what to expect.

  Nicole let herself into the workshop and picked her way past piles of steel and iron scrap until she reached her employer’s side. She waited for him to turn or somehow acknowledge her presence, but all he did was mumble to himself and pace between two machines that bore an uncanny resemblance to steam engine boilers.

  Curious, Nicole stepped closer and craned her neck to see around Darius Thornton’s broad shoulders. The boilers were nowhere near the size of the actual mechani
sms used to power riverboats, but the two of them together took up an entire wall of the workshop.

  “Did you build those yourself?” she asked, impressed. The craftsmanship was really quite good. Apparently his construction skills were more finely tuned than his drafting ones. These models looked nothing like the disproportioned schematics in his logbooks.

  “What? Oh, ah . . . yes.” He shot a quick glance at her, frowned, then continued his pacing. “But there’s something missing. I can’t conduct my experiment until I diagnose my error.” He ran a hand through his short-cropped hair, his jaw clenching as he looked from the first boiler to the second.

  At least he’d thrown on dry clothes, even if his shirttail was half-untucked at the back. She dropped her gaze to his feet. And shoes—thank heaven. There was something far too intimate about being in a closed room with a barefoot man.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, Miss Greyson.” Darius Thornton reached out, clasped her wrist, and tugged her forward. Heat from his hand penetrated her sleeve, and tiny sparks shot up her arm. He positioned her in front of himself and started rambling off facts about the two boilers, his body hovering near hers as he pointed out the various details.

  “Same quantity of new rivets, same soldering, same flue design in each,” he was saying.

  Nicole ordered her mind to concentrate on the task at hand, not on the man standing close enough to brush against her shoulder every time he gestured to one of the scaled-down boilers. The brief contact between them obviously meant nothing to him, as focused as he was on his experiment.

  What would it be like to be the object of such focused attention?

  The stray thought so staggered her, Nicole had to lock her knees to remain upright. Where in the world had that come from? Mr. Thornton was the oddest, most socially defiant gentleman of her acquaintance. Still . . . there was something about him that intrigued her. Something deep inside that drove his obsession. Something she wanted to excavate and examine for herself.

  Simple curiosity, of course. That’s all it was. Nicole eased forward, putting an inch more distance between her and Mr. Thornton. It was natural to be curious about one’s employer. Who wouldn’t be?

  Yet if he were ever to look at her with the same intensity he reserved for his boilers, she’d probably combust on the spot. The woman who gained his attention would have to be made of sturdy stuff. And while Nicole had always considered herself of that breed, she was also savvy enough not to get tangled in a mess that didn’t concern her. She was at Oakhaven to earn passage to New Orleans, not to unravel Darius Thornton’s mysteries. Best she leave him to his boilers.

  Determined that their proximity would mean as little to her as it did to him, Nicole reined in her thoughts with a strong hand and turned her attention back to the situation at hand.

  “Thickness of the boiler plate should be the only variable,” her employer was saying, “but I can’t escape the feeling that I’m missing something.” He paced a few steps away from her. “I need you to tell me what it is.”

  Her heart gave a panicked flutter. “Me?” What made him think she would know anything about boilers?

  “You’re an intelligent woman with a logical mind. You found my error with the cargo weight. You can find any errors here, as well.” He finally looked her full in the face, and she was struck by the desperation in his features. It was as if he feared failure at a level that far exceeded what this simple experiment warranted.

  And she was the one he was turning to for help. Because he respected her intellect and considered her capable.

  “Please,” he said. “I can’t afford the waste of time and precious equipment for an experiment that the Franklin Institute will throw out as useless because I overlooked a control element.”

  One had only to see the angst etched across his brow to know this had nothing to do with personal prestige. He was a crusader, and even though she didn’t fully understand his cause, Nicole felt herself being drawn into it.

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  Some of the tension drained from his jaw and forehead. He dipped his chin in an abbreviated bow. “Thank you.”

  Nicole nodded back, then took a step closer to the boilers. “Have you made any notes?” The words were barely out of her mouth before a logbook was shoved into her hand.

  It was difficult to concentrate with her employer pacing the room behind her, but Nicole did her best to examine his work and search for any discrepancies that might interfere with the experiment’s outcome.

  “Both have safety valves in the same position,” she murmured. “Dampers, fireboxes, water pumps. They seem to be identical in every way. As long as you are careful to use comparable water levels and heat them at the same rate, everything should be fine. Although . . .” She made a few mental calculations.

  “What?” Mr. Thornton demanded, coming beside her. “What are you thinking?”

  Nicole hesitated. “It’s just that . . . Well, I don’t know how much difference the thickness of the boiler plate will make in the heating rate of the water. You might have to use more fuel, or greater heat, to induce the same amount of steam in the second engine due to the barrier between the fire and the water being thicker. Once a steady temperature is achieved, the differences should even out, but if you are testing to see which thickness can stand up to increased steam pressure the longest, you might need to factor in the initial difference in heating the water through a thicker plate.”

  Nicole finally glanced up from the logbook to gauge Darius Thornton’s reaction. The poor man looked rather frozen, his face expressionless, his body eerily still. Nicole returned her attention to the notes, unsure what such a response meant.

  “Of course, I have very little practical experience with the workings of such machines,” she hurried to remind him. “It’s very possible that the difference an eighth of an inch of plating would make on the heating rate is negligible. I’ve never actually witnessed a side-by-side comparison.” She knew she was rambling but couldn’t seem to stop. His continued silence had stretched her nerves nearly to the snapping point.

  “Miss Greyson?” His deep voice cut through her babble, sparing her from further maligning her own intelligence.

  “Yes?” She forced her chin up. The lines that had grooved his face mere moments ago were now barely visible. It was as if ten years of hard living had just fallen away. Her own heart lightened in response.

  A grin broke out across Darius Thornton’s face. “I think I might just have to kiss you.”

  CHAPTER 11

  And then, unbelievably, he did.

  His warning gave Nicole no time to react, for as soon as the words left his mouth, Darius Thornton gripped her upper arms and planted a fast yet fierce kiss on her lips. Oh, it was perfectly chaste—a celebratory kiss, not anything with romantic intent—but it rattled her just the same.

  He laughed, called her a genius, and immediately snatched his logbook from her fingers and began jotting notes in the margin as he returned his attention to the boilers.

  Nicole followed his lead, adding her laughter to the mix while hoping he was too absorbed in his boilers to recognize how forced the sound was.

  Darius Thornton had just kissed her. That fact roared so loudly in her mind that all thoughts of boilers, heating rates, and explosions dimmed in comparison. Her first kiss from a gentleman, and he hadn’t even meant anything by it. Not that her pulse could tell the difference. She hadn’t felt this light-headed since the time she bet Tommy Ackerman that she could hold her breath longer than him and nearly passed out from the effort.

  Nicole backed a few steps away, needing some distance. Get ahold of yourself, Nicki. The man’s eccentric. That’s all. He probably would have kissed Mrs. Wellborn had she been the one to mention heating rates. No need to blow anything out of proportion. Just be thankful you were able to help.

  Yet that was half the trouble. She’d helped him puzzle through a problem, and at the moment the solution clicked in his mind, hi
s demeanor became as unburdened as it had been when he burst out of the water after swimming the length of the pond. She’d done that. She’d given him that bit of peace. Her heart swelled with the knowledge even as an alarm sounded in her mind. For deep inside, a need was growing within her—a need to ease this man’s burdens, to restore whatever it was he had lost. But it was a need she couldn’t afford to indulge. Not while her own family’s burden lay heavy on her shoulders.

  “So, want to help me set up the barricade?”

  Nicole’s head jerked up. Darius— No, Mr. Thornton. She had to keep a professional distance with the man. Unfortunately it was hard to think of her employer as Mr. Thornton when he was grinning at her like a young boy with a new toy. Numbly, she nodded and followed him outside.

  “Grab hold,” he said, gesturing to the barricade handle nearest her, “and help me cart this old girl toward the pond. You’ll see a well-worn groove in the ground about fifteen yards from the landing. That’s where we’ll set her down.”

  The scarred logs—an all-too visual reminder of the very real threat these experiments posed—still sent an unwelcome shiver through her. Nevertheless, she hurried forward and wrapped both hands around the cylindrical peg that jutted out on the right side. Most men would assume she was too weak to help with such a task or would consider it improper for a woman to take part in an endeavor so obviously fitted to a man. Others would prefer to show off their manly prowess by hefting the thing themselves while the lady looked on in awe. Not Darius. He respected her desire to be included as well as her strength and capability and therefore asked her to help. Simple. Straightforward. No murky social considerations to confuse things.

  Nicole hid a grin as she bent her knees and lifted her end of the barricade. That nonconformist quality of his was starting to grow on her.