The doctor seemed to mull that over. “So you drop down from the sky with no warning, carrying a man with a virulently contagious disease and ask the first person you see to take care of him until you send help? Is that about the size of it?”
“And we’ll pay you,” Eliza reminded him.
“Do the racers always fly at night? I thought you all were supposed to land in Carson City yesterday, and be on your way to San Francisco by now. At least that’s what the schedule in the San Francisco paper said. We get it a week or so behind here, but we do read it.”
Matthew had already surmised that the doctor was smarter than he looked. Now he was certain of it. He decided to cut to the heart of the matter. “Are you Lord Orm’s man?”
The doctor sneered and spit again, a thick brown wad of contempt. “There’s a lady present, so I can’t say what I’m really thinking, but the short answer is ‘no.’”
“I’m probably thinking the same thing,” Eliza told him. “Orm shot us down and took us prisoner yesterday. We barely escaped with our lives, and I suspect now it’s daylight, his pirates will be after us again soon. We must get to Carson City. But Mr. Cantlebury will never make it there, and even if he does, the longer he stays with Mr. Pence, the more likely that Mr. Pence will be infected too.”
“You’re probably both infected already, this strain just seems to have a long incubation period. You’re ticking time bombs,” the doctor told her, but not unkindly. “But you’re young and strong, and should pull through a bout of flu all right. Your friend here, I’m not as sure, but he’ll live if I have anything to say about it. Help me get him into the house, then you two can be on your way. No offense, but I want you long gone by the time those pirates come looking.”
• • •
THEY CAUGHT A tail wind and Eliza had started to believe they might reach Carson City after all, when she tried to adjust her course slightly south a few hours later and her airship didn’t respond. She jiggled the control, pulled the lever again, but the ballonet still didn’t respond by deflating as it should to send the ship in the desired direction.
She tried a gentle movement to the right, and the craft responded beautifully.
“Damn.”
She could hardly make it to Carson City, much less San Francisco, if she had to do a full circle every time she needed to veer left. If nothing else, she simply didn’t have the fuel for it.
Eliza’s dirigible was slightly ahead of Matthew’s and he followed her down to the ground. They landed by a copse of trees, with a charming runoff stream gurgling nearby. They hadn’t seen a town or even an isolated cabin in miles.
“Now what?”
“I can’t turn left.” She tugged at the balloon as it deflated, flattening it along the ground as best she could, twisting it so the defective ballonet would be spread on top. And there it was, plain as day, a frayed tear in the silk. That bullet from Orm’s henchman hadn’t missed her after all, but had grazed the ballonet. The pressure must have been tugging at the scrape and widening it ever since, until it finally shredded open at the weakest point.
The tear was long, longer than any of her patches or the scraps left in Cantlebury’s kit. Too long for her to sew quickly, and the silk would likely fray again from all the needle holes if she tried to darn an area that large.
After an hour of examining it from every angle, laying out patches in different combinations and considering the small amount of fiber goo remaining, Eliza threw her hands in the air. “That’s it, then. It’s over. I concede defeat.”
She was fairly certain she’d never spoken those words in her life. They tasted bitter and unwelcome.
“Come and sit down. Have some luncheon. You’ll feel better for it.”
“Luncheon?”
Her stomach growled in a manner most indelicate, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since the discovery of Cantlebury’s hamper last night. Apparently, Matthew and Cantlebury had brought it along.
“We’re down to the wine-soaked things now. But everything was wrapped in cheesecloth or linen, so at least we can be sure there’s no glass in the packets.”
Wine-infused dried apricots turned out to be surprisingly good. The dried, cured beef strips were not quite as delicious with their impromptu burgundy sauce, but Eliza ate several anyway. Chewing on the tough meat satisfied some craving she didn’t know she’d had, the desire to really tear into a meal.
Investigating the stream, they found the water icy and clean, and almost miraculously refreshing.
“You can have the last of the cheese if you like. For some reason I can’t stomach the idea of it.”
Eliza considered telling Matthew about some of his less dignified moments of the night before, but decided against it. “I’ll save it for later.”
“Very well, suit yourself. Now that we’ve lunched, and presumably feel better . . . ?”
She nodded happily. There might not be much to celebrate, but food had helped. Now they sat under a tree, enjoying the quiet and the cool breeze, and that helped too.
“Right, then. I think you’re missing a few obvious possible solutions to your airship problem, Eliza.”
“What solutions? I can’t patch it piecemeal. It’ll never hold, and I’d be here for days trying to sew it anyway. One big patch would do it, with some stitching and the last of the goo, but I don’t see any other way to manage it. I might as well hang my balloon over this branch for a tent right now and send you on your way as soon as it’s dark.”
Matthew leaned back against the tree, tilting his head to study the low-hanging branch she’d gestured to. “This would be a decent spot for a tent. But you’re missing the point. We have silk. A ton of it. Right there.” He pointed at his own airship, with its green balloon folded inside the basket. “Or just take my ship, and let me use your balloon for the tent. Either way, you need to move on to San Francisco.”
If her anger hadn’t spent itself on more important things, Eliza knew it would have flared up again. After all this time, after the change she thought she’d seen in the way Matthew viewed her, for him to play the chivalry card now was simply too much to bear.
“We’re still competitors, Matthew. The only two left. You may not care, but I do. I don’t want to give Orm the satisfaction of stopping the rally entirely. Only one of us can make it to San Francisco, and obviously it should be the one who still has a working vehicle. I won’t accept a win based solely on your deciding to be noble.”
“My working vehicle has been carrying an extra payload and is nearly out of fuel and helium,” he explained. “I’m not being noble, just practical. I wouldn’t make it to Carson City. Carrying Cantlebury, plus stopping to let him out,and lifting off again, took up any reserves I might have drawn on. But you’re only a little over half my weight. You could make it there easily in my ship. Or in your own, if you borrow the silk. You should still have plenty of fuel left. Hot air is more efficient that way, and your Firebird is particularly well designed.”
“Thank you. The ballonet placement was my idea. Dexter started with the same design as Gossamer Wing, but he’d planned to add to the weight with a more traditional rudder arrangement and smaller directional ballonets. I didn’t like it, it felt clunky in the air. So I convinced him I could control the pitch just as well this way.” She nudged at the silk’s edge with one booted toe, suddenly shy and awkward as she realized she and Matthew were finally alone together. It wasn’t quite the setting she’d imagined.
He stepped closer and slid his toe adjacent to hers, tapping the side of her boot with his own. “I remember. You’re very good at that, you know. Taking existing designs, testing them and then improving on them. And you’re also clever with fabric. I’m not very good with soft materials. I should lure you from Hardison House and put you to work on my designs.”
He twined his fingers with hers as he spoke, and Eliza returned the pressure. It
was as comforting as it was exciting. Just standing on a hillside, alone with a man. With Matthew.
“Lure me? It’s not as though I work for Dexter.”
“You’re driving his steam car and airship. You field-tested vehicles for him, helped modify his designs. Or at least modify his modifications, as I believe the Gossamer Wing was originally conceived by some poor nameless naval researcher in a secret lab somewhere.”
Now he was trying to flatter her. Why wasn’t she full of umbrage? “He was nameless then. I think he’s Lord Admiral Davis McCollough now.”
“Interesting. So will you consider it?”
“Cannibalizing your balloon?” Was there some other subject she’d missed? It was hard to say. His fingers and flattery were very distracting.
He shook his head. “That too, but I meant coming to work for me. After all this is done, I mean. And after you’ve helped liberate the opium slaves. Or perhaps you could do that and work for me on an alternating basis. Job by job, as it were.”
She turned to look at him, craning her neck because he stood so close. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Quite serious. You wouldn’t have to be an employee if you prefer not. A partner, perhaps? A consultant? I don’t know, I’d always imagined . . . a partner, I suppose. Somebody to come with me to Europa when I had business there, who would also appreciate the artwork and so forth. Someone to make terrible puns with in the workshop. Just someone.”
“And to share your bed?”
He looked up at the branch again. “I’ve always sort of assumed the someone would be my wife, so yes. But as you won’t marry me, I suppose I’ll have to work scandal management into my business plan.”
“What a foursome we’d be, you and me with Cantlebury and Lavinia. Nobody would have us.”
“We’d have each other.”
Eliza thought back to the day before, in Orm’s office, certain she was about to die. That strange peace had come over her, and part of it had been the shredding down of self-delusion to reveal her to herself. She did want to marry Matthew, although she wasn’t sure what marriage was. What they could make it. She also knew that regardless of what she’d tried to think, her first reaction to the tale of Cantlebury and Lavinia hadn’t been to congratulate them on their willingness to embrace life beyond society’s limits. No, her heart had broken for them because they were in love and couldn’t marry. Whether she liked it or not, she saw that as the happy ending.
Could she like it, with Matthew? People were always saying things were different when it was with this person or that person, different with your own children, different when you’re in love. But in Eliza’s experience it all looked the same. Charlotte was happy with Dexter, but their last trip to Europa had been their honeymoon, and now Charlotte seemed to spend most of her time balancing the household accounts and overseeing the installation of the rose gardens. Sometimes she visited the workshop, it was true.
“Charlotte and Dexter would probably still receive us,” Eliza mused. “Charlotte can get away with anything. She makes the fashion.”
“Which is strange, because she spent years as a recluse. At least as far as society knew.”
“Matthew, what did Charlotte do before she and Dexter married?”
“Government work,” he said quickly.
“Yes, but what kind of work? It wasn’t just decoding messages, was it?”
He smiled. “It’s just speculation on my part, I don’t know anything. And if you ever, for one second, mention a word of this to either Charlotte or Dexter, I’ll . . . I don’t know, but there will be dire consequences for you.”
“Understood. Now you must tell me.”
Matthew sat up and glanced around ostentatiously, as if there were anybody within fifty miles to overhear them. “I’m reasonably certain she was a spy.”
“A what?”
“A spy. You know, derring-do, secret capers, intelligence gathering. International espionage.”
Eliza wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t that. The more she considered the possibility, however, the more sense it made. The way Charlotte had spoken of a whole career about which Eliza knew nothing. A career she’d given up entirely, as far as anybody knew, but if she was a spy then perhaps she was still doing it. Who would ever know? Added to that were Charlotte’s unique skills, so different from most elegantly bred ladies of their acquaintance. How had the staid Lord Darmont’s daughter become an expert pilot of a secret dirigible prototype, after all? Why was Charlotte such a crack shot with any weapon she put her hand to?
And if she truly was retired, perhaps she found it relaxing to tally pillowcases and double-check the housekeeper’s arithmetic, after spending all that time at high alert, in constant danger. Even a few days of danger had been almost too much for Eliza to take. She could understand wanting a change. Safety, predictability. Simple fun.
“Matthew, if your wife is haring off to the continent with you and helping design your engines, who will see to the home? Hire the servants, make sure there’s furniture in all the rooms? Who keeps the household ledger and handles the correspondence? Who minds the children or sees to it that they have the right nannies and governesses and tutors? That’s what wives do. They’re too busy to play in the workshop and go to France.”
He gave her an amiable, patient smile, the one she used to want to smack off his face. Still did, just a little. “My wife won’t be. Except I thought I wouldn’t have one, because we were planning to be scandalous instead.”
“It isn’t that I want to be scandalous.”
She wanted him. If only it didn’t have to be so complicated.
Still smiling, he leaned over to rest his forehead against hers, pushing strands of hair out of her face so he could cup his palms to her cheeks. He brushed a kiss over her lips, soft as air, then pressed his lips to her hairline.
“You’re thinking too hard about this. Let’s get started on that patch, then we can make the tent and have a rest before nightfall.”
• • •
ELIZA SLEPT FITFULLY, dreaming of poison and flowers. Great brass stairwells rose to the clouds, moving on gears as tall as an elephant, powered by a wheel with a hundred opium slaves in rags. She ran over marble and jumped, then found herself flying over a field of poppies. Blood red, beautiful, alluring. If she fell, she would die, because she’d been poisoned and time was running out. Only by moving could she stay alive.
“Eliza.”
Matthew was with her, flying alongside. Then he started to fall, and she tried to scream, to warn him, but he only looked back at her and smiled.
“Eliza! Time to wake up.”
He was shaking her shoulder. Night was falling outside their green silk shelter.
“I’m awake.”
“You should see the last of the sunset. It’s spectacular.”
She dutifully peered out of the makeshift structure to view the western sky, and found herself agreeing with him. It was nearly gone, but still lovely, all crimson and violet against the encroaching deep indigo.
There was still enough light to find her way to the creek, and she returned feeling much refreshed.
“The patch has set,” Matthew told her. “Should be safe enough.”
He frowned down at the rigging of her airship, arms folded over his chest, looking miserable.
“Matthew?” Eliza laid a hand on his chest, feeling his strong heartbeat. She’d come to a decision, sometime between drowsiness and sleep, and had awakened still knowing it was the right decision. “I’ll wait awhile longer, until well after full dark. Come back inside the tent with me.”
TWENTY-THREE
“I SHOULD STAY out here and stand watch. Go and rest some more if you need to.”
“No. I’d like you to help me with something,” Eliza insisted.
“With what? All the equipment�
�s out here!”
She tugged his arm, laughing. “Matthew. I want you to help me . . . gather rosebuds while I may.”
He was silent for a long moment. Long enough for Eliza to grow nervous. Finally he asked quietly, “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Probably.” She pulled on him again, loosing one of his arms and gripping his hand. “Come inside the tent and make love to me.”
He stood his ground, resisting her efforts to lead him. “Say you’ll marry me.”
“I won’t make you any promises.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, Matthew. But we can decide for ourselves what that means. And we don’t have to decide right now.”
“We might find ourselves faced with a decision fairly soon if we accidentally bring a third party into this. I’m not going to sire any bastards, Eliza.”
Embarrassment flashed in her cheeks, hot and awful. She’d been aiming for a seduction and landed herself in a lecture. The worst part was, he was absolutely right. That didn’t change how much she wanted him.
“I could die,” she said, knowing as she said it that she shouldn’t. The “don’t-let-me-die-a-virgin” ploy was the last resort of seducers everywhere, and it cheapened her to use it.
“That was a very low blow.”
“I know, I’m sorry. This isn’t going like I thought it would.”
He relented on his physical opposition and stepped in, pulling her into his arms. She hugged his waist, feeling safe and as though things would be all right, even though she knew it wasn’t so.
“How did you think it would go, then? Just curious.”
“I thought it would take less thinking, for one thing. That I would ask and you would agree, and then we wouldn’t have to think for a while.”
Matthew stroked her back, and the intimate gesture inflamed as much as it soothed. Eliza held him closer, wishing she weren’t quite so susceptible.
“It deserves some thought. I’ve thought about little else for days, if you must know.”
Scarlet Devices Page 24