The Christmas descended faster. Linet grabbed for the ladder as it lurched to one side. She lost her grip on the acrid-smelling bucket and it fell, denting on the deck below. The girl lost one handgrip on the ladder and Linet caught her so that they both held on by one hand. They glanced at each other and nodded, then slid down in tandem. The ladder swung sickeningly to one side, over the stern, until they hung in the sky like acrobats. Linet saw lights through the fog below her feet, then Andrew must have turned the wheel because they swung back over the deck.
The girls fell in a heap on the wooden planks. Linet swore as she banged her elbow hard. The other girl coughed.
“Is he going to do it soon?” Linet asked.
“He’d better or we’ll crash.”
When Linet looked up, she saw the captain nod at his first mate, and the man grabbed a lantern, opening and shutting a blackout panel three times.
“Hold on,” whispered the girl.
Linet braced herself as the men above opened the burner. She knew the men in the ratlines would be slamming the valves closed so the balloon could fill. They rose into the air with dizzying speed, tilting to one side. She somersaulted, and slid for yards until she slammed into the steering flat above the squat cabin. Gasping for breath, she damned her corset again and came unsteadily to her feet.
She heard the vicious sound of cannon fire behind them and climbed the ladder to the bridge, hoping to get a better view of what they were up against.
Andrew had lost his hat and his shoulder blade-length black hair waved in the breeze. His smile was fierce. For a moment she felt pride in him, pride in the Christmas, pride in defiance. Then the airship dipped again and she crashed against his side. They hit the wheel and the airship lurched.
“Lose the ballast!” the captain cried, grabbing her arm to steady her.
Every hand on deck dumped the canvas sandbags along the hull overboard. The airship shot up until it hovered above the Blockade craft.
Andrew laughed heartily. Linet caught his mood of insane gaiety and joined his laughter.
“Now there’s a Christmas miracle for you blackguards!” he cried, releasing her arm.
“Return fire, sir?” asked the first mate.
“Not on Christmas Eve!” With a whoop, he spun the wheel then grabbed Linet around the waist and swung her up in a circle, lifting her until her gaze matched his.
His contagious smile brought a curve to her lips. She smelled cinnamon sticks and sandalwood, scents both familiar and strange.
Then he bent her into a dip and crushed his lips against hers. The shock had her opening her mouth as it fused with his and his tongue swept in, hot and tasting of peppermint. For a moment she reveled in the sensual treat, then came to her senses. She’d be damned before she’d lock lips with an Andrew.
He pulled her out of the dip, his face still next to hers. Inexplicably, she tried to lick her windswept lips, as if some instinctive part of her wanted to capture his flavor, and he swept her tongue into his own mouth. Blistering longing took control from her sanity and she moaned into his touch. His hands slid along her arms, then found her torso and inched toward her chest. When one finger reached her nipple, it was if a bucket of hot lava had been thrown at her.
She opened her eyes and saw Erasmus “Elmo” Andrew. Andrew, the slobber-nosed traitor’s son.
She pushed against his unyielding chest and when he opened his eyes, she freed her other hand from where it had traitorously been wrapped around his thick bicep and slapped him across the face.
CHAPTER TWO
The amusement in Andrew’s face as he touched the red spot where Linet had slapped him shocked her. Years had passed since there had been any kind of violence in her life. Now, in the space of one evening, she’d been shot at numerous times, slapped a man—and been kissed. A normal day in the dramatic life of an air pirate. How quickly she’d forgotten! Except for the kissing part. When she’d been fifteen and flat-chested, sixteen and covered in spots, seventeen and on the run with a father in Newgate Prison, no one had wanted to kiss her.
Christmas Eve had never been so eventful, though. Her parents had married on Christmas Eve, and they adored the holidays. Every year they had treats, games and songs, always at home in Hastings, and always, until that last year, the Andrew clan had been with them for an afternoon meal. Captain Andrew’s wife had died the previous summer and until the Blockader attack on Christmas Day, she’d thought her death was the reason why the Andrews hadn’t visited. She hadn’t allowed herself to remember those times, but now, on this airship, she couldn’t forget. Fighting the rush of memory that she knew would bring tears, she looked away from Andrew.
She could tell from the way the sooty sky held a faint, grayish cast on the horizon that the night was almost over. Christmas Day had begun. Once her family’s favorite hours of the entire year, now the holiday held nothing but ashes for her.
“Should I take you back?” he asked. “Now that you know it was me at the top of the ladder?”
His tone was gentler than she would have expected.
“Did you see anyone with a spyglass at the factory? Could anyone have recognized me?” Regardless of her distaste for the irritatingly attractive Andrew, she knew she could share her father’s fate if the Guterman family knew she’d been in an airship, much less that she’d been part of the Fenna air pirate clan. Either was punishable by death.
“The cannon fire obscured everything. No one could have seen you.”
“The other housemaid will discover I am gone about now.”
“Will she know how?”
Linet grimaced. “I left the window open. I should have closed it. I’ve grown soft.”
“I can think of a few alternatives to your present position with the Gutermans. You’re much too talented an Owler to spend your life as a housemaid.”
She scowled at the mention of the informal name the Hastings-based smugglers had given themselves. “Crew member on this airship? No Fenna would crew for an Andrew after what your father did.”
He scoffed “I doubt you have the skills for a top-flight airship like the Christmas after all this time away.”
“I loaded the burner well enough.”
“I have Hatchet for that.” He lifted his chin toward the girl. “But I’ll still keep you aboard if you like.”
She put her hands on her hips. “And what, make me your doxy on my father’s airship?”
“So if I made you my mistress on some other airship that would be acceptable?” He grinned.
As she growled at him, his spyglass made a clicking noise and the silver band around it puffed out a circle of white smoke.
He waved the spyglass at her. “Another Blockade airship is on its way. I expected there to be less surveillance over the holiday, but I was wrong. I can set down and you can make your way back. I doubt anyone on the Blockade airship got a good look at you.”
“But the automen factory? What started the attack?”
“They were firing at us, not you. All it takes is the sight of an airship these days for the cannons to come out. None but the Queen’s airships are free to roam the skies these past four years.”
Then things had changed for the worse since her father’s day. She thought of the family she served, making a living manufacturing the detested things that took jobs from the needy and filling the streets with the belching exhaust they generated. “I’ve been looking for an excuse to leave the Gutermans’ employ. This is as good a time as any to go.”
“You won’t get a character. Isn’t that important to people like you?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. He didn’t know anything about her. “I was forced into respectable life, I didn’t choose it.”
“I understand differently. You could have taken refuge among us Owlers.”
She let a little of her rage show, scarcely banked after three years. “Who betrayed the Fennas? Do you know I haven’t seen my sister since they took my father away? I have no one left.”<
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His eyes narrowed slyly. “I know where she is.”
She clutched at her father’s coat, forgetting for a moment that an Andrew wore it. “Where? Tell me. Is she safe?”
“The Blockade airship is in sight,” warned the first mate.
Linet stepped back, shocked by her instinctive grab for him, uncomfortably aware of the warm male body underneath the coat.
“Make for the Conqueror’s Table,” Andrew said, relinquishing the wheel to the first mate. “You are certain, Linet? If you aren’t there to work today it’s over for you in respectable London.”
“I’m certain. I hate automen as much as any other right-thinking person and I don’t want to work for a manufacturer if I can help it. Give me a better way to put bread in my belly and I’ll take it.”
“Now there’s my girl,” Andrew said approvingly.
The words reminded her she’d once been friends with his family, though she’d mostly played with the Andrew daughter and ignored the sons. “Now tell me about Terrwyn.”
“Nothing is free,” he warned.
“Name your price, sir.” She leaned toward him and shook her finger.
“Another kiss will do.” He lifted his eyebrows roguishly.
She reached for Hatchet, who’d been quietly standing at the ladder waiting for orders, and pecked the child on the cheek. “There, that’s your kiss for you.”
“Well played,” he said with a laugh. “I shall be more specific in the future.”
The hull rattled as they changed course and the airship moved south. A crew member, undersized and pale as if he’d just been released from prison, came up the ladder onto the steering flat.
“Is Terrwyn in Hastings?” She knew the windy coastal location they headed toward was near the town where her family had lived.
“No. In Newgate Prison. She’s been sentenced to death for smuggling. They’ve held her for the past three years.”
“She was taken too?” Her corset seemed to tighten again, stopping her breaths in her throat. “But I never knew she was in London!”
“You never contacted anyone in Hastings after you left.” He leaned in as the crew member whispered in his ear, then nodded. “Thank you, Glen.”
The man went back down the ladder.
She blinked back hot tears. Her eyes burned in the wind. “I had no choice. I was in the house when they came for Father. I crawled out my bedroom window using my sheets. I had no money, nothing.”
“That was three years ago.”
“I was afraid the Blockaders would come from me if I sent a letter and told anyone where I was. But Terrwyn was out on the Hallow’s Eve. How did they take her?”
“The Blockaders were lying in wait when she returned to port.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “Your father has much to answer for.”
“He’s dead.” Andrew fished in a pocket for a piece of leather and tied his hair back. The angles of his face sharpened, making him seem harsher. “You’ll get no satisfaction from him, lass.”
A sense of unexpected disappointment surprised her. Now she’d never really know what happened to ruin their fathers’ friendship and cause such terrible consequences. “I wonder why they let her live. They killed Black Bess alongside my father and six of his men.” She’d been in the audience at the hanging, the worst day of her life.
“Information, perhaps. Or,” he paused, “I’ve heard she is very beautiful.”
The thought struck Linet square in the heart, as if Terrwyn had been in the prison only a few hours, rather than years. “We should turn around. Newgate Prison is in London.”
Andrew frowned. “What has that to do with me?”
“You must have a plan since you came to London. You’re going to break her out, aren’t you?” For a moment, Linet wondered if that had been his desire all along. Had they been lovers in the old days? But even if that was true, what had prompted him to make his move tonight?
“Why would I do that?”
“Was Terrwyn your goal all along? A beautiful woman who won’t care that you’re a smuggler?”
“My reasons are my own,” he said with stoic assurance. “Be glad you are benefiting from them.”
“Your arrogance won’t bring down the walls of a prison. Enticing me out of my employer’s house was one thing, but nothing like what is required to free my sister.”
“I have some thoughts on how it could be done.” He stroked his beard.
“Then turn around!”
“It’s less than an hour to Hastings. I need to pick up supplies.”
“Supplies? Like metal files?” She wondered what would be needed to break into the imposing brick prison. Thankfully, she knew escape was possible, as had been reported in popular literature. Jack Sheppard had inspired many a desperate soul in these troubled years since the automen were invented, as he had back in the eighteenth century when Daniel Defoe and others wrote about his amazing abilities to escape, magician-like, from the prison.
“The Christmas can’t carry much cargo if we want top speed. We flew in light. We’re going to need to add to our coal stores, thanks to the Blockaders.”
“What about the prison? Do you have a plan?” She tried to ignore his fingers, the sensual way they slid up and down the downy hair of his beard. Why did he have to be so distractingly handsome?
“We’ll try to go in the usual way first. I have a beautiful forgery, a permit from the Lord Mayor of London, that we can make work for these purposes. That will allow you to get into the yard to see your sister.”
Her gaze flitted to his eyes. “Me?”
“You’re much less recognizable to authorities than I am, and known to your sister.”
“She’d recognize you anywhere, either by that traitor’s face or by my father’s clothes. I’m sure she’ll forget her hatred of your family long enough to let you help her escape prison.”
Andrew beetled his bushy black eyebrows, but his pleasant smile changed not a whit. “As you say, but I’d be a fool to wear my captain’s coat into Newgate. I’d be clapped in irons before you could say ‘Dick Turpin.’ ”
“And such a pity that would be.” Would his crew follow her? Not perhaps, if she led a mutiny, but if Andrew were to be legitimately captured, she liked her odds.
“Don’t get any ideas above your station,” he snapped, as if reading her mind. “What a face you have for an air pirate’s daughter. Shows every thought crossing your female brain.”
Her hand lifted at the insult, but before she could slap him, he caught it in a hard grasp.
“I won’t fall for that again either, you,” he warned. “Just because we’re travelling light doesn’t mean I don’t have irons of my own on board.”
“My sister was in line to become captain of Hallow’s Eve. Some of the Owlers have more enlightened views about women.”
“You aren’t Terrwyn,” he said.
Had her older sister had been his aim all along. What was the end game here?
“There’s rolls and jerky in the cabin,” he told her. “Eat up before we drop anchor. Quick turnaround, no time to dawdle.”
She opened her mouth to spew insults then decided eating would be more profitable. A few moments later, she found herself shoulder to shoulder with Hatchet in the tiny cabin, outfitted for the captain with a map table, dining area and cozy berth. Long ago, her father and mother had slept here despite the cramped quarters, until Terrwyn had been born and they settled into the house in Hastings. Even though her mother had died when Linet was thirteen they had stayed there. She and Terrwyn shared the household duties after that.
Taking a roll from a wicker basket, she moved to the porthole and stared at the clouds racing past as they headed south. The Christmas could go eighty miles an hour in top shape, and Hastings wasn’t as far as that.
Sure enough, she hadn’t finished tearing her jerky into chewable strips and mentally choreographing how to capture the bridge from Andrew before the airship rocked and began t
o descend. The anchor was dropped at windy Conqueror’s Table, where legend had it William the Conqueror had dined when he first set foot on English soil. A hotel run by Owler supporters hid airships from the road.
The sensation of flying through a sparkling night sky quickly fell away under the onslaught of running feet on the beach and shouted orders, but at least the air remained clean so far from London’s chimneys. For the first time when a journey of this kind ended, she couldn’t wait to get back in the air and leave the Sussex coast she loved.
Still, she smiled as her half-boots touched the shingle beach. The lights from the hotel winked from above as she joined the crew refueling their coal stores.
*****
“Put this on,” Hatchet said, as the Christmas cast off from its moorings an hour later and moved into the lightening sky toward London.
Linet took the gray gown and noted the dirigible-shaped sleeves and high neckline that indicated current fashion. Smuggled from Paris, perhaps? “I won’t fit into it without tightening my corset beyond endurance.”
Hatchet made a face and opened the back of the gown. “It’s for half-mourning. I think I can just rip it here.”
Linet held up a hand, horrified that Hatchet would destroy the fine fabric, as the girl produced a sharp knife from somewhere in her blouse.
“Aha. Don’t fret.” She used the two-inch blade at the waist.
Linet wondered where she could acquire such a knife. She should have asked for a weapon at Conqueror’s Table.
“Here,” Hatchet said with a satisfied smirk. “Some stitches needed cutting. No one wants to buy a second half-mourning gown if they are increasing.”
Linet sighed and took the gown. The insult she took in stride as well. She wasn’t increasing, just more healthy in shape than was fashionable. “Why don’t I simply wear my own dress? I repaired the shoulder while we were waiting for stores.”
“You can’t look like a servant. No servant would have that permit the captain obtained.”
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