Airborne - The Hanover Restoration (5 page)

Time passed. I looked down and discovered my hands white-knuckled in my lap like some quivering heroine from the absurd novels published in my grandmother’s day.

Wrong!
Not Minta Galsworthy. Th
is was
not who I was.

I bounced to my feet and strode to the window, shoving the draperies aside with vigor. With the summer solstice less than a month away, there was still enough light to enjoy the splashes of color from peonies, rhododendron, late tulips, and clematis twining over trellises. Color also dotted the more formal perennial borders, which were just coming into bloom. Beyond the garden a smooth expanse of green park extended all the way to the treeline. All this, but one small portion of the Abbey grounds.

I considered the miniature railway that had brought me from the station, the Mono, the stone-walled workshop with machines that hummed and clanked and whirred, sounding the arrival of a great scientific age. An age, where even women might find a place outside their roles as wives and mothers.

I considered Julian Stonegrave . . . and shivered. If I had met him in the drawing room for the first time, clean-shaven and properly dressed, I would have thought him strikingly handsome in a dark, shivery way. Intriguing? Without doubt. Of romantic interest? That too.

But I had met him in monster guise, dirty, bearded, and with what I now recognized as a carnal gleam in his eye. I was his, he knew it. The product of an inventive, unconventional household, the perfect wife for an inventive, unconventional baron.

Except his bride was afflicted by that insidious disease, naivety. And th
at
even worse disease
,
ignorance.

My fists clenched. I snapped the draperies back in place.

Just as the horse-mad set invested heavily in breeding stock, Rochefort had risked a considerable amount of money to buy my bloodlines. Not so much the duke, an earl, and a bishop on the family tree, but with an eagle eye on the creative genius of my father, which had begun to show in me by the time I was four. Not that I claimed to rival my father, but there was little doubt I’d bred true. And mixed with the Stonegrave bloodline . . .

Josiah Galsworthy sired no fools. I could actually feel the heat draining from my blood, the angry flush from my cheeks. Returning to the comfortable chair in front of the fireplace, I contemplated my problem with a return of common sense, a trait I’d frequently been told I had in abundance. Well, someone had to. It was definitely not Papa’s forte.

All this could be mine.

I would have access to an extraordinarily fine workshop.

I would have a husband who understood the joys of “tinkering.”

I would have a husband who had bought me.

I would have a husband who had exhibited the good sense to procure a wife of intelligence with interests similar to his own.
Now that sounded better!

I would have a husband who ruled the roost—I had few doubts about that. As single-minded about his work as Papa, but not as malleable. I might have seen very little of my guardian, but about that I had no doubt.

I sighed, once again glaring at the innocent coal grate. Cupboard love. I had not thought myself so shallow. But, in truth, Rochefort was the very devil of a man. Ruggedly handsome, dynamic, intelligent. A woman might be willing to yield the reins to such a man. Occasionally, that is.

A surprise thought penetrated my guilty contemplation of the baron’s assets. If I hadn’t been so shocked by his pronouncement, I might have had the presence of mind to realize a fiancée had every right to smooth salve on his burns. Which I should have done under any circumstances. It wasn’t like me to be so faint-hearted.

I was across the room, digging in my trunk before I could stop and think about what I was doing. If Rochefort had gone to bed, then I was too late, for tracking a gentleman to his bedchamber was as forbidden as running naked down Bond Street. But if he was still up . . .

I found the salve Mrs. Jenkins had concocted to soothe the many scratches, scrapes, and burns that occurred in Papa’s workshop. Back to my bedchamber, a quick peek in the mirror. Unfortunately, black was not my best color, and the strain of this long day showed in unnaturally pale skin and lines on my forehead and beneath my eyes that looked as if they weren’t going away any time soon. My blue eyes reflected doubts I refused to consider. Carefully, I patted my golden brown curls back into place. Those at least, thanks to Tillie and her curling iron, did not look as wilted as the rest of me.

I slipped the jar of salve into my most commodious reticule and, clutching a candle encased in a narrow glass chimney, I opened the door and set out to retrace my steps to the first floor.

At the foot of the curving staircase, I saw it—a faint glimmer of light through the open doorway on the opposite side of the entry hall from the rooms I’d seen earlier. The glimmer grew to a modest glow as I passed through two elegant reception rooms and a music room. At the rear of the house I found him, surrounded by a veritable sea of books, racked on shelves at least ten feet high, with more above on a gallery that extended along all four walls. No gaslight here, I noted idly, only candles in wall sconces shielded by glass. A cautious and realistic man, my guardian. He took no risks with his books.

Rochefort was sprawled in a wing chair, eyes closed, a brandy glass clasped in one hand, a nearly empty decanter on a small table next to his chair. I paused, biting my lip. He certainly wasn’t the first drunken gentleman I’d had to deal with, but I suspected this one had more bite than most.

He’s hurting. You know he’s hurting.
The whisper of an inner voice. Not Papa. After what I’d learned today, I refused to let him in. But the pain my guardian was suffering would explain his present condition, for I doubted the man who had created the machines I’d seen today was an habitual drunkard.

I tiptoed forward, feeling like Daniel in the lion’s den. At least I assumed Daniel had been this wary. As I looked down at my betrothed—so much less frightening with his eyes closed, though the beard I’d seen in his workshop was once again sprouting on his chin—I was very aware of the brandy glass, which had not crashed from slack fingers to the carpet.

He knew I was here, I was certain of it.

“Go away.” Even mumbling, his words held the snap of authority.

“I’ve brought a salve that helped my father’s workers. With your permission?”

His dark eyes snapped open; he struggled to sit up, not quite making it. “What the devil? What are
you
doing here?”

Oh. Though somewhat deflated, I had to ask. “Who did you think I was?”

He waved the hand holding the brandy glass. “Never mind. You too can go away.”

I stood my ground. “Don’t be foolish, this salve does wonders.”

“Idiot female,” he growled, “don’t you have sense enough to stay away from a man when he’s in his cups?”

“I could scarcely anticipate you were drinking away your pain,” I informed him. “And as your betrothed, I felt an obligation to help if I could.” I removed the jar of salve from my reticule and waved it at him.

This time he made it all the way to upright, his shoes flat to the floor. With the exaggerated care of the considerably drunk, he set his glass on the table beside the decanter. “You’re honoring the betrothal?” he inquired, his face a perfect blank.

“A Galsworthy always honors his agreements,” I pronounced grandly.

“The ‘his’ is duly noted. Females, I’ve discovered, have a tendency to alter agreements to suit themselves.”

I came close to bouncing the jar of salve off his head, using the ugly burn as a bulls-eye. Carrying out my resolve as healer, or as fiancée, was not going to be easy. “Since I’m bought and paid for,” I told him with some asperity, “I might as well be useful.”

Five seconds. Ten. When no protest was forthcoming, I opened the jar and went to work. And discovered how very different this moment was from all the other times I’d applied Mrs. Jenkins’s salve to a wounded workman. As I bent over the man who was to be my husband, my stomach churned, my fingers shook. Sensations I’d never before experienced flooded through me, threatening to take my breath away. I blinked to clear my vision.

My quivering fingers spread the salve over the red patch on his forehead as lightly as I could. He flinched, but I suspected pain from his burn was not the cause.
Was it possible he was experiencing sensations as disturbing as my own?

I stepped back, gulped, and reminded myself I was a woman with a mission. It was my
duty
. “Your fingers,” I said rather too harshly. “They need the salve too.”

Eyes closed, he extended a hand. I held it in my palm while smoothing on the salve. If I’d thought touching his forehead was intimate . . . by the time I finished both hands, I was breathless, consumed by a fire as hot as the burns I was treating. Was this arousal? I wondered. If so, perhaps there was hope for this strange marriage, after all.

I capped the salve, thrust it into my reticule, grabbed my candle, and all but ran for the door. I thought I heard him call, “Minta!” But I must have been mistaken. How could he possibly know the name my father called me?

I was halfway up the staircase when it hit me. Of course he knew. He knew everything about me, while my father had kept Julian Stonegrave a deep, dark secret.

Why? I could only ask myself,
Why?

Chapter 4

The events and revelations of the day warred with each other, turning sleep into a futile hope. In the past month I’d buried my father, authorized my father’s primary assistant—through Papa’s solicitor, of course, as a twenty-year-old female hasn’t an ounce of legal standing—to complete all projects in progress. I had found new positions for our household staff and closed up our house, leaving open only the w
arehouse where Elbert was born.

Today, I had left all that I knew behind and journeyed into . . . madness. Into a world of mechanical marvels, peopled by a displaced Scotsman, a cheeky street boy, a witch, and a cook of a decidedly evangelistic turn. Thank the Lord for Tillie, who actually seemed to be normal.

And all them—all of
us—
living under the dictates of an enigmatic inventor, who didn’t need his cylindrical metal mask to turn into a monster.

Well . . . I suppose that’s a trifle unfair, but I never wanted to be the object of the anger I’d witnessed when he ordered the place settings changed. If he could exhibit such fury over nothing . . .?

And then he’d dared inform me we were betrothed, the marriage settlements gathering dust these past six years. “Devil it!” I muttered, borrowing one of Papa’s favorite expressions. The night breeze wafting through the open window appeared unoffended.

Betrothed. Stonegrave Abbey. Rochefort. Monster. Mono. Kilt. Witch. Paintings. Fire.
The visions marched in cadence through my head, moving faster and faster, jumbling into a kaleidoscope of fragmented shapes, colors, and sounds.

I must have slept at last, for I opened my eyes to the dim light of day peeking through the opening I’d left in the draperies so I could breathe the cool, fresh, country air. I had not drawn the filmy bedcurtains, so the room was open to my view. I saw nothing I had not seen the night before, yet I knew I was not alone. Something other than the pale, early morning sun had waked me.

A faint whirr, a soft rattle to my left—in an area hidden by the sweep of the tied-back bedcurtains.
Courage, you idiot! It’s not Mrs. Biddle with a sacrificial knife.

Fine
, I told my inner voice.
Then
you
turn and look!

Whirr . . . thud.
Definitely not Mrs. Biddle. I couldn’t imagine the lithe housekeeper bumping into anything. Softly, I turned back the bedcoverings, ready to run if necessary. I leaned forward, peeked around the bedcurtain. And clamped a hand over my mouth to stifle a scream. Galsworthys don’t scream. Galsworthys are not faint-hearted. Galsworthys understand machines, truly they do.

Nothing helped. The creature before me was almost as shocking as discovering I was betrothed. An oval blob of metal, evidently intended to be a head, extended on a pipe neck above a chunky body that was mostly obscured by a shapeless blue muslin gown with, quite incredibly, a crisp white apron fastened where a waist should have been. A metal cylinder, similar to my guardian’s monster mask, only larger, peeked from beneath the gown’s hem, revealing—I bent down for a closer look—four metal balls which seemed to allow it to move.

Amazing. Rochefort was even more of a genius than I had thought.

I got out of bed, donned my robe, and watched this remarkable invention go about its work. Metal arms extended out to each side of the cylindrical body, one of them gripping a feather duster, the other a polishing cloth. Ignoring me, it moved from chaise to dressing table to tallboy, dusting and polishing. Incongruously, the oval metal head was topped by a white mob cap with a perky blue bow. As for its face, only the two slits that functioned as eyes were real, glowing with an odd green light I found more than a little disconcerting.

Was that a twinge of professional jealousy? Could it be the creature annoyed me because I had no idea how it worked?