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  Mr. Francisco eyed her critically, saying, “The lady, she does not have the hair of the blazing set of the sun, but she is smart, she is much smart. She may have the flan I have so carefully made for the sweet.”

  “Whereas I am to go flanless?” Jack said, winking at me. “Perhaps the captain will take pity on me and share her sweet?”

  I was a bit aghast at his flirtatious comment, but luckily, other than Mr. Mowen (who choked on his ale), no one seemed to understand the double entendre.

  “You may have mine if there is not enough,” Mr. Ho said generously. “I don’t have much of a sweet tooth.”

  I gave Jack a stern look that was completely wasted upon such a rogue, and settled back to let the conversation move along general lines, memorable meals claiming the discussion for some time. Although I was extremely aware of Jack sitting next to me, so close I could almost feel the heat of his body, I kept my mind firmly focused elsewhere.

  I did not notice the fine blond hairs that grew along his forearms, which were visible since he’d rolled back his sleeves.

  I did not dwell on that little lock of hair that kept falling over his forehead, driving me almost to distraction with the need to push it back.

  I refused to notice it when his knee brushed mine as he leaned forward to answer one of Mr. Mowen’s questions about where in California he was from.

  I didn’t care one hoot about the fact that his eyes, so different in color, and yet so intriguing, had an uncanny attraction for me.

  “Captain?”

  “Hmm?” With a start, I realized that I was being addressed. I cleared my throat and looked attentive. “Yes, Mr. Ho?”

  “I asked if there was anything in particular you wished us to do with respect to the ground crew and emperor’s officials in Rome.”

  “No. When we are close to arrival at the aerodrome, we will land for a few minutes in a remote location to allow Mr. Fletcher and his sister to disembark.” I told that lie without batting so much as an eyelash. “They won’t be on the ship when we land in Rome; thus, there will be no need for you to conceal anything other than the fact that they were on board the ship for a few days.”

  She nodded and continued passing around cups of after-dinner coffee. Mr. Llama dropped his spoon under the table, and leaned down to pick it up.

  “I know it goes against everyone’s standards to conceal even that, but I think that it’s for the best if—”

  The sound of the door behind me gently closing had me whirling around in the chair.

  “What’s wrong?” Jack asked, looking up from the flan that Francisco reluctantly produced for him.

  “The door . . . where’s Mr. Llama?” I asked, looking suspiciously around the table. His place was empty. “Ratsbane! He’s done it again. Did any of you see him leave?”

  The crew all shared an unreadable look, six heads shaking in unison.

  “Do you have a rule or something about people not being able to leave the table without your permission?” Jack asked as I pushed back my chair, hoisted up the edge of the tablecloth, and got on my knees to peer under the table.

  “No, of course not. It’s just that the blighter . . . er . . . gentleman has the habit of disappearing without anyone seeing.”

  “It wouldn’t be a disappearance if you were watching, now, would it?” Jack said with infuriating reason.

  I glared over the top of the table at him. “You don’t understand—the man is positively uncanny. One moment he’s here, the next he’s gone. And no one ever sees him leave!”

  Jack glanced over at Mr. Mowen. “Have you seen him leave a room?”

  Mowen shook his head, watching me curiously as I dusted off my knees and retook my seat. “No, but then, I don’t watch for folks to leave rooms.”

  “There you go, then,” Jack said, just as if that explained everything.

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” I argued. “The fact remains that no one has seen Mr. Llama actually in the process of leaving a room.”

  “I haven’t seen Dooley leave the room, and yet he’s gone,” Mr. Christian said from farther down the table, waving his sticky spoon toward Dooley’s chair.

  “That’s different. He probably went to use the convenience,” I said, aware I was sounding grumpy. “Dooley can’t sit still for more than ten minutes. And we are not discussing him—we’re discussing the mystery that is Mr. Llama.”

  Jack pursed his lips slightly. “Does anyone else feel that this Llama person is mysterious?”

  The crew, blight them all, shook their heads.

  “That is misleading!” I told them before focusing my attention on Mr. Francisco. “Didn’t you tell Dooley that Mr. Llama doesn’t sleep in his bed at night?”

  “Sí, but I wouldn’t be in my bed if there was another for me to lie in,” he said with a lecherous waggle of his eyebrows.

  “Oh. You mean he spends the night—” I stopped, not wanting to put it into words.

  Mr. Francisco had no such sense of propriety. “He has the mistress of love he visits.”

  They all looked at me.

  “You can’t possibly think that I would—I’m the captain!” I said, outraged.

  “Aye, but ye’re a right looker when ye want to be,” Mr. Piper said, subjecting me to a thorough once-over. “Ye’ve a nice plump arse, and a pair o’ ripe titties that fair make a man’s cods tighten.”

  “That’s my bustle, and you will please refrain from commenting on my chest,” I said, grabbing the front edges of my jacket and jerking them closed over my blouse.

  Jack grinned at me.

  “You aren’t helping matters,” I told him.

  “I’m sorry, but he’s absolutely right. You do have a nice ass. And your breasts—”

  “Don’t say it,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Aye, it could be your bustle,” Mr. Piper said meditatively as he casually picked his teeth, making wet sucking noises as he did so. “But I’m of a mind that there’s a fair bit o’ paddin’ beneath the bustle, else it wouldn’t be so round.”

  I sent the glare down to him, then spread it amongst the other crew members as they continued to eye me speculatively. “We have left the subject of Mr. Llama and his nighttime perambulations. I assure you all that he is not visiting me. So where is he going?”

  Mr. Ho calmly sipped her coffee, seemingly unaware of everyone’s sudden scrutiny of her person.

  I cleared my throat. Crew fraternization wasn’t encouraged, but neither was it prohibited. “Oh. I . . . indeed. Well, then.”

  “Are there any other mysteries you’d like me to clear up for you?” Jack offered as I rose to my feet. “How the ship stays aloft? Why the sky is blue? What the meaning of life is?”

  “No, thank you,” I said, thinning my lips at him as he grinned at me, his eyes glittering with enjoyment.

  Damnation, I would not fall for him. He was no better than any of the other rogues in my life, and if I hadn’t learned by now just how bad for me such a man was, I might as well pack up my things and retire to a convent.

  Ssssssssteam Heat

  “So really, the boiler is just a big water tank that has some tubes running through it that contain air heated from a constantly burning fire.”

  “That’s an oversimplification of it, but yes, basically, that’s correct,” Matt Mowen said as we squatted next to an emergency release valve on the number three boiler.

  “And the boilers produce steam that goes from here—” I stood up and visually followed the long metal pipe as it snaked up the metal girder to disappear into a gigantic pillowy shape above us that I had been informed was technically called an envelope—“and fills the envelope, which keeps the Tesla floating.”

  “Yes. Boilers one and two feed the fore and middle envelopes. Number three, here, feeds the aft envelopes, and the propellers. She’s twice the size of one and two, as you can see.” He gestured toward the second pipe that led down into the floor, assumably running to the back of the airship where a
giant propeller gave the ship its forward thrust.

  “Gotcha. And you use coal for the boilers?”

  “Coal?” He scratched his head, looking puzzled. “Why would we use that?”

  “I thought that’s what the folks in Victorian times used.”

  He just stared at me.

  “Sorry, that’s probably not going to make any sense to you since you didn’t have a Victorian age. Or did you?”

  Matt gave me an odd look. “Was there something in particular you wanted with me, Mr. Fletcher?”

  “Jack.”

  “Jack, then. You said you were an engineer yourself, so I’m confused why you would be wanting an explanation of how a simple steam engine works.”

  “I’m a nanoelectrical engineer. That’s sort of a specialized engineer, and I didn’t learn anything about steam power in college. If you don’t use coal for the boilers, what do you use?”

  “Aether.” He frowned at a valve on the back side of the boiler.

  “Er . . . that would be . . . ?”

  “Aether is aether,” he said, tapping the glass front of the valve. The needle inside dropped a couple of points. He nodded at it and went back to the small, rickety desk that was bolted to the floor.

  “It’s the same stuff used in your guns, isn’t it? Some form of heated plasma or something along those lines?”

  He shook his head as he picked up a small toolbox and started for the door. “I don’t know what this plasma is. Aether is what’s all around us.”

  I glanced around as I followed him, not sure what he meant. “Air? Like oxygen and carbon dioxide and those sorts of elements?”

  “Aye, it’s an element, but not of oxygen or those gases. The aether is what holds them up.”

  “OK, that’s getting a little beyond me.” I climbed after him as he went up a narrow metal ladder to the landing above. “It supports air? How does it do that?”

  One of Matt’s shoulders jerked in a shrug. “I’m no scientist. I’m just a simple engineer.”

  “I have a feeling that’s an understatement,” I said softly.

  He gave a short bark of laughter. “Aye, well, my da always told me the modest man succeeds. Aether is the matter that holds the world together, lad. It binds everything. The extractors in the boilers remove it from the air, and heat it to make steam. Does that make more sense to you?”

  “Actually, it does. It sounds to me like you’re describing gluons.”

  He stopped and shot me a curious look. “A what, now?”

  “Gluons. It’s a way to describe the interaction of quarks.” His face was blank with incomprehension. “Let’s see. . . . Gluons are a way to describe how protons and neutrons are bound together.”

  “Binding,” he said, nodding and proceeding down the narrow catwalk. “That’s aether.”

  “Right, so your steam-powered society is using nuclear physics. I can accept that.”

  “Good. If there are no more questions, I’d best be getting back to work, lest the captain has my ears for talking when I should be working on the propeller slide valve. The captain thinks the valve rod isn’t moving as smoothly as it should.”

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to keep you,” I said, trailing after him despite his obvious attempt to get rid of me. I had too many questions to be shooed away like that. “And I do have another question.”

  He stopped again and faced me with a badly concealed sigh. “You want to know how a Disruptor works? How the autonavigator functions? How aether was discovered?”

  I grinned. “Actually, all of those, but for right now, I have a more burning issue uppermost in my mind. Octavia.”

  “The captain?” He looked me over carefully. “You fancy her?”

  “Hell, yes. And I think she likes me, too,” I said without a shred of modesty.

  “Does she?” He pursed his lips for a moment, then continued down the catwalk.

  “Well . . . yeah. I think. No, I’m sure. She’s just . . .” I waved a hand to indicate the mystery that was Octavia’s moods. “She seems to be avoiding me right now, but I think that’s just because she didn’t like the way that kiss turned out.”

  “Oh?” He stopped again, giving me a narrow- eyed look. “I won’t have you hurting the captain. You seem likable enough, and I’m not holding with Mr. Christian’s belief that you’re really a thuggee, but I don’t hold with men hurting those weaker than themselves. Not that the captain is weak, but you’re a bright lad. You understand what I mean.”

  “I understand perfectly, but that’s not what I meant. I didn’t hurt Octavia—I think I ruffled her feathers because she liked the kiss too much.”

  “Ah.” He almost smiled. “Women are like that sometimes.” He proceeded to yet another ladder, this one leading downward.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” I waited until he was a safe distance below me before following him down the metal ladder. “Every time I try to talk to Octavia, she finds something she has to do, and gets away before I can do more than say hi. I want to know about her, Matt. She’s infinitely interesting. I like the way she thinks—when she’s around me long enough to do so, that is. I thought you could tell me something about her.”

  “You want to talk to her?”

  It wasn’t what he said—it was the way he said it, as if he was shocked I wanted to do anything that didn’t involve her body pressed up against mine.

  “Yes, I do.” I gave him a long look. “I may not be able to keep thoughts about her being naked out of my head, Matt, but I’m not just looking for a quick lay. I want to get to know her. Maybe if I understand her better, I will be able to combat this need she feels to keep me at arm’s length.”

  “I hardly know the captain. I met her about a week before you came on board.”

  “Right, but I’ve watched you—you notice things. You must have made some judgment about her.”

  He waited until I jumped down the last few rungs to land a few feet from a small wooden door. “She’s lonely.”

  “She is?” That surprised me. “She doesn’t act lonely.”

  “Aye, well, that’s an insight into her all by itself. If your intentions towards her are honorable, and not of the sort of the other men she’s filled her life with, then you might succeed. She’s alone in the world now that Robert Anstruther is dead, and a smart man, one who had her best wishes at heart, might be able to fill the void he left in her heart.”

  “Robert Anstruther?” I tried to remember the names of the lovers that Octavia had mentioned. He hadn’t been one of them.

  “Her foster father, not her man friend,” Matt said.

  “Oh, that’s right. She did mention him.”

  “You want to get her talking, you ask her about him. Now be off with you. There’s only room for one on the propeller platform, and I don’t want to be explaining to the captain why you fell overboard.”

  “Thanks, Matt,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. He gave me a little nod and smile, then went through the door to an outer platform, the wind whipping through it with a punch that sent me reeling backward a few steps.

  “Her dad, huh?” I mused as I retraced my steps down to the main cabin area, which I’d heard Octavia refer to as the gondola. “Speak of the devil,” I said as I caught sight of a red jacket and navy skirt whisk around the corner of a doorway. I followed, closing the door softly behind me. “Hello, sweetheart. All alone in here, are you?”

  “Jack!” She jumped as she turned. “Er . . . that is, Mr. Fletcher, you startled me.” Her gaze narrowed on me. “You wouldn’t be taking lessons from Mr. Llama on how to creep up on me, would you?”

  “You were right the first time—it’s Jack. And I didn’t mean to scare you. I just thought I’d take the opportunity of finding you alone to have a little talk with you.”

  She moved a bit to the side, her gaze slipping to the left. “I’m afraid that I have to set the autonavigator. Its mechanics seem to be beyond Mr. Christian’s ability.”

 
I looked at the large lump of machinery behind her. It sat on a small wooden desk, a mass of clockwork, whirring gears, and three rows of small dials. “You go right ahead. We can talk while you do that.”

  She didn’t like that. I could tell by the way she kept glancing over my shoulder at the door. “Well . . . I suppose. What did you wish to speak about?”

  I laughed. “You don’t have to sound so resigned, Octavia. I’m not going to bite you. Well, I might, if you asked nicely.”

  She blushed. It thrilled me almost as much as the speculative light that flared in her eyes for a few seconds before reserve claimed her again. “I am not opposed to speaking with you, Mr. Fletcher. It’s just that I have many tasks awaiting my attention.”

  “Go ahead and take care of your autonavigator. We can talk while you do that.”

  A little flicker of irritation was visible in those lovely velvety brown eyes. “Talk about what?”

  “Whatever you like. Something of interest to us both.”

  Her gaze shot to my mouth, instantly making me hard. It was just that quick. One moment I was relaxed, leaning against the door, admiring her boobs when she wasn’t looking at me, and the next, I was toting wood. I became even harder when the tip of her little pink tongue emerged to lick her lips, her teeth biting on her lower lip for a second making my blood boil. Damn. I wanted to kiss her again. And again after that. And probably again for several more decades.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Huh?” Maybe if I kissed her for a little bit, there would still be time to talk afterward. I wanted so badly to taste her mouth again, taste that sweetness that seemed to be a part of her, I damn near died denying myself.

  “Pardon?”

  I shook away the memory of her mouth so softly enticing beneath mine and made an effort to focus on the words that emerged from between those delectable, delicious lips. “Sorry, you asked me what? Oh, what would interest us both? I thought you could tell me a little bit about your father.”