Love Is in the Airship Read online

  Catherine Stein

  Love is in the Airship

  A Sass and Steam Story

  First published by Catherine Stein, LLC 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Catherine Stein

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First edition

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  Contents

  ⏣ 1 ⏣

  ⏣ 2 ⏣

  ⏣ 3 ⏣

  ⏣ 4 ⏣

  ⏣ 5 ⏣

  ⏣ 6 ⏣

  ⏣ 7 ⏣

  ⏣ Epilogue ⏣

  About the Author

  Also by Catherine Stein

  ⏣ 1 ⏣

  England, April 29, 1904

  Spending her entire wedding day trapped in a shrubbery was the second-worst thing Euphemia Werrington could imagine.

  Being discovered in said shrubbery and made to go through with the wedding would be the worst.

  Effie carefully detached a portion of her skirt from the spiny bush. Choosing this location for her escape had been a grave miscalculation. In her defense, her judgement had been impaired. She defied anyone to make a good decision immediately after discovering one’s fiancé embracing his mistress in the church on one’s wedding day. Effie had clambered out the closest window, determined to flee as quickly as possible.

  And now she was stuck in the shrubbery.

  She worked her fingers between the smooth, white fabric and the prickly twig that had snagged it. She wouldn’t let this dress be ruined. She’d designed it herself, and it was the one thing about this wedding that she didn’t hate.

  Except for the scratchy lace fichu. When Effie had revealed the dress that morning, her mother had taken one look at the low, scooped neckline and practically swooned. Apparently breasts were an affront to God. Which made no sense to Effie. If God had seen fit to give her a sizable bosom, shouldn’t she be unashamed to display it? Shouldn’t she be pleased with the beauty of her body as it was?

  Her stepfather had said she looked like a Parisian tart. He would know. Not that Effie cared. She looked beautiful in the barely-there top and the leather corset worn on the outside. And fashionable, if you weren’t a stuffy family from the English countryside.

  Effie tugged the fichu loose and stuffed it into the shrubbery. The tearing sound as the delicate lace caught on the branches made her smile. She was done being a good girl.

  She inched forward, pausing to free another bit of skirts. Not too much longer. She was still supposed to be dressing. She had perhaps a quarter hour left before anyone even noticed she was missing.

  Something brushed against her boot. She glanced down and caught a glint of metal slithering off into the grass.

  “Oh, no, Rusty!” She lunged for the mechanical creature, but her dress remained stuck fast, and she didn’t dare pull any harder. “Rusty, stop!”

  The snake-like dragon continued on his way, heedless of her cries. How had he come unwound from her waist? She must have bumped a switch while trying to maneuver through the shrubbery.

  “Drat,” she muttered, pulling at her skirts with even more haste. “Drat, drat, drat.”

  If only Rusty could hear and understand her voice. Effie always followed the latest news in dragon technology, and supposedly a professor in the United States had perfected voice controls. She was eager for such things to become commercially available.

  Effie worked another snag loose, then another. Almost free. She watched the waving grass to track Rusty’s progress. Too much further and she’d lose him.

  “Oh, why couldn’t I have gotten a chicken-shaped dragon, or one of those dog-like ones?”

  Because you like snakes.

  The way they moved about without any legs fascinated her. She enjoyed the way a snake could wrap around her neck or wrist. She could wear Rusty like a belt or a scarf and carry him anywhere.

  The last tangled bit of her dress came loose, and she stumbled. The ugly veil that matched her discarded fichu toppled in front of her face, and she yanked it off and tossed it aside. Several hairpins came away with it. Effie shook the rest loose as she ran after her pet, letting her long, red locks tumble down. Freedom.

  She raced across the open lawn, ten, twenty, thirtyish yards before she finally found her dragon wriggling away at top speed. She ducked and snagged the creature, his metal body cool against her hand. She flipped a switch on his back and he stilled.

  “Thank goodness.” She wrapped Rusty around her waist, comforted by his sturdy, but lightweight frame. “Now to get out of here.”

  Effie surveyed the area around her. She’d run nearly all the way to the treeline. She could hide in the woods, temporarily. She took a few steps further. Her gaze caught on an unnatural shape in the distance. Scooped, like a boat hull, perhaps? Curious, she plunged into the trees to take a look.

  Another thirty or forty yards beyond, a small airship filled the entirety of a small clearing. Effie gasped in amazement, rushing toward it. The polished wood of the ladle-shaped hull gleamed, and the round balloon above was the same beautiful blue as the sky. Portholes of stained glass dotted the side and intricate scrollwork railings lined the deck.

  “It’s Charlie’s dream ship!” She walked up to the vessel, letting her hand slide across the smooth wood. “He would love this.”

  She jerked her hand away.

  No. Stop thinking about him.

  As if such a thing were possible. She’d been trying for three years to put Charlie out of her mind and she failed almost daily.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she told herself. This airship mattered. It almost certainly belonged to one of the wedding guests. She could climb aboard and hide. No one would ever think to look for her there. What lady could climb in a wedding dress?

  Effie pulled on the hidden ties in her waistband, cinching the front of her skirt up to mid-thigh. Legs free, she circled the ship until she found a place where small handholds had been nailed to the hull. Seconds later, she vaulted over the gleaming railing onto the deck.

  A large chest sat along the starboard rail. Effie lifted the lid to find it half-full of some kind of folded cloth. Bedding? Curtains? Rugs? She couldn’t quite tell, but it looked comfortable enough. She climbed inside and let the lid fall closed.

  She snuggled down into the cloth, resting her head on her arms. She’d hardly slept last night, fretting over the wedding. She was safe for the moment. What harm could come from a little nap?

  ⏣ 2 ⏣

  “I loved you first, and best!”

  Charlie took another peek through the window. Hundreds of guests packed the pews of the little village church. A few men stood in the back.

  “Stop the wedding! I object! No, no. Too ordinary.”

  He turned away with a grimace and resumed his pacing.

  “She’s mine, dammit! You’re not good enough for her!”

  Too obsessive? Probably shouldn’t swear in church.

  Honestly, he didn’t know if this Lord Daycroft was good enough or not. Charlie had never heard of the man. They didn’t exactly move in the same circles. Charlie had always been a step below the people Effie’s family mingled with.

  “Not
that I’m bitter or anything!” he shouted, his voice echoing off the stone walls of the church.

  He looked skyward, wincing as the bright sun hit his eyes. He flipped the protective filter on his monocle to its darkest setting.

  “Pull yourself together, Charles Wilson,” he told himself. “She doesn’t want you. You’ve known that for years. You were an idiot to stop here.” He withdrew his pocket watch and checked the time. “Work calls. And do you really want to find out if Effie’s stepfather would make good on his threat? No. Get on with your life. And stop talking to yourself.”

  That wasn’t going to happen. He’d been talking to himself for most of his twenty-three years. He plodded back to the Kestrel, muttering about how stupid he was. He had this ship. He had a flourishing career. What need did he have for a buxom redhead with a laugh like an angel and the untamed heart of a soaring falcon?

  “Spain. Work. Good.”

  Charlie untied the moorings, scampered up the built-in ladder, and set the airship in motion. The Kestrel was a speedy little craft. In no time at all, she’d leave England—and Euphemia Werrington—far behind.

  * * *

  Clank.

  Charlie flinched, yanked from the half-doze he tended to fall into when flying at night in good weather. Had he just imagined it, or had he heard a…

  Clank.

  “Not your imagination.” The noise had come from over by the bin where he stored his bedding. Most nights, he liked to fly for five or six hours, then stop to sleep under the stars. Tonight he’d intended to go all night, pressed for time as he was because of his fool notion of trying to stop Effie’s wedding. She’d be married by now, and probably in bed with…

  Clank.

  “Bloody hell,” Charlie swore, not certain if he was talking about the unknown noise or the idea of Effie with another man.

  A muffled rustling came from inside the box. Was there an animal trapped there? Or a stowaway? Who the hell would stow away on a tiny dirigible like the Kestrel?

  Charlie hauled the lid open and peered inside. The ship was unlit, and the last vestiges of purple twilight were fading to black, but with his enhanced low-light vision he could see every detail of his surprise passenger. Mounds of white skirts. Tall gray boots with little, silver buttons. Mismatched stockings. Red hair tumbled all about. A body he would know anywhere.

  “Goddamn,” he muttered. “Effie?”

  She sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes and tugging up her dress where it had slipped down to almost completely expose one luscious breast. A snake-like dragon wound half around her waist banged its metal head against the side of the box.

  Clank.

  “What time is it?” Effie asked, groggily. “How long did I sleep and who…” Her eyes locked with Charlie’s and went suddenly wide. “Charlie? My goodness. Charlie?”

  “It’s me,” he replied, because what else could he say in such a situation?

  “My goodness,” she repeated. She scanned him from head to toe. “You look so… so…”

  His jaw tightened. In the dim moonlight he wouldn’t be as clear to her as she was to him, but she would see enough. She would see that he was changed. Inked. Scarred. Broken. Rebuilt.

  “Go on,” he snapped. “Say it. Everyone else does.”

  “I can imagine.”

  He didn’t need to imagine. He heard the words every day. Freakish. Deformed. Unnatural.

  “You look so…” She licked her lips. “Tantalizing.”

  ⏣ 3 ⏣

  Effie wondered if her expression looked as stunned as Charlie’s did. She imagined it must. She couldn’t seem to stop gaping. He was both the same and entirely different. His hair was still cut very short, and his face shadowed with stubble. Did he still keep the same routine of shaving only once a week? Or did his beard grow faster now that he was older? He wore a waistcoat, no tie, and shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, but his arms were significantly more muscular than she remembered. They were also completely covered with tattoos. In the dark it was difficult to discern what the designs might be.

  Most peculiar of all, he wore a large, brass monocle over his right eye. A greenish glow emanated from behind the lens, the color eerily similar to the tube of luxene that fueled Rusty.

  He noticed her staring and pushed the monocle up. With the lens out of the way, the green glow appeared more focused, like a dot or pupil in the center of his eye. His glass and metal biomechanical eye. A section of his face surrounding the eye had been replaced or covered with a steel plate. What on earth had happened to him?

  “Traumatizing, did you say?” he asked. “You must have said traumatizing. I can’t have heard you correctly.”

  “No. Tantalizing.” He was. Exquisitely so. She had always found him attractive. Too much for her own good, according to her stepfather. Now these years apart had given him something more. A new, dangerous edge that set Effie’s heart racing and her body tingling. New Charlie was an adventurer, and he called to all the wild impulses of her heart, longing to be let free.

  She would have to be a fool to act on them.

  “But never mind that,” she said crisply. “What time is it, and where are we?”

  “It’s about half-past eight, and we’re nearly halfway to Spain.”

  “Spain?” Effie almost choked on the word.

  “Yes, Spain. Barcelona, to be precise. We’re flying over France just now, and we should arrive by morning.”

  “But… but, why? How?”

  Words failed her. They always did when she was surprised or upset or anything other than calm and happy, really. Charlie had always been the one to do the talking.

  “Why, because I have an important business meeting. How is rather more complicated, but it has to do with the density of hydrogen as compared to air, steam engine propulsion, and—”

  Effie folded her arms across her chest. “I know how a dirigible flies, thank you very much. But how are you here? And why were you there?”

  Charlie’s glowing green eye held her fixed in place. She couldn’t see the color of his other eye, but she remembered it as a warm chocolate. Always twinkling. Always smiling. He wasn’t smiling now. His mouth was set in the sternest expression she’d ever seen from him.

  “I think what we should be asking is how and why are you on my ship?”

  “I stumbled upon it, and it seemed a nice place to hide. I didn’t mean for my nap to last, er, six hours.” She felt the flush rising in her cheeks. “I’ve been very overwrought and tired of late.” She swung a leg over the edge of the box and stepped out. “What business do you have in Spain? Are you a quilt merchant? Those blankets in the box were quite cozy.”

  “That is my personal bedding. I don’t sell quilts. I sell airships.”

  Effie’s mouth opened and stayed that way. “You… All those sketches…?”

  “Yes. I’ve made a career out of my passion. I design the ships and oversee the construction. I’m to present my most elaborate and expensive plan ever to a client in Spain tomorrow. My business is based out of a small town in Scotland, but I have customers all over Europe.”

  Effie stepped to the rail and ran a hand along the gleaming wood. The exquisite craftsmanship had all the same loving care that Charlie had always put into his drawings. “You designed this?”

  “Yes. And recruited many of the men who built her. We are a whole community based around airship fabrication. A small, but close-knit group. I live in that village, now, Effie. My house isn’t fancy. My neighbors and friends are craftsmen and farmers. We trade favors for goods and watch one another’s children. It’s nothing like the life you’ve always known.”

  No. Not in the slightest. But it sounded so lovely. Except for the one phrase that had stabbed straight to the center of her heart.

  “You have children?”

  Charlie’s head tilted to the side and he frowned at her, his nose crinkling in that way it always did when he was puzzled.

  “What? No. Why would you think… Oh, I see
. I didn’t mean anyone watched my children. Not yet, at least.”

  Effie stared down at the wooden planking. “Someday soon, though. I’m sure you must be married by now.”

  “No.”

  She looked back up. “No? But you have a sweetheart.”

  “Not that, either. What about you, Miss Werrington? Why aren’t you married? Why did you run from your wedding?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t love him. I don’t even like him. He brought his mistress to the wedding, the cad!” She pulled a face. “I was doing what I was supposed to do. But I couldn’t go through with it. I don’t want to end up like Mother, stuck with a man she can’t respect.”

  “She should try to divorce him.”

  Effie shook her head. “She is content to quietly tend to his needs and avoid conflict, even if it means she’s ignored. I think she likes the solitude. People are different.”

  Effie’s stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten a thing since shortly before fleeing the church. It was time she ate. She didn’t want to throw her diet or her schedule off. She stuck her thumb into Rusty’s mouth, and the snake bit down. A moment later, his eyes flashed yellow. Normal. Good.

  “Effie? Did your dragon just bite you?”

  “He tests my blood. You know I have the sugar sickness.”

  Even in the dark she could see his face blanch. “I could never forget that awful day you almost died. What do you need? Food? Medicine?” His jaw dropped. “Oh, fuck, Effie, do you need medicine?” He ran for the ship’s controls. “I’ll turn us around. Take you back home. Christ, Effie, why didn’t you say anything?”

  She rushed over to his side, grabbing his arm before he could pull any levers or spin any wheels. “Stop. I’m fine. Rusty carries enough for a week.”

  Charlie shook his head. “I should take you home. I can’t even imagine what everyone is thinking. I’ve all but kidnapped you!”

  Effie put her hands on her hips. “Listen to me, Charles Wilson. I won’t let you destroy your business over this. And no matter whether you take me to Spain or back to England, I am not going home. Never. Good Girl Effie is gone.”