The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie(26)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

Daniel leaned back into the corner of his seat and swung his long legs up on the cushions, resting his hands behind his head as the train swayed on. He said, with a wink, that he didn’t sit next to her, because it was bad etiquette, as they weren’t related. Besides, she needed somewhere to put her machine.

The box rested next to Violet, she not wanting to put it on the rack above. The mechanisms could be delicate.

The journey to the small town near the coast took about an hour. They emerged from the train to the sound of seagulls and the smell of fish and brisk sea air. The wind was cold but not nearly as dank and bone-chilling as in London.

Daniel, speaking French with a strange mixture of Parisian slang and coastal dialect, hired a cart. He explained to its owner that he wanted to drive the cart himself, and reinforced his request with a large handful of francs.

The man laughed with Daniel, slapped the horse on the rump, and said in a dialect so thick Violet barely understood him, “Tell Dupuis, that old bastard, that I said he owes me money.”

Daniel grinned, helped Violet onto the front seat with him, and touched the reins to the horse.

“Sorry it’s not a better conveyance,” Daniel said as the cart jerked from the middle of the village up a steep hill. There was no other seat but the driver’s, and Violet was squeezed tightly against Daniel’s side. “The ducal coaches all seemed to be out.”

“It’s perfectly adequate.” Violet pulled her coat closer about her, but it was Daniel who kept her warm.

“You’re a sweetheart, you are. The females of my acquaintance, with the exception of my resilient aunts, would be shrieking in dismay. Pierces your eardrums, those shrieks. My aunt Eleanor, on the other hand, would tell them to buck up and enjoy the fact that they didn’t have to walk.”

“Isn’t your aunt Eleanor a duchess?”

“Aye, she is now. And she was an earl’s daughter, but she grew up without a penny, and learned how to fend for herself. You’d like her. You’d like my stepmum too. She’s as resilient as they come.”

“Your stepmother was a lady-in-waiting to the queen of England,” Violet said in a rather bewildered voice.

“What do ye think made her resilient? The queen, she doesn’t believe in heat in her drafty Scottish castle, and she’s a hearty woman. Very hearty. Her frail look and any worry about her health is a nice façade. She can ride around the countryside in her little cart all day long and then stay up all night demanding to be read to. Marrying Dad was a relief to poor Ainsley. Putting up with him is easy in comparison.”

Violet had never met anyone who talked about a queen behaving like a real person. A few of her mother’s clients had believed they were queens, or had been queens centuries ago, or claimed they knew the deceased Prince Albert. None of them had ever mentioned driving around in pony carts or skimping on coal in the palace.

Daniel, son of a lofty lord and nephew to a duke, drove the rattling cart and old horse with competence. “Not much longer,” he said after a time. He clucked to the horse. “Come on, old fellow, you can make it. Then a nice long rest for the afternoon, eh? Better than dragging a cart up and down a cobbled street all day.” The horse flicked his ears back to Daniel, seeming to like his voice.

Their destiny turned out to be an old farm in the hills away from the sea. This one looked ancient. Three wings of a two-story house surrounded a pitted courtyard, the house’s doors and windows facing the courtyard rather than outward to the land. Plaster crumbled around the walls’ wooden half-timbering, revealing worn bricks beneath. A barn and storage rooms took up the entire lower floor; the living quarters for the farmer and his family looked to be on the upper floors.

The farm, however, was long gone. The fields around them were overgrown, though farther away, on the next farm, neat plowed rows, bare with winter, lay ready for spring planting. The courtyard was littered with coils of metal and pieces of wood, and the only animal in the barn was one large draft horse.

Two men were carrying what looked like a giant basket out of the courtyard as Daniel pulled up. One of the men broke away from the basket and came to take the horse’s reins as Daniel jumped down. The man was large, with a hard face and a nose that had been broken more than once.

Daniel reached back and handed Violet out of the cart. “Lass, ye remember Simon? Who followed Mortimer to your house with every intention of beating five thousand guineas out of him? Or maybe you never saw Simon that night. He works for me now. Carry on, Simon. I’ll take care of the cart.”

While Violet stood aside and Simon returned to help the other man carry the basket, Daniel deftly unhitched the cart. He left it braked on one side of the courtyard, and led the horse past Violet to the stall next to the draft horse. He talked to the cart horse all the way, little endearments in his broad Scots as he gave the old animal a brief brushing down and made sure it had hay and water.

What kind of a man, with all the trappings of wealth, who could live the softest possible life, took the time to comfort a working cart horse?

Daniel seemed to think nothing of it. He emerged from the stall, took Violet’s box from the cart as he passed it, then led her out to follow Simon.

At the top of a hill was a flat, fallow field, which had been hidden from view by the wide house. In the middle of this field bobbed a giant bubble of red and yellow, half on its side, a buoy in a sea of dark earth. The bubble was being held down by four men, straining against ropes. Mr. Simon and the other man carried the basket toward it.

Violet stopped in her tracks. “Mr. Mackenzie, what on earth . . . ?”

“Monsieur Dupuis is lending us his balloon,” Daniel said. “For my experiments with your wind machine.”

Violet stared at the balloon, which was coming to life, men holding the ropes as though they fought to contain a wild stallion. “You’re going up in that? Now? With my machine?”

“Aye. Ye see, it’s my theory that hot air is a much safer and more useful method of keeping a balloon afloat than hydrogen gas. At the present time, though, if you want to use hot air, you fill up your balloon on the ground, and that’s all you have. You either have to tether the balloon for your ascent, or go wherever the wind blows you. But, I’m thinking that if I have an efficient heat source I can take on board, I can manipulate the balloon, not just float where it wants me to go. Understand?”

Violet blinked. “Not really.”

“If I can fix a good engine above the basket after the balloon is inflated, I can replace the hot air while I’m flying, and give the balloon a boost when I need it. I came up with the engine design, but never had a good way to shoot the heated air into the envelope while aloft—I don’t want it to burn up the blasted silk when I’m two hundred feet off the ground. When I saw your machine, with its efficiency of pumping out a great blast of air, I thought, bloody marvelous.”