Gossamer Wing (31 page)

And it needed a thorough tune-up, something she hadn’t been able to accomplish often enough while attending college. Poughkeepsie hadn’t been much of a town for motoring, though had she needed to render a whale for blubber she would have been in the perfect place.

The young man leaned his weight onto one foot, settling into a pose common among fashionable toffs of the day. It irritated Eliza, who knew it was just an affectation he adopted out in public, for polite society. A pretense that he was still a son of privilege rather than a machinery-loving apostate. He had always been good at blending in, though, becoming part of the prevalent social scenery. In some ways she envied him that skill. “Photographs? Flora or fauna?”

“Workers who claim their lost loved ones have ‘gone west,’ never to return again,” she told him, daring him with her eyes to take her up on this topic. “I photograph them holding portraits of the missing. I was also conducting interviews and gathering anecdotal data. I’ve noticed some interesting correlations.”

Matthew raised an eyebrow, but didn’t take the bait as he once might have. Back in the days when she had run into him frequently at Dexter Hardison’s factory, Pence would have been the first to chide Eliza for taking such a risk, haring off on her own and talking to strangers.

Now it seemed he had lost some of that interest in her welfare, or perhaps simply developed more circumspection about stating it. In fact, Eliza thought, he seemed a bit distracted in general. Perhaps it was the problem of the engine. It was clear he still itched to get his fingers on it.

He wore a metal flower on his chest, a sleek, stylized, closed lily bud in some silver brushed metal. It was far more understated than her heckler’s had been, but it reminded her of the man all the same. She wondered if Pence knew him.

“Hardison House is only twenty or so miles from here,” Matthew pointed out. “I’d be more than happy to give you a lift, so you can make the party sooner. It wouldn’t do to cross Charlotte by being late. She’s inclined to be touchy these days.”

“I suspect she has good reason.”

Eliza thought she’d be touchy too if she were as tiny as Charlotte, Lady Hardison, but carrying the undoubtedly huge child of a man the size of her cousin Dexter. Because she was nearly as small as Charlotte, the very idea daunted Eliza. She had recently vowed only to look at slight, slender men as spousal prospects should she ever decide to marry. Preferably men with smallish heads and narrow shoulders. Pence’s shoulders were rather broad, like most makesmiths’, despite his fashionable slimness. It made her even more irked at him, though she knew she was being unreasonable because of the incident at the lecture. She couldn’t help it; she resented those effortlessly capable-looking shoulders.

“I’ll be fine,” Eliza said firmly. “I don’t require help, but I thank you for the offer.” She procured a large bottle of water from under the seat of the vehicle, then used a funnel to add a slow trickle of liquid to the cooling unit. “In fact, you should start off again now or I’ll beat you to the party.”

In Pence’s smug chuckle, Eliza heard the first hint of the younger version she remembered. “Not likely. You never could have before.”

“Really? A dare? Would you care to wager on that? I’m more than old enough to gamble now, lest you be concerned for my morals.” She was already tightening the fittings, closing up the boiler and securing the latch. A bet would make the last few miles to Dexter’s party fly by.

Sadly, Pence declined to make it as interesting as he could have. “Certainly, Miss Hardison. If I win—and I don’t mind saying I intend to—I’ll claim the first waltz of the evening from you once the dancing starts.”

“I . . . oh, fine then. Fair enough.” Eliza was not inclined to waltz with anyone, least of all with Matthew Pence. But she didn’t plan to lose, so it seemed a safe enough stake. No need to tell her competition about the Leyden jar battery cleverly concealed beneath the velocimobile’s seat, and the boost its charge would give to her starting speed until the boiler reached full steam. “If I win, I’ll claim fifty pounds and when my book is published you’ll put an endorsement in the
Times
. Quarter-page at least.”

The terms took him aback, it was clear, but he covered nicely. “All right. May I ask what this book is about? A novel, perhaps? I didn’t know you had writing aspirations, those must be new.”

With a final yank to the boiler cover’s handle, Eliza cranked the engine until it kicked into life, then stalked back to the velocimobile’s seat where she stowed the half-empty water jug and funnel before she strapped herself in. “It’s a monograph on worker–landowner negotiation inequities and the impact of subliminal psychological manipulation by authority figures on common laborers.”

Grinning at Pence’s look of dismayed astonishment, she released the handbrake and engaged the gears simultaneously, triggering the start capacitor.

“Ready, steady, go, Matthew!” she called back to him, as he belatedly ran for his steam car.