Imperial Clock (The Steam Clock Legacy) (28 page)

Derek w
idened his stance, squeezed palm around fist behind his back. “And that’s your final word on the matter?”

“
It is.”

Derek looked at his m
other, whose solemn gaze at the floor told him she wasn’t about to disagree with the old man. “In that case, I...” He turned and marched out, choking down the tirade he was dying to unleash. No, the air was thick with wrongheadedness already. Before he said something he’d regret, he needed fresh air, somewhere to think, to consider his next move.

For without his family
’s blessing, or society’s approval, what was he really subjecting Sonja to? For all love, did
anyone
have a good word to say about this match? And if not, would she even want it?

In the three quarters of an hour it took for him to wal
k, or rather march to her house, he considered, as per Father’s command, umpteen futures in which Sonja was not a part of his life. Snowflakes in a kiln, they quickly vanished. He’d found the woman he wanted, and she was more important to him than any family business, any career-making situation, any social taboo. The idea put a spring in his step so propulsive his calves ached by the time he reached Bitker Lane.

Mrs.
Van Persie answered the door, but Sonja was standing behind her, bright-eyed and pensive. No smile, but a look of fascination, of concern. He accepted her invitation inside, wiped his feet, and waited for the housekeeper to toddle off. Sonja was about to speak when he held up his hand. “Please, let me say what I came here to say, before anything else tries to stop it.” He swallowed, then sucked in a mighty breath that left him a little lightheaded.

“
Oh my God, you’re finishing with me.”

“
No. No, that’s what
they
want.” He got down on one knee. “I know this is sudden, but I’ll not ask your forgiveness. With so much uncertain in this world, it’s a relief to know, know truly and without a shred of doubt, who I want to spend the rest of my life with. That means more to me than anything, except one thing—whether she will have me. Sonja McEwan, will you do me the extraordinary honour of becoming my wife?”

Chapter Fourteen

Net Play

Leading Derek by the hand along the shale path narrowed by
dense nettles, Sonja seemed almost to glide, weightless and effortless, into a new world. It was only the forest behind the Van Persies’, across the way—she’d walked this path a thousand times—but its excited branches above swayed and spoke in ancient whispers. Its aromas told of once-prophesised passions newly unearthed from the damp autumn soil. Its height and range took on exotic rainforest proportions, conjuring the romantic adventures of Quatermain, Horace Holly, Lady Skyhawk.

H
is impromptu proposal had had a curious pursuing effect. It was constantly a split-second behind her, enthralling her in a lucid awareness of exaggerated sights and sounds and smells as if for the first time. But she couldn’t quite take them in. It was a haze, a dizzying alchemic haze suspending her a finger’s breadth from the ground. It was a mist, a delightful, teasing mist that contained all the answers to her future but refused to give them up. It was everything romantic she’d dreamed of, made real, with nothing lost in translation. A single trailing breath around a forever coil of the most wonderful pins and needles.

If only she
’d said yes right away. That would have been her heart’s only answer. But the Derek she knew hadn’t asked it—the proposal had been forced upon him somehow, an act of desperation, a way out of a situation he couldn’t control. Whatever it was, she had to get to the bottom of it before she gave her answer. If he was in some sort of trouble, maybe she could help find a solution.
That
would be her engagement present to him, to give him a clear conscience along with the answer he wanted.

“
Is it much farther?” he asked.

“
No. In the next clearing.”

“
I don’t see why we couldn’t have stayed in the house.”

“
Because that’s boring. And anyway, I planned this for us days ago, right after you left Aunt Lily and I under a cloud like that. Damned mysterious, Derek. Ah, here we are.”

“
It’s a...a balloon.”

“
Very observant. Come, I have Mr. Van Persie’s permission, so long as we don’t exceed the height of the mooring cables, which would be some feat, I must add.” She pointed to several heavy-duty ropes attaching the balloon’s car to iron cleats in the ground. The balloon itself, an envelope inside an envelope—a safety precaution to maintain buoyancy should one of them become torn during flight—hung limply afloat, its top circling drunkenly about, at about a half of its possible dilation.

“
Very...novel.” As he gazed up, his Adam’s apple bobbed like a buoy.

“
Not your first balloon ride?”

“
No. I just wouldn’t know what to do in an emergency. We’re completely unsupervised? Where is Mr. Van—”

“
Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. I’m a dab hand at ballooning.”

“
Hmm, that usually means you’ve sort of maybe almost done something once before. Am I right?”

“
Twice, smartypants. The second time I crashed us into a factory chimney.” He whipped her a glance. “Only kidding. Sheesh! And I thought this was your day for taking chances.”

Derek
thumbed his lapels, marched over to the nearest mooring cable, unwound it from its cleat, and slackened the line almost to its utmost length, to give them the greatest possible height while still being tethered. “Let’s ride.”

Grinning, she
helped him slacken the other lines to the exact same fathom mark. Then she made sure the ends were all tied securely, and hustled him into the wicker car. “You know, I had planned this as a romantic tryst, but now its use seems much more...practical. There’s nowhere more private in the world than when you’re looking down on treetops. And I think we need that.” She bid Derek hoist the anchor.

Mr.
Van Persie had instructed her in his method of achieving ascent or descent by means of regulating the temperature inside the envelopes. This she achieved through the lighting of a combustible, the flame of which could be turned to control the heating of a metal cylinder inside the balloon. This in turn dilated the gas inside the balloon, providing uplift. At a certain point of expansion the ascent became prodigious, but Sonja didn’t want that, as they were still tethered. So, while keeping an eye on the barometric gauge, in a few minutes she had the car pulling gently on the mooring ropes at a height of about a hundred feet, at more or less perfect equipoise over the glade.

“
I always pictured sandbags for ballast.” Derek gazed out toward the coast.

Sonja slid her fingers under his on the basket
’s slick wicker rim. Wonderful shivers  wove through her, kite streamers in a breeze, drawing her closer to him, to the charged mystery of his manliness. So much had gone unsaid between them, especially concerning his secret liaison that night in Portsmouth, his proposal today had been completely unexpected.

“
You have questions, Sonja, and I can’t say I blame you.” He put his arm around her, held her as she pressed her cheek onto the breast of his duffel. “I promise to tell you anything you want to know, leaving nothing out.”

“
That’s sweet. And I don’t mean to keep you dangling like this, but we have to get something straight. It’s important. That night in Portsmouth, you met a woman on the harbour wall, and she gave you something. I know because I was there. I followed you.”

“
You...? Oh, now I see.” He looked out at the unobstructed view to Clarence Pier, where umpteen small cargo vessels were berthed, ready to be unloaded. Along the coast, Portsmouth harbour shimmered in the afternoon haze. Dozens of tall masts, belching funnels, and airships of all shapes and sizes poked their heads over the bed of oily heat. “It’s a wonder you didn’t slam the door in my face.”

“
You’re not yourself, Derek. You’re worried about something. What is it?”

“
I feel trapped.”

“
By what?”

He exhaled at length.
“By duty, by family, by circumstance, and before I proposed to you, I would have said by love, too. You see, I went to London a free man with a world of prospects. I came back a prisoner to them. Certain parties would not look kindly on me for telling you this, but you deserve to know. And I can’t keep you in the dark any longer.”

“
You can tell me anything.” Even though the other woman in the equation—Gangly Girl—preyed on that statement. If
she
was more than a messenger in all this, if the two of them had a history, a romantic past, well, that would change things. But even though Sonja had no experience whatsoever in these matters, something told her Derek’s situation had more to do with what Gangly Girl had given him than Gangly Girl herself.

“
The day I was inducted into the Leviacrum, I was invited to Hell’s Foyer that night...” He relayed the entire story of his dilemma and his verbal recruitment into the
Coalition
—not the Atlas Club—omitting nothing, as he’d promised. Pity wrung her heart for the impossible situation they’d put him in. Trapped indeed! His dream appointment had become a nightmare, and in many ways he was still living it. Derek was not a political animal. He was too forthright, too sensitive, too romantic in his view of the world. Politics would seek to destroy all that, to turn him into something he wasn’t.

“
So I pledged my loyalty to the rebels,” he said, “the same week I vowed to serve the Leviacrum. I’m trying to think of a word other than spy
,
but that seems to be my lot, I’m afraid. Nessie will be in touch shortly regarding the ins and outs of it all. And that’s about where we’re at. My careers—plural—are to begin officially in six weeks time.”

Even before he
’d finished his account, Sonja knew what she had to do, what her role in his life would have to be from here on, saw it so clearly it was as though Mother was telling the story of their future in her inimitable, vivacious manner. It also struck a spark on Sonja’s own rebellious centre, that well-sharpened point she and Merry had honed over years of being at odds with the world around them.

“
I will marry you, Derek Auric. And more than that, I will support you one hundred percent in your Coalition endeavours, whatever they may be. To whatever end. As long as we both shall live.”

Of the two sides, she would have chosen the rebels
anyway.

He gazed at her, believing, disbelieving,
wanting
to believe she’d thrown him this lifeline as he struggled to stay afloat. He looked so vulnerable, so grateful, she melted inside and couldn’t help reaching up to kiss his moist warm lips...once, twice, and couldn’t stop.

They might have flo
ated on air without the balloon.

F
orever.

Eventually they stopped kissing and huddled
together on the deck, utterly private. She’d never felt as warm or as safe, a hundred feet up.

“
And you say your family is dead set against us?” She shook her head. “If only they could see us now. If they were still unmoved, they’d have to be Stonehenge, the creatures.”

“
It isn’t us. It’s my father, your father, it’s politics, it’s social politics, it’s everything we can’t fight. It’s all this—” He motioned to the air around them and the blue sky outside, “—the nature of things we’ve no control over. Like I said, trapped.”

“
No, it’s all
that.
” Sonja pointed up at the balloon. “Hot bloody air.”

Derek laughed, stuck
two fingers up at the offending canopy.

“
Exactly, Mr. Coalition Secret Agent. You’ve joined the rebellion; isn’t it about time you started rebelling?”

“
Against Father, you mean?”

“
Against anyone who means to spoil our happiness because it might interfere with theirs. Let’s be a coalition of two, you and I. Our mission: to become husband and wife in the biggest damn ceremony you ever heard of, by bringing everyone around to our way of thinking.”

“
I love it. And if they refuse?”

“
Then hang them lot of ‘em. Make up the rules as we go—shouldn’t that be the way of things in 1914?”

“
It will be our way, Sonja. You might not realise it, but you’ve saved my life just now.”

She tapped his cheek with her palm. “
No more of that talk, sir, if you please. The first rule of the new coalition is...no more of that talk. Now, when shall I go to see your family?”

“
Tomorrow. I’ll arrange it right away. But I should warn you, Father’s about the most infuriatingly intransigent man you’ve ever met.”

“
Then let the battle commence, because I aim to blast his hulking carcass clean out of the water. As politely as possible, of course.”