The Earl of Brass (The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Book 1) (15 page)

Sir Joshua took a long sip of the viscous coffee. “You know how upper class society is better than any of us. They don’t
do
anything, so they have to talk about what others do. Who knows, maybe they pay the steamer cabbies for information.”

With his heart pounding in his ears, Henry choked down his momentary panic and quickly asked in his best tenor impersonation, “Who is Lord Newcastle?”

“My uncle. According to my parents, he was the bad influence that made me desert my duties to the earldom,” Eilian replied with a grin.

A Visit from George

“I’m so proud of you,” George whispered without the wheezing echo of his damaged lungs. A wide grin stretched across his countenance as he looked down at her. His freckled cheeks were no longer sunken with disease, and his light eyes shone brightly with vigor rather than fever. She stared up into his face, one that had been so altered from the last time they spoke, but now it had been restored to its original, handsome form. As a tear crept down her cheek, a calloused thumb carefully wiped it away. His deceptively strong hands drew her to his chest and held her close. Over the years of sickness, she had forgotten how much strength the illness had stripped from him. Hadley’s face burned with tears of joy and sadness as she listened to the steady beat of his heart and the rhythmic ebb and flow of air from his lungs with her head pressed to his lean but healthy body.

“I have missed you so much,” she sobbed into his crisp white shirt and vest. “Why did you leave me alone for so long?”

His long fingers ran through her cropped hair as she inhaled his familiar scent of wood-shavings with an underlying hint of metal from his tools. “Because you have been doing fine on your own. That’s what I came here to tell you, you’re making the right decision. You needn’t doubt yourself.”

She met his blue eyes, which crinkled at the corners as he grinned, and studied his face. His auburn hair was coiffed just as it always was before he was ill, and his cheeks and lips were full and flushed with color. With a final smile, she buried her head into his chest and closed her eyes as the linen wicked the dampness that seeped between her lashes.

“Hadley.”

“George?” she peeped as she opened her eyes to find her face pressed into the covers and Eilian Sorrell perched on the edge of her cot.

“Sorry, it’s only me,” he replied softly while rubbing her shoulder. “It’s time to get up.”

Hadley lingered with her head on the pillow, blinking away the pain that followed the disbelief that it had all been a dream. When she first opened her eyes, she was so certain he would still be there, healthy and whole again. She held her breath as the tears threatened to flow, but then she saw his smiling face in her mind’s eye. It was the first time since he died that she had dreamt of him. More importantly, it was the first time she remembered him so vividly. Her daydreams never did him justice and he always appeared dusty as if he was hidden behind a veil, but in this dream, he was as solid as Eilian. More importantly, he was all right.

A shiver passed through her body as she rose to choose a clean ensemble from her trunk and scooted behind the portable screen Patrick had packed for her. The surprisingly nippy desert air and the fear that someone would see her in a compromised state hurried her into clean clothes. With a sigh, she finally raised her eyes only to meet Eilian’s as he stared at her reflection in his shaving kit’s mirror. His grey gaze softened as he frowned. Even if she didn’t say anything, he had seen the tears and heard her cries. Flashing a small smile, she tended to his prosthesis as he shaved with his other hand. After a fortnight on the airship together, Eilian and Hadley had developed a clothing codependence. She affixed the components of his prosthesis while he tied her cravat and put the finishing touches on her outfits.

***

As they walked from their tent to the campfire, Henry couldn’t help but notice the eager exhilaration that permeated every muscle of Eilian’s body, lightening his step and bringing a child-like gleam to his eyes. They passed the turbaned men huddled around the fire, speaking in hushed tones while a pockmarked pot sizzled and sputtered between them, and were about to settle in among them when a bronzed hand jutted out from between the flaps of the main tent and waved for them to enter. Sir Joshua quickly ushered them inside, ranting about sending the wrong message, but Henry barely heard him as his eyes stung from the smoke of the coal-fueled grill in the center of the room. Poking at four slabs of meat like an epicurean Vulcan was Edmund Barrister, who only muttered a grunt of acknowledgement as they took a seat on top of the nobleman’s steamer trunk.

“Did you get a good night’s sleep?” Sir Joshua asked Henry as he placed a kettle directly onto the reddened coals and handed them tin cutlery and plates.

“Better than I expected,” he smiled stiffly, trying to make his jaw appear wide. “I meant to ask yesterday, but what are you actually digging for?”

The artist watched the Anglo-Indian’s hands as he poured each of them a cup of tea. His fingers were beginning to gnarl with arthritis, but his nails were pristine and the skin was less calloused than his own.

“I’m looking for a Roman town that was involved in trade between the East and West. What I would really like to do is show that the empires were much more connected than historians believe.”

As Henry opened his mouth to reply, a hunk of oryx meat was plopped onto his plate and then onto Eilian’s, which nearly fell out of his prosthetic hand from the sudden weight.

“I haven’t found the bullet yet, so you may want to chew carefully. You wouldn’t want to break your pretty teeth,” Mr. Barrister sneered with his eyes locked onto Henry’s.

The two adventurers eyed the meat suspiciously as Henry ripped into both portions with his dull knife, dissecting the steaks to ensure that any bits of buckshot would be found before they bit down. Throughout their lackluster meal, Eilian felt his gaze continually trailing to the flap of the tent. He wished he could be dining among the men as he usually did, joking and telling stories in Arabic, rather than listening to Sir Joshua and Mr. Barrister bicker about who would go to Beersheba to pick up the supplies and mail. When Eilian and Henry finished their breakfast and slipped out, the two men were still yelling over each other.

“Are they always going to go on like this?” Henry whispered when they were finally out of earshot but could still hear the hunter’s baritone voice thundering in the distance.

“I hope not. Let’s just get our job done, so we can go exploring on our own before dark. Grab your art supplies and meet me in the supply tent.”

He nodded and watched Eilian as he walked away, trying to mimic his relaxed gait as he passed the campfire again. Henry quickly retrieved his papers and box of pencils from his trunk before walking back through the aisle between the rows of tents, lifting the canvas flaps until finally he spotted Eilian’s jacketless back as he hefted and shifted small crates. At his feet were two wooden chests the size of hat boxes labeled with
artifacts
in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, which rattled slightly as his knee bumped against them. The archaeologist sighed and stood back with his hands on his hips before going back to the massive pile of crates filled with canned food and tools.

“Well, this appears to be it,” Eilian explained as he gestured toward the petite packages.

“That is it? Two boxes?”

“So it seems, but the boxes are quite heavy. They are probably loaded with fragments.”

Lord Sorrell carried the artifacts over to a makeshift table and motioned for Henry to take a seat while he perched on a crate nearby. The artist leaned in close as Eilian removed the lid, expecting to see the glitter of metal or beads, but his blue eyes were greeted only with the dingy murk of pottery. The archaeologist pulled out a clay shard and examined it closely, explaining to Henry the subtle ways to tell it apart from Greek or Egyptian pottery and what it possibly contained in ancient times. In his ledger, Eilian scribbled down the notable features of the fragments along with their materials and possible origin before handing it off to his companion to sketch. For several hours, they fell into a peaceful rhythm of productivity that was only punctuated by the occasional scrape of pencil to paper. As he finished the last shard in the box and passed it to Henry, a smile crossed the dandy’s lips.

“I have been meaning to ask, how are you and Patrick connected? You are so in-tune with each other that you seem more like family than servant and master.”

Eilian’s pencil stopped as his face brightened. “He’s like my brother. He actually has worked for my family since he was a youngster, and he has been there for as long as I can remember. If I recall correctly, his father was my father’s butler, but as a boy, Patrick was a footman until I was old enough to have my own valet. The incident that really brought us together occurred when I was eight. My mother told me not to play near the duck-pond behind our house because it was winter, and it never froze all the way through. I was a child, and of course all I wanted to do was go ice-skating, so I did it anyway. Luckily, I didn’t fall into the pond, but the ice broke near the edge, drenching me from head-to-toe. Instead of letting me walk through the house and get caught, Patrick snuck me up to my room through the servants’ passages. He lightly chastised me the whole way, but he got me redressed and presentable in time for dinner without my mother ever—”

The adventurer’s voice trailed off as a bellow rumbled across the camp followed by a chorus of upset voices replying in frantic Arabic. A moment later, a howl of pain sent the artist and archaeologist running toward the excavation. As they entered the clearing, they found Mr. Barrister gesticulating threateningly as he screamed at a cowering Yousef, who clutched his eyes. Placing their bodies between the Arab and the barbarian, the other men had gathered around him and protected him from the Englishman’s shaking fists. They were speaking so rapidly in fragmented English that Eilian could hardly understand them, but it was clear from their abandoned prayer rugs left behind them pointing southeast toward Mecca that something bad had happened. The men parted as Eilian Sorrell approached, allowing him to draw Yousef from the crowd. The Arab’s face and beard were coated in a layer of sandy grit along with his eyes, which burned and watered. With his real arm, Eilian used his sleeve to clean the man’s face as best he could before ushering him off to Henry, who took him to their washbasin to flush his eyes. Lord Sorrell looked from the familiar prayer rug, which was coated in a spattering of sand, to the matching dirt stain on the toe of Edmund’s boot

“What’s going on here?” he yelled sternly over the quarrelling, knowing full well what probably happened.

“We had just started to pray when
he
came and demanded we stop and go back to work,” Fadil began in Arabic. “Yousef refused and continued his prayers, and despite our protestations,
that
man kicked sand in his face.”

“What is the liar saying about me?” Edmund demanded as he loomed over the smaller man again.

“I don’t know, Mr. Barrister. What are you saying?” Eilian’s chest tightened when he thought of what had transpired before they arrived. As the blood pumped faster through his body, his hand trembled and his mind clouded until he was seething with anger. “You would punish a devout man for praying?”

“They just prayed a few hours ago! They are supposed to be working, not sitting around all damn day!”

“They pray five times a day, and if you would like to continue to stay at this site, Mr. Barrister, you will need to understand that we allow them to practice their customs freely. Whether you agree with them or not is irrelevant. Joshua left you to manage the dig, not the beliefs of his men. They would have returned to work in a few minutes, and you have wasted more time haranguing them than they would have praying!” Eilian started to raise his hand to gesture but let it fall to his side. “If you have a problem with the men, take it up with Joshua when he returns, but
I
have seniority here and a larger stake in his company than you. Do you understand, Mr. Barrister?”

He narrowed his eyes. “I
will
be speaking to Joshua when he returns, you can count on it,” he spat before storming off between the tents.

The earl-to-be sighed, deflating as he felt the men’s dark eyes on him. “All right, prayers, then work, men. Get it done before he becomes unpleasant again.” Eilian looked up to see Henry smiling proudly at him, but as he caught up to him, he steered him back to their tent. “Had,” he whispered, “we have a problem.”

“Are you all right?”

He shook his head as he held up his prosthetic hand, which stood frozen open. “I keep trying to get it to work, but it won’t budge. What if I broke it?”

“We will fix it. I brought my tools and extra parts.”

Henry left him sitting on his cot as he rummaged through his trunk until he found his little toolbox of prostheses supplies, complete with extra batteries and springs, hidden in a biscuit tin. Pulling the battery from the outer prosthesis, he replaced it with another, but it still refused to move. The artist put the old one back in before untying the leather bracer and unhooking the springs. As he removed the flexor coils, grains of the Negev’s sand trickled out of the mechanisms and pooled on the coverlet.

“Here’s the culprit!”

For over an hour, Henry used one of his smallest brushes to carefully sweep away the minute flecks of rock and glass from the wires and conduits within the prosthesis. When the inner workings were no longer gritty, he reattached the newly cleansed pieces. With a thought, Eilian’s fingers stretched and coiled freely once again.

“Thank God,” he murmured softly as his friend began rummaging through his trunk of clothing.