Full Steam Ahead (8 page)

She nodded, though the stubborn tilt of her chin did nothing to reassure him that she comprehended the absolute necessity of obedience.

“I will leave strict instructions regarding where you may and may not venture on this property, and I expect those instructions to be followed to the letter. Should you fail to comply, you will forfeit your position.”

The young lady schooled her features into a properly sober demeanor. “I understand, sir, and will, of course, abide by your wishes.”

He swore he could hear the qualifier—
As
long as I deem it appropriate
—wafting in the air about her. This was not a woman one contained with threats. No, she’d follow his commands only as long as it suited her purposes. Not that he sensed anything nefarious about her. On the contrary, she was quite the most genuine person he’d met in years. Yet there was something untamed about her. Something below the surface. Like a wild mare that had been broken to saddle even while her spirit stood ready to race the wind the moment the reins were loosened.

Darius turned his face away from her, pretending to peer at something outside his window. The woman was interfering with his focus, drawing him into her puzzle with her bright smile and hidden depths. He couldn’t afford to be distracted from his work, from his purpose. Yet neither could he afford to continue on without a secretary, and she was his only applicant. A far more qualified one than he had hoped to find, even amongst the local male population. That outweighed his personal . . . discomfort.

He was master of his own mind, after all. He’d simply refuse to give her the power to distract him. She’d work in the study, and he in the workshop. They would rarely need
to cross each other’s path. Besides, once she’d been around a few days, he’d grow accustomed to her, much like one grew accustomed to a new piece of furniture in a room. She’d eventually stop standing out and would be absorbed into the surroundings, like everything else about the place.

Yes, he could handle her.

He spun around again to face her, though he focused slightly to the side to avoid full contact with her eyes. “Meals will be included, and a stipend will be delivered at the end of each month.”

“Week.”

His gaze arrowed back to hers. “Pardon?”

This time she was the first to look away. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’d prefer to be paid at the end of each week. My father is ill, and I’m trying to do all I can to help him.” She looked directly at him again, and while he didn’t detect any untruth in her, he did sense there was more to her story than she was letting on.

Curious.

“A compromise, then.” He watched her closely. “Payment twice a month. Would that be agreeable?”

A slight tightening about her lips was the only hint of her disappointment. She nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Then I’ll have Wellborn assist you in collecting your things from town.” Right after he had his man remind him of his new secretary’s name.

N
icole unpacked the last of her belongings in the small chamber that was to be her home for the next two weeks. Most likely the room had been intended for a maid or other servant. No paper decorated the walls, a small rag rug on one side of the bed was all that broke up the monotony of the oak floor, and the only furnishings the room boasted were a washstand, a thin wardrobe, and a tiny bureau that contained two drawers. However, it was spotlessly clean, and Mrs. Wellborn had plucked a handful of buttercups and placed them in a stoneware crock atop the bureau. The yellow blooms cheered the room considerably.

She’d only had space to hang three of her five dresses in the wardrobe. The rest of the space contained table linens and the like. But she didn’t mind. With her trunk cleared out, the remaining dresses could be stored there without fear of excessive wrinkles.

A light tap echoed as her door pushed open. “I found another rug and a length of calico that we can use over the window to brighten the place up. What do you think?” The
housekeeper bustled into the room, her smile doing more to brighten the place than the pink fabric she carried.

“It’s lovely,” Nicole enthused, coming forward to take the calico. White flowers dotted the pink cotton in a feminine pattern.

Nicole crossed to the stark bar hanging above the narrow window and began experimenting with the cloth. Perhaps a twist here, then a swag, and another twist . . . She stepped back to eye her handiwork, made a few adjustments so the fabric hung symmetrically, then turned to the housekeeper with a grin. “It really warms the room up. Don’t you agree?”

“That it does, dearie. That it does.” The plump woman dropped the rug into place in front of the bureau, gave it a tug or two, then straightened, wiping her hands on her apron. “Though I must say, it’s having you here that truly warms this old place. I can’t tell you how delighted I am to have another female about. Mrs. Graham, our cook, comes in every day to prepare the midday and evening meals, but she never actually dines with us. Says it’s not her place.

“I suppose it’s natural for a former slave to feel that way, but no matter how many times I explain that Arthur and I are servants on equal footing with her, she refuses to come to the table at lunch, preferring to take a plate out on the back porch and eat on the stairs. In the evenings, she leaves as soon as the food is prepared so that she can get back to her family.”

Nicole smiled as the woman took a knitted throw from its storage at the top of the wardrobe and unfurled it across the narrow bed. Mrs. Wellborn seemed always to be in motion. Both with her hands and her voice. Nicole had liked her immediately upon their first meeting, and that impression had only grown stronger over the last hour.

“Yes, indeed. It will be wonderful to have another woman
around to talk to. Don’t get very many visitors at Oakhaven. Not like we did back in New York. ’Course there were plenty of maids and other household staff to talk to there. Not like it is here with just Arthur and me. But I’m not complaining,” she assured Nicole as she wiped a smudge from the tiny mirror above the washstand with a corner of her apron. “Mrs. Thornton was right to send us out here to care for the young master when he decided not to come home after the accident. The man barely eats as it is. If left completely to his own devices, he’d probably wither away to nothing in less than a month’s time.”

Nicole’s ears perked. What accident? Why wouldn’t he go home? What was keeping Darius Thornton at Oakhaven? She clamped her lips against the questions, though, fearful that if she drew attention to the details Mrs. Wellborn was inadvertently revealing about her employer, the housekeeper would cease her informational prattle. So instead, Nicole fiddled with the placement of her brush and hairpin box atop the bureau.

But it seemed Mrs. Wellborn was done imparting jeweled tidbits anyway, for she turned around, straightened her apron, and reached for the door handle. “I’ll leave you to finish settling in. Come to the kitchen in about thirty minutes, and I’ll have supper on the table. Mr. Thornton always dines in his workshop, so you need not worry about dressing for dinner. You may eat in the dining room if you wish or join Arthur and me in the kitchen. Whichever you prefer.”

The woman kept her voice carefully neutral, but after the way she’d gone on about having company, Nicole would’ve had to be dreadfully thickheaded not to guess the correct response. “I’d be delighted to join you and your husband in the kitchen, Mrs. Wellborn. If you’ll have me. I can’t imagine
anything more unappetizing than eating alone in the dining room.”

“Splendid!” The housekeeper beamed. “I’ll set another place.” She bustled out of the room with the same energetic spirit she’d entered with earlier, leaving Nicole smiling in her wake as the door clicked closed.

Should the eccentric Mr. Thornton ever decide to sup in the dining room, her family’s status as well as her professional position in the Oakhaven household would demand that she dine in his company, but until then, she’d gladly take her meals with the amiable Mrs. Wellborn and her taciturn husband.

First, however, she had to find a secure place to hide her dagger. Propping her foot against the bedpost, Nicole reached beneath her burgundy skirts and unstrapped the sheath. A sigh of pleasure passed her lips at the removal of the bulky weight. Her fingertips ran over the reddened skin where the hilt had rubbed against her thigh. She winced a bit at the sting. Obviously, she wouldn’t be able to wear her own blade for a few days if she wanted the area to heal. But since transcribing logbooks was a fairly innocuous occupation, she didn’t expect to need it.

The Jenkins threat still hung over her head, but John and Mathis would have ensured that the brothers hadn’t followed her from Galveston. Fletcher and Will might eventually track her down, but for now she was safe.

Glancing around her room, Nicole tapped the flat of the dagger blade against her hip. The wardrobe was out. With the table linens stored there, Mrs. Wellborn would have cause to dig around inside on a regular basis. The bureau? She could wrap the dagger in a spare petticoat and stuff it in the bottom of a drawer. Nicole frowned. Better not. Should the Jenkins brothers find her, they would immediately search her belong
ings, and she doubted the presence of frilly unmentionables would deter them.

The bed? Nicole knelt down to peer under the mattress. A rope frame. Nowhere to conceal a dagger there. The washstand wasn’t any better. Should she bury it outside? Nicole peered out the narrow window and examined the grounds visible from her vantage point. Beneath that oak tree or behind the shed? She glanced back at the dagger, a sick feeling turning her stomach. No. She couldn’t trust it that far out of her sight. There was no telling what could happen out there. A rainstorm could erode away the dirt from where she buried her treasure, or a dog could dig it up.

She paced the floor, her grip on the dagger tightening. She had to find—

A squeak from a loose floorboard severed her train of thought. Dropping her gaze to the floor, she kicked aside the new rug Mrs. Wellborn had brought in and took a few calculated steps, listening for the telltale squeak.

She heard it again, closer to the bureau. Nicole pointed her toe, extending her foot under the bureau, and experimentally pressed on the board she suspected was the culprit. Not only did it squeak, the far edge of the floorboard rose up nearly an inch when she exerted more force on the end closest to her.

Nicole’s lips curved in satisfaction. Perfect.

Darius sat cross-legged on the floor of his workshop surrounded by boiler plates. They were each carefully labeled so he would know which exploded boiler they had come from. He had six and a half boilers in his collection. The half being one that had blown so violently, the scrap dealer could only identify a fraction of the parts.

Of course, none of the plates matched. If he’d learned nothing else over the last year, he’d learned to expect inconsistencies. Still, after reading that article, he’d hoped to find
some
common ground. He should have known better. Some of his samples were corroded, others had fractures, and one displayed virtually no wear at all. Some were made of substandard iron, while others were of high quality and appropriate thickness. No pattern. Yet all of these boilers had exploded.

There were simply too many variables. If all explosions were due to boiler plate quality, legislation could be passed to regulate it. But the culprit could be a faulty rivet, a damaged flue, a lack of proper water maintenance, an overtaxed release valve, a clogged pipe, even the accumulation of too much mud from the pump. There were probably a dozen causes that hadn’t even been discovered yet. That’s what made this work such a nightmare. One malfunction in any of these areas could be the catalyst for an explosion. Though more often than not, a combination of factors set the deadly cogs in motion.

What the industry needed was a regulating body that forced manufacturers and engineers to have their machines held to certain standards and inspected on a regular basis. The 1838 Act had tried to do that by holding captain and crew liable for negligence, but it did nothing to address machinery standards. The number of explosions had actually increased since that act was passed.

They needed a new law and improved safety equipment. An accurate steam-pressure gauge could change everything. If one were found, a crewman could make adjustments to maintain an optimal level of steam without dangerous pressure buildups. It wouldn’t be perfect, explosions could still
occur with faulty equipment, but it would be a step in the right direction.

Darius sighed. The solution was no simpler than the cause. A multi-tiered problem required a multi-tiered solution. Which led him back to the boiler plates. One tier at a time.

A quiet rap sounded a moment before his door creaked open. Darius didn’t look up. “Just set it in the usual place.” He waved vaguely, his attention focused on a scorch spot on one of the boilers. Had there been a fire before the actual explosion? Or had the boiler plate simply been overheated in more than one location, and for some reason, this section had held together while another section of the boiler blew? He flipped it over to examine the other side. Similar discoloration, but not to the same extent. It—

“Where, exactly, is the usual place?”

That voice. Darius’s head jerked up. The woman holding his dinner tray was definitely
not
Mrs. Wellborn. Far too young. Far too pretty. And far too distracting.

“On the stool by the hearth,” he groused, hoping she’d take the hint and scurry away. Alas, Nicole Greyson—he’d made a point to jot her name down in his notebook; he always remembered things once he’d written them down—was not a scurrier. She was a swisher.

Ignoring his impatient barking, she brushed past him, her skirts swishing in a gentle motion as she moved. Swishing in a manner that was far too intriguing. Darius gritted his teeth and forced his attention back to his scorched boiler plate. Although, from his vantage point on the floor, her skirts were impossible to ignore, being at eye level as they were. Maybe if he squinted a bit more as he stared at the boiler plate, his area of peripheral vision would shrink and reduce the pull of—

“You’ve quite a collection, here.”

Drat
.
Squinting hadn’t helped. He could still see her skirts, and the blasted things had stopped swishing altogether. She couldn’t be leaving if her skirts weren’t swishing. And what was really annoying was that they’d changed. Oh, it wasn’t annoying that she’d replaced her fancy red dress with a navy blue calico one sporting a white ruffled apron. No, that was actually quite sensible. What was annoying was that he’d noticed, and that his noticing had stolen his attention from his boiler plates.

“Did you explode these all yourself?” For once, someone asked that question with curiosity instead of condemnation. But it didn’t matter. He needed her gone.

“No, Miss Greyson,” he said in his most scathing tone. “
My
explosions are done with models on a much smaller scale. These boilers are from actual steamboats, ones I’ve collected for my research. And I’ll thank you to not touch anything.” He raised his voice on this last instruction when his peripheral vision picked up the motion of her hand reaching for one of the internal flue tubes that stood balanced against the wall. “Everything is precisely as I wish it to be in here, and you are not to disturb it. Or me. Now get on with you. I’ll see you in the study promptly at eight tomorrow morning. We’ll discuss your duties then. Good night.”

The skirts swished a step or two, then stopped. “Well, you
did
mention that I would occasionally be assisting you here. That’s why I offered to bring out your dinner tray—to familiarize myself with the building and its setup. I’ll be sure not to disturb anything until I learn your organizational system.”

Darius forced his attention to remain on the boiler plate draped across his lap, even though all his instincts were
screaming at him to look her in the face. That would be even worse than watching her skirts. He remembered those golden brown eyes, the way they sparked one minute and went all soft the next, only to be filled with triumph when she bested him a few moments later. No, her eyes were far too dangerous.