Her Sky Cowboy Read Online Free PDF

the Mods, their mother persisted in resisting the transition. As for the telephone…“You speak as though we live in the Dark Ages,” Amelia snapped, “whereas we simply live in the country. Yes, we have dodgy service, but the blame lies with the long-distance wiring, not our telephone.”
    “Merely an observation,” Simon said.
    “Unless you can talk sense into Mother where modern conveniences are concerned,” she went on, “or work miracles with the long-distance company, stuff your observations, Simon.”
    He laughed, though his normally vibrant personality seemed muted by a cloud of gloom. “I believe she’s grown extremely willful this past year,” he said to Jules.
    “She has always been willful.”
    Amelia ignored them both, noticing for the first time that, though her brothers were drinking coffee, they’d barely touched their porridge. Odd, given their usually ravenous appetites. “Why aren’t you eating?”
    “Eliza prepared the morning meal,” Simon said.
    Eliza, though an excellent housekeeper, floundered in the kitchen. “Why?” Amelia marched to the sideboard and frowned at the porcelain tureens boasting undercooked eggs and burned bacon. “What happened to Concetta?” Their cantankerous cook of nine months. Amelia had never warmed to her as a person, but as a cook, she had most impressive skills.
    “Dismissed,” Simon said.
    Amelia looked to Jules, who’d inherited their father’s title and troubles. “I understand we can no longer afford certain luxuries, but could you not have at least given her the standard month’s notice?”
    “I didn’t do anything. It was Mother who trimmed the fat, so to speak, and she did offer Concetta notice, in addition to excellent references.”
    “Unfortunately for us,” Simon said with a nod toward the watery eggs, “Concetta’s prideful. I venture she is packing as we speak. I heard her venting earlier, and though I am not fluent in Italian, I’m almost certain she mentioned going home.”
    “To Italy?” Although Amelia was not truly surprised. Concetta consistently dithered about British ways. Why she’d remained in a country she abhorred was an utter mystery.
    A bell sounded, announcing an incoming Teletype. Papa had fixed several key rooms with amplifying mechanisms so that one could be alerted promptly of incoming messages. Ingenious, if you asked Amelia. Pocketing her anonymous invitation, she scrambled for the library, her favorite room in all of Ashford, save for the carriage-house workshop, with Simon alongside her and Jules lagging behind. She slid over the parquet floor in her haste to reach the customized Teletype machine. Noting that the message was indeed addressed to Jules, she stepped aside and waited. Never would she tell him to hurry, but blast, she wished he’d make greater haste.
    Simon perched on the edge of Papa’s rosewood desk, also waiting. He dragged a hand through his hair, longer and lighter than Jules’s, though they sported identical mustaches and beards. Closely trimmed. Impeccably groomed. His attire, however, was somewhat more casual than his brother’s, whimsical in comparison. As was his mind-set. Simon the freethinker. Jules the deep thinker. Two very different cogs in a clock, as Papa had been fond of saying.
    Jules leaned his brass-tipped walking cane against a bookcase and pulled the paper from the machine. The tilt of his mouth, the angle of his head, and the gleam in his eye said it all.
    “It is a legitimate contest,” Amelia said.
    “With a daunting deadline,” Simon added. “Less than five full months to locate and deliver a prize-worthy lost invention.”
    Amelia pounded a determined fist to her palm. “Between the three of us, one of us will succeed.”
    “You mean between the two of us,” Jules said. “This is no venture for a lady.”
    Amelia huffed. “I’m not a lady. I’m…a member of this family. And, as I was influenced by Papa and his obsessions, an expert of sorts on