Of Silk and Steam Read Online Free PDF Page B

airship from the dark silence of a garden folly.
    Another sign that the duchess was not at all what she seemed.
    “What sort of distraction do you think would be best?” she asked. Since their truce, she’d grown easier with the idea of working with him. It was surprising how well they’d managed.
    He cast a quick glance back at the two uniformed guards standing at the mooring ropes, joined for the moment by the first pilot. One guard lit a cheroot as Leo watched, shaking out the match.
    “They’re bored, and most importantly, they’re men.” His hands slid over her shoulders, earning him a wary glance. He teased the clasp of her cloak open. She was shivering wet underneath it, and he was glad he’d left it under a hedge for her. “Why not use the few weapons we have?”
    With that, he dragged the cloak off, letting it fall to the folly floor. The duchess wrapped her arms across her chest, her lips trembling.
    “Look at you,” he whispered, kneeling at her feet. “All wet and cold, with some miscreant having stolen your dress—and dare I say it, your virtue?” Taking hold of her petticoats, he tore them up her thigh, earning a hissed intake of breath. “Trust me. We don’t need an extensive diversion.”
    Mina’s lip curled. “One would argue that you’re saying men are base fools, to be led by their instincts.”
    “Have you only just worked that out?”
    “I’m going to kill you for this.”
    “Go.” He gave her a gentle shove in the back. “And I would advise you to let your arms drop. You’re hiding your best assets.”
    Giving him a truly evil glare, she dropped her arms, revealing how tightly her stays and chemise clung to her full, rounded breasts as well as the tight puckering of her nipples. “You’ll pay for this, Barrons. I promise you that revenge will be excruciating.”
    He didn’t look. There would be time enough for that later. “I shall await your endeavors with great anticipation.”
    Oh, how those eyes burned him. Leo muffled a laugh as the duchess turned on her heel and strode out of the folly. Hardly the damsel in distress.
    She changed, however, when the men caught sight of her, the guard choking on his cheroot.
    “Sir, oh sir!” the duchess called. She looked utterly miserable, bedraggled, and glorious, the flickering gas lamps playing over her gently rounded curves. “Could you please help me?”
    Dangerous minx. Leo eased into the shadows, moving around toward the airship. How easily she slipped into the role, as if she’d been fooling people her entire life.
    Grabbing hold of one of the mooring ropes, he climbed hand over hand, up toward the deck that lined the edges of the gondola, the muscles in his shoulders burning. Listening for a moment, he stole over the edge and crouched low. The engines were silent, the enormous inflated envelope above keeping the dirigible floating nearly twenty feet off the ground.
    What a bloody travesty. The decks were obviously designed for its owner to “take in the air,” with a foredeck covered in a daybed and mounded pillows. For the view, no doubt. A floating pleasure palace. Matheson was a modern-day Louis XIV. Leo strode toward the engine room. Its structure reminded him somewhat of the Valkyrie , which he’d sailed aboard on his way to Saint Petersburg and back. Only minutely. Captain Alexi Dansk would have sneered at such extravagances, and no amount of frippery would have survived the icy winds as they’d crossed the Baltic Sea.
    Jerking open the captain’s cabin, Leo found himself face-to-face with a second pilot. The man had his feet kicked up on a stool and was flipping through the London Tribune . The moment Leo appeared, the pilot’s jaw dropped and he opened his mouth to yell.
    “A hundred quid to keep your mouth shut,” Leo said, slipping through the door and examining the control panel. A series of gears and levers greeted him. Hardly incomprehensible, but he preferred to take his time to examine such things