The Emperor’s Aeronaut: The Regent’s Devices • Book 1 by Shelley Adina & R.E. Scott

Author:Shelley Adina & R.E. Scott [Adina, Shelley & Scott, R.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Loveday had become very good at escaping the house in favor of her workshop, but now her sanctum was open to Celeste and was no longer quite hers. However, this afternoon Celeste had been drawn into a discussion of a new evening frock and this irresistible subject had freed Loveday to find her own solitude.

The sideboard was still immobile against the wall.

“We are not going to punish you, you know,” she said to it when she slipped inside and latched the door. “Or send you away, or take an axe to you. You are quite safe here, should you feel the need to change position occasionally.”

It did not move, but Loveday spotted something under it that she was quite certain had not been there when she and Celeste had left at Rosalind’s call yesterday.

A piece of wrapping paper. Likely from the bookshop.

“Were you hiding this, or preserving it?” She pulled it out from under the lowest box and spread it on the bench. She found a pencil, but it dangled loosely in her fingers as the astonishment washed over her again, though this time it didn’t render her speechless. “I cannot believe we have been harboring none other than the daughter of Jean-Pierre and Sophie Blanchard under our roof.”

For of course she knew of Sophie Blanchard, Boney’s own Chief Air Minister. The woman who knew more about balloons than anyone on earth. The news that she had a daughter no one had ever heard of was scarcely more believable than their pulling said daughter out of the sea last week. If Portugal was a hum, but the unwelcome marriage was not, then what about the ship and the washing overboard? Would the daughter of two famous balloonists, who taught in a school for aeronauts no less, do anything so prosaic as book passage on an ordinary sailing ship?

She tried to put herself in Celeste’s position. Unwelcome marriage… a school possibly full of airworthy balloons… a key to which she had access…

The impossible—a flight from France to England—was just possible.

Could have happened.

She turned to the piece of wrapping paper, her fingers trembling around the pencil. Celeste might be the key to the Tinkering Prince’s prize. For surely someone as knowledgeable about balloons and as passionate about powered flight as Loveday was herself would make the best possible partner in such an endeavor?

She had to put the pencil down to breathe.

They must simply master the physics of weight. None of your heavy steam boilers and wooden gondolas built to mimic sailing ships. Monsieur Robert’s mistake was in attempting to make Minerva all things to everyone. A floating household, in fact. No, an air ship—even a small, two-person shallop of a ship—ought not to have a basket, like a touring balloon, but a gondola, made of sturdier stuff but built for one purpose. A cane whiskey, as everyone knew, was built for a different purpose than a family carriage, and was therefore smaller and lighter.

She snatched up the pencil and drew the arc of Madame Racine’s landau.

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