Amelia hummed to herself as she watched the firm thrum and buzz below her. It had taken a year to get back to full production, but the work on the Duke of Camden’s locomotives was well underway.
She leaned back in the armchair Oliver had carried up to the mezzanine for her, gently stroking her belly.
“How did you even get up here?” Benedict asked as he climbed the stairs.
Amelia flushed. “Oliver might have helped.” After she’d paused on the fourth step and come to a dead stop on the eighth, the foreman had sighed and lifted her like she didn’t weigh the rough equivalent of a baby whale.
“There’s a reason they call it confinement.” Benedict dropped a quick kiss on her brow. “Are you feeling well? You should be in bed.”
“I just wanted to see her fire up.” They had invested every ounce of energy they had into forming new systems and procedures that would see Baby Tess delivered in sixty percent of the time it had taken to make the old Tessie, and nothing would keep her away from the first test run.
“Did John get off all right?” she asked. “He seemed awfully anxious before you two left—like he couldn’t leave England fast enough. I worry about him in the Americas all by himself.”
Benedict supported her under the arms as she shifted in the chair. “He’s hardly all by himself. The factory is not far from Boston—not exactly the Wild West. And he’ll have a team of people working for him.”
“Still…I do wish we’d sent someone else to oversee the whole thing. There was no need for him to set sail for the other side of the world.”
“Shhh, princess. You’re going to miss it.” He turned her head toward the new locomotive. The stoker shoveled coal into the firebox, and the engineer released the brakes. Slowly, Baby Tess began to move, the cast-iron wheels turning.
As she exited through the side door and onto the testing track, she picked up the pace. The crowd that had gathered, made up primarily of the men that worked for the firm but also their families, broke into applause.
They had done it. And this time Amelia had been there from the beginning.
“There,” Benedict said. “You’ve seen it now. Can I please take you back to the house? You’re giving me an apoplexy traveling around in your condition.”
“Only if you promise to give me a foot rub.”
He nuzzled into her neck, his breath sending shivers down her spine. “Oh, I promise I can do more than that. Let’s get you into a hot bath.”