Under her riding habit Loveday wore her work dress. At her bench, she stripped out of the wool skirt and tight jacket, and put on her leather apron with a sense of relief. “Where are they, Colin? You may turn around now.”
“Out in the back, miss,” replied their apprentice, who had been studiously studying the equipment rack in front of him. “They’re firing it up—you’ve come just in time.”
She’d nearly missed it! Loveday ran out the back door of the workshop and into the yard in the rear, Colin hot on her heels. Here a length of greensward ran by the river, which supplied them with water for the steam engine. And there it was, its copper piping gleaming in the sun, the curve of the boiler as lovely as any sculpture she’d ever seen.
Emory and Thomas were bent to the task of shoveling in coal, and the great wheel had begun to turn, sending the pistons up and down with ponderous grace. Oh, this was a marvelous sight! Faster and faster it went, and now the steam had to be released. The prototype’s relief valve had sounded a whistle they could hear in the shop. The real thing would be heard all the way down at the waterfront, she was certain of it.
The relief valve would be tripped at any second.
Emory shouted, and Thomas yelled at Colin, then leaped to grasp the backup lever that would open the relief valve if its own mechanism failed. But before he could pull it down, the boiler screamed like a species of agonized animal, and a seam separated.
The entire rear side of the boiler exploded outward with a roar, and a cascade of hot water splattered against the stone wall separating the Works from the stableyard next door. Every living thing on the wall—moss, lichen, climbing flowers, insects—was boiled alive as the cloud of steam rose into the summer sky.
Someone screamed—the high, thready scream of pain and terror.
Loveday came out of her horrified trance to see poor Colin writhing under a section of boiler. She dashed across the grass and kicked it off his leg with all the strength she possessed. It landed in the grass, where tomorrow there would surely be a burn scar as well.
“Colin—Colin—how bad is it?” She fell to her knees.
He gibbered with pain, and she could see the dreadful damage the hot metal had done.
“I will ride for the surgeon,” she croaked past her fear as Thomas and Emory ran up, both apparently unharmed. “Get him into the river. Cold water. Hurry!”
Poor Colin screamed again as the two men picked him up and splashed together into the river. Loveday hauled up her skirts and ran like the wind for the stables next door, where the men had already begun to gather, asking each other what had happened and who had been hurt. Thank the good Lord they had not unsaddled the mare yet.
Heedless of her skirts, she ran to her mother’s horse, used a mounting block to shove herself up into the sidesaddle, and shouted the mare into motion. The men stared at her as she pelted out of the stable.
The surgeon was several blocks away, and by a huge stroke of luck, was in his surgery treating a man for what appeared to be a severe case of gout.
“Please, Doctor Pengarry,” she gasped. “There has been an explosion at the steam works. Young Colin Treloar has been badly burned. Please come at once.”
“I shall come directly, miss. I must gather my salves, and we will bring him back here once I have assessed his situation.”
The patient looked so relieved to have his treatment interrupted that Loveday hardly felt sorry for being the cause of it. Her fear for the possible loss of Colin’s leg propelled her back to the steam works, where she threw the reins to one of the stable boys and dashed back into the rear yard.
“He’s coming,” she shouted. “How is Colin?”
“F-freezing,” the boy said, now sitting up on the narrow bit of beach, both legs still submerged. “Didn’t expect a dunking, miss,” he told her reproachfully. “Though it still hurts like the devil.”
She was no surgeon or apothecary, but anyone who worked with steam knew about the properties of hot water and the damage it could do to flesh. The first thing to do was to stop the burn from going deeper. The second thing was to prevent it from suppurating. The fact that Colin was sitting up and actually talking and not rigid from the shock was very good indeed.
“The surgeon will have you right as rain,” she assured the boy as the man jogged across the green. “Here he comes.”
Emory kept his face calm as the surgeon treated Colin Treloar’s leg for its burns and wrapped it in clean strips of cloth. The lad could have been killed. Emory and Trevithick might have been killed. And for nothing. The boiler was a wreck. So were his hopes of making a difference, in the war and in his family’s lives.
As the owner of the steam works carried the boy to the surgery, Emory stood on the burned and gouged grass gazing at the ruin of the boiler. He didn’t notice Miss Penhale was still there until she toed the piece of copper plating that had struck Treloar.
“Look. The heads of the rivets were torn right off,” she said sadly. “I saw the pressure bend one whole section outward just before the entire side blew out of it.”
Emory frowned, matching her memory to his. “The heads did not spread enough when struck with the peen? But we calculated it precisely.”
“Precisely for an engine that will be working above the surface of the ground, perhaps,” she said. “But at the depths this one could be working, it appears we must account for the greater steam pressure. No wonder the relief valve did not work. There go our hopes for a working engine to demonstrate to the prince.”
Emory sighed. It wasn’t just the prince. Dozens of lives had been lost to the gas that bubbled up from the mines along with scalding water that arrived with a hiss of steam and a gush of death. The gas caused men to swoon, their limbs useless, at the first whiff of that distinctive smell. Like licorice mixed with lavender, only more toxic than any man could withstand.
“We may still show the prince the plans,” he allowed.
“Or open Wheal Morvoren for the day so that he may see the scope of the project,” she suggested.
She could not know what she asked. He still didn’t understand why she came to the steam works, why she worked so hard. His three older sisters had no such passion beyond securing a likely husband.
He had a passion that overrode the attraction of any female he’d met thus far: the creation of a boiler and steam engine capable of removing the foul gas from the copper and tin mines, perhaps even of supporting their valiant troops on the Continent. He’d been a lad of twelve the last time the gas had claimed lives at his father’s mine, Wheal Thorne. He would never forget the bleak faces of the wives, the crying of the children, when the foreman had had to announce that all men on that shift had been lost. He’d promised himself then and there he would find a way to keep the mines safe. Eleven years later, he was still trying.
“Opening Wheal Morvoren would be unwise,” he said. “We can’t risk that any man be harmed again.”
Now she sighed. “No, of course not. At the very least, the prince may have some advice upon the subject. Everyone likes to be asked for advice. Even princes.”
He felt as if the weight of the metal was perched on his shoulders. “I doubt we should take the prince’s time until we have something of merit to show him.”
“Then we’ll just have to persevere,” she said. “This wasn’t a total loss. We may be able to use the copper on other projects. I do not think it may be used a second time under such pressure without risk of its own failure.”
Her practical observation soothed the frustration inside him. Emory raised his head, trying to find his own silver lining from the disaster. “And this may just be the push Trevithick needs to try the new steel they’ve been using in France.”
She stared at him. “Are you talking about the boilers in the behemoths? I saw a drawing in a French magazine when I called upon old Madame Racine several months ago. Are you mad?”
“Not in the slightest,” Emory said.
“Forgive me,” she said quickly, as if she could hear the frost in his tone. “I did not mean that. I was just shocked.”
Emory drew in a breath through his nose. “I don’t know why you should be. Do you think me a traitor for wishing to try a technology that has been a success for our enemy?”
“No indeed,” she assured him. “I am only amazed we have not thought of it before. The question is, where does one lay hands on a behemoth’s boiler so that one may study it?”
“That is indeed the question,” Emory said, his gaze upon the river. The river that ran into the waters of the Carrick Roads, past the village of St Vivyan, near where Barnabas Pendragon, the smuggler, was known to ply his trade. Emory’s friend Arthur Trevelyan had dealings with the smuggler, secret dealings to which Emory was not entirely privy. But Arthur would know how to reach the fellow. How would the crafty smuggler deal with a request for something a little bigger than French perfume and brandy?
“Emory,” Miss Penhale said, watching him, “you are not thinking of hiring a crew of pirates to bring back a boiler, surely? Why, that is sending them to certain death.”
Drat the woman! He could not be so obvious. “No, of course not,” he said, echoing her words of a few minutes ago. “But think of those battlefields and the debris left to lie. Even a damaged boiler would give us an idea of its design and construction. A single plate with its rivets still in place would tell us so much.”
She shook her head. “You may as well attempt to extract the original plans from the manufactory at Cherbourg as scavenge parts and pieces from the battlefield. Smuggling casks of brandy is a far cry from braving the front lines to steal technology.”
He eyed the bent piece of copper lying in the grass. “I suppose we must devise our own. To do that, we must begin with the raw metal. I wonder how Trevithick would feel about taking two days’ journey to Portsmouth, where they are building the ironside steam ships?”
“A ship’s boiler—of course!” Her grin faded as quickly as it had come. “Mr Trevithick isn’t likely to allow it, but there must be plans. You must write to the Admiralty to secure them, Emory, at once.”
He nodded, hope rising as surely as steam from the boiler he planned to build. “It’s a start. Perhaps when Trevithick sees the plans, he will be amenable to a change in our production process. But still…” His voice trailed away.
“I know,” Miss Penhale said and sighed again. “It will not be in time for the prince’s visit. But it will be in support of the war effort, for tin is needed and every mine counts. If Wheal Morvoren can be opened and Thorne brought back to full production, we will have accomplished much indeed. In the meanwhile, let us clean up here as best we can. The sight of our beautiful boiler all blasted to bits makes me want to weep.”
Naturally, by the time Loveday reached home, turned her mother’s mare over to Pascoe, and reached her room without incident in order to change into a frock more suitable for tea, her parents had already heard of the explosion.
“A wretched shame, I call it,” her father said when he had taken his seat on the sofa and gratefully accepted the cup from Mama. After the first gulp of his tea, he went on, “Criminal negligence at worst. Thomas Trevithick ought to be hauled up in front of the magistrate.”
“Oh, surely not, Papa.” Loveday must tread carefully, yet she could not allow anyone to trample upon Thomas’s excellent reputation. “The Trevithick Steam Works is renowned for its business practices. From my experience there I can say—”
“Yes, Loveday, we have heard repeatedly and at great length about your experience at the steam works.” Gwen reached for a savory tart from a tray laden with small cakes, slices of buttered bread and pots of jam and honey, as well as slices of cold beef and cheese. “But your information is five years old. Anything could have happened in that time.”
“Sloppy practices that endanger the engineers are not among them, I assure you,” she snapped. If she told her family she had actually been there and seen the dreadful event with her own eyes, that would silence Miss Gwendolyn forever on the subject. She had opened her mouth to betray herself for Thomas Trevithick’s sake, when her father spoke again.
“I hear a man was injured, to boot.”
“Yes, Colin Treloar was burned by a plate of flying copper,” Loveday said instead, doing her best to swallow her indignation. “But he was treated promptly and is expected to make a good recovery.”
Her mother put down her cup in its saucer. “Your information is better than ours,” she said. “How did you come by it, Loveday? When you were exercising Iris?”
“Yes,” Loveday said and took a sip of her own tea. Pascoe had clearly told her parents she had been out on the mare, but not where she had gone. “I heard of it as I was returning … from Gwynn Place.”
Rosalind’s cup scraped in its saucer, and even her father paused in his reach for a tart, looking astonished.
“You rode to Gwynn Place?” Mama repeated.
Had Loveday said she had met the Duke of Cornwall in the lane, she could not have had a more satisfying reaction. While her ruse had succeeded in steering them away from Thomas Trevithick and the magistrate, she would now have to navigate this new path without either raising their hopes or coming to grief herself.
“I rode along the cliffs,” she said, as if this were no great matter. “And Captain Trevelyan seemed also to have deviated from his routine, for he was there, too, albeit seated upon his usual stone.”
“And how does he?” Papa asked, finishing off the tart with every indication of satisfaction, both with it and with her news.
“He seemed in good spirits,” she said diplomatically. “Though of course a soldier would not admit to any discomfort in front of a lady.”
“Certainly not,” Papa said, nodding.
“And did you converse?” Mama asked. Oh, must she lean forward as though the fate of the House of Penhale depended on Loveday’s next words?
With an inward grimace, Loveday said, “We did. He inquired after my interests.”
“Did he, now?” Mama said, pleased. “I hope Iris behaved well for you.”
After being ridden six miles in either direction, to say nothing of a gallop for the surgeon… “You may be assured she earned every one of the oats I asked Pascoe to give her.”
Mama sat back to enjoy her tea with a smile.
“What difference does it make if Loveday converses with Captain Trevelyan or not?” Gwen complained. “He is not going to marry her. I am too young, so that leaves only Rosalind with any hope where he is concerned.”
“Heavens,” Ros said. “Pray do not take my name in vain.”
“Then what is the point?” Gwen took a piece of Stilton and waved it to close the subject. “Let us talk of something more interesting. Did you find Sir Anthony and Lady Boscawen in good health?”
“We did indeed,” Mama said. “And this will interest you, Gwen, if nothing else. Sir Andrew had it from Lord St Aubyn, who had it from the prince himself in a letter. It is definitely fixed that His Royal Highness will progress to the Duchy of Cornwall and moreover that he will attend our own humble Midsummer Ball!”
Loveday’s spine wilted against the upholstered back of her wing chair while Gwen and Ros squealed with delight. The prince was definitely coming, and they had nothing more than a bent and torn engine to show him. Oh, woe!
“As we know from the newspapers,” Papa said, taking up the tale, “he is not seen much in company. So while he will be inspecting the shipyard at Portsmouth and conferring with his lordship about the detachment of aeronauts on the Mount, as we would expect, Lady Boscawen is quite beside herself at the honor.”
“We will have to make the event one to remember,” Gwen said eagerly. “Oh, Mama, please tell me Ros and I are to be presented! Please, please, please?”
Their mother looked demure, but the flush of pleasure on her cheeks gave her away. “Lady Boscawen and I spoke of that most particularly. For besides yourselves, and Isobel Boscawen, there are the Trevelyan twins, too, ready to be out in society.”
“And Lady Anne St Aubyn,” Rosalind said. “We must consider her to be the countess’s first object.”
“Of course,” Mama said. “It was, of course, the countess who broached the plan to Lady Boscawen. It is far too difficult to hold such an event at their castle—one can only approach on foot at low tide, and my goodness, what if the tide were out at noon and not the hour of the ball?”
“To say nothing of people’s going home,” Loveday pointed out, rather sensibly, she thought. “Guests would arrive at noon on one day and be forced to stay until noon the next—unless they wished to be conveyed to shore in a fishing boat. Which I would not mind, but—”
“You have no sense of personal dignity,” Gwen informed her. “But imagine old lady Tregothnan trying to get into a boat with those big Georgian skirts.”
“Quite,” Papa said with a quelling glare at her disrespect of their elderly neighbor, chatelaine of the oldest estate on this part of the coast.
Gwen, thank goodness, subsided.
“The point is that you will all be presented, and my life will consequently become three times more complicated than it is already,” Papa went on. “But that is the price I must pay to see you happily settled.”
Mama slid a glance toward Loveday that she did her best to pretend she had not seen. Instead, she leaned forward to take a savory tart. “We must not get ahead of ourselves,” Loveday said. “We have had news he is definitely coming before, and something has always prevented him.”
“That was a mere rumor before,” Mama said. “This time, we may place a little more stock in it, if Lord St Aubyn has had it in writing.”
“But even if it is only a possibility, we must still prepare as though it were a fact,” Rosalind put in. “Oh, Mama, may I not now have that beautiful blue silk in the mantua maker’s window in Truro?”
Mama laughed. “Dearest, if you are to be presented, silk from Truro is not nearly good enough. The four of us will go to Exeter and have gowns made in the latest fashion.”
“Exeter!” Such pandemonium reigned in the parlor that Papa snatched up a piece of cheese and fled.
But Loveday merely poured herself another cup of tea and withdrew into the shallow protection of her chair. Exeter, piffle. If she could convince Mama that her presence was not necessary—that she might simply take along one of Loveday’s dresses to use as a pattern—then she could work on the articulated sideboard undisturbed for days.
What a happy prospect.
And when her mother asked her how she liked the plan, she said with complete truth that it was the best she had heard in forever, and the day of departure could not come soon enough for her.