Iron Hard by Sylvia Day

 
     
     

     
     
    “YOU ARE ATTACHED TO THEM.”
    Annabelle Waters took one last, lingering look at the mechanized lovebirds in their velvet-lined delivery box, then closed the lid. “I’m attached to all my creations.”
    “Let me rephrase,” her brother said. “You are
especially
attached to these.”
    She met her twin’s blue-eyed stare. “Have you any notion of how difficult it was to calibrate the resonance frequencies so that if one should fail the other will also?”
    “They are your best work yet,” Thomas agreed. “But that isn’t why you favor them so, and we both know it.”
    Annie looked at the empty bird cage in the corner of her workroom, then shifted her attention to the clock on the mantle. With a sigh, she pulled the safety goggles off the top of her head and ruffled her short cap of dark curls. “I have to make myself presentable.”
    “Allow me to deliver this one.”
    “The baron asked that I personally demonstrate how they work. Considering the obscene sum we charged him, it is the least I can do.”
    “Annie—”
    “I promise to speak of you,” she rushed on, knowing what he desired, “if the opportunity presents itself. But the subject must be delicately approached. His lordship’s future patronage and endorsement could change our fortunes in profound ways.”
    “I know. But you’ve no notion of what it is like at his shipyard,” he complained. “I have waited in that line for nearly a year and am no closer to gaining employment than I was when I began. Every man in England wishes to apprentice under his banner.”
    She knew that; it was impossible not to know. Baron de la Warren had returned from the war a hero, a sky captain lauded for his brilliant strategies and swashbuckling boldness. He was credited with the destruction of Boney’s dirigible fleet and romanticized for his patched eye, which gave him the appearance of a pirate of old. Peacetime had done nothing to lessen his appeal. He was, in fact, more popular now. His import empire offered well-paying work and apprenticeship to many destitute yet able-bodied young men, like her brother. Annie had been startled when his lordship had commissioned the lovebirds, wondering at the private man who lived beneath the public personage. What manner of warrior thought of such a lover’s gift? She was more than a little eager to see for herself.
    The long case clock in hall began to chime with the hour. Annie proceeded with her egress. “I will find an excuse to mention you. Perhaps I can convince his lordship to visit under the guise of viewing some of my other creations. He could find nothing untoward about meeting you here, and once he does, he’ll certainly engage you. How could he not? You’re just the sort of intelligent, ambitious young man he cultivates in his employ.”
    “It’s not working,” he grumbled after her. “Your flattery.”
    “Yes, it is.” She slowed at the sound of creaking floorboards and heavy footsteps.
    The soothing whirring of gears preceded the appearance of their butler as he rounded the balustrade in the visitors’ foyer. He slowed his steady forward momentum when he saw her, his striated glass lenses turning to adjust his polarized vision.
    “Please have the coach brought around, Alfred.”
    He acknowledged her request with an imminently regal dip of his head.
    “Thank you,” she said, unable to refrain from smiling.
    The servant was one of her most prized creations, albeit one lacking the painful sentimentality of the lovebirds. As much as she longed to keep them, she also could not wait to be parted from them. They awakened memories she’d learned to suppress through an intense focus on her work.
    It had been five years since Waterloo.
Five years.
    He wasn’t coming back.

    Annie secured her hat to her head with an ivory pin and collected the boxed birds with gloved hands. Alfred pulled the front door open, allowing the low-lying fog to roll in over the cracked marble floors with