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  It was too late to change her plans of going in trousers as it was the day of their journey and at any moment, Mr. Sorrell’s steamer carriage would be pulling up to carry her to the airship hangar. Adam had already left to go to his job in the financial district, but he had awoken early to have breakfast with her and wish her well on her trip. Hadley checked the house one more time. Her workshop was in perfect order for the first time in years, and her inventory list was left out in the open for her brother to easily find and an extra copy had been left on his desk just in case. The new trunk she had bought for the trip was sitting in the hall, ready for when the viscount arrived. Hadley glanced down at George’s old pocket watch before tucking it back into her blue, velvet waistcoat, but as she looked back up, she was once again startled by her reflection.

  Staring back at her was a strangely beautiful young man with cropped henna hair neatly coiffed and held in place with a scant amount of pomade. Despite the long red lashes framing her eyes, they only added a certain allure to her boyish form, one that didn’t differ much from her twin brother. Now, we really are twins. It had been painful to see her long braid decapitated and coiled on the bathroom floor after only two snips, and now it would take months for her to be able to braid her hair again and return to the woman she once was. The most shocking part of the process was seeing how dramatically she seemed to transform into a man once she cut her hair and donned the tailored suit. After months of tinkering, her corset finally flattened her curves and held without blowing open even with the most strenuous amount of movement. The improved design consisted of a tight wrap to bind her breasts while a looser cotton piece encircled her torso, tying down her side. From the front window, she caught a glimpse of the bright red steamer turn the corner, so she grabbed the handle of her trunk and dragged it onto the landing.

  ***

  Eilian watched from the back of the cab as Patrick drove past Baker Street’s storefronts and tube station until they reached Miss Fenice’s lodgings. As they passed the brick facades, he searched for her in her work clothes and newsboy hat but saw only a fop in an azure waistcoat studying his nails. Once the carriage came to a stop, Lord Sorrell darted out to ring her doorbell when he realized the man he took for a dandy was not only toting a large locker but had the same coloring as Hadley but without Adam’s pencil mustache and height. A smirk spread across the effeminate man’s face as he watched the adventurer’s eyes run over him in disbelief. Her clothes had been tailored to give her the illusion of added height, and the motley, flamboyant fabrics not only distracted the eye from any feminine shapes hidden beneath them but made her less than masculine air somewhat excusable.

  “What do you think?” Hadley asked as she donned her top hat with a flourish. Her voice was lower and had a hard edge that had been absent the last time he saw her only days earlier.

  He couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of the intelligent craftswoman being transformed into a vain popinjay. “I think you make an incredible fop, Miss Fenice.”

  “Good, the more feminine I’m allowed to be, the better I will blend. Is it convincing though?” she asked as she gave Patrick a hand loading the laden trunk into the steamer.

  “I actually didn’t recognize you when we pulled up.” As they climbed into the carriage, his eyes trailed to the flat spot on the back of her head. “You cut your hair!”

  “Well, I couldn’t have a two foot long braid fall out of my hat again, could I? I will admit I was sad to see it go. Is Patrick looking forward to the trip?”

  “He isn’t happy to see us go, especially since he likes to keep an eye on me, but he seems content to stay behind in England for a while.”

  Hadley peered over the front seat at the butler as he drove toward the distant landing field where half a dozen tiny, silver balloons hovered in the distance. “Won’t you be lonely in that house all by yourself?”

  “A little, Miss Fenice, but it will give me and the rest of the staff time to catch up on the housework. In my absence, I’m leaving you in charge of Lord Sorrell’s well-being.”

  She grinned. “Those are some big shoes to fill, but I’m honored that you would trust me with your master’s life.”

  “Miss Fenice, what am I to call you while we are away?” Eilian asked as his eyes roamed over her close-fitting jacket and lustrously polished shoes.

  “I decided on Henry Fox, artist, dandy, and lover of all things beautiful. Hopefully this persona will give me a little leeway in case I slip-up. Harold just sounded too masculine, and I couldn’t imagine calling myself Hadley while dressed as a man.”

  ***

  The Queen Victoria Landing Fields stood several miles outside London on an expansive swath of flat grasslands. The sight was peppered with steel and glass cathedrals that housed the colossal airships beneath their vaults and between their sprawling decorative buttresses. Hadley gaped up at the towering structures, feeling for the first time in her life incredibly insignificant. Patrick and a uniformed porter loaded the trunks onto a brass cart and filled out the paperwork to ensure they would arrive in their proper rooms. As the baggage was rolled away, the butler stared at Eilian and Hadley with doleful eyes.

  “Take care of yourselves,” he advised as he squeezed Eilian’s shoulder and blinked away the moisture behind his glasses, “and have a good time, write often.”

  “Come here. Do not look so sad, Pat. We won’t be gone forever.”

  Eilian embraced his friend before releasing him to allow him to shake Hadley’s hand, but she, too, hugged the sentimental butler. Patrick sealed his feelings away with a feeble smile before heading over to the spectators’ area where he could wave good-bye to his companions with the rest of the families. As they moved forward in the queue, Hadley’s eyes traveled up to the closed wood and metal barn doors that stretched to the top of the cathedral. Each panel had been decorated with braided and trailing vines and lotus flowers. Without steam-powered engines, it would have taken over a dozen men to push open the massive doors. The line of well-dressed travelers rapidly shuffled into the hanger as a uniformed man efficiently checked tickets before allowing them inside.

  Hadley held her breath as the porter in a modified bellhop’s uniform glanced down at the tickets and back up at the two finely dressed gentlemen. “Welcome to the Victoria Landing Fields. Please enjoy your trip to the Near East, Lord Sorrell, and enjoy your stay, Mr. Fox,” the man greeted without taking a second glance at Hadley’s disguise.

  The terminal buzzed with activity as guests and brass carts pushed by porters hurried past, creating a din in the tile and tin room. The HMS Ramses hung suspended near the massive doors, tethered to the floor by thick, metal cords. As the cargo was loaded onto the airship, the crowd divided into a patchwork of brightly colored dresses and dull, heron-grey suits. The ladies clumped together into small groups as they ambled over to the tea room while their male companions, now free of their charges, fled to the smoking room’s bar to avoid being dragged into the gabbling gossip of their wives and daughters.

  “Tea or spirits?” Eilian asked as he watched Hadley’s eyes run between the two very different rooms.

  She stared at the brilliantly lit tea room with its full-length stained glass windows of pastel flowers and the painted iron garden tables before returning to the cavernous room beside it whose crushed-velvet furnishings were barely visible through the haze of tobacco smoke. Her first instinct was to have tea since she rarely even drank wine or sherry, but as she looked at the faces sitting at the tiny tables, she realized that there wasn’t a single man there who wasn’t surrounded by women. Henry Fox wouldn’t drink tea with the Viscount Sorrell.

  “Spirits, I guess,” she sighed as she headed into the fog. Her lungs seized in revulsion as the pungent odor of cigars and Turkish tobacco. Even though there were only about forty gentlemen in the room, their raucous laughter and alcohol-induced carousing reverberated off the intricately tiled walls to create a gay atmosphere that could only be heard within the confines of the
velvet-lined room. She followed close behind Eilian as he ordered her a glass of red wine and whiskey for himself. For the first time since they arrived, she was aware of his metal hand as he gingerly wrapped his fingers around the glass and handed it to her, careful not to break the delicate stem. With his dark jacket and black leather gloves, the artificial hand blended discreetly enough that outsiders wouldn’t notice it.

  Swirling her drink idly, she leaned against the bar. “You know, you have never told me how you lost your arm.”

  Eilian laughed nervously as he took a long swig from his glass with wide eyes. “This probably isn’t the best time to tell that story.”

  “Why? Was it gangrene after a campfire accident?” What could it possibly be? His resistance only made her want to know more. “I had breakfast hours ago, so I’m not going to be sickened by it. Tell me, I can handle it.”

  “I don’t doubt your stomach. I—” He sighed. “Do you remember how I told you I once took an airship back home?”

  She nodded as she sipped the cloying wine.

  “Well, I have never experienced one properly landing.” He watched with a satisfied grin as her eyes bugged at the moment she understood his meaning. “Come on, let’s finish up and get out of here before our clothes start to reek of tobacco.”

  He downed his whiskey and ordered another, throwing it down in two gulps. Rather than waste Eilian’s money, she finished her wine but soon regretted it when her head swam. Out of habit, she reached to take his arm, but she instantly caught herself and pretended to swat the lint from his coat. Stepping into the clean air of the lobby, she stared at the mammoth dirigible towering over them, looming like a silver whale that appeared to breathe and bob as the unseen porters moved within.

  “Eilian, are we sharing a room or do we have separate suites?” she asked apprehensively, unsure of what the answer would mean.

  “Separate, but we share a lavatory. After my first trip, I am much more willing to pay for a decently sized room even if it means sharing,” he explained with a sincere smile. “You should have seen it. I think you have more room on a sleeping car of the Orient Express than you do in one of those cabins.”

  Hadley’s head snapped back to the airship as two sets of wooden and brass steps were lowered from the cabin hanging from the mighty HMS Ramses. Descending the stairs was a stately porter in a crisp blue uniform. Once he reached the ground and secured the steps with a resounding click, he blew a piercing gold whistle to signal to the passengers to begin boarding. Eilian grinned as he and Hadley mounted the steps, rushing up to the promenade in order to get a prime spot from which they could wave to Patrick. Within moments, the other passengers filtered in, going either to their own cabins to unwind or rushing to the windows to wave to those they were leaving behind. After the lobby and leisure rooms had emptied, the stairs were pulled in, the bottom level of the gondola was sealed off, and the massive doors creaked open against the autumnal breeze. Hadley stumbled with the dirigible’s uncertain bobbing, but Eilian caught her as the airship was led out of the terminal by a team of men. The adventurers grasped the brass railing as the ship glided over the cheering crowd. Eilian and Hadley locked eyes with Patrick who stood by himself, waving up at them with anxiety barely hidden under feigned excitement. Sooner than she anticipated, they were too high to make out those below. The rest of the guests began to filter away from the windows to find other activities to occupy their time until dinner, but as she finally turned from the massive pane, her eyes met those of a small pack of young women. Their faces flushed as they giggled and looked her over with avid interest.

  “Why are they staring at me?” she whispered in Eilian’s ear before checking her reflection in the glass. “Is my disguise that unbelievable?”

  Lord Sorrell suppressed his amusement as he watched the silly girls out of the corner of his eye. “Quite the contrary, Mr. Fox. They are giving you the eye.”

  ACT TWO:

  “To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.”

  -Tacitus

  Chapter Eighteen:

  The Archaeologist and the Hunter

  “I know you were upset with that woman at your mother’s party, but you must admit it is dreadfully hot here,” Hadley groaned as she wiped her forehead with her already salt-encrusted handkerchief. After only half an hour of riding through the desert on a mule, she had abandoned her jacket and vest for fear of passing out from heat exhaustion.

  “You’re lucky we didn’t come a month or two earlier. Sir Joshua wrote that even the workers who are native to the region were fainting from the heat,” Eilian called from his steed as they followed their guide through the arid landscape.

  Since their departure from the airship in Jerusalem, they had taken an incredibly long steamer ride down the bumpy dirt road to the up-and-coming town of Beersheba, which stood in the middle of the desert with only a few sturdy buildings and real roads. Within moments of arriving in town, Yousef, one of the laborers from Sir Joshua’s dig, approached the travel-worn Englishmen with mules to guide them through the craterous desert. She had been told by Eilian, who conversed with the man in Arabic for several minutes, that they would arrive at the camp within an hour. After travelling for over an hour, Hadley wondered if the powdery beige and blue lunar landscape would ever end. For miles all she could see was the crumbly desert sand peppered with scraggly, low bushes and the occasional thorny acacia tree or ibex. As they crested the hill, her eyes fell on a sea of tents fluttering in the sweltering breeze beside a large, square hole carved into the earth. With a sigh of relief, her body sagged, bumping all the way down the gorge.

  When the mules reached the bottom of the hill, every turbaned worker snapped to attention and two Englishmen came forward, though the shorter one shouted to the men to keep working. As Hadley realized everyone else was dressed in khaki or white, she suddenly felt very conspicuous in her bold-printed green vest and dark jacket. She hopped off the animal, donning her vest and jacket to hide anything that may have shifted under her corset during the long and bumpy journey before the men reached them.

  “Lord Sorrell!” the dark-haired man called as he approached them with open arms and a wide grin that showed off his bright, white teeth. As he grew closer, Hadley stopped working to free her luggage and realized he must have been Sir Joshua Peregrine. He had been the one to yell at the workers upon their arrival, but the archaeologist’s identity was confirmed by his silken, jet hair and sun-kissed skin, which had darkened to a rich brown after months in the desert sun, and strong English cheekbones. Despite being over forty, Sir Joshua appeared youthful in his white seersucker suit with only a few lines around his eyes and strands of grey in his thick hair to give away his true age. “Eilian, it’s delightful to see you again.”

  Sir Joshua reached for Eilian’s hand to shake it, forgetting his injury, but with a quick motion, he switched hands and clasped his left instead. “How is the dig going, Joshua?”

  “Good, good. Is this the artist friend you wrote about?” he asked as he glanced over Eilian’s shoulder only to find an overdressed gentleman with red cheeks and sweat-flattened hair struggling with a trunk on the back of the braying mule. The man was short but well-proportioned with delicate features that contrasted with the rugged nobleman.

  “Oh, yes.” He motioned for him to come over. “This is Mr. Henry Fox.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sir Joshua,” Henry greeted with a smile as he shook Joshua’s hand firmly as he had practiced on the dirigible. “Eilian has told me only good things about you.”

  The moment Henry returned to dislodging his trunk from the side of the mule, Sir Joshua, muttered under his breath, “Did you take out an ad for an artist? He doesn’t exactly seem like the outdoorsy type you are usually friends with.”

  “Unhook the belt, Henry,” Eilian called to his companion before turning back to Joshua Peregrine. “Actually, I met him at the British Museum
. He was sketching the building’s façade, and I was impressed. I asked him if he had a portfolio because I had a possible job for him. Henry has never been overseas, so he jumped at the chance to go with. Do not be too hard on him.”

  “I will try not to, but he is a different story,” Sir Joshua replied as he nodded toward the massive black-bearded man who hung a few yards behind, picking through a box of relics with paw-like hands.

  “Who is he?”

  The baronet rolled his dark green eyes. “Edmund Barrister, a new major shareholder of our export business. He decided that he needed to come poking around to see how his money was being spent. Mr. Barrister is a dung-fly with a bull’s temperament if you ask me. Supposedly, he made a fortune exporting ivory along with precious stones and metal from Africa, and from what I have heard, he’s a big game hunter. He even personally killed some of the elephants for their tusks. Now, all he does is terrorize my workers, criticize my leadership, and ask me when I am going to find something of value. He acts as if this whole excavation is pointless unless we make a fortune off it. Here, let me introduce you two before he becomes cross again.”

  Sir Joshua called for a few of the men to take the steamer trunks to Eilian and Henry’s tent, freeing the artist from his cumbersome task. Henry instinctively stood close to Lord Sorrell as the hulking man approached. His towering frame and ursine torso made even Eilian Sorrell appear petite. The manner in which the poacher arrogantly strutted across the site as if everyone and everything was beneath him put him on guard. His light eyes were emphasized by thick, overhanging brows and weather-beaten skin. When Mr. Barrister reached Sir Joshua’s side, Henry could feel the man’s amber gaze slicing through his form, sizing him up so wholly that he took a particularly deep breath to ensure his derringer was still safely perched between his bound breasts. If Eilian was as fearful as he was, he didn’t let on as he stood with his knees slightly bent and his hands tucked casually into his pockets.