The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Box Set Page 14

  “Mr. Barrister, this is Mr. Henry Fox, our new draftsman. Mr. Fox, this is Mr. Edmund Barrister, one of my investors.”

  “It’s a pleasure to make your—” he stammered through clenched teeth as his hand was crushed in his enormous grip, “acquaintance.”

  When Edmund finally released him, Henry glared at him, realizing by the subtle smirk and narrowing of his cat eyes that it had been done on purpose.

  “And this is Lord Sorrell.”

  “I hope you know, Lord Sorrell, your titles are useless out here, outside of the civilized world,” he remarked in a low, growling voice as he ran a paw over his dense but well manicured beard.

  Without missing a beat, Eilian smiled and replied with his prosthetic hand proffered, “Lucky for me, I much prefer to be called Eilian.”

  The hunter sneered at the metal hand in undisguised disgust. “Is this some sort of joke?”

  “I wouldn’t refer to my prosthesis as a joke, but if you would prefer not to shake my hand, then I see no reason for you to do so, Mr. Barrister.” Eilian met Edmund’s eyes, holding his gaze until the massive man muttered something about going out to kill an ibex for dinner and lumbered back to the camp. “Have the workers found anything of interest, Joshua?”

  As Sir Joshua opened his mouth, Barrister hollered over his shoulder, “Nothing of value, only a bunch of broken pots and rubbish.”

  “What kind?” Eilian deliberately asked while facing the archaeologist and giving the other man his back.

  “Amphorae and bowls for the most part.” He lowered his voice. “We also found some Roman coins, but they have apparently gone missing.”

  “Who do you think did it?” Henry yawned, the day’s excitement washing over him as a wave of lassitude.

  “I have my suspicions. My men may be poor, but they would not steal from me. Eilian, I was hoping you and Henry could inventory everything and make some quick sketches as proof in case anything else should go missing.”

  He nodded. “Henry and I will get right on it. I just want to introduce him to the men first and get our trunks unpacked.”

  “Don’t be silly. I wasn’t expecting you to start today,” Sir Joshua chuckled as he checked his pocket watch. “The men are due for a break anyway. Why not introduce Henry now, and then we can have a little tea before you turn in for a rest? I know you have had a very long day. Look at poor Henry. He cannot keep his eyes open.”

  “Sorry, the heat makes me drowsy,” he replied, mopping his forehead again with his now crunchy silk handkerchief. “That and travel. Sadly, my constitution isn’t accustomed to either one.”

  “Within a week, my boy, you will be as accustomed to it as one of the men, I assure you.”

  Henry’s polished black boots dulled with each step as he kicked up chalky flakes of stone while following Eilian to the pit. As they drew closer, the occasional keffiyeh bobbed above the lip along with the gleaming edge of a pickax before it dipped back down with a thump. Eilian easily hopped down into the excavation and was greeted by the group of men. A small cheer erupted from the eight workers as they dropped their shovels and picks and called out his name, each embracing him in turn. Henry lowered his body into the pit. His thin legs flailed as he struggled to reach the bottom unassisted. He wiped his dusty hands on his smeared trousers and watched with a smile as Eilian and the men conversed in Arabic so rapidly that what little he had learned on the dirigible was absolutely useless. The cheers of glee soon dissolved into solemn sympathy as they gestured toward his metal hand. With a grin, the explorer rolled his sleeve up to the shoulder and explained to them his entire ordeal. Their soft, dark eyes lingered on the springs and metal of the prosthesis devoid of disgust or apprehension. Their faces lit up as Eilian demonstrated how the mechanism opened and closed without any levers or switches. After a few minutes of conversing about their families and wives, Eilian raised his eyes to see Henry standing near the wall, slightly sandy but smiling patiently with his head cocked to the side.

  “This is my friend, Henry Fox,” he explained in Arabic as he motioned for him to come over. “He doesn’t know much Arabic, so please be patient with him and correct his pronunciation if necessary. He told me he won’t be offended.”

  The group nodded, and once Mr. Fox was at his side, Eilian continued in English, “Henry, this is Fadil and his brother Jamil, you can tell because they have the same chin. The tall one is Nasir, the short man beside him is Said, and the young one is Ibraheem. The two men with the lovely beards are Daud and Yousef, who you met earlier, and finally, the man with the cleft lip is Mohammed.”

  Hesitantly and with measured cadence, the artist greeted respectfully, “Is salām ‘alaykum, fursa sa’ida.”

  “Not bad,” Nasir responded in English with a nod. “Pronunciation needs work.”

  Henry laughed along with the men. “Shukrān, Nasir.”

  Ibraheem spouted something in Arabic that he couldn’t understand, the boy’s juvenile voice cracking with a high note.

  “What did he say?”

  “He says he likes the color of your hair. Let’s go find Sir Joshua. We have kept the men from their break long enough.”

  Using his good arm for leverage, Eilian effortlessly climbed out of the hole, but when he looked back, Henry was still trying to claw his way out until finally one of the men pushed him up by the boot. The unexpected aid made him to land face-first into the dust, but he scrambled to his feet and brushed himself off. From across the camp, Edmund Barrister watched as Eilian Sorrell attentively wiped Henry’s smudged face with the side of his sleeve before leading him to Sir Joshua’s tent with his mechanical arm draped around his shoulders. When they turned, he silently crept behind them, noting how the artist leaned into the viscount slightly with a smile as the taller man opened the flap of the tent for him. The hunter lingered outside the tent until he was certain they had settled in before throwing open the door with thick, knit brows and artificial outrage.

  “The men are on break again! Do you pay them to drink tea?” he badgered as Joshua poured coffee from a French press into several porcelain cups.

  “As I explained to you last week, keeping your workers happy and well-fed makes them not only more loyal but more productive. Treating them like prisoners doing hard labor doesn’t make them work any harder.” After pouring another cup for Mr. Barrister, Sir Joshua sat in his desk chair and allowed a playful grin to spread across his lips. “Eilian, a little birdie told me that you have a lady friend.”

  “Who— who told you?” he stammered, feeling Henry stiffen with alarm beside him.

  “I ran into Lord Newcastle when I was in Jerusalem last month, and he told me your mother sent him a letter saying how happy she was to hear that you have taken an interest in a woman living in London. Of course she was worried about scandal since she has no idea who the woman is or if she is properly supervised, but her desire for grandchildren seems to outweigh her apprehension.”

  “If you happen to run into my uncle again, you can assure him that the woman is not only virtuous but brilliant and nothing improper is going on between us.” He shook his head. “I never expected my uncle to be such a gossip. How did my mother find out? I have not spoken to her in weeks.”

  Sir Joshua took a long sip of the viscous coffee. “You know how upper class society is better than any of us. They don’t do anything, so they have to talk about what others do. Who knows, maybe they pay the steamer cabbies for information.”

  With his heart pounding in his ears, Henry choked down his momentary panic and quickly asked in his best tenor impersonation, “Who is Lord Newcastle?”

  “My uncle. According to my parents, he was the bad influence that made me desert my duties to the earldom,” Eilian replied with a grin.

  Chapter Nineteen:

  A Visit from George

  “I’m so proud of you,” George whispered without the wheezing echo of his damaged lungs. A wide grin stretched across his countenance as he looked down at her. His freckled
cheeks were no longer sunken with disease, and his light eyes shone brightly with vigor rather than fever. She stared up into his face, one that had been so altered from the last time they spoke, but now it had been restored to its original, handsome form. As a tear crept down her cheek, a calloused thumb carefully wiped it away. His deceptively strong hands drew her to his chest and held her close. Over the years of sickness, she had forgotten how much strength the illness had stripped from him. Hadley’s face burned with tears of joy and sadness as she listened to the steady beat of his heart and the rhythmic ebb and flow of air from his lungs with her head pressed to his lean but healthy body.

  “I have missed you so much,” she sobbed into his crisp white shirt and vest. “Why did you leave me alone for so long?”

  His long fingers ran through her cropped hair as she inhaled his familiar scent of wood-shavings with an underlying hint of metal from his tools. “Because you have been doing fine on your own. That’s what I came here to tell you, you’re making the right decision. You needn’t doubt yourself.”

  She met his blue eyes, which crinkled at the corners as he grinned, and studied his face. His auburn hair was coiffed just as it always was before he was ill, and his cheeks and lips were full and flushed with color. With a final smile, she buried her head into his chest and closed her eyes as the linen wicked the dampness that seeped between her lashes.

  “Hadley.”

  “George?” she peeped as she opened her eyes to find her face pressed into the covers and Eilian Sorrell perched on the edge of her cot.

  “Sorry, it’s only me,” he replied softly while rubbing her shoulder. “It’s time to get up.”

  Hadley lingered with her head on the pillow, blinking away the pain that followed the disbelief that it had all been a dream. When she first opened her eyes, she was so certain he would still be there, healthy and whole again. She held her breath as the tears threatened to flow, but then she saw his smiling face in her mind’s eye. It was the first time since he died that she had dreamt of him. More importantly, it was the first time she remembered him so vividly. Her daydreams never did him justice and he always appeared dusty as if he was hidden behind a veil, but in this dream, he was as solid as Eilian. More importantly, he was all right.

  A shiver passed through her body as she rose to choose a clean ensemble from her trunk and scooted behind the portable screen Patrick had packed for her. The surprisingly nippy desert air and the fear that someone would see her in a compromised state hurried her into clean clothes. With a sigh, she finally raised her eyes only to meet Eilian’s as he stared at her reflection in his shaving kit’s mirror. His grey gaze softened as he frowned. Even if she didn’t say anything, he had seen the tears and heard her cries. Flashing a small smile, she tended to his prosthesis as he shaved with his other hand. After a fortnight on the airship together, Eilian and Hadley had developed a clothing codependence. She affixed the components of his prosthesis while he tied her cravat and put the finishing touches on her outfits.

  ***

  As they walked from their tent to the campfire, Henry couldn’t help but notice the eager exhilaration that permeated every muscle of Eilian’s body, lightening his step and bringing a child-like gleam to his eyes. They passed the turbaned men huddled around the fire, speaking in hushed tones while a pockmarked pot sizzled and sputtered between them, and were about to settle in among them when a bronzed hand jutted out from between the flaps of the main tent and waved for them to enter. Sir Joshua quickly ushered them inside, ranting about sending the wrong message, but Henry barely heard him as his eyes stung from the smoke of the coal-fueled grill in the center of the room. Poking at four slabs of meat like an epicurean Vulcan was Edmund Barrister, who only muttered a grunt of acknowledgement as they took a seat on top of the nobleman’s steamer trunk.

  “Did you get a good night’s sleep?” Sir Joshua asked Henry as he placed a kettle directly onto the reddened coals and handed them tin cutlery and plates.

  “Better than I expected,” he smiled stiffly, trying to make his jaw appear wide. “I meant to ask yesterday, but what are you actually digging for?”

  The artist watched the Anglo-Indian’s hands as he poured each of them a cup of tea. His fingers were beginning to gnarl with arthritis, but his nails were pristine and the skin was less calloused than his own.

  “I’m looking for a Roman town that was involved in trade between the East and West. What I would really like to do is show that the empires were much more connected than historians believe.”

  As Henry opened his mouth to reply, a hunk of oryx meat was plopped onto his plate and then onto Eilian’s, which nearly fell out of his prosthetic hand from the sudden weight.

  “I haven’t found the bullet yet, so you may want to chew carefully. You wouldn’t want to break your pretty teeth,” Mr. Barrister sneered with his eyes locked onto Henry’s.

  The two adventurers eyed the meat suspiciously as Henry ripped into both portions with his dull knife, dissecting the steaks to ensure that any bits of buckshot would be found before they bit down. Throughout their lackluster meal, Eilian felt his gaze continually trailing to the flap of the tent. He wished he could be dining among the men as he usually did, joking and telling stories in Arabic, rather than listening to Sir Joshua and Mr. Barrister bicker about who would go to Beersheba to pick up the supplies and mail. When Eilian and Henry finished their breakfast and slipped out, the two men were still yelling over each other.

  “Are they always going to go on like this?” Henry whispered when they were finally out of earshot but could still hear the hunter’s baritone voice thundering in the distance.

  “I hope not. Let’s just get our job done, so we can go exploring on our own before dark. Grab your art supplies and meet me in the supply tent.”

  He nodded and watched Eilian as he walked away, trying to mimic his relaxed gait as he passed the campfire again. Henry quickly retrieved his papers and box of pencils from his trunk before walking back through the aisle between the rows of tents, lifting the canvas flaps until finally he spotted Eilian’s jacketless back as he hefted and shifted small crates. At his feet were two wooden chests the size of hat boxes labeled with artifacts in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, which rattled slightly as his knee bumped against them. The archaeologist sighed and stood back with his hands on his hips before going back to the massive pile of crates filled with canned food and tools.

  “Well, this appears to be it,” Eilian explained as he gestured toward the petite packages.

  “That is it? Two boxes?”

  “So it seems, but the boxes are quite heavy. They are probably loaded with fragments.”

  Lord Sorrell carried the artifacts over to a makeshift table and motioned for Henry to take a seat while he perched on a crate nearby. The artist leaned in close as Eilian removed the lid, expecting to see the glitter of metal or beads, but his blue eyes were greeted only with the dingy murk of pottery. The archaeologist pulled out a clay shard and examined it closely, explaining to Henry the subtle ways to tell it apart from Greek or Egyptian pottery and what it possibly contained in ancient times. In his ledger, Eilian scribbled down the notable features of the fragments along with their materials and possible origin before handing it off to his companion to sketch. For several hours, they fell into a peaceful rhythm of productivity that was only punctuated by the occasional scrape of pencil to paper. As he finished the last shard in the box and passed it to Henry, a smile crossed the dandy’s lips.

  “I have been meaning to ask, how are you and Patrick connected? You are so in-tune with each other that you seem more like family than servant and master.”

  Eilian’s pencil stopped as his face brightened. “He’s like my brother. He actually has worked for my family since he was a youngster, and he has been there for as long as I can remember. If I recall correctly, his father was my father’s butler, but as a boy, Patrick was a footman until I was old enough to have my own valet. The incident that really brought us
together occurred when I was eight. My mother told me not to play near the duck-pond behind our house because it was winter, and it never froze all the way through. I was a child, and of course all I wanted to do was go ice-skating, so I did it anyway. Luckily, I didn’t fall into the pond, but the ice broke near the edge, drenching me from head-to-toe. Instead of letting me walk through the house and get caught, Patrick snuck me up to my room through the servants’ passages. He lightly chastised me the whole way, but he got me redressed and presentable in time for dinner without my mother ever—”

  The adventurer’s voice trailed off as a bellow rumbled across the camp followed by a chorus of upset voices replying in frantic Arabic. A moment later, a howl of pain sent the artist and archaeologist running toward the excavation. As they entered the clearing, they found Mr. Barrister gesticulating threateningly as he screamed at a cowering Yousef, who clutched his eyes. Placing their bodies between the Arab and the barbarian, the other men had gathered around him and protected him from the Englishman’s shaking fists. They were speaking so rapidly in fragmented English that Eilian could hardly understand them, but it was clear from their abandoned prayer rugs left behind them pointing southeast toward Mecca that something bad had happened. The men parted as Eilian Sorrell approached, allowing him to draw Yousef from the crowd. The Arab’s face and beard were coated in a layer of sandy grit along with his eyes, which burned and watered. With his real arm, Eilian used his sleeve to clean the man’s face as best he could before ushering him off to Henry, who took him to their washbasin to flush his eyes. Lord Sorrell looked from the familiar prayer rug, which was coated in a spattering of sand, to the matching dirt stain on the toe of Edmund’s boot

  “What’s going on here?” he yelled sternly over the quarrelling, knowing full well what probably happened.