Free Airborne - The Hanover Restoration by Blair Bancroft

Rochefort’s added weight. A quick trip through the kitchen—I nodded, graciously I hoped, to Mrs. H, two kitchen maids, and a kitchen boy. Fortunately, Mrs. E was not in sight.
    Rochefort seated me on the Mono, then walked beside me, easily keeping up with machine’s slow pace. Matt Black greeted us with a broad smile as we entered the workshop in the Abbey cellar, and followed close behind while my husband showed me the great boiler and pumps that provided hot, as well as cold, water for the house. He explained the machine that ran the lift and the amazing invention that ran the Mono. He even showed me how fire came out of the hose he was using the day we met. “Welding,” he called it. Throughout the tour Rochefort showed less emotion than a housekeeper giving a perfect stranger a tour of a great country house. He was, I feared, not best pleased to have acquired such a shocked, angry, and reluctant bride. In all fairness it was not his fault guilt had kept Papa from preparing me for my fate. But just when I most needed comfort, why must Rochefort be so cool?
    Matt, however, had no such reservations. “Ain’t ’e the one, Miss?” he chortled as Rochefort laid the hose back on the worktable. “A genius, that’s what ’e is.”
    It wasn’t easy to admit Matt was right—that compared to Rochefort, Papa was only a superior sort of engineer. I had to give the devil his due. “You’re right, Matt. These are the most amazing machines I’ve ever seen.”
    “And when did you two become so well acquainted?” my husband inquired, a trifle too silkily.
    “We ’ad a bit of a natter early this morning, Guv,” said Matt. “Your lady was out fer a walk.”
    “Indeed.” Dark eyes sparked in Rochefort’s maddeningly immobile face. “Then you must call me Julian.” A frown rippled across the burn on his forehead. He winced. “In private and in the workshops,” he qualified. “With all the guests descending on us in the next week, I fear we must be more formal in public. My mother and her friends tend to be . . . shall we say, higher in the instep than most.”
    A baby step forward in our relationship, but enough for my spirits to soar by more than admiration for my husband’s inventions. We exited the workshop by the outside stairs and crossed the cobbled area behind the old abbey. Rochefort—Julian—gave me a hand over the train tracks, and then we were standing outside the great doors of the oversize structure I had seen earlier that morning.
    “I built this two years ago,” he said, “when I conceived an idea for something too large for the Abbey workshop. Now . . .” He paused, looking down at me, his face cracking into a faint smile. “Now, I am beginning to think we didn’t build it big enough.”
    Since the structure was half again the height and length of a barn, I decided he must be funning. But, true daughter of an inventor, I was prepared for anything.
    Or thought I was.
    “It’s not functional yet,” Rochefort cautioned me, “but I believe we’ve found a way around each problem that has plagued us. “I am hoping another week or so will do it.”
    He drew a deep breath, ran his fingers through his dark hair, and I realized he was nervous. He truly cared what I thought about the mysterious creation inside this building. And suddenly I knew it was going to be all right. We both loved machines and what they could do. Somehow that would lead our most peculiar marriage into a relationship that would work, no matter how cobbled together by a shrewd mix of pragmatism and wishful thinking.
    My husband nodded to Matt, who unlocked the padlock on a heavy chain that was wrapped around a thick wooden bar. Straining, Matt lifted the bar, then pulled one side of the huge double doors back, revealing nothing more than a dimly lit cavern beyond. Rochefort held out his hand and led me to the doorway, where we paused to let our eyes adjust to the dim interior.
    Fortunately, the capricious English sun had