Free Miss Minnie and the Brass Pluggit by Sahara Kelly Page B

Minnie. To be honest, there was no exactly about it. He had kept silent about it, deliberately. He did not want it getting back to Parliament. It had been insanely stupid of him to fire it up tonight, with her sleeping right above the laboratory.
    Stupid to use it at all when guests were present. But he’d not been thinking as clearly as he should have been and was driven by the need to get his mind out of his trousers and into something useful.
    Not Minnie.
    So he shouldn’t have been surprised when the doorknob moved and she crept in like a thief in the night. And truthfully, part of him wasn’t. The part that wondered if he’d obeyed a subconscious urge to draw her back down to him, to finish what they’d started.
    However, it seemed her thoughts were now well away from any kind of physical union and focused entirely on his illuminated console.
    He sighed. He couldn’t explain this away with facile or glib scientific terms. She might not understand the theory or the circuitry, but she would understand the implications. He walked to her side, put down the brandy snifter he’d just refilled and pulled out his chair, motioning to her to sit.
    “You might as well get comfortable.”
    “This is…” She reached out and touched glass. “Intriguing.”
    “Yes.” He nodded. “It’s also complex, experimental, unfinished and quite confidential. You are only the second person to have seen it in operation. Dusk was the first. I am going to ask of you what I asked of him. Please do not relate to anyone else what you’re seeing now or what I’m about to tell you.”
    She glanced up at him and gave him a look of disdain. “I have kept more secrets than you’ve had bottles of brandy. Please don’t give my discretion a second thought.”
    “I had to ask.” He refused to be apologetic. She didn’t yet comprehend what she was looking at. “Let’s see if I can explain this.” He pulled up a small stool and sat beside her, their shoulders almost touching.
    It seemed oddly right.
    “What am I looking at?”
    She was seated in front of the console. The desk surface featured a few dials and switches and the occasional knob. But it was the glass surface on the wall above the desk that had all her attention. He kept it enclosed by two unobtrusive cabinet doors, which explained why she hadn’t seen it earlier in the day. It was mostly black, framed in brass and wood. But on it things were moving. More like a shallow box mounted upright than a mirror or a picture, this device was flickering, rippling with green strands making their way from the top to the bottom.
    “You are looking at a representation of the coastline and the waters off shore. I think the distance is currently set at half a mile.”
    She blinked. “I can’t… I don’t…”
    He leaned forward and pointed. “Here. This odd jagged shape? That’s the Needles rocks. Here’s the actual coastline.” He touched a glowing line that wiggled its way across the bottom of the screen and stopped sharply. “And this is the sea.”
    “And these?” She pointed to a few small dots in the sea area he’d just indicated.
    “Those are ships.”
    “Good Lord.”
    “Yes.” He waited, knowing her intuitive intellect would be processing this information and drawing an assortment of conclusions about now.
    She drew in a breath, a movement that did interesting things to the front of her dressing gown. Pierce, of course, made a point of not noticing the rise and fall of soft breasts, loose and free beneath the fragile fabric. Nor did he specifically notice the small buds poking firmly from the silk. He never, for one moment, imagined sucking them or tonguing them.
    No. He was a scientist in his laboratory. He was focused on his work.
    Not Minnie’s breasts.
    And he was lying through his teeth.
    “So I’m looking at a sort of map, more like a photograph I suppose, of what is out there on the ocean right this minute ?”
    He smiled. She was as good as he’d