Free Imperial Clock (The Steam Clock Legacy) by Robert Appleton Page B

girls’ lives.” Mr. Auric glared into his colleague’s hateful stare, inches away. “And if you do anything to scupper it, I’ll break your bastard neck. We clear?”
    “ Just so long as you know what’s coming.”
    “ And vice versa.”
    They parted with obscene and livid hand gestures Sonja could not believe came from teachers at her school. If the other girls had seen or heard that exchange, they might indeed think the world was coming to an end. But it only confirmed her suspicion—that beneath the slightly shy and awkward assistant teacher, Derek Auric was a formidable man. He would not be bullied or swerved from what he knew to be the right course of action. Admiration almost frothed through her chattering teeth as she watched him orchestrate the survivors in the gale force winds.
    While she squeezed between a shaking Dorcas Henshall and Patty Lonergan under the canopy in the first carriage, muffled sobs from all around reminded her she was in most regards still in a world of children. But she didn’t feel like one right now, not even a little. A warm, gentle kiss on her cheek made her gasp. She couldn’t see him, yet the faint hint of tobacco on his masculine breath was unmistakable under the whumping tarp. And when he whispered to her, “Thank you for believing in me, Sonja,” she knew instantly she would never be that child again.
    She closed her eyes and saw beyond the storm as clear as day; it was almost unbearably exciting.
     

Chapter Five
    High Tide
     
    The sluggish beats of the vintage chronometer kept Meredith on edge as she paced around the living room and dining room and peered through the front window every few moments. Mrs. Van Persie, their half-blind housekeeper, flittered in and out, gathering items for the dining table spread, for this impromptu early lunch Father had scheduled by telephone. Exactly what trouble Sonja had been in was unclear, but it had to be serious for him to leave his pre-expedition operations in Portsmouth harbour and fly the first available airship all the way to Cumbria and the Lake District to collect her. He hadn’t had time to explain in his telephone call, but she was safe now and on her way home with him, if a little weak from whatever ailed her.
    When Meredith spied the glinting brass of a large, tu bular-shaped wagon pulled by a team of several beefy shires, and Father walking backward down the driveway as he guided the vehicle’s clumsy turning arc between the gate posts, her heart sank. His third expedition to Subterranea was suddenly imminent. He’d hired the wagon to transport the remainder of his supplies to the harbour, an impregnable wagon for his most secretive possessions: scientific tools and instruments commissioned from his learned colleagues around the world, kept under lock and key in the cellar these past several months.
    Father was a puzzle of a man, always had been, beset by an unfathomable desire to win dominion over inexplicable regions far beneath their feet. Meredith had only been a toddler when he’d burrowed his way to Subterranea in his giant mole. She remembered more of the ballyhoo here at home afterward than of the famous day itself, in the autumn of 1899, when the massive machine had dug its way into a hillside in Dover—and the history books. Endless streams of dignitaries and reporters and particularly those teams of postmen carrying sacks of correspondence had flooded the living room for months, reducing her to a shy little ornament, while elevating Mother to a kind of regal personage, always smiling, always offering her hand to strangers, always profoundly sad inside, or so it seemed to Meredith. For although Mother had supported Father’s expedition indefatigably, even funding it from her considerable fortune, she had cried herself to sleep most nights he’d been away.
    She glanced to the photographed portrait hanging on the wall over the mantelpiece. Hair as white as the whitest cloud, eyes bright as dewdrops in the