The Designs Of Lord Randolph Cavanaugh: #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Laurens returns with an uputdownable new historical romance. Stephanie Laurens
would be wise not to make assumptions about Lord Randolph Cavanaugh. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock, and already, he’d surprised her twice.
She was surprised again when Cavanaugh turned to her and asked if William John’s proposal to commandeer the footmen and gardener for cleanup duties in the workshop would inconvenience her.
She was tempted to say it would, but she’d promised to assist as she and the household could. She shook her head. “There’s nothing on their plates this morning that they can’t do later, once they’ve finished in the workshop.”
Cavanaugh turned back to William John and continued—artfully, gently, almost imperceptibly—to steer her brother, again and again drawing his peripatetic mind back to the issue at hand and keeping him firmly on the shortest path to completing the necessary modifications to the engine.
Felicia had to be grateful for that; if left to himself, William John had a tendency to follow whatever vague notion popped into his brain. From comments he’d let fall, she’d long ago formed the opinion that her brother’s brain was literally awhirl with thoughts, even more so than their father’s had been.
Now Cavanaugh had won William John’s trust, Cavanaugh was in a position to harness William John’s undoubtedly able mind and keep it focused on fixing the engine.
Watching the pair, for the first time since learning of the true nature of what faced them all, she felt a smidgen of hope.
With Cavanaugh at the helm, they might just win through.
Finally, William John slapped his palm on his pile of diagrams. “Right, then!” He looked at Felicia for the first time since she’d entered the room and grinned. “It’s time we got working.”
The enthusiasm in his eyes...she hadn’t seen that for quite some time. She found herself smiling back, then she set down her empty teacup, pushed back her chair, and rose as both men came to their feet.
She turned and made for the door; she had her usual morning meeting with Mrs. Reilly, the housekeeper, to attend, then she needed to take stock of the kitchen garden with Cook and decide if they should try for another crop of peas.
Cavanaugh and William John followed her into the front hall. William John made straight for the door to the workshop stairs, but Cavanaugh hesitated. When, heading for her sitting room on the other side of the hall, she glanced his way, he caught her eye. “Don’t you want to see how things are in the workshop?”
She slowed, her gaze steady on his. “No. I don’t go down there. I haven’t been down since I was twelve years old.”
His eyes narrowed, as if he sensed there was some tale behind that.
She summoned an entirely meaningless smile, turned, and walked on.
Rand watched the fascinating—and now enigmatic—Miss Throgmorton walk to the door of the room opposite the drawing room, open the door, and disappear inside, shutting the door firmly behind her.
He shook aside the feeling of...he didn’t know what. Ridiculous to feel that, now, he needed to find out what had happened when she was twelve years old that had kept her out of her father’s workshop ever since.
With a shake of his head, he strode after William John and started down the stairs.
He had to admit that William John’s performance in the breakfast room had certainly borne out his sister’s view; William John had been utterly oblivious to her presence. He hadn’t even looked her way when Rand had asked her about the footmen.
Rand was well aware that inventors—most of them—behaved in exactly that fashion, that their minds were so blinkered they were aware of nothing beyond their invention. Yet since he’d spoken with Miss Throgmorton, his eyes had been opened to the harm that trait could cause.
There was, sadly, nothing he could do to alter or even ameliorate that.
He reached the bottom of the stairs, raised his head, and surveyed the challenge before him.
William John and the Throgmorton steam engine.
That was a challenge he could do something about.
Although the workshop doors had been closed during the night, they’d been propped open again at daybreak, and the air inside the laboratory-workshop was now fresh and clear.
Rand paused on the last stair and scanned the chamber. With no wafting cloud to obscure his view, he took in the racks and shelves that filled every available foot of wall. Every inch of storage space was crammed with cogs, tubes, pistons, valves, pipes of every conceivable sort, and a cornucopia of engine parts. Two large, moveable racks were hung with a plethora of tools. The paraphernalia for welding was piled on a large trolley.
There were no windows; given the likely frequency of explosions, that was probably a good thing. Instead, a gantry with multiple beams hung from the ceiling; it was rigged with gaslights that, once lit, would shed strong, even light over much of the room.
A large, rectangular frame, roughly five feet long, three feet wide, and reaching to chest height, held pride of place, positioned squarely in the center of the space between the stairs and the double doors. Suspended within the frame was the steam engine designed to power the Throgmorton version of John Russell’s modification of Trevithick’s horseless carriage.
Although presently smudged with soot and grease and liberally sprinkled with coal dust, the engine was a gleaming mass of copper and steel pipes and cylinders, of connections and joints and screws. The body was smaller than Rand had expected, between three and four feet long and possibly the same in width, and about two feet in height. Regardless, the combination of solidity and complexity made it an impressive sight.
There was no carriage, only the engine; the frame supported the engine’s body at bench level so William John could easily poke and prod and tinker, as he was presently doing, crouched on the other side of the frame.
Unfortunately, it was obvious that the engine wouldn’t be working anytime soon. The gleaming boiler that was essentially the heart of the contraption was ruptured, its sides peeled back like a banana skin.
Frowning slightly, Rand stepped down to the workshop floor. The flagstones were littered with bits and pieces of metal. One of the tool racks had been tipped back over the welding equipment, and tools lay scattered amid the debris.
Something metallic crunched under Rand’s boot, and he halted.
William John straightened and, across the wreck of the boiler, smiled at Rand. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
Rand couldn’t stop his brows from rising. “I’ll have to take your word for that.” He glanced around, peering deeper into the far reaches of the chamber that extended beneath the house. “Where’s the carriage part of it?” He glanced at William John. “It is built, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes.” His gaze almost lovingly cataloguing what remained of the engine, William John went on, “We keep it in the stable, tucked safely away. We won’t bother putting the engine into the carriage until we have the engine working perfectly.”
Rand hid his relief and nodded at the blown boiler. “That certainly appears wise.” He hesitated, then said, “Your sister mentioned you’d blown several boilers over the past weeks.”
William John frowned at the engine. “We—Papa and I—redesigned the feed of heat off the burner to the boiler. We increased the efficiency and therefore the steam generated, but that’s led to difficulties with the mechanisms downstream, especially the controls. We can achieve smooth and significant acceleration, but deceleration...” His frown deepened. “Papa died before we’d fixed the problem, and up to now, everything I’ve tried... Well, I’ve improved the system to the point we can accelerate and decelerate once, but further acceleration seems to be cumulative, and then...” William John gestured at the ruptured boiler. “I still haven’t got it right.”
Footsteps coming down the stairs had both William John and Rand glancing that way. “Ah,” William