Clockwork Gold Read online

  Clockwork Gold

  Jenny Schwartz

  There’s a conspiracy in the Goldfields of Western Australia, and the money men of London don’t like it. Dirigible pilot Rebecca Jones likes it even less. She has a messenger service to run, justice to pursue in a lawless land, and she can do without Special Agent to the Crown, Nathan Burton, hijacking her dirigible—and her heart—and disrupting her carefully laid plans. The result is adventure, romance and explosions.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Note from the Author

  Chapter One

  1896

  Western Australia

  It gets cold in a dirigible, so despite the warm spring sunshine, Rebecca Jones wore a winter-weight tweed suit. She’d unbuttoned its top button, though, and pushed up the sleeves. The divided skirt flapped around her boots. The wind was picking up.

  “Darn it.” She’d planned to be in the air by now. Chasing down the chickens her mum had suddenly decided needed their wings clipped had taken forever. The wretched birds wandered freely in the fenced orchard, snapping up snails and grubs and protected from predators by the perimeter defences Rebecca had installed. Her mechanical echidnas ran on rails, and any touch to the trigger wire that ran just outside the fence, sent them swiftly to the intrusion site to emit a shrill whistle and jet pulses of clove water at pesky invaders. Their spines provided a sharp disincentive to any foxes who ignored the clove shower. The result was hens far too confident of their own powers. Rebecca had chased one bantam three times around an apple tree before she’d caught it, ending face first in a patch of mud.

  Naturally, she’d then had to have a bath. Her black hair was still wet and she wore it in a simple braid down her back.

  She completed the final pre-flight check and descended the short ladder to the ground.

  Her ship, the Blue Wren, hummed with readiness. The efficient furnace was stoked, the blue sail-bladder fully inflated and the white silk flags snapped in the breeze. The cabin beneath the bladder was mostly empty. She carried just enough cargo this trip to avoid suspicion. Tucked out of sight beneath her portable writing desk was a camera and travelling phonographic recorder. When she returned, there’d be justice.

  A gleaming portion of the Blue Wren’s engine reflected Rebecca’s frown. Hastily she readjusted her face. Smile! She had to collect her dinner basket from her mum and the last thing she wanted was for Louise Tanner to guess that this flight was anything other than routine. The Tanners had taken Rebecca in and loved her like a daughter. The least she owed her adopted parents was peace of mind.

  Time enough to confess her actions when she’d accomplished her objective.

  So she hummed a little tune as she strolled back along the path from the airfield (really just an empty paddock) through the trees to the Tanners’ house.

  The house was delightful. Sam Tanner taught woodwork at one of the settlement’s most exclusive boys’ schools. He’d built this house himself. It stood on stilts, a wise concession to its position beside the Canning River. A person could sit on its wide verandas in one of Sam’s hand-carved rocking chairs and watch the river traffic go by. Steamboats were increasingly popular, both for holiday-makers and transporting goods. There were also small sailboats and rowing boats. Mr Fennimore from America even paddled a canoe. And then there were the birds. So many birds.

  A magpie carolled in a nearby tree, a loud demand for attention. It was nesting season, and Rebecca kept a wary eye on it in case territorial instincts led it to swoop. Magpie beaks were sharp. The bird ignored her and sang on.

  A lemon tree was in flower beside a shiny-leafed bay tree at the edge of the kitchen garden. Lavender framed the gravel path. The last of the peas waited to be picked. Then they’d be replaced with the tomato seedlings Louise was nurturing in the glass house.

  Rebecca climbed the back steps with the quick rhythm of familiarity. She raised her voice, starting to speak even before she pushed open the screen door. “Mum, if I see old Clarence—”

  A tall, elegantly dressed man rose to his feet. A cup and saucer sat in front of him on the kitchen table with a matching plate holding a half-eaten shortbread.

  At the sink, Louise turned around, looking guilty. She set the round brown teapot down carefully. “Nathan’s here.”

  “So I see, Mum. Good afternoon, Nathan.”

  “Good afternoon, Becky.” Her foster brother stood regarding her with the small smile he so often wore.

  “You might as well sit down,” she said ungraciously. “Finish your biscuit.”

  He picked up the shortbread and ate it standing.

  She only just prevented herself rolling her eyes. Whenever she encountered Nathan, it was a struggle not to slide back into adolescent behaviours. He riled her—and she knew guilt, her guilt, played a big part in her response. She couldn’t be natural with him.

  The rift between them worried Louise.

  “Nathan telephoned this morning.” Louise wrapped a thermos in a clean tea towel and tucked it into a picnic basket.

  The picnic basket was family-sized, not the usual, slightly shabby wicker affair Rebecca normally took with her. An ice cube of foreboding slid down her spine.

  “I wanted to be sure I’d catch you, Becky.” Nathan carried his dishes to the sink. “I’ll be flying with you on the Blue Wren, today.”

  “No.”

  He leaned down and kissed Louise’s cheek. A pat on her shoulder conveyed reassurance. He picked up the picnic basket with one hand and clasped Rebecca’s elbow with the other. “Tell me all the reasons I can’t travel with you while I walk you to the airship.”

  Whether she willed it or not, Rebecca found herself headed for the back door. She twisted her head around and saw Louise watching worriedly.

  “Smile,” Nathan said under his breath.

  Her mouth curved automatically. They’d spent years hiding their animosity. Christmases were…interesting.

  At the door, he released her elbow and scooped up a valise.

  Damn. He really did intend to travel with her.

  “Be careful,” Louise called.

  “Don’t worry, Mum. See you.”

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’ll worry if I want.”

  The ritual exchange steadied Rebecca. Her smile became almost natural. Until the trees hid her and Nathan from the house, and she abandoned pretence. She frowned. “You’re not coming with me.”

  “Such a warm welcome, love.”

  “The Blue Wren is mine. Everyone knows I travel alone in it. That’s why the miners and prospectors don’t shoot at me the way they do at other dirigibles who stray from the telegraph line.”

  “I know all about your arrangement with the men of the Goldfields,” Nathan said grimly.

  “I write letters, deliver mail and deal with medical emergencies. That’s all I supply.” She was sick to death of people who assumed that a woman who travelled alone provided men with “other services”. The brothels in town dealt with those needs.

  “I know that. Darn it, Becky, you’re pricklier than a…a prickle bush.”

  She snorted. “Some insult.”

  They arrived at the ladder of the Blue Wren. Nathan dropped the valise and gripped her arm. “I’m going with you.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. I’m Sam Tanner’s kid, same as you. The miners will accept me.”

  She scowled. She�
��d built the Blue Wren with Sam three years ago and accompanied him through that summer—the school holidays—on jaunts across the Goldfields before taking over the Blue Wren completely and building up her own unique and trusted messenger service. But the truth was, the miners had given her a chance because of Sam. Sam’s integrity was known throughout Australia. He was the man who’d handed back a nugget the size of a child’s fist to the drunken man who’d lost it.

  “I didn’t even let the police on the Blue Wren when they were chasing that bushranger,” she said.

  “So I heard.” Apparently he also heard the capitulation in her voice because he released her arm.

  She climbed the ladder sulkily, aware that he followed.

  “You made a few enemies that day,” he added.

  “Police.” She sniffed. “I made more friends. People knew then that I wouldn’t spy on them. Besides.” She climbed aboard and stepped aside for him. “I didn’t refuse to let the police board the Blue Wren. She simply developed a fault in the engine and couldn’t fly.”

  “You were always a shocking liar.” He said it carelessly, even with a trace of affectionate amusement, but it stopped her cold.

  In truth, she owed him too much to refuse him the Blue Wren or anything else. She had lied, once and disastrously.

  Yet she knew he hadn’t been referring to that incident. He never did. But the memory of her guilt silenced her.

  She stowed the picnic basket beside her writing desk and sat in the pilot’s chair. Her fingers shook as she unhooked the goggles and fitted them over her head.

  Nathan extracted a pair of goggles from his coat pocket and put them on. They looked odd beneath the townsman’s hat he wore. He handed her the leather cap she’d discarded on the cabin’s second chair.

  She took it without thanks, slapped it on her head and put both hands to the controls. With her left hand she halted the reverse thrust that kept the Blue Wren grounded, while her right hand held the steering wheel steady. Her right foot pressed the pedal for more power.

  The Blue Wren began a controlled ascent.

  She gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Handled firmly, the airship could rise nearly vertically. The challenge was compensating for the wind. She allowed the Blue Wren to take a twenty degree ascent, not fighting the wind for dominance. They drifted over the river. She tooted the whistle in a cheerful goodbye to Louise.

  “Aunt Louise is watching from the front veranda,” Nathan said. Unlike Rebecca, he’d been fostered in his teens and never fell into the habit of claiming a nearer relationship than courtesy aunt and uncle with the Tanners.

  “Mum always does.” They were heading for the Darling Ranges. There would be a bit of turbulence over the low hills before the farming land on the far eastern side gave way to the open scrubland and desert of the Goldfields. “Why are you pushing in, today, anyway?”

  “I wondered when you’d ask.” He lounged in the passenger chair. If it bothered him—as it bothered many men—to be driven by a woman, it didn’t show. He looked relaxed and, as always, in command.

  Rebecca pressed her lips together. She’d determined years ago not to let his “lord of all he surveys” manner drive her to idiocy. She’d succumbed once. Never again. If there was a person in the world who could challenge Nathan—it wasn’t her.

  “I’m here on Crown business.”

  “What else?” she muttered.

  His work for the British Empire had absorbed his every thought and action since he graduated from Oxford eight years ago. What visits he made home to Western Australia were few and fleeting. Although he maintained a steady correspondence with the Tanners.

  Always he addressed his letters to “Uncle Sam, Aunt Louise and Becky.” He never forgot her. She checked sometimes, looking at the letters when Louise left them out on the kitchen table. The letters were filled with wry descriptions of the places he visited: crowded Birmingham, brash Chicago, the mysteries of Shanghai.

  “I wouldn’t have thought there’d be anything big enough here to warrant the attention of an agent of the Crown.”

  “There’s always gold, Becky. Where there are fortunes to be made and lost, there is trouble.”

  She considered that, and the finality in his voice, while the Blue Wren flew onward. “Do you want me to set you down in town? All the news arrives in Kalgoorlie sooner or later.”

  He laughed. “So helpful. Or should I say, hopeful? No, love. You’re stuck with me. Whither thou goest…”

  “But you won’t see anything with me.” She adjusted the height of the Blue Wren, finding the sweet spot in the turbulence as the Darling Ranges passed beneath them. “I talk to isolated miners, sometimes to a travelling group. I’m not the best person to gather news with.”

  “Aren’t you?” He gave her a long, steady look.

  Even through the goggles, she sensed his intensity. It was as if he wanted to learn her every secret.

  She shivered.

  “Cold?” he asked.

  “I think a goose walked over my grave.” She thought of her grand plans for justice as the Blue Wren bounced in an air pocket.

  Justice delayed is justice denied.

  Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. Nathan mightn’t want to be set down in town, but sometimes even an agent of the Crown couldn’t have things all his own way. Her own quest was too important to be set aside.

  “Hold tight,” she said. “I think things are about to get rough.”

  Chapter Two

  Nathan released his grip on the underside of the chair as the Blue Wren ceased bouncing over the hills and set a smooth path across the open farmland. He pushed the goggles up to his forehead and rubbed his eyes.

  Lord he was tired.

  The skimmerboat out from Calcutta had encountered the storms of the Indian Ocean. The storms hadn’t delayed them—the captain had been a maniac and seemed to find near-death an incentive for even greater speed—but they had interrupted his sleep. And then, there’d been his private demons.

  When he had slept, he’d dreamed of Becky. Becky at nine years old. Becky now. Becky in tears, in rage; dying.

  He’d raced home to save her.

  Thank the old school tie for Patrick Murphy who’d thought he’d “want to know”. The message had reached him in Delhi, telegraphed in code.

  “Thought you’d want to know. There are rumours about your foster sister, Rebecca Jones. Will just about kill the Tanners if it’s true. Lots of money. Lots of secrets being leaked. Story is Rebecca is spying in that dirigible of hers.”

  Not Rebecca. The girl he knew would do a lot of things, but not spy. Nor would she cheat.

  He’d raced home to save her.

  He smiled ruefully. A good thing he hadn’t expected a warm welcome. She’d greeted him with her familiar attitude, the one that said she wished he’d disappear. He’d obliged her for years, but this time…

  He looked at her sitting alert but easy in the pilot’s chair. The usual pain caught in his chest. Objectively, he knew she wasn’t beautiful. Her cheekbones were too high, giving her face elegance where the current fashion was for plump prettiness. Her mouth was wide, not rosebud, and her blue eyes were sharp, challenging sapphires. Even the ugly goggles couldn’t hide their fire.

  His gaze travelled down her slim body. He loved how she moved. Her careless grace drew the eye. He’d met any number of beauties through his years of service to the Crown. They were mannered and flirtatious, self-consciously alluring. Becky was simply herself, proud, courageous, loyal and loving.

  He tipped his head back, forcing his gaze away from her. He was twenty nine, nearly thirty. Time to give up vain dreams. Becky might be loving, but her love wasn’t for him.

  “Are you going to be airsick?” she asked.

  He followed her gaze and saw she was staring at his clenched hands. He relaxed them. “I’m fine.”

  “Because there’s a bucket.”

  He laughed. He was a lovesick fool.

  She h
unched an offended shoulder.

  Below them, three children ran out of an isolated farm house. Their shouts rose faintly and their arms semaphored. One boy stood on his hands and waved his legs. Becky dipped the Blue Wren and waggled its steering wings.

  Nathan reached over and tooted the whistle.

  The children’s mother waved from the back step of the house.

  “You’re quite an event in people’s lives,” he said as they sailed on.

  “Life gets lonely in the Outback.”

  “Do you get lonely?” He couldn’t help himself. He had to ask.

  “I’ll be home in a week.” She looked directly in front.

  “Will anyone be waiting? A man?”

  “Mum would have told you in her letters if I’d met someone special.”

  Which was true. There had been a few mentions through the years. The Grampian boy, a man called Oswell, Peter Caddington. “Rebecca’s beaux” Aunt Louise called them. She’d never written that Becky seemed serious about any of them, and they’d all drifted away.

  “Are you looking for someone special?” He guessed it was like poking a sore tooth. A man knew there’d be pain, but he tested it anyway.

  “Nathan, you forced your way on-board. Enough. Now we’re alone, there’s no need to pretend we’re family.”

  It hurt. “Believe me. I don’t consider you my sister.”

  They sailed in silence for the next two hours.

  The shadow of the Blue Wren skimmed over the land, lengthening as the afternoon approached evening. The green, cleared farmland gave way to pockets of bush that thinned out into scrubland. A few, very few, tracks passed through it. Cattle and sheep were left behind. Kangaroos and emus took their place.

  For a sense of power and freedom, nothing beat watching a red kangaroo bounding across the bush. The creatures were incredibly powerful. People back in Britain thought them a charming oddity. Ha. A dog—or man—held in the animal’s front paws could be disembowelled with a strike from its back feet. Power was seldom peaceful.