Moonlight & Mechanicals Read online

  Moonlight & Mechanicals

  By Cindy Spencer Pape

  London, 1859

  Engineer Winifred “Wink” Hadrian has been in love with Inspector Liam McCullough for years, but is beginning to lose hope when he swears to be a lifelong bachelor. Faced with a proposal from a Knight of the Round Table and one of her closest friends, Wink reluctantly agrees to consider him instead.

  Because of his dark werewolf past, Liam tries to keep his distance, but can’t say no when Wink asks him to help find her friend’s missing son. They soon discover that London’s poorest are disappearing at an alarming rate, after encounters with mysterious “mechanical” men. Even more alarming is the connection the missing people may have with a conspiracy against the Queen.

  Fighting against time—and their escalating feelings for each other—Wink and Liam must work together to find the missing people and save the monarchy before it’s too late…

  74,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  I love October because it’s the perfect month for my favorite season: fall. I adore the sights, sounds, smells and feel of the fall season. Pumpkins and straw bales, colorful mums and burning woodsmoke. And the crisp, cool weather that’s perfect for sitting on the porch and reading a book while sipping hot apple cider.

  This month, we have an excellent variety of books perfectly suited to this very thing, starting with All He Ever Desired, Shannon Stacey’s latest Kowalski family contemporary romance. As always, Shannon delivers a captivating romance with just the right touch of light humor. Joining her in the contemporary romance category is HelenKay Dimon with Lean on Me, the second book in her trilogy. Make sure to check out her first Carina Press title, It’s Not Christmas Without You, and look for We’ll Be Home for Christmas, coming in December 2012.

  If you’re gearing up for Halloween and are in the paranormal mood, check out Regan Summers’s newest novel, Running in the Dark. Debut author Bryn Donovan offers a wonderful paranormal romance in Sole Possession, while Diana Copland’s male/male paranormal romance A Reason to Believe will haunt you long after you’ve read the last page. And joining Diana with a male/male release is L.B. Gregg and her rerelease Men of Smithfield: Seth and David.

  Fans of steampunk romance will be thrilled to see new releases from two of our favorite steampunk authors: Cindy Spencer Pape and Jenny Schwartz. Look for Moonlight & Mechanicals and Courting Trouble to release in mid-October. And as an aside, can I tell you how much I love Jenny’s series name of The Bustlepunk Chronicles? It’s a perfect fit for this series about a spunky young woman in steampunk Australia.

  I’m thrilled to welcome Val Roberts to Carina Press with her newest science-fiction romance novel, The Valmont Contingency. Val and I worked together in the past and I love her voice! And returning to us with another release in the fantasy romance genre is Karalynn Lee. If you’ve never had the pleasure of immersing yourself in one of Karalynn’s worlds, now’s the time to check out Heart of the Dragon’s Realm.

  My team is especially excited about this next book from Julie Rowe. As fans of Downton Abbey, they fell in love with the first book in her new historical romance series set during World War I, Saving the Rifleman.

  If you’re wondering where the romantic suspense is, not to worry, Kate Sherwood offers up a spine-tingling suspense, Shadow Valley. And mystery author Janis Patterson returns with her newest novel, Beaded to Death.

  To round out the month of October, we have two spicy erotic romances to tempt you. With No Reservations, Lilly Cain kicks off her new erotic series, Bad Girls Know. Last, but definitely not least, the book from Christine d’Abo’s Long Shots series I’ve been waiting for. Mouthwatering sex club owner Josh is finally going to get his own happily ever after and you don’t want to miss the mind-blowing chemistry Christine has written to get him there in Calling the Shots.

  We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  www.carinapress.com

  www.twitter.com/carinapress

  www.facebook.com/carinapress

  Dedication

  This one is for my cousin Carol Spencer, PhD,

  the little sister I never had, who now has an e-reader,

  so she can read my books.

  Acknowledgements

  As usual, I need to thank the Untitled Writers’ Group and Anny Cook for their critiques and support. Thanks also to my agent, Evan Gregory, and my editor, Melissa Johnson, along with the amazing staff at Carina Press, who help keep things moving in my world. I’d also like to thank the Lolitas of the STEAMED! blog for welcoming me into their midst, along with the supportive authors and readers at Here Be Magic and Romance Books R Us. Finally, as always, I need to say thank you to my husband, Glenn, who not only puts up with my quirks, but is even willing to dress in silly costumes and go to steampunk and science fiction conventions with me. I’m also lucky to have my long-suffering offspring who seem to take my weirdness in stride without displaying too much embarrassment. Thank you all.

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  London, June 1851

  Winifred Carter, almost sixteen, barely dared to breathe for fear that something would ruin the moment as a burly dark man and a fair-haired faerie-tale princess said their wedding vows in the garden of a duke.

  Cor, an honest-to-bloody-goodness duke. He was old, as was the duchess, but they’d been kind to Wink and pretended they didn’t notice when her speech slipped back into the cant of a Wapping pickpocket. Everybody at the wedding also pretended not to see that both the bride and groom had been recently injured, and still sported a bandage or two beneath their silks and satins. Wink bit her lip. Wounds they got saving my sorry hide.

  In the space of the last two months, Wink’s world had turned upside down and inside out. There she’d been, fighting vampyres in a stinking Wapping alleyway with her friends, like always, and along had come this man. He’d helped slay the monsters, and he’d let Wink, Tom and the others run away before the coppers came.

  Of course Wink had hidden to watch. A toff, helping the likes of them? It didn’t make any sense. Neither did the young constable with the curling black hair and twinkling dark eyes, who’d winked at her, but not given her away to the other coppers. Constable McCullough had been the handsomest thing she’d ever seen, though the older man—Sir Merrick he’d called himself—wasn’t exactly an ogre. Once the night was over, Wink never expected to lay eyes on either of them again.

  But Sir Merrick came back to Wapping and told Tom a story. What if, he’d said, King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table had never disappeared? What if their descendants were still alive, still in Britain, protecting people from the monsters, bloodsucker and human as best they could? Even stranger, what if Tom were one of them? Wink had to admit, Tom’s senses for finding monsters and his skill at hunting them was unusual, as much so as her facility with machines or Nell’s gift for seeing ghosts. When Sir Merrick had offered Tom the chance to come live in his posh Mayfair mansion and train to be a
Knight, Tom had refused. Not unless the others come along, he’d said. Tom was a good sort like that. Wouldn’t let the little ones down.

  Wink still couldn’t believe Sir Merrick had said yes. Now the five street rats from Wapping were living it up in Mayfair, the wards of a baronet. Of course they ran amok. Who wouldn’t? Soon, a governess came, Miss Caroline with her ready smile, bright green eyes and cor, pointed ears. Next they found out Tom wasn’t a bastard, but the heir to another baronet. Tom’s grandfather was too sick to take care of him, but he sent papers proclaiming Sir Merrick as Tom’s legal guardian, and one day Tom would have a huge house and the title Sir. Wink’s head had barely stopped spinning from that, when the bloodsuckers and their human friends had kidnapped her to make a machine that would allow them to pass as human. Sir Merrick, Miss Caroline and the dashing Constable Liam had all rushed to her rescue.

  That’s when she learned Constable Liam was a werewolf. Not that it mattered. Wink had gotten used to strange things early in her life, even back before Wapping. Furry by moonlight or not, he still made her heart flutter and something strange twist in her stomach.

  Now Miss Caro and Sir Merrick were married. Wearing her hair up and her first long skirts to mark the occasion, Wink clapped as loudly as anyone, just barely refraining from whistling or whooping in her joy. Instead, she hugged George, her brass clockwork mastiff, who’d been decked out with a blue ribbon for the occasion.

  “I know this isn’t a traditional part of the wedding ceremony,” Sir Merrick said to the crowd. “But we have something else we’d like you all to witness.”

  Then, right there in the duke’s garden, in front of half the Order of the Round Table, a Lord Justice and all sorts of other toffs, Sir Merrick and Caroline signed papers, adopting Wink, Nell, Piers and Jamie. Tears leaked down Wink’s cheeks. She was Miss Hadrian now. They were a real family. She hugged Sir Merrick—Papa—and her new Mum, who also had tears in her eyes. They dragged Tom in, too, never mind that his new name was Devere, not Hadrian. He’d always be her brother.

  At the wedding breakfast, Papa Merrick opened a letter from the Queen herself and things got even stranger. He was a baron now, Lord Northland, and Wink was officially the Honorable Miss Hadrian. She exchanged stunned looks with Nell, now her legal sister and not just the sister of her heart. Still trying to catch her breath, Wink hugged little Jamie on her other side and looked over at Constable Liam.

  He was younger than Papa, just out of university, so only five or six years older than Wink. Not too old. His dark brown eyes crinkled a little when he smiled and applauded along with the rest, but there was something else there too. Wink wasn’t as good at reading people as she was with machines, but even she could tell there was some sadness behind his genuine happiness for his friend. He looked…lonely. While everyone else was here with a husband or wife or family, he stood all by himself and something twisted in Wink’s heart. He needs somebody too.

  She hoped he’d wait for her to grow up.

  Chapter One

  London, June 1859

  “Any questions?” Winifred Carter Hadrian looked around the room full of the august gentlemen—and very few ladies—of the Royal Society, and straightened her spine. She’d just finished presenting her paper on the beneficial properties of wind and electric power over coal. The members of the Royal Society remained unimpressed. Whether mustachioed, mutton-chopped or rice-powdered, nearly every face regarded her with a unified disapproving frown.

  “What does a young lady like you know about steam engines?” She couldn’t identify the voice—it came from a shadowy corner of the room. Snickers and rude noises erupted in its wake from throughout the so-called genteel membership. The acoustics in the room were impressive. Not only could the audience hear her, but she could hear them more clearly than she’d have liked. The front row, made up of Wink’s family and friends, swiveled and glared at the crowd. Most of the hecklers shut up.

  Wink remained polite. “Are there any further questions?” Not a single hand was raised.

  “The problem, missy, is that our economy is built on coal. Reducing its use costs jobs.” She couldn’t see the owner of that particularly patronizing tone either, but it obviously met the approval of the audience, because another round of boos and jeers broke out. At least they weren’t throwing anything. Yet. That wasn’t unheard of.

  “I’m aware of the monetary value of coal to the empire,” she said. “If you’d read my paper, you’d see I propose to train displaced miners—”

  “Go back to your needlework, girl. It’s where you belong.”

  Wink’s adoptive father, Sir Merrick Hadrian, Baron Northland, rose and whirled on that voice, fists raised. So did his wife, Caroline, though she lifted her parasol. Merrick’s aunt, Dorothy, simply gave the man a death glare.

  “Better yet, on her back. She wouldn’t be too hideous in the dark.” The speaker didn’t shout that remark, but a coincidental lull in the other noise made it stand out like the smell of dead fish. In the back row, Lord Eustace Irons, son of a marquess and a coal heiress, laughed at his own so-called joke. Wink wasn’t surprised. He also had a tendency to grope during waltzes. When he saw that he’d been heard, his pasty skin paled even further and he mumbled an apology as he looked wide-eyed at an angry Lord Northland.

  Meanwhile Sir Thomas Devere, Wink’s foster brother, and his closest friend, Sir Connor MacKay, began to bolt from their seats toward Lord Eustace. Another man, one whose presence had caused Wink’s heart to flutter, caught the two younger men by their coat collars and hauled them back into their seats. “Remember, I’d have to arrest you both for assault. Let’s just get the hell out of here.” Inspector Liam McCullough shot Wink an imperious glance as if commanding her to leave the stage.

  She seethed at being told what to do, but he was right. Retreat was in order. She gave him a nearly imperceptible nod and then smiled at the audience with exquisite politeness. “Thank you, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, for your time. My thesis is, of course, on file at Lovelace College, Oxford, if you care to refer to it at a future date.” With that, she gave a hint of a curtsey and stepped away from the podium, her spine straight and her starched crinoline petticoat rustling.

  As she left the stage, she looked back at Lord Eustace and felt his oily grin skimming over her curves—or lack thereof. Next to him stood another man, one Wink had never seen before. His leer wasn’t as overtly slimy, but somehow, his intense and calculating stare made the back of her neck itch. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tom mutter a quick spell under his breath. Eustace seemed to hit a slick patch on the floor and went flying, landing on his arse on the marble. His friend tripped over him and fell as well.

  Both Tom and Connor had moved to the door, so neither Eustace nor his oily friend saw a thing. Wink turned her head and hid a grin. It was fun to have sorcerers in the family. The Knights of the Round Table were all trained in simple spells.

  Wink couldn’t wait to get home to Hadrian House and change out of her ridiculous full hoopskirts, back into her comfortable coveralls. Ignoring the crowd and the continued catcalls, she slipped out the side door, whisked open by Connor and Tom as she approached.

  Out in the hallway, she breathed deeply and smiled up at her rescuers. “Thank you, lads. That was not my finest hour.”

  Tom gave her shoulder a gentle punch. “They’ll come ’round, ducks,” he whispered in the street cant they’d used, growing up together in the back alleys of Wapping.

  “I think you were splendid.” Connor took her hand and bowed over it. He never failed to treat her as if she was a real lady, though his family was one of just a few who knew her true origins. Before Wink’s adoption at age fifteen by Merrick and Caroline, she’d been a daughter of impoverished gentry until she was nine, then nothing more than a street rat. Thanks to their protection and support, she’d been re-educated as a lady, her history hidden. Not a single soul in that audience of stuffed shirts had any clue about Wink’s real history, or ever wou
ld. They simply saw a young woman of moderate looks, hazel eyes that changed from green to brown depending on her clothing and unfashionable copper-colored hair. Mostly people noticed a female who’d broken tradition to study at Oxford and then dared lecture them on the way they managed technology. It didn’t matter that she was the Honorable Miss, now that her father was Lord Northland, rather than the girl who had fixed laundry machines for a room and fought vampyres in the streets. She was female, twenty-four in two weeks and a trained engineer. That was more than enough to make her suspect among “serious” scientists.

  Connor offered his arm. “Tom is right. They’ll come around. You’ll see.”

  “Thank you, Connor,” Wink said. He was a dear friend, tall and broad-shouldered with dark auburn hair and lovely pale blue eyes. Like Tom, he looked utterly proper in his charcoal and dove-gray morning suit, with a striped ascot at his neck. In fact, the two men could almost pass for brothers. Tom’s sandy hair had darkened to a rich golden brown now that he was grown and his freckles had faded. His blue eyes were a darker shade than Connor’s, a deep azure that bordered on indigo. Furthermore, both of them, like Merrick, and Connor’s father Sir Fergus, were Knights of the Round Table, and therefore among the most dangerous men in Britain. Connor’s bluff manner and cheerful smile provided effective camouflage, making him seem harmless as a toy bear. He leaned down and swept her into an enthusiastic hug.

  “You were brilliant, darling.” Caroline joined the embrace, hugging Wink from behind. “They’re a bunch of nodcocks, but we knew that.”

  “Thanks, Mum.” She blinked back a tear. Despite having been adopted so late in life, she’d taught herself to think of them as her parents, partly to avoid confusion for the younger children, and partly because they deserved it. Merrick and Caroline had saved Wink’s life, risking their own. They’d taken in a pack of street rats and claimed them, with the nominal explanation to others that the children were the orphans of childhood friends. The motley collection of Hadrians might not be blood, but they were very much family.