Chapter One

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Isabelle eyed the liquid bubbling over its flask and cursed unstable isotopes, clumsy jitters, and meddling guardians.

Lady Isabelle Huxley routinely damned things in threes. She learned the habit from her father. After losing him young, she took up his position as the anti-St. Peter, checking off lists of infernal trios at the gates of hell. The invocations calmed her or, at least, focused her emotions. She despised chaos…chaos and confusion and corsets.

The dorm mother rapped at the door — more gently this time, but it was too late. The first knock had jolted Isabelle mid-pour and ruined the morning’s experiment. “My lady? Mrs. Darling — the chaperone Sir Edward hired to accompany you to the Aerial Express and Constantinople — has arrived.” 

Isabelle stopped the burner with a jerk of her wrist and breathed. She reconsidered her doomed threesome. Silly to blame the isotopes. Chaperone. She chewed the ridiculous word, chomping into its ch, as she scraped the chair back from the desk. That was the third thing. Her own clumsiness, Edward’s meddling, and utterly unnecessary chaperones.

Isabelle used her forearm to shove the goggles up on her forehead as she swung the door wide. The nosepiece tangled in her brown frizz, drawing a wince. 

Two women waited in the corridor. The dorm mother met Isabelle’s hostility with serene indifference. 

(At the School for Young Ladies of Extraordinary Ambition, the headmistress chose her employees for many fine qualities, the most important being stoicism. Students who pursued combustible dreams required teachers able to put out fires — literal and figurative — without panicking.)

Isabelle turned her glare on the stranger. “You’re early.”

Blue eyes twinkled back. “My apologies. I see we interrupted your work.” 

Isabelle gave a grudging shrug of absolution. After all, she supposed it wasn’t the woman’s fault Edward selected her as the tool for his interference. Studying Mrs. Darling, Isabelle wondered where her guardian found her. She’d always assumed that chaperones must be militant wardens or narcoleptic grannies.

Blond, rosy-cheeked, and forty-something, Mrs. Darling resembled neither. The woman bit down on a small smile and cleared her throat. “Why don’t I return in half an hour, my lady? That should give you time to prepare for our departure. At that time, we can meet one another properly.”

“Not a minute more, Isabelle.” The dorm mother tilted her head to eye Isabelle over her tortoiseshell glasses.

Isabelle nodded a curt dismissal. As she closed the door, she sagged against it and turned to face the disaster, watching the puddle drip from desk to floor. Sighing, she threw her soggy notes away. She rubbed damp and ink-smudged fingers on a rag until the abused skin prickled. After cleaning the vials, she packed her alchemy equipment for travel and set the case atop two trunks waiting in a corner.

One last glance reassured her that nothing was out of place, and she crossed the dormitory hall to say goodbye to her best friend.

Hippolyta Merryweather — Pippa to her friends, Hippo to her enemies — anticipated her knock. “Come in.”

Isabelle rested against the door as it closed behind her. She smelled the familiar scent of caramel. Her friend had a notorious sweet tooth. One couldn’t pass her room without catching a whiff of dessert. Pippa loved baking almost as much as engineering, and given the limitations of the dormitories, a perfect soufflé required both.

“He actually did it.” 

Pippa looked up from her book with a horrified expression. “The chaperone?”

“I know he sent word, but part of me still thought it was a jest.” 

Pippa, who knew the dour Sir Edward, raised carrot-colored eyebrows. Isabelle’s guardian may have made a joke. Once. It was possible to imagine him stumbling into an ancient Greek pun after his second snifter of brandy.

Isabelle conceded the point with a shrug and regarded the half-finished device on the floor between them. The object resembled a small oven with a catapult mounted on top. Did it bake scones and throw them to hungry diners? Was it a new game? A safe that hurled flame at potential thieves? Pippa’s imagination was always fertile and sometimes dangerous. 

Isabelle pulled her mind back to the topic — the woman — under discussion. “Her name is Mrs. Darling, if you can believe it.”

Her friend pushed herself up from her sprawl on the bed, braids swinging. “I still don’t understand why.”

“I assume it was her husband’s surname.” 

Pippa ignored the weak quip. “Sir Edward never insisted on a chaperone before.”

This was true. Isabelle’s only surviving relation was a bumbling fool, but he had the redeeming quality of indifference. “I believe an acquaintance made insinuations…” The word writhed on her tongue. “They claimed it wasn’t proper for me to romp about unsupervised in such an environment.”

She traded a wry look with Pippa. If Sir Edward understood his ward at all, he’d have long given up on propriety. Shipboard life was only part of the situation.

Every year, she spent weeks in transit, associating with the inhabitants of the Aerial Express. Last summer, Pippa accompanied Isabelle to her guardian’s home in Constantinople via the dirigible. Isabelle hesitated about introducing her refined friend to the captain, whom she viewed as a surrogate uncle, and his crew, but Pippa lacked Isabelle’s innate reserve and quickly embraced the ship’s freedom. 

During the voyage, Pippa also fell into an infatuation with the roguish navigator, the young woman whom Isabelle had ranked as her closest contemporary until Pippa displaced her. It made Isabelle itch. She worried — half for Pippa’s heart and half that a budding romance would interfere with her own friendships, few and precious. She wasn’t proud of her reaction, but she’d been relieved when Pippa’s parents demanded she join them for the spring holidays.

Anxiety was a familiar foe. Isabelle went through her days in a constant state of worry that she’d trip over the messy ties between people. Most of the time, she preferred the clean solitude of her own company. 

Pippa cleared her throat. “I’m jealous, you know.” 

For a heart-stopping second, Isabelle thought her friend could read her mind.

“You’ll be one of the first to experience the new design. Beechcraft Enterprises replaced the Aerial Express’s engine this past winter.”

Isabelle breathed easier.

Pippa went on. “The latest model was the last thing Julia Beechcraft designed before disappearing.” At this statement, she stared at the wall where she’d pinned her idol’s portrait. It was from an old newspaper clipping and faded, but you could still see the inventor’s strong features.

“She didn’t disappear, Pippa. She left the company. Formally. There was an announcement in the financial press and everything. After Rosefield, she felt she could no longer be part of her father’s business.”

Pippa rolled to her stomach and stared at Isabelle. “And what has she done for the past two years? We don’t know. She disappeared.”

“Staying out of the papers isn’t the same as disappearing.” Isabelle grimaced at the mess about her and bent to return a wrench to the toolkit beside it.

“Don’t move the wrench, Izzy. Or organize my effects. The last time, I couldn’t find anything for days.” 

Isabelle pressed her palms against her side and tried to ignore the sty. 

Pippa slid off the bed and came to demand a hug. Plump and cuddly-looking, Pippa gave incredible hugs. Isabelle did not. She grew hyper-aware of her bones and sharp edges and often tensed despite her best efforts. Just as she awkwardly patted Pippa on the back, her friend leaped out of the embrace, stumbling on her room’s debris.

“I almost forgot.” Pippa hastened to her desk and tore through its compartments. The first drawer she opened held a jumble of gears and tools that clanked as she rummaged. She tossed a miniature propeller onto the floor and sent straight pins skidding across the desktop to join a pile of their fellows. She found the object on her third try and let out a triumphant “ha!” before pressing a small velvet bag into Isabelle’s hand. “Wait until you’re on board to open it.” Pippa blushed, her skin turning the blotchy pink common to redheads. Despite her abundant genius, the girl grew bashful when presenting her work, a habit Isabelle reproached.

“Thank you.” She slipped the gift into her pocket and cast one last look at the clutter. “Don’t blow yourself up before I return.”

“I’ll promise to be careful if you agree not to pass the entire journey working in your cabin.”

They solemnly shook on the bargain. It was an easy concession. Isabelle was excited to spend days hunched over her lab equipment, but she would also visit with her friends. A little.

She left Pippa and frowned at a thought, her steps faltering. How much would her new chaperone interfere with these plans?

Isabelle looked out the windows as their carriage rolled along the street. She watched the sun bounce off the skeletal ironwork of the railway and traced the silhouette of Lambeth Palace in the distance. A steam-powered bicycle clattered beside them, its rider vibrating on the cobblestones in a way that struck her as uncomfortable. 

Her mind lingered on her unsuccessful experiment, and the sound of the gig’s wheels provided her spinning thoughts with musical accompaniment. The project wasn’t her own, not in design. It belonged to her correspondent, a well-regarded Hungarian scientist who believed his friend to be a reclusive gentleman rather than a young lady. The man had succeeded where all alchemists failed before, bonding aether to hydrogen instead of carbon. All the top alchemy journals cheered and speculated about potential applications. 

Isabelle played with her chatelaine necklace, sliding her hand from the pendant down each chain to its attachment. She pressed her fingertips into the cold, hard edges of a dangling tin of matches. She always equipped the chatelaine with a pocket watch and folding knife, but changed the other accessories, reaching into her jewelry box each day for implements she expected to need. There were writing utensils, magnifying glasses, and other odds and ends, not to mention the capsules and vials she could fill as wanted.

When she released the tin of matches, it left a capital “L” indentation on the pad of her index finger. The Hungarian’s success only sharpened her awareness of the metaphorical hourglass. Someone would find the solution. Isabelle needed it to be her. Her correspondent wasn’t trying to create a rechargeable aetheric battery, but he’d beaten her to one step in the process. She reminded herself that renewable energy required a long staircase of steps before it would be a real possibility. 

Mrs. Darling glanced at her, eyes drawn by the clicks and tinkles of Isabelle’s fidgeting. At the start of the ride, she’d tried to initiate a conversation, asking the usual how-do-you-dos of new acquaintances, but Isabelle resisted. The chaperone finally accepted defeat. The woman retreated into her thoughts with the ease of someone whose inner landscape was well-mapped. 

They crossed the Thames, and the smell of diesel and the muddy tang of the river perfumed the air. Men scrambled between the massive steamships and the docks, unloading goods from all corners of the globe and cursing in every known language. Two blocks away from the London air station, the general clamor sharpened into distinct, repeated phrases.

“Hold Beechcraft accountable!”

“No more Rosefields!”

“People over machines!”

Beneath the blond ringlets, a frown wrinkled Mrs. Darling’s forehead. 

Still a block from the carriage circle in front of the station, their driver slowed and encouraged the horses to one side of the road. He opened the compartment separating them. “I’m afraid to get much closer in this crowd. I have the best horses in the city, and Midnight and Dawn are less apt to break down than those newfangled carriages. But they might spook and hurt a person.”

Mrs. Darling nodded and thanked him before turning to Isabelle. “My lady—”

“Isabelle,” the lady corrected. 

“Isabelle, I should fetch a porter.”

“Nonsense.” She thought of her massive trunks, which she could not possibly lug that distance, and hastily added, “We can direct the porters to retrieve our belongings here once we arrive. I doubt we are the only passengers encountering this challenge.” 

Mrs. Darling narrowed her eyes, glancing between the crowd and her charge, but decided not to choose this battle. 

The women exited the vehicle. Isabelle twisted to reach back for her alchemy kit and hauled the leather bundle from the seat with a grunt. The case was heavy, but she refused to trust someone else with the delicate equipment.

Protesters, lookers-on, and irate travelers crowded the street. The closer the two women drew to the dirigible station, the greater the press of bodies. Isabelle began to regret her impatience. A young man with his cap pulled low over the eyes shuffled toward them, and she clutched her case tightly.

The demonstrators were an assorted lot. Respectable matrons rubbed elbows with scruffy, hollow-eyed fellows, and Isabelle noticed several empty sleeves and trouser legs. She wondered if those people were present at the Rosefield catastrophe. One man clanked as he walked. He held a box connected to his prosthetic with pulleys, and the rotating gears allowed for shambling movement forward. 

Amid the throng, the pressure at Isabelle’s back doubled without warning, making it hard to breathe and sending a thrill of panic down her spine. She obeyed Mrs. Darling’s tug at her sleeve. They joined the crowd at one side of the street where they could see the cause of duress. A whistling steam-powered vehicle drove the people remorselessly. It forced them to compress and divide down the middle to accommodate the arrival.

Isabelle muttered as the contraption drew close to the station gates. “Bad manners, narrow roads, and poor urban planning.” 

A gray-haired passenger emerged from the conveyance. The air filled with gasps and angry shouts. The man’s over-strong forehead tugged his hairline toward his nose and into his trademark scowl. In this crowd, there was no chance he could pass unrecognized.

“Murderer!” a voice shouted. 

“Fiend!”

A fresh round of “Hold Beechcraft accountable” sprang from the protesters, and Isabelle thought she detected more than one passerby join the chant. 

Julius Beechcraft — the owner of the airship line and the father of Pippa’s idol, Julia — sneered as a station employee opened the gate. He turned his back and strode through, dismissing the gathered rabble.

Isabelle wondered what Mrs. Darling thought of the scene. Her question died unasked. Mrs. Darling stared after the notorious magnate, hatred filling her eyes and adding lines to the corners of her mouth. 

A mustached gentleman next exited the vehicle, speaking with the man at the gate as he gestured to the luggage left behind. He did not share his employer’s disdain and avoided the crowd’s gaze, hunching in on himself as he scurried after Beechcraft. 

Mrs. Darling sighed, and her expression relaxed. 

The mob rearranged itself. Irritated people wreaked their petty vengeance, leaving the unseen chauffeur with no way to turn around. Mrs. Darling tilted her head forward, and the two women resumed their block-long odyssey. 

They moved at a quicker pace in Beechcraft’s wake. He had cleared a route through the center, and his fellow passengers took shameless advantage. The disturbance regulated the station’s usual traffic, and they continued to move easily once they passed the gates. Only the odd porter remained between them and the pneumatic lift. Isabelle seized control, pausing to instruct one to fetch their luggage please. She left him with directions and a large tip.

As the elevator carried them to the docking platform, Mrs. Darling gasped at her first unobstructed view of the Aerial Express. It glowed in the sunlight, its wood sleek with polish and the envelope taut though its ballonets were only half full.

Beechcraft Express airships were the pinnacle of luxury and efficiency. Julia Beechcraft’s designs did more than make her rich father, Julius, richer. They revolutionized air travel and the amount of weight and power a person could safely chart through the skies. The result was a smaller but roomier ship.

Next to her, Mrs. Darling swallowed and stared at the floating vessel. 

“Have you flown before?” 

“Only once, and that on a small balloon for tourists wanting to see London from above.” 

Isabelle led the way up the boarding plank, the wind ripping hair from her tight bun. “There’s no reason to be nervous.”

She stepped off the platform to find the captain waiting for her. Deep in conversation with the ship’s doctor, he paused long enough to smile at her and raise a finger. She nodded to both men. The doctor was a relatively recent acquaintance, a man she would have liked even if his infirmary wasn’t her best shipboard source of laboratory staples such as distilled water and alcohol.

Captain Miro had aged since she last saw him. New wrinkles lined his forehead, and his gray beard needed a trim. His black skin didn’t show the purple circles that plagued Isabelle after a sleepless night, but deep shadows ringed his brown eyes, tattling on him, testifying to recent strain. 

She heard him ask, “Can you encourage her to take a different flight? If she’s already poorly, I hate to think what the journey will do to the woman. This trip promises to be rough. We’re leaving a heartbeat before the storm hits London, and I expect it to chase us.”

The doctor swallowed, seeming more nervous at the prospect of turbulence than befitted someone who’d served two years aboard the Aerial Express. “No. Whatever her reasons for travel, they don’t allow for delay. Just keep the staff away from her room. I doubt she has a catching illness, but even so, better to let the woman rest in peace. I’ll bring her meals and personally monitor her health.”

Miro clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I’ll pass the word and otherwise leave the matter to you.”

With a parting wave to Isabelle, the doctor left the deck, and Captain Miro could greet her properly. She set down her alchemy case, and he placed his massive hands on her shoulders and squinted. “No. I do not believe it. You have become even more beautiful than when I last saw you.”

She tolerated such nonsense from no one else. Isabelle was not a beauty. In retrospect, she had been a cute child, her sharp features elfin, giving the serious young girl a misleading air of impishness. Grown, she was…perfectly fine-looking.

“My lady?” Mrs. Darling ventured.

Isabelle clasped her hands over the captain’s and smiled. He let her go with a wink before nodding to the older woman. 

“Mrs. Darling, this is Captain Miro.” She cut her eyes at him. “Leader of this vessel and too important a person to play porter.”

“Far too important, you ungrateful child.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Mrs. Darling fixed her lips into a smile. 

“And you, ma’am. Let me show you to your rooms.” He bent to grab Isabelle’s alchemy case, and they set off.

“I assume I’m in my usual cabin.”

He shook his head and shot Isabelle a quizzical look. “When your guardian sent word about your companion, we chose a pair of connecting rooms.” 

Annoyance stabbed at Isabelle. She loved her cabin — indeed, she thought of it as hers no matter what other guests occupied it in her absence.

Perhaps Miro sensed the direction of her thoughts. “Your usual quarters are empty this trip.”

The ladies followed Miro through the expansive atrium and down a corridor. Massive windows let them spy on the protest outside as they walked. The figures seemed small from this height, but there were many of them.

“There was quite a scene when we arrived. Apparently, Beechcraft himself is traveling with us to Constantinople. ”

“Yes.” The tense syllable lingered, the sound causing Isabelle’s muscles to tighten instinctively.

“I’ve never met the man.” It was almost odd considering how frequently she traveled on his flagship.

“You’re not missing much.” Miro regretted the muttered aside, and his throat rumbled as he cleared it.

They passed the parlor and tea room, and Mrs. Darling gawked at the elegantly set tables. A soft clink of china suggested movement behind the scenes as the staff prepared for their guests’ first meals.

They reached their cabins. “Corrosion,” Mrs. Darling swore. The impropriety made Isabelle like her more. “This is beautiful.”

It was beautiful, Isabelle admitted. It wasn’t as expansive as the familiar room. There was no separation between the bedroom and living area, but all the Aerial Express’s first-class apartments were spectacular.

Windows created the illusion of ample space, and wrought iron and brass accents drew the eye without ever exceeding the bounds of good taste. Brocade fabric framed the glass, and the leather furniture managed to be both elegant and comfortable. 

Next door, Mrs. Darling’s smaller room contained a bed tucked up into a cupboard above the couch. Levers allowed the staff to transform the chamber at night and maximized the daytime dimensions.

Miro said, “A maid will come by to unpack your luggage when it arrives.” 

Mrs. Darling offered Miro a tip in thanks. The captain hid a smile as he declined, suggesting that she give the money to the maid instead.

Isabelle agreed with Mrs. Darling’s suggestion that they lie down before dinner. (Or rather, she agreed the chaperone should lie down and leave her to her own devices.) She closed the connecting door and checked the time. She probably couldn’t get away with dining in her room, not the first night. Isabelle would join the other passengers and point to this magnanimity if her chaperone tried to drag her from her study tomorrow.

She huffed in impatience. Dinner was both too close and too far, creating one of those spiky-edged blocks of time that fit nowhere. Not enough time to do anything important and too much time to do nothing. 

Isabelle withdrew her correspondent’s article on the process of bonding aether to hydrogen, but she kept finding excuses to look away from the page, the proof that someone had surpassed her. At one point, she heard Mrs. Darling exit, and the woman didn’t return until shortly before she summoned her charge to dinner. 

Opening the door, Isabelle stared at Mrs. Darling. Edward’s letter mentioned that the chaperone was a widow, but she received the impression that the loss was old. The woman hadn’t been in formal mourning earlier, so why had she added the lavender mesh veil covering her face? She’d need to tie the accessory back to eat dinner. Isabelle’s better angels instructed her to ignore the object, and, for once, she listened to the insipid cloud-dwellers.

While Isabelle locked her cabin, her neighbor’s opened. Julius Beechcraft emerged. To her other side, Mrs. Darling made a small noise. It was half-growl, half-squeak, the noise of an animal unsure whether to hide or attack. Isabelle turned, but the netting obscured the details of her chaperone’s expression.

A young man stood further down the hall, drawing Isabelle’s eye. Blond and athletic, he possessed the type of unreasonable good looks that spoke of a charmed existence. His beauty irritated her, and she wanted to scowl at him to prove herself unaffected, but he didn’t notice her. His glower was wholly for Beechcraft.

Was there anyone on board who didn’t despise Beechcraft?

That’s it for the first chapter! The story continues in chapter two.

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