Page 86 of The English Duke
Once she was certain everything was in working order she returned to the cottage, sat at the table in the middle of the space, and wrote her findings in the journal. The tasks of inspecting the compressor and recording what she’d found were things she did every day, relaxing in their routine and repetition.
In a way, it was as if she kept alive all the various bits and pieces of her life with her father.
She could almost expect him to come walking in any moment, carrying a piece of toast in his right hand and his mug of tea in the other, pushing the door closed with his hip.
“It looks to be a bright and beautiful day, my dear Martha,”he’d say as he did every day, regardless of the weather.
Strangely, most of the days with her father were bright and beautiful. He had such a sunny personality it put everyone around him in a good mood.
The cottage had been built to specifically house Matthew York’s experiments and inventions, a two-room structure where he could tinker and test, then perhaps take a nap in the loft reached by a ladder in the corner. The second room was used for storage, the space nearly empty now that most of the inventions had been taken to Sedgebrook.
The cottage still smelled of his tobacco and she found it comforting. In the afternoon the sun streamed in through the windows on the west side, making her think she needed a cat like Hero to take advantage of the squares of light.
The whitewashed walls in this main room had once been adorned with plans and sketches, notes and reminders. She’d rolled up all the plans, copied what she wanted to save, and packed the originals up for the duke.
When her father was alive, the table where she sat had been strewed with drawings and occasionally metal fastenings and copper parts. Now the only thing on it was her journal and theGoldfish, the prototype she’d made using her father’s design.
Over the past weeks theGoldfish’s copper sheathing had changed color. Now it was a greenish hue, indicating corrosion. The final vessel, once she’d solved the problem of the steering, would have to be covered in another metal, something that wouldn’t add significantly to the weight yet keep the corrosion to a minimum.
She’d been studying the experiments Sir Humphry Davy had made on the degradation of copper by seawater and was leaning toward cast iron. The problem was it would have to be forged; she wouldn’t be able to simply pound or twist copper sheets into the final shape of the ship.
Today, however, she decided to put aside the problem of the corrosion and work on the steering mechanism again.
Few people came to the cottage, one of the reasons she’d been coming here every morning in the past weeks and staying until dark. She didn’t want to see Josephine. Nor could she talk to Gran.
Her father had the idea she and Jordan would suit. The thought made her both sad and happy. She wasn’t angry at Gran for trying to fulfill his wishes.
How, though, did she forgive Josephine? She was no closer to answering that question today than she’d been weeks ago when they’d left Sedgebrook.
Ever since then they’d spoken only a few words to each other and those said in Gran’s company and only for her benefit. Otherwise, she and Josephine avoided each other.
She didn’t want to hear about the wedding plans. She didn’t want to have to pretend any type of happiness for her sister. What Josephine had done was wrong, deceptive, and... her thoughts stumbled to a stop. She couldn’t call her sister evil, but she couldn’t help but think what Josephine had done was cold, calculating, and spiteful.
Only one other time in her life had she felt more miserable than she did now—when she’d held her dying father’s hand and watched as he left her. She wanted to believe he’d seen her mother at the end, that their long-awaited reunion had been the reason for his smile.
This situation, the circumstance she found herself in, was not unlike those dark days. Eventually she would learn to live with missing her father, but how did she endure the pain of watching Josephine marry the Duke of Roth?
The upcoming wedding wouldn’t be the celebration of a union as much as a public announcement that Josephine York was becoming the Duchess of Roth.
Jordan was simply incidental to the process.
Even though Josephine would much rather the wedding take place at Sedgebrook’s baroque chapel, her grandmother had insisted it happen here.
Josephine acquiesced without much of a fuss. Marrying in the church they’d attended for years would mean everyone from the nearby villages would attend, in addition to their friends in London. Afterward, everyone would come to Griffin House for the enormous reception being planned.
Each day that passed Martha castigated herself for not saying anything. But it would have been pointless, wouldn’t it? She would have made the situation even worse. Two York sisters claiming the duke had taken their virginity and Jordan being unable to remember any of it.
What had Reese said? That Jordan was surfeited by honor. Well, he’d certainly acted with more honor than anyone else, offering to marry the woman who’d accused him.
What she couldn’t forget—or forgive—was Josephine’s triumphant smile.
The marriage was taking place in indecent haste. No doubt Josephine had given their grandmother some sort of excuse, or claimed that she might be with child.
At least that was one thing Martha didn’t have to worry about.
She put the journal back with the rest of them on the shelf above the table and retrieved the ship she’d made, the exact duplicate of the one she’d taken to Sedgebrook. The only difference was the name etched on the stern: theGoldfish. The ship looked exactly like a goldfish when it wiggled below the surface of the water.
Pulling up a stool, she examined it, seeing the original vessel in her memory. Once again, as she had so many times, she wondered what her father had changed to make the guidance system work. Something small, perhaps, a simple turn of a screw, a change in linkage. Some tiny alteration she’d never noticed.
