Magnifiques Artifices, Tome 3 : Magnifiques artifices

Excerpt: Chapter 1

Somewhere over the Atlantic, late September 1889

The man's eyes bulged in his final moments and he glared with brutal accusation. "You—" he choked. "You did it ... you'll regret it ..."

She faltered back, but her feet tangled in her apple-green skirts and she couldn't run. Still he staggered toward her.

"You—" Those eyes, filling her vision. Hazel eyes under auburn hair. James's eyes in another man's face. And then they boiled over, sizzling like bacon on a griddle, and popped and she screamed—

—and woke herself up. The breath left her lungs and Lady Claire Trevelyan flopped back on the bunk with a gasp. Sweat trickled down her temple.

Breathe. You must breathe.

Lightning Luke had met his Maker several weeks ago at her hands, and while he might have found some measure of peace, she had not. Most of the time she was able to tamp down the guilt at having ended the life of another human being. It had been an accident. But in the midnight hours, there was his face again, contorted and boiling and accusing her until his last breath.

It was always so real, even if she had never actually seen his eyes. Her mind had put those of another in that face, one she had wronged, as if he—

Something rustled in the dark.

Claire sucked in a breath. It was not Lightning Luke. He was in a watery grave, to the best of her knowledge. It was not even Lord James Selwyn, who was in London. She was safe aboard the Lady Lucy, the luxury airship belonging to John, Earl Dunsmuir, and his wife Davina, to whom she had restored Willie, their son, not a week past.

Her cabin, while comfortably appointed with a velvet coverlet on a bed set into a kind of curved cupboard, and gleaming paneling that set off the visiting chairs, was not large. She could cross it in six steps, and by now, the third night of their voyage, she knew its topography by heart.

"Maggie?" she whispered. Perhaps one of the Mopsies had awakened in the night and needed her. "Lizzie?"

A thump, followed by scratching that somehow communicated agitation. This time, she could pinpoint its location: above, in the brass piping that ran along the floors and ceilings conveying heat, gas, and various other necessities in an airship this size.

She reached for a moonglobe. That was what the countess called them, she being of a gentle and fanciful turn of mind. Claire had inquired of the chief steward what they were, and he had launched into such an enthusiastic explanation of its properties ("One cannot have lamps and flames on an airship, my lady—only think of the gas fuselage above our heads!") that even she had been astonished that so much clever chemistry could be cupped in her hand. She shook the globe and it lit from within as the chemicals combined, illuminating the entire room.

No one was there.

But something was. Something that scratched, and clinked, and—was that a flutter? Good heavens, did bats lodge in the high ceilings of the passenger deck?

She lifted the globe and peered upward, and an enormous winged shadow leaped down upon her head.

She choked down a second scream that wanted to rattle the pipes, and grabbed for the shadow. It fought back, a limbless fighting ball of claws and feathers that—

Feathers?

Claire pounced on the moonglobe she'd dropped and held it up.

The fighting claws and feathers landed on the nightstand and resolved themselves into a red hen, who shook her plumage into order and glared at her with offended dignity.

"Rosie?" Claire's knees gave out and she sat in the opening to her bunk rather suddenly. This couldn't be Rosie, the alpha hen of the flock of rescued chickens at the cottage in Vauxhall. The Dunsmuirs must have a small flock aboard for eggs, though with the powers of modern refrigeration, this seemed rather bucolic and unnecessary.

The hen stepped daintily off the nightstand and onto her knee, settling there as if she meant to spend the night.

She always did this. And it never worked.