call it a train, as it can pull dozens of boxcars behind it endlessly at astonishing speeds. I left England on the seven o’clock train last night and arrived in Perth early this afternoon.”
He shook his head in abject disbelief, aching to see the real thing. To discover how his empire and world had changed in so long. “How does it work, this locomotive?”
“I’m no engineer, but the engine is powered by steam created with coal fire.” She put up a finger as if to tap an idea out of the sky. “You’ll be interested to know, ships are powered by steam and steel, as well, rather than wind and wood. We can cross to America in a matter of six days.”
“America?” He scratched his head. “Oh, you mean the colonies.”
Her lips twisted wryly. “Well…that’s a long and rather disappointing story. But the short of it is, they are their own sovereign nation now.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re having me on.”
“I am not. Declared their independence in seventeen seventy-six. They’ve their own parliament and everything.”
“And what royal family, I’d like to know?”
“A democratic republic, if you’d believe it. A society whose aristocracy is chosen from the best capitalists.”
“Not landowners, then?”
She shrugged, gathering back a few of the portraits from the bed into a tidy pile. “Some. But mostly industry giants and war heroes. Machines, factories and the like have changed everything. England’s like that too, now. The new century will belong to innovators rather than aristocrats, I’d wager.”
“Good God, what I wouldn’t give to see that.” He couldn’t decide what would be worse, dying before his time and missing what might have been. Or existing past his death and learning what he was still missing. What if the Empire rose and fell, and he was still sitting here in the bunghole of Blighty, watching generations of Balthazars raise, eat, and sometimes bugger sheep?
Her eyes brimmed with sympathy, as if she could read his thoughts. “I wish you could see it all. I plan to. I haven’t been to America yet, though I’m dying to visit New York. I think I’ll go there next if my journey to Constantinople is delayed.”
“You’re traveling to Constantinople? With whom?” He looked pointedly at her ring finger, which he noted was bare.
Why that ignited a little glow of pleasure in his chest, he couldn’t say. It wasn’t as though he could speak for her. It wasn’t as though he knew he would. They’d been acquainted for all of five minutes.
“Oh…haven’t decided yet,” she hedged, glancing away and plucking at a loose thread in the coverlet.
“You mentioned your family wanted an advantageous marriage for you, but you didn’t introduce yourself as nobility.”
His observation seemed to displease her. “No. But my father owns a shipping company, and the thing to do is marry off rich heiresses to impoverished lords.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat that he wished didn’t convey the depth of his derision on that score. It wasn’t that he thought women shouldn’t marry above their rank.
It was that he instantly and intensely hated the idea of her being married.
She was young, but old enough to have been made a mother many times over. Maybe twenty and five or so…So why wasn’t she spoken for?
John allowed his notice to drift to another photograph, this one of a woman in a dark dress seated in a velvet chair. She posed like one would for any master of portraiture, looking off into the distance. Her features carefully still.
From her place at his elbow, Vanessa said, “This is my eldest sister, Veronica. The Dowager Countess of Weatherstoke.”
“A Countess. How fortunate for her.”
“I wouldn’t have traded places with her for the entire world.” The melancholy note in her voice made him glance up at her, but her faraway expression didn’t brook further discussion.
He saw the resemblance between her and the woman in the portrait. Hair the color of midnight. Bright eyes, a heart-shaped face, and elegant, butter-soft skin.
“My family is visiting her in Paris, where she lives among the beau monde,” she said, her voice injected with a false, syrupy insouciance. She picked up the photograph as if to hide it from him, examining it with a pinched sort of melancholy. “Veronica is the beauty of the family.”
“No,” he insisted more harshly than he meant to. “No, she is not.”
She peered up at him oddly, her gaze had become wary and full of doubts he dared not define. “Yes, well…the photo doesn’t do her