Read Online Gilded Lily by Delphine Dryden - Free Book Online Page A

could find whatever it is that runs on the track,” Freddie whispered back. “I suspect it would make this distance in a fraction of the time we’re taking to walk it.” They couldn’t walk all night.
    â€œYour father and the other one must have used it. Oh, what’s this?”
    On the right-hand track sat what appeared to be a handcar—or rather, on closer examination, a velocipede. The simple metal framework sported two seats and a complicated system of treadles and gears that led, to Freddie’s great delight, to a rudimentary Stirling engine.
    â€œBring the torch closer! Oh, this is brilliant. Look, the treadles create a charge to heat the element that powers the engine, then the engine maintains the speed after you shift this gear. This will take us as far as we care to go. All we need to do is provide the momentum.”
    â€œYou believe you can operate that after a cursory glance?” He sounded less disbelieving than amazed, to his credit.
    She nodded. “It’s what I do. Climb on.”
    It wasn’t as smooth as described, of course. Building momentum from a dead stop was a good deal of work. Then finding the switch to start the heating process once they were in motion took Freddie a few extra moments, during which they had to hurtle into pitch blackness because she was using the torch to examine the controls on the engine casing. She had to stop pedaling in order to crank the engine itself when the element seemed sufficiently hot, the attached indicator needle creeping into the comforting green zone on the dial. Barnabas had to work all the harder in those moments, complaining bitterly as he did so. Then the first time she attempted to engage the gear shift, the velocipede shuddered so badly she thought it might come apart, and she had to ease back and reconsider, all the while pumping madly at the treadles until she thought her legs or lungs would surely give out. The second time, however, she coordinated a brief pause in their pedaling. The gear clunked into place and engaged, and suddenly they were whirring down the track along the torch’s narrow beam, faster than could possibly be safe.
    Barnabas laughed aloud as he resumed pedaling in a slow, easy motion. The velocity was in the engine’s hands now, the treadles merely providing its sustaining heat and helping maintain momentum.
    â€œI could go like this all night,” he claimed.
    â€œWe should agree on a time. Especially as we’ve no idea how fast we’re really going.”
    He checked his pocket chronometer, a lovely gold piece that gleamed even in the weak light of the torch. “Twenty minutes?”
    â€œForty-five. I don’t suppose you have a compass as well? I didn’t think to bring one.”
    â€œThirty minutes,” he countered. “We’ve been some time down here already, and I suspect Mr. Pinkerton won’t give the full hour and a half before he investigates. We need to allow ourselves time for the round-trip and the lift ride back up. And no, I don’t have a compass.”
    â€œFair enough. Oh . . . shine the light forward again? Not on the tunnel,” she corrected, “on the bar in front of us. We’re both idiots.” Leaning forward, she pulled a lever and the tracks before them were flooded with light from the velocipede’s headlamp.
    â€œOf course it has one. And of course we only find it after I’ve been turning the crank on this silly thing until my hand is ready to come off at the wrist.”
    â€œThat thing isn’t silly. It’s gotten us this far. And your wrist will recover, I’m sure. Oh, seeing farther ahead doesn’t make it any less unnerving, does it?”
    â€œNot one bit.”
    They tried not to dwell on what would happen if there were an unexpected obstacle up ahead, an unfinished track or construction debris in the way. Freddie couldn’t see a way to adjust the speed, so