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  CAPTAIN FENNA’S DIRIGIBLE VALENTINE

  Smuggler Terrwyn Fenna just escaped from Newgate Prison and most of Queen Victoria’s British Air Force is after her. Instead of spending a quiet Valentine’s Day with her infant daughter, it’s time for them to jump an airship and flee Wales. Terrwyn thinks she’s out of harm's way—until the airship finds itself under siege.

  Ian Cavill, an enslaved crewman serving aboard the government airship Defender, recognizes Terrwyn during the battle. He wants to escape the clutches of the government as much as she does. Will joining forces help them rebuild their lives or lead them into more danger? Both have enemies. Both have much to lose. They can die trying…or find a way to survive.

  Captain Fenna’s Dirigible Valentine is a 27,000-word steampunk adventure novella. It is the second release in the Steampunk Smugglers series.

  What others are saying about the Steampunk Smugglers

  "5 Stars! Steampunk adventure at its finest." — Shoshanna Evers, author of ‘Snowed In With The Tycoon’

  “5 Stars! I love how she blended the recognizable, everyday world with the fantasy of an alternate reality, working out the wonderfully intricate details of the story and giving us an airship ride that is believable, enticing and intriguing. — Teagan Oliver, author of ‘Three Truths’

  “Captain Andrew's Flying Christmas was a fabulous read, especially for a short novella. Her characters are sweet, engaging and brave in a world of darkness and grime.” — Mae Pen on Romancing the Genres

  “A fun, lovely story with a happy ending.” — Sheery’s Place

  Captain Fenna’s Dirigible Valentine

  By Heather Hiestand

  Copyright Heather Hiestand 2011

  Smashwords Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  CAPTAIN FENNA’S DIRIGIBLE VALENTINE

  COPYRIGHT 2011 by Heather Hiestand

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Coffee on Sundays Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Delle Jacobs

  Coffee on Sundays Press

  Visit us at http://www.coffeeonsundays.info

  Publishing History

  First Smashwords Edition, 2011

  ISBN 978-1-4661-7137-4

  Published in the United States of America

  DEDICATION

  For Andy

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to Viola Estrella, Jacquie Rogers, Mary Jo Hiestand, David Hiestand, Katie Hiestand, and Elizabeth Flynn for editing this story. Thank you to Delle Jacobs for the brainstorming session.

  CHAPTER ONE

  February 14, 1893

  Terrwyn Fenna huddled over the counter of the locksmith’s stall outside Cardiff Market, hoping to shield her face from the freezing wind drying her lips and chapping her skin.

  “Where is Owen this bitter day?” asked a youth in a bloody butcher’s apron, walking by with a caged chicken.

  “Joints are bothering him.” Her cousin, Owen, owned the stall. He had stayed in bed that morning and asked her to work for him. She knew she needed Owen to keep housing and feeding her, so she had left her seven-week-old daughter in the care of her cousin’s wife. If only the family could have afforded to locate their stall inside the new indoor market. But any extra money the Fenna family had was sent to the black market builder who was constructing the family’s new airship.

  “Tell him to visit Mary Perkin,” the youth, the youngest member of the Bebb family, advised. “My mam swears by her liniment.”

  “Thank you, I will,” Terrwyn said.

  “Stop by my nhad’s stall when you’re done for the day. I’ll give you a ham hock for the pot.”

  “Ask your father to set aside a couple of your good sausages too.” She rubbed her hands together to generate warmth. “I’ll pay for them.”

  He nodded and went around the corner. The Bebb family lived just two streets away from her cousin’s cottage. They knew why the Fennas were low on shillings, and that they’d receive a case of French spirits as thanks for past assistance when the airship was operational.

  Cardiff had been a center of smuggling for centuries, thanks to the reefs, sandbanks and cliffs along the near shores that made water travel so dangerous. The Fenna fortunes, long built on the smuggling trade, had fallen three years before when the Blockaders, the law enforcement force keeping the air under government control, had attacked Wales and Sussex-based smugglers the same night. Owen Fenna had survived where Terrwyn’s father had not, and saw the recent retirement of Prime Minister Gladstone as an opportunity to take to the skies again. The new prime minister, the earl of Rosebury, didn’t have the stomach or personality of Gladstone, and smuggling was far more lucrative than locksmithing.

  Terrwyn had had enough of mud and horse droppings herself. She couldn’t wait to have her boots on an airship deck again.

  “I need a key to fit this lock,” called a portly, sparsely bearded, middle-aged man, waving a heavy iron box at Terrwyn as he rushed out of the Trinity Street entrance to the market. “My bloody wife lost the key to our strong box.”

  Terrwyn stared at the glass, iron and stone edifice behind him with longing, wishing her day was spent in the warmth inside. The irritated husband plunked the box down in front of her and she was glad he’d brought it. A locksmith had to have proof the customer owned the lock they wanted a key for, otherwise selling to that customer was illegal. A trained screwsman, or lockpicker, herself, she’d had relationships with less scrupulous locksmiths over the years, but she’d never do business with one at ten in the morning on a busy street.

  With the care of a newborn resting on her conscience, she’d been careful to stay law-abiding. As a fugitive sprung from jail the night her daughter was born, she didn’t want to go back to Newgate Prison.

  The man tapped the box. “How long will this take?”

  She picked up the box and examined it. “A pretty standard lock.” Her gaze moved to a rope strung with keys at eye-level on her left. No, they were all too large. The string of keys to her right seemed more promising. She lifted them off the nail and untied the knot, then flipped through until she found the one she wanted. Always one to keep a small workspace neat, she restrung the unwanted keys, knotted the string and hung them back on their nail before fitting her chosen key to the lock.

  “Perfect,” she said.

  “It will unlock the box?”

  “After I file it.” She worked on it for a few moments, sanding the metal until it turned in the lock easily. When she had the box open, she felt a wave of jealousy at the fat pile of shillings inside. If she broke into this man’s market stall late tonight, perhaps she could take this box and start a new life somewhere with Noelle.

  No, she was honest now, an upright citizen. Besides, her family liberated stores from the government,
and only then when times were bad, never from common individuals. “One shilling, sir.”

  The man plucked one from his box and tossed it in her direction. She grabbed it out of the air and dropped it into the pouch at her sturdy leather belt. Owen had said she could keep a quarter of the day’s earnings for herself.

  An hour later, she was searching through a string of tiny keys, looking for one decorative enough for an ornate bird cage a girl had brought from her mistress’ house. The girl’s hair was pulled into such a tight bun, and her dress and apron were so starched and spotless, that Terrwyn could only imagine how exacting the mistress was.

  From a distance, she saw a trio of men approaching. Not an unusual sight in itself, but these men wore distinctive black uniform jackets quilted with navy and blood red stripes at the cuffs and hem. Blockaders. The British Air Enforcement men must have an airship in their yard on the River Taff. She could see the brass Two-Day War service metal on the chests of all three men. That they proudly wore a medal indicating they’d killed her Owler kin, as free traders were called in her home town of Hastings, brought a hot rush of acid to her stomach.

  Terrwyn tilted the brim of her man’s wool cap to shadow her eyes further. She already had her black hair pinned and secured underneath, careful to keep her appearance obscured. It hadn’t been advisable to show herself in prison and it wasn’t any wiser to display herself on the streets of Cardiff.

  The men turned into the market entrance and she released her breath.

  “Not a fan of those?” the servant girl asked.

  “I do not believe only the Blockaders should be allowed in the skies,” Terrwyn said, then cursed herself for admitting even that much.

  “My brother went up in a dirigible once,” the servant confided. “Friends of his built one over by Rumney.”

  “That’s not the sort of thing to be bragged about.”

  The servant sniffed. “It was before the crackdown.”

  “Are the Blockaders tolerated hereabouts? I haven’t lived here long.”

  “I can tell, with that London accent. The officers have money, so they are entertained, at least among ladies looking for husbands for their daughters.”

  “And the rest?” She wondered when her southern accent had been replaced by the Newgate Prison patois.

  The servant’s hands fluttered. “Well, they’re riff-raff, aren’t they? Impressed off the streets in port towns. Criminals, vagabonds—”

  “And the unlucky,” Terrwyn finished.

  “As you say.”

  Terrwyn held up a one-and-fourth-inch gold jewelry box key. “Will your mistress pay for this? It has a real gold overlay on the bow.”

  The servant sniffed again. “She’d pay for pure gold, if you had it.”

  Terrwyn raised an eyebrow. “Too bad, then.” She tested the key in the lock and made adjustments until it turned cleanly.

  As the servant paid her, the Blockader officers stepped out of the Market entrance and walked toward her. Terrwyn’s shoulders stiffened and she wished she had another customer so she could keep busy. She dropped the coins into her cousin’s lockbox and then wiped her work surface with a towel.

  “Why’s your master letting a pretty girl like you work all alone?” said one of the Blockaders, slapping a hairy hand down in front of Terrwyn’s towel.

  The servant squeaked and trotted away.

  Terrwyn lifted her gaze slowly, and tried to imitate the lilt of the servant’s accent so she didn’t betray her time in London. “Need a key, Officer?”

  “What kind of key would unlock a smile on that face?” The Blockader leered at her.

  She pointed to a five-inch key with a complex pin pattern. “This expensive kind of key. The payment would make me happy.”

  “Oh, our money’s no good here, miss,” said the youngest officer.

  She felt her lips tightening and fought to relax them. A fight could be disastrous.

  “You have a man?” asked the hairy officer, moving his face closer to hers.

  Not for the first time, Terrwyn wished she had a grotesque facial scar that might scare off men. “I’m spoken for, sir. May I fix a key for you, or find one for a lock?”

  The hairy officer sniffed the air disdainfully. “I smell tobacco. You one of those illegal tobacconists, missy?”

  “I’m a locksmith.” Her teeth ground together.

  “Why aren’t you home making a meal for your man, if you have one?” asked the youngest officer, showing more self-confidence than she’d expected in one so young.

  “He’s sick in bed,” she said, adding to her lie, then instantly regretted making herself sound vulnerable. Her right hand slipped to her apron, where she kept a paring knife in one pocket. Three years in prison had a way of making a woman’s air of mystery vanish. She needed to learn she could deny information to strangers again. Outsiders had no right to her life. Or even her lies.

  “No one to tell on you if you have a bit of fun then, right?” The hairy officer grinned, revealing crooked yellow teeth. “Besides, you’re too young and pretty to really be a locksmith.”

  “You shouldn’t lie,” said the youngest officer. “It might bring the attention of the authorities.” He winked.

  As if she was enjoying this byplay.

  The third Blockader, a tall, wiry blond with wispy side whiskers who hadn’t spoken until now, fingered the small ring of expensive keys where Terrwyn had found a suitable match for the birdcage. “A lot of money in this stall. Why aren’t you trading inside?”

  “I don’t make those decisions.”

  “What is the name of the stall owner?”

  Terrwyn desperately wanted to lie, but knew these men could easily find out the truth. “Owen Fenna.”

  “Fenna, eh,” said the third man, a gleam in his eye. “Bloody smugglers, the lot of them. You a Fenna?”

  Terrwyn took a couple of steps back, until she was pressed against the stone wall of the Market.

  “By marriage, right?” said the youngest officer.

  “She has the look of them,” said the hairy one. “Black hair, dark olive skin.”

  The youngest officer peered at her. “No wedding ring.”

  “I heard tell of the most beautiful Fenna of them all,” said the third Blockader. “She’s in Newgate Prison.”

  “I don’t know about that, Everard,” said the hairy one. “Hard to believe there’s a prettier one than this.” With speed belying his avoirdupois, he shot out a hand and grabbed Terrwyn’s wrist, pulling her toward the counter until her belly slammed painfully into the edge of the wood.

  She couldn’t quite keep her cry of pain in her throat, still a bit sensitive from giving birth less than two months before. Were they toying with her? Did they know she had escaped? When she’d come to Cardiff, she’d thought she could hide here, but airships had drastically sped communication in Britain, even though the only legal flight was by the government. She could have been known to be here all along.

  “Word was that beautiful Terrwyn Fenna had a deft hand with locks,” said Everard.

  The hairy Blockader pulled Terrwyn’s hand toward him and examined it minutely, blasting her with onion breath. “Her hands aren’t nearly as pretty as her face.”

  She wrenched her hand from him and stumbled back toward the wall. How could she escape? She had no weapons, no friends nearby to create a diversion.

  “Let’s take her in,” the youngest one suggested. “If she’s an escapee, we might be able to pick up a fat reward.”

  “Was the pretty Fenna famous enough for a big reward?” asked the hairy one.

  Everard’s only answer was a grin.

  Terrwyn knew her time was up. Summoning lightning speed from somewhere deep inside her, she ripped two strings of keys from their nails and threw them in the faces of the hairy Blockader and the youngest one, then grabbed Owen’s strongbox and lobbed it at Everard. While they cursed, she leapt onto the base of the stone column to her right, steeling herself against the b
ite of heater rays that might hit her back any moment if the men were vicious. The surface above was smooth, but on the left were brick walls. With more luck than skill, she reached the outcropping of stone just below the arch of the doorway, then grabbed for the electric lamp post and pulled herself on top of the iron bar.

  Shillings clattered to the ground along with keys as the Blockaders stomped into Owen’s stall. She felt terrible to see his livelihood destroyed. Did he have friends who would protect his goods when the Blockaders finished with her? Hopefully someone would tell the Bebbs.

  The youngest officer leapt onto the stones a few feet underneath her boots. With a prayer, she reached above her head and pulled herself up to the capital of the column. A few moments later she balanced on the roof. The glass roof.

  She heard shouts from inside the market as people spotted her. Young men pointed to the view up her skirts. “At least my combinations are clean,” she muttered. After whoring for prison guards for a year, the thought of men viewing her underskirts wasn’t an impediment to her actions.

  She held her breath as she ran across the slippery roof, trying to remain upright on the slick, metal struts for fear the glass would break, but managed to reach the southeast edge before the first of the Blockaders appeared. Hopefully all three had tried the climb. When she saw a free-standing lamppost she leapt for it and slid down the smooth black surface until she hit pavement, then ran full out toward the docks, nearly three miles away.

  Thank God the hands of the Blockaders had been too busy to pull out their weapons.