Is that so?
Martin hid his surprise. He hadn’t been able to learn much about Miss Sophia Carmichael, majority shareholder of Carmichael Steelworks. He’d asked, but apparently, she didn’t move in the social circles for which he had sound intelligence. Until he’d knocked on the door of her Portobello home and been told that she was at the works—in a manner that suggested he should have known that—he’d fully expected to find her filling her morning doing the usual things ladies of quality did.
“So she’s in the laboratory in the shed?” He hadn’t seen any other building that might reasonably house a laboratory, and many works had their laboratories close to the action. Smiling confidently, he moved to round the counter, making for the door to the yard.
“I’m not sure…?” The secretary—Martin had decided he was probably that—hurried to come out from behind his desk.
Martin waved the man back. “I can find my way. Given the subject of our discussion, we would have ended in the shed anyway.” One way or another, he would have ensured that.
He reached the side door, opened it, and stepped through. Leaving the harried secretary to close the door, Martin set off, striding across the yard. He didn’t glance back but heard no further remonstrations, and after a moment, the office door quietly shut.
Smiling to himself, he slowed his pace and looked about him, drinking in all he could see. His suspicion that the long building between the receiving office and the main office served as a store for the works’ products proved correct; large doors were currently wedged open, providing access to well-stocked bays within.
Several carts had come through the main gates and were loading up with steel sheets. Judging by the sheets’ thickness, the load was destined for one of the city’s numerous cutlery manufacturers. Meanwhile, trolleys laden with slim steel bars were being hauled out through the shed’s nearer door. Judging by the steadythump-whumpand the clanging rattles emanating from that half of the shed, it housed the steam-powered hammers that beat the steel into the desired shapes, the rolling mills that produced the steel sheets, and no doubt other machinery to work and mold the still-malleable steel.
The farther side of the huge shed, with its noise, heat, and peculiar smell, drew him on. He walked up to and through the huge open door and stepped into a setting that some wag had recently dubbed an early circle of Hell.
Heat enveloped him. Nearby, a furnace roared, spewing red light across the shed. A head-high brick wall ran down the center of the shed, directly beneath the ridge of the roof, and various furnaces were built into that wall, their chimneys rising like massive brick pillars up to and through the roof far above.
Three huge, black Bessemer converters sat along the central wall, each backed into its own brick alcove with a chimney flue opening like a maw above the converter’s mouth. The nearest converter was being loaded with pig iron in preparation for a blow—the process during which hot air was bubbled through the molten iron to remove impurities and convert the iron to steel. The middle converter was being tapped, molten steel being drawn off to one side and slag pushed in the other direction, while the third converter was in the middle of its blow, with crushed additive ores—necessary to form whichever alloy was desired—starting to be fed into the converter to mix with the molten iron in the rounded belly of the beast.
Martin halted and took in the scene with one slow, sweeping glance. The staccato sounds from the forging area on the other side of the shed punctuated the sullen roar of the furnaces and the constant hiss of steam.
One comprehensive look was all it took to verify that Carmichael Steelworks had been constructed and organized to maximize efficiency. Quite aside from the steel it produced, this was definitely the steelworks he ought to acquire to complete his portfolio.
Several workmen, leaning on their long-handled implements and waiting for their moment, saw him and stared curiously, then one handed his tool to his mate and approached.
By then, Martin had spotted the set of metal stairs running up the outer wall to a long, narrow room of many windows, set at mezzanine level. The sturdy glass-and-metal-walled and wood-floored room was supported by massive iron pillars bolted to the concrete floor.
As the workman neared, Martin, his expression easy and unconcerned, pointed to the stairs. “I’ve been told Miss Carmichael is in the laboratory. I take it it’s up there?”
The man’s features eased, and he nodded. “Aye, sir. Through the door at the top of the stairs.”
Martin saluted and, cane swinging, headed for the stairs. He went up quickly, paused on the narrow landing at the top, opened the half-glazed door, and stepped through.
The laboratory stretched the entire length of the narrow room, with a long bench against the outer wall hosting numerous apparatuses while a raised table with papers and rocks littering its surface ran down the room’s center. Cupboards and cabinets lined the inner wall, sitting beneath and between the wide windows that provided an unobstructed view of the furnaces and converters below.
The area closest to the door was, relatively speaking, less crowded, as the bench and table didn’t reach that far. Three people were in the room, all with their noses, metaphorically speaking, pressed to the glass. Their gazes were trained on the third Bessemer converter, the one where the additive mixture was being combined with the purified molten iron.
Two men in gray laboratory coats stood farther down the room. Both wore wire-rimmed spectacles and were somewhere in their thirties, one brown haired, the other ginger haired. Neither glanced Martin’s way.
Equally oblivious was the slender lady with pale-blond hair, twisted into a knot and anchored at the back of her head, who was standing at the window nearest the door. She was dressed in a plain gown of charcoal twill. Noting the absence of any other female, Martin assumed she was his quarry.
Her attention remained unwaveringly fixed on the scene below. “What is it?”
Martin closed the door.
The noise level in the room abruptly fell, and the lady glanced his way.
Her eyes flew wide.
That’s better,Martin thought, then her startled gaze rose, and she met his eyes.
The punch of visceral awareness was disorienting.
Turquoise.Her eyes were a most unusual turquoise blue.
Beyond that…his brain was swamped by the impression of a lithe figure, slim, svelte, subtly yet alluringly curved. Her complexion was alabaster pale, and finely arched brown brows and long, thick lashes framed those large and distracting eyes. Her face was heart-shaped, but the set of her lips and chin bore witness to willfulness and determination even while her lush rose-tinted lips, slightly parted in surprise, evoked thoughts he’d never before entertained in the pursuit of business.
