“Good. Perhaps then you’ll think twice about ever desiring to take your own life.”

Dare glanced over at her, limping more heavily than was necessary. To tell the truth, he hardly felt the slight injury, but the shock that his wife, his Charlotte, had shot him—actually held his pistol on him and shot him!—put him in a petulant mood. She wasn’t even looking the slightest bit sorry for her horrible deed. Oh no! She bestowed sweet smiles and sweeter kisses on him, caressing him and sending him little adoring messages with her lovely blue eyes until he wanted nothing so much as to pick her up and carry her off to his bedchamber where he could make long, slow love to her for the next few hours. Or days. Years had a nice ring to it, too.

“You know, that limp is really rather romantic,” she whispered boldly in his ear as he held the door to the kitchen open for her. Her fingers trailed across the slack fingers of his bad arm as she entered the kitchen, an unmistakable look of passion in her eyes.

Dare sighed as he followed his wife down the last flight of stairs to the remains of his workroom. He wanted to wrap the chilly cloak of martyrdom around him again, blaming her lack of concern about wounding him, but he was a truthful man if nothing else, and so he admitted to himself that the fact that she had so brazenly shot him made him realize just how much she loved him.

And how much he stood to lose without her.

“Well? What do you think? Can you do it?” Charlotte stood aside and waved toward the remains of his engine.

Dare looked around the room, noting absently that someone had been in and cleaned up evidence of the explosion. The destroyed parts of the boiler were stacked tidily in one corner, the sturdy oak table that Charlotte had told him saved his life had been sanded and put back in its usual spot. He avoided looking at the engine itself, dreading the moment when he had to admit his dream was over, his hopes and plans for the future destroyed with one careless miscalculation. But eventually, there was nothing else to look at but Charlotte’s hopeful face.

“Well?” she asked again.

He looked at the engine at last, slowly circling it, taking in the damage. There was surprisingly little to the body of the engine—his design had proven well in that respect, at least.

“Can you fix it? How long will it take? We’ll all help, Batsfoam and all the staff and myself, so you needn’t feel as if you are doing this by yourself. There’s ten days before the scientific exhibition. With all our help, I’m quite confident you’ll have the engine running spectacularly.”

He caught the note of pride in her voice even as he leaned closer to examine a set of delicate valves. They moved a bit stiffly, but it was nothing that a good oiling wouldn’t fix. He had a spare boiler—built while he was still making modifications to the design—so if just the boiler needed to be replaced, if nothing else was actually damaged, it might be feasible to get the engine back in working order before the exhibition. He did a few mental calculations, stepping back and absentmindedly removing his cuff link and rolling up the shirtsleeve on his bad arm, grimacing as Charlotte stepped forward to help him with the sleeve on his working arm.