Heart of Steel by Meljean Brook

bitter note. Perhaps some man had said those words to her before?
    Perhaps they hadn’t.
    Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to prove that he meant it. “Our hour is almost past. I need the sketch.”
    â€œI don’t have it aboard—”
    â€œUse the key around your waist.” He regretted the hardening in her eyes, but it couldn’t be helped. “These were my father’s quarters—and my sister reminded me of the hideaway behind the wardrobe.”
    Archimedes preferred to forget the hideaway behind the wardrobe. Their father had used it to hide them away whenever they’d spoken out of turn—or simply spoken.
    â€œGoddammit.” She turned toward the wardrobe with a growl of frustration. Her fingers dipped beneath the sash at her waist, withdrew the silver key. “You and your sister. Wily foxes, the both of you. You chose your name well.”
    â€œIt was a toss between that and the equally apt ‘Archimedes Stallion.’ But Zenobia won.”
    â€œYet she still calls you Wolfram.”
    â€œTo her, Archimedes Fox is a character, or a disguise I wear.”
    â€œAnd you? Do you still think of yourself as Wolfram?”
    â€œOnly when I’ve done something foolish or I’m about to die.”
    â€œAnd who are you now?”
    â€œThe man who plans to fall in love with you.”
    â€œWolfram, then.”
    â€œNo,” he said, and the gravity in his voice must have surprised her. She paused, looked back at him. “With you, I am always Archimedes.”
    Her lips parted, but she didn’t immediately respond—perhaps she couldn’t decide how to respond. Her gaze searched his features for a long moment.
    â€œArchimedes Fox,” she mused. The corners of her mouth tilted gently. “With balls of iron and a silver tongue. I admire both in a man.”
    His heart almost stopped. Then it began to race, his body tensing—his instincts screaming at him to flee. Captain Corsair would never soften so easily. He was in trouble.
    â€œYou’re dangerously close to encouragement,” he warned her.
    â€œI forgot to mention your thick head.”
    She reached beneath the wardrobe, pulled on some hidden lever, and stepped back. The large cabinet swung open like a door, revealing the small keyhole in the bulkhead behind it.
    â€œMy father always had to shove the wardrobe aside.” And then shove it back into place until he was ready to let them out.
    â€œAnd the scratches in the boards gave away the location,” she said. “So I improved it. I can move the wardrobe from inside the hideaway, too, so that no one can trap me within.”
    Archimedes couldn’t respond.
    â€œThere were scratches inside, too.” She didn’t glance back at him as she inserted the key. “All around the lock and in a few places on the walls. Tally marks, as if counting off days. And the name Geraldine , written beneath a bawdy little poem.”
    Their father had beaten her for that. “She’s always been a writer.”
    â€œAnd what have you always been?”
    â€œLucky.”
    â€œSo it would seem. You are not still in there, after all.”
    â€œOh, he always let us out in time for the sermon on Sunday. In truth, that was crueler than leaving us inside.”
    â€œAfter hearing a few of those sermons, I have to agree.” She opened the panels and stepped inside the shadowed closet. For a moment, Archimedes wondered whether to worry that she’d stowed weapons inside—but of course she had. And it hardly mattered, because she’d been armed the entire time.
    When she emerged, he immediately recognized the converted glider in her hands. His glider, transformed into a reinforced satchel that he’d designed to carry delicate paper artifacts. “You didn’t open it?”
    â€œOf course not. Only a look through the glass as we left Venice, and again when Ginger created the