The Tin Rose: Elemental Web Stories, #1

By Anne Renwick

Enjoy this romance by USA Today Bestselling historical fantasy author Anne Renwick where you'll unravel mysteries and defy conventions in a world where danger lurks around every corner...

 

An evening escape. A clockwork poison. A race to save a love balanced on the edge.

 

On the night they were to elope, a spurned lover returned. A gift, she claimed. But the clockwork contraption unwound a poisonous bloom, sending Lady Emily and Luca, her beloved, on a desperate race to reach the cure.

 

STEP INTO THE ELEMENTAL WEB!
Steampunk adventure wrapped around a romance and threaded with biotechnology. Join USA Today bestselling author, Anne Renwick, as she takes you back into an alternate past.

 

ELEMENTAL WEB CHRONICLES: The Golden Spider, The Silver Skull, The Iron Fin, Venomous Secrets

ELEMENTAL WEB TALES: A Trace of Copper, In Pursuit of Dragons, A Reflection of Shadows, A Snowflake at Midnight, A Ghost in Amber, A Whisper of Bone, Flight of the Scarab

ELEMENTAL WEB STORIES: The Tin Rose, Kraken and Canals, Rust and Steam

 

For fans of steampunk and gaslamp fantasy romance, this is a STEAMY romance with a guaranteed happily ever after for women in STEM and the men who are their match.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anne Renwick
• Release date: Sep 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780997747591

Anne Renwick

Though USA TODAY bestselling author Anne Renwick holds a Ph.D. in biology and greatly enjoyed tormenting the overburdened undergraduates who were her students, fiction has always been her first love. Today, she writes steampunk romance, placing a new kind of biotech in the hands of mad scientists, proper young ladies and determined villains.

Book preview

Chapter One

The Dover Coast

June, 1884

Would she come?

As the first rays of the setting sun struck the gleaming windows of Knowlton House, Luca stood beside the sole remaining campfire, one hand clutching a handful of viridis powder ready to cast it into the flames. If all went as planned, his bride would soon abandon the only life she’d ever known, trading it all for a new one among the Roma. With him. At last, he would feel whole.

That is, if they’d not been discovered by her father, the Duke of Avesbury. The man had eyes everywhere, and with a single word in a carefully chosen ear, he could throw a wrench into all their plans.

Luca smoothed down the front of his indigo waistcoat, the only one he possessed that hadn’t been patched or darned.

What Emily saw in him—a gypsy with a knack for fixing enormous balance plows and a side talent for crafting clockwork creatures, both pragmatic and frivolous—he’d never understand. To the manor she was born, but aspired to trade polished silver spoons and fine silk gowns for brass and rough wool. And him. Her love humbled him.

He’d made a few weak attempts to discourage her notions, but in the end selfishness won. Besides, she was of age, and he would not deny her the freedom to choose the life she wished.

And so tonight they leapt into the future, together. Consequences be damned.

Already the rumble of the other vardos—gypsy caravans—grew distant, muffled by the evening hum and buzz of insects. His finest clockwork horse, Tesio, was hitched to his grandmother’s vardo, its springs wound tight in anticipation of the journey ahead. Their exit from her family’s country estate would be silent and swift and—aether willing—unnoticed.

Tomorrow, the duke and duchess would wake to find their daughter gone, deserting the very house party they hosted with the express intent of finding Emily a blue-blooded husband. A husband they no doubt hoped would put an end to her association with the old gypsy herbalist. And him. Would they touch a match to tinder and mount a furious pursuit of their daughter? Or would they silently ink her name from the family records? Not that it mattered. She would be his, and he would not surrender her without a fight.

A dark silhouette appeared in a window of the great hall. Though indistinct at this distance, the feminine form stood with determined anticipation. His heart leapt. It could only be Emily.

A gust of wind blew through the leaves of the nearby trees. In the distance, storm clouds gathered to blot out the navigation lights of silver dirigibles making their way to and from Captain Oglethorpe’s great boarding towers at Dover. He took a deep breath, steadying his mind. It was time.

Time to turn the fire green and call his bride. But as he lifted his shaking hand toward the fire, a familiar form slid from the door of Grandmother’s vardo. How had he missed her return to camp? Distaste crept over his skin, but he forced himself to meet her gaze. Nothing good ever came of Rayka’s presence. Luca let the viridis powder slide between his fingers to the ground in hopes she would not notice, but her sharp ears caught the soft hiss of sand as it fell.

"Second thoughts about stealing