Toxic Diamonds (The Adventures of Xavier & Vic Book 8)
Page 21
“Yes, please!” Cannon replied. “How fast does it go?”
“I believe nine miles an hour is its top speed.”
“But that’s slower than Casey drives our horse.”
“Yes. They could go faster, only our Parliament does not wish them to.”
“Why not?”
“They fear disruption if the world changes too quickly. But the world is changing whether they like it or not. Other countries are embracing the changes, while England drags behind. I worry we will have a great deal of catching up, if the Queen does not relinquish her reign.”
“The Queen will die before she turns over her reign to her son.” Xavier sighed.
“Then we probably won’t have to switch to automobiles until the next century.”
“That long?” Cannon asked.
Vic laughed. “That’s only three years away and hopefully by the time we do buy an automobile, they will build them larger, with a roof, and capable of driving faster than a horse.”
Satisfied with the future, Cannon snuggled against her and fell asleep.
“How do you know so much about autos?” Jacko asked.
“I learn a lot from David.”
“Why didn’t you invite him to play today? You put everyone else to work.”
Vic sighed. “That’s a sad and long story.”
“You and your sister are exact opposites. In fact, she rather reminds me of the young woman we dealt with today: smart, vindictive, and determined to win, no matter the cost.”
“I don’t want to talk about my sister.”
Xavier spoke up. “Let’s not. So Jacko, since you’ll be in London all winter, any chance you’d be interested in assisting us on our complicated tasks?”
Vic huffed. “Be warned, they all seem difficult these days.”
Jacko smiled. “I would enjoy the challenge,” he admitted.
“Think Pete might be interested working in the office as a secretary?”
“Not at all. But make him an investigator in training, and I expect he’ll sign on.”
Xavier placed his arm about Cannon. “You both should know we’ve decided to ask Stone to come on as a third partner when he gets well enough to work.”
Jacko grimaced. “He was seriously injured. It’s possible he won’t ever want to work again.”
“But if he does?” Xavier asked.
“If he returns to the unreasonable fellow he became when you two went to Spain, I’ll quit in a day.”
Vic met Jacko’s eyes. “Stone was in an impossible situation with the first minister. That cannot happen with us. And we promise not to run off to Spain to make a baby again.”
Jacko snorted. “No, you just pick them up in the police station now. And that dog! Why does it screech so loudly?”
“A client brought him to me.” Vic laughed. “Oddly, the husband gave her an ultimatum: him or the dog.”
Jacko shrugged. “The dog has a good disposition. I just wish it would express itself an octave lower. Is it possible its voice might change as he gets older?”
Xavier nodded. “When he ceases to be a pup in nine months, and is a large furry Husky, you can have Pete teach him to use his lower registry.”
“Think it will work?”
Xavier sighed. “I’ve no idea.”
When Casey pulled to the carriage house, all the occupants hurried out, happy to be greeted with loving hugs and one barking dog.
***
Vic watched Jacko run to Pete and Alice, ruffling his son’s hair and kissing Alice until she nearly swooned. She then noticed David seated with Ham on his lap and Danny on Ham’s lap, all studying schematics of an automobile. David was telling them what each part did in simple words so they could understand him. She sat down beside him. “We’ve got extra room upstairs if you ever need a place to sleep.”
He gripped her hand. “Thank you for the offer. I haven’t given up on my wife, but she is in a ‘take-no-prisoner’ mood right now, so if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to stay here tonight. Otherwise, she’ll fight with me all night long, then tomorrow, I’d be the worst dentist in London.”
Ham pointed to a part of the engine. “Carburrater.”
David kissed the boy’s head, resulting in Ham kissing Danny’s head. “Tubs, your boy is very smart.”
Vic grinned at Ham’s proud father, then smiled at Xavier. “Before any of you are tempted to run off, I just wanted to say how much I love each and every one of you. You are my family. You are my reason to wake and try to make our world better every day.”
Xavier’s sensual stare warmed her body as he said, “Matters are becoming much too sentimental for me, so I’m headed up to bed.”
Vic saw Pete, Alice, and Jacko off, then, after kissing the boys goodnight, she followed Xavier upstairs.
He laid in bed, but kindly sat up and assisted her out of her anaconda shirt. Once she lost her pants and her long wear, he pulled her to him. “Words cannot express my feelings for you.”
“Ha!” Vic said. “Then I will outdo you for once. Xavier, you are my perfect mate. You always know exactly what I need. You scold me when I go too far and playfully tease me when I’ve missed the point, but most of all, you know how to love and nurture me. You are the very best of men, and I am most fortunate to have met you.”
“It is much the same with me. When we met, I was most discontented with life. Not only could I not find anyone to love, I couldn’t even find a decent secretary. And then I attended Maddy’s funeral, and there you were, insisting we must speak of a very important matter. You sparked my heart back to life that day at the funeral. I could not understand why, for young men did not interest me. But you…my beautiful wife or handsome fellow, depending on your clothes for the day, captured my heart and despite our misunderstandings over the years, there has not been a single day I have not loved you, nor a day where your fabulous mind and intuition did not dazzle me. And allow me to compliment your latest setback with Carlson. It was beautifully said.”
Vic laughed. “I’ll admit, it was intentional. He was becoming a bit creepy with his compliments.”
Xavier rolled on top of her and kissed her passionately. “Given all my compliments, should I be worried that you find me a bit creepy as well?”
“Test me and see. I would not wish for your deductive reasoning to falter from lack of use,” Vic teased.
“Be warned, this may take all night!” Xavier declared.
And thus, concludes another Xavier & Vic Adventure.
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True Facts used in Toxic Diamonds
1) Real women, such as Margaret Bulkley, chose to dress like a man in order to have a meaningful life in the Victorian era. As a physician, she performed the first successful caesarean, and became the highest ranked surgeon in the army under the name of Dr. James Barry. Her true gender was only discovered upon her death and it was kept a secret for another century.
2) Hydrogen Sulfide at high concentrations will kill you. It is why there is a kink in the toilet that holds water. However, during the Victorian era, that was not always the case.
3) Can a person hold their breath for twenty minutes? Yes, some can. The current record is 24 minutes and 3 seconds. Tubs can only hold his breath for 20 minutes.
4) Life could be deadly in the Victorian era, especially for babies: Given all the poisons in their homes, including arsenic in the wallpaper, asbestos in the walls, raw sewage seeping up through improper toilets, not to mention tainted milk and mothers quieting their babies with laudanum, heroine, and cocaine, it was frankly a miracle that any child managed to survive to adulthood.
5) Prince Rupert’s drops are teardrop-shaped bits of glass which are produced by allowing a molten drop of glass to fall into a bucket of water, thereby rapidly cooling it. They can withstand a blow from a hammer on the bulbous end wit
hout breaking, but the drops will disintegrate explosively into powder if the tail end is even slightly damaged. One of my characters has discovered, using a hollow glass tube, how to inject a highly lethal gas into the drop before it hardens in the water.
6) Baby Farmers were usually women (or a couple) who, for a monthly fee, would care for your baby. (In the late Victorian Era, London was full of women needing work at various factories. Many baby farmers failed to feed or simply drowned the babies. There were several notorious baby farmers who killed babies: Amelia Dyer is believed to have killed over 400 babies. The exact numbers of babies who died by these women was rarely certain.
7) A Bullet proof vest made of silk: In 1881, Tombstone physician George E. Goodfellow noticed that a faro dealer, Charlie Storms, who was shot twice by Luke Short. One bullet was stopped by a silk handkerchief in his breast pocket that prevented that bullet from penetrating. In 1887, he wrote an article titled Impenetrability of Silk to Bullets[11] for the Southern California Practitioner documenting the first known instance of bulletproof fabric. He experimented with silk vests resembling medieval gambesons, which used 18 to 30 layers of silk fabric to protect the wearers from penetration.
Fr. Kazimierz Żegleń used Goodfellow's findings to develop a bulletproof vest made of silk fabric at the end of the 19th century, which could stop the relatively slow rounds from black powder handguns. The vests cost $800 USD each.
8) Wireless telegraphy came to mean Morse code transmitted by radio waves (electromagnetic waves), initially called "Hertzian waves", discovered by Heinrich Hertz in 1886. The first practical wireless telegraphy transmitters and receivers were developed by Guglielmo Marconi beginning in 1895.
9) The 1897 Bersey taxi, developed by Walter Bersey, was London's first "self-propelled" vehicle and, at its peak, had a fleet of more than 75. The vehicle was powered by grid-plate batteries. They could only be recharged at Bersey's Lambeth station, where a hydraulic lifting system allowed for battery exchange in the space of a few minutes. The taxi weighed in at two tons, had a range of about 48km and a top speed of 19km/h. It was powered by a 2.2 kW Lundell motor, had light wheels, thin spokes and narrow rubber tires designed to grip "greasy pavements". It could only carry 2 passengers and the driver.
Despite gaining a steady business of regular customers, the company lost £6,200 in its first year. Following a series of issues with the tires -- which were far too fragile to take the weight of the car -- and a costly project that saw the firm generate its own electricity, Bersey was finally forced out of business in 1899. This was largely prompted by a campaign led by London cab drivers fearing for their jobs, a campaign supported by the press which published a series of stories on the vehicles' breakdowns and accidents.
OTHER BOOKS BY LIZA O’CONNOR
HISTORICAL
The Adventures of Xavier & Vic
Humorous, Late Victorian Sleuth Series
The Troublesome Apprentice
The Missing Partner
A Right to Love (a romantic spinoff)
The Mesmerist
Well Kept Secrets
Pack of Trouble
The Darkest Days
The CrimeLords’ War
Toxic Diamonds
SINGLE HISTORICAL NOVELS
Untamed & Unabashed
The Duchess Lydia – November 2017
Spinoff from Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice
Six Sisters of Shame
Romance/Suspense
CONTEMPORARY
A Long Road to Love Series
Humorous Contemporary Disaster Romance
Worst Week Ever
Oh Stupid Heart
Coming to Reason
Climbing Out of Hell
The Hardest Love
CONTEMPORARY SUSPENSE
White Oak Mafia Series
Snarky, Romantic, Suspense Thriller
A Fortune to Die For
Unexpected Love
Dance or Die
Requires Rescue Series
Often Humorous, Contemporary, Romance/Suspense
Standalone books with a special twist
Even the strong can use a helping hand when life gets hard.
Saving Casey
Saving Molly
Proud Mary
SINGLE CONTEMPORARY BOOKS
Ghost Lover
Humorous, Contemporary Romance with Ghost & Ghost cat
Luck Be an Angel
Contemporary Romance with a Paranormal Twist
RANA: Teenage Queen
Young/New Adult, Sweet Romance Fantasy
Slammed (Davy’s Saga) – Aug 4, 2017
New Adult/ Bullriding/Contemporary Romance
PARANORMAL
Ancient Love - Sept 6, 2017
Paranormal/Contemporary Suspense/with a Ghost
SCIENCE FICTION
The Multiverse Series
Sci-Fi Soap Opera with humor, romance, and science
The Gods of Probabilities
Surviving Outbound
Surviving Terranue
Surviving Sojourn
Artificial Intelligence Series
Sci-Fi/Romance
Public Secrets
Birth of Adam
The SkyRyders Series
Sci-Fi Romance
Scavenger’s Mission
Scavenger Falters
Scavenger Vanishes