The Janus Affair: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel (41 page)

He reached out and grabbed her, pinning her shoulders against one of the nearby shelves. “Dash it all, Eliza, this has nothing to do with protecting the Ministry! I could give a flying toss presently about any of them. The Ministry can fortify itself with a simple push of a red button, but you—” He drew closer to her, making sure he could see her eyes. “It’s you. I don’t want them to hurt you in order to get to me.” He released her, slowly shaking his head. “I could not bear that. Not for a moment.”

They stood before each other, the generator thrumming low in their ears. Perhaps he had finally got his message through. Maybe now she understood his intentions.

“Sorry, mate,” she replied, “but you’re still saying I can’t look after myself!”

Was he
completely
invisible to her?

“Bugger it,” Wellington swore.

He pulled her towards him and kissed her—rather hard and with great urgency. No, perhaps it was not the way a gentleman would have kissed a lady; but it was the way he wanted to kiss her in that moment. For all Wellington knew, this would be the one chance he would have to kiss her, so he would bloody make it count.

He felt her embrace tighten on him, her hands running along his back, her breathing deeper and wilder. Eliza’s curves against his own surpassed any fleeting expectation he nurtured previously. Wellington prolonged his kiss by nibbling and nipping on her lips. They were soft, faintly tasting of strawberries. A delicious surprise, to be certain.

With a final touch, he pulled away. His heart was now pumping at full steam, so much so that he felt quite lightheaded. He hoped that any physical reaction he outwardly displayed to such an erotic embrace (which, being human, he could not help) did not offend Miss Braun. Her brilliant blue eyes were now blinking quickly as she looked at him. Wellington hoped that, at best, she would simply slap him for offending her morality and making assumptions that were far beyond any intended or welcome by her.

Knowing too well her fondness for explosives, he preferred not to think of the worst reaction she could have to this.

“You stopped,” she stated, her breath short and laboured.

“Um . . .” Not quite the reaction he expected. “Yes. Yes, I did, Eliza.”

“Why did you do that? Did you want to stop?”

“Well . . .” Brash honesty. It was what he wanted. “No.”

Her hand grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him close, so quickly, he gave a little yelp as he found himself nose-to-nose with his fellow Ministry agent.

“Then don’t,” she whispered just before bringing her lips back into his.

Wellington had never quite taken much notice of the smell of the Archives. Perhaps the smell of ageing wood and paper was something that he had grown accustomed to. Eliza’s light touch of perfume—far too faint to have been freshly placed on her skin this morning—reached him. The two scents complimented each other quite well. In fact, the smells of old books and her skin, the feel of her hands running along his arm and back, and his own fingers feeling the softness of her cheek and curve of her bosom, and the faint taste of strawberries and tobacco—

Tobacco? Did Eliza smoke cigars?

He was in his own domain, deep within the shelves and stacks of the Archives, and yet, Wellington found himself quite lost. Lost in sensations, emotions, and an unending list of things needing to be done before catching an airship to the Americas. They would not miss that last flight to the former colonies, as he hated transatlantic travel by sea. The soft moan escaping Eliza scattered his thoughts once again, and he found himself enjoying the feel of her pressing harder against him. She was, indeed, a lovely woman; and it was quite a pleasant thing to kiss her. Better than he could ever imagine.

The Archivist still did not want the kiss to end. At least, not yet.

Wellington covertly checked his watch. A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt.

Acknowledgments

There is always that daunting task after you write a book, people want more. Sure, it’s always good when people want more. It means they like you. (They really, really like you!) So you get started on the sequel . . . and that’s when it sinks in—you’ve got to clear the bar you’ve set for yourself.

The good news about a sequel: You’re not in this alone. There are so many people out there pulling for you, and it is that drive that keeps us going.

To our friends and fans on Twitter, Facebook, and social networks far and wide, thank you for your unending support in letting people know about Agents Books and Braun, and The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. We owe a lot of our success in part to you. To Laurie McLean, our full-time agent, part-time cheerleader, and eternal friend—thank you for keeping us on the right track. To the writers (past, present, and future) of
Tales from the Archives
, thank you for opening up our world to the steampunk curious and encapsulating the global scope of this Neo-Victorian era. To the steampunk community for their accolades in the 2011 Airship Awards and the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards. Your praise and admiration mean we must be getting something right.

A book can’t happen without an editorial staff behind it, and we are so fortunate to have the talents of Diana Gill, Will Hinton, and Eileen DeWald at HarperVoyager. This is the team who helped us get the Ministry in order. And a special thank you to Stephanie Kim and Pam Jaffee for opening doors and opportunities for us in our first year of the Ministry and making us feel like steampunk rock stars. We look forward to what you have in store for us and
The Janus Affair
.

About the Authors

P
IP
B
ALLANTINE
and T
EE
M
ORRIS
have been collaborating since 2006 in podcast productions, including
Chasing the Bard
,
Weather Child
,
Billibub Baddings and The Case of the Singing Sword
, and
Morevi
. Their collaborations have won them a variety of acclaim, including a Sir Julius Vogel Award and a Parsec Award. Their first writing collaboration was
Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel
. The book went on to win the 2011 Airship Award for Best Steampunk Literature of the Year. Together they enjoy life in Virginia alongside their daughter and five extremely playful cats.

Pay a visit to Pip and Tee’s Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences at www.ministryofpeculiaroccurrences.com.

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www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

By Pip Ballantine & Tee Morris

Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences

Phoenix Rising

The Janus Affair

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover art by Dominick Finelle

THE JANUS AFFAIR
. Copyright © 2012 by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Epub Edition JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780062049797

Print Edition ISBN: 9780062049780

FIRST EDITION

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