Love in the Time of a Highland Laird (A Laird for All Time Book 3) by Angeline Fortin (bill gates books to read .TXT) 📕

“Well, I hope they never have a fire in there.”

“You must know someone who can pick the lock,” Mathilde jumped in. “Someone who could pry it open?”

He half-nodded without committing. “Mayhap, but ‘tis nae wee thing easily done. “Twould need tae be done quickly ‘ere the alarm is raised and the platoon reinforced by the burgh’s garrison. I dinnae ken how tae assure ‘tis done quickly.”

“Why don’t you just blow the lock?” Al asked. They both turned to her inquisitively.

“Blow the lock?” Mathilde repeated. “Whatever do you mean?”

She shook her head uncertainly and looked at Keir as if he might truly be able to read what was in her mind.

“Blow it up.” She curled her fists together before spreading them out to simulate the boom with a whooshing noise to accompany it. “Explosives. You do have them, don’t you?”

“Like black powder?” he asked. “I ken ‘tis been used for mining excavation but mostly just used as a propellant for cannon and musket fire.”

She pursed her lips, thinking. “Could you get some?”

He was curious. She could see it in his eyes, that same vivid fire that burned whenever she talked about something new. “How much? We’ve muskets in the armory.”

Her mind was working furiously, trying to mentally construct some mode of delivering an explosion of only gunpowder on a focused area. They needed to take out the lock and the jamb area next to it. Everything she knew about blowing things up with just gunpowder involved a coyote and barrels and barrels of powder marked Acme.

Too small, it wouldn’t work at all. Too big, they blew through the prison wall and took down the innocent people inside he meant to free. Working their way through the rubble would take time.

It had to be just the door.

Then even if they managed the right amount, the ignition would be the problem. A cartoonish trail of gunpowder that might fizzle out before it could get there wasn’t going to work. It would hardly be reliable in the best of circumstances. And if this pouring rain continued…

“Do you have safety fuses?”

He shook his head. He didn’t understand what she meant. But she could see by the expectation on Keir’s face, he was counting on her to come up with something.

“There’s no dynamite…” Al left off the ‘yet.’ He shook his head. “No nitroglycerine?”

Her eye roll was all for herself. She knew full well from her chemical engineering classes it hadn’t come around until Nobel’s time after the Civil War and hadn’t been employed for demolition purposes until later in the 19th century. This was only the 18th.

But there must be something here they could use. Something small but that packed a big, focused punch. Enough of a blast to take out a lock.

Tapping her lip, she paced the room searching for inspiration.

“What is she doing?”

“Thinking,” Keir answered his cousin softly.

“Is there anything that can be done about it?” was Mathilde’s droll reply.

“Nay, she’s a brilliant lass, my Big Al. Ye just wait, she’ll come up wi’ a solution for us.”

Warmth spread from her heart at his proudly spoken words. Bursting like the bomb she was determined now to produce for him.

No one had ever had such faith in her before.

She wouldn’t let him down.

Chapter 30

Al paced the perimeter of the room, running options through her head. Best case was to make a plastic explosive for size and ease of use. Unlike nitro, it was far more stable and without the unfortunate side effect of randomly exploding if dropped. She could mold it right into the lock.

She’d even made it before in a weapons engineering class she’d taken for fun and to meet guys before she’d given up on ever finding one. Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard. If she could get the ingredients.

“Do you have bleach?”

“What is she talking about, Keir?”

“Perhaps, I can have Hastings show ye tae a room, Mathilde, where ye might rest,” he suggested. “Ye’ve had a long journey. Ye maun be neigh exhausted.”

“I am to the bone but I cannot imagine leaving just now. This is fascinating. Tell me, Miss Maines, what is bleach?”

Al wandered closer to Keir and spoke softly. “It’s a cleaning liquid. I’d need potassium chloride, too…”

“Nay, lass, whatever it is, we dinnae hae it.”

“Any chemicals? Anything?”

He shook his head. Biting her lip, she resumed her pacing. Not that it really mattered, she realized. She would’ve needed petroleum jelly for the plastic explosive as well. Something the source of wouldn’t even be discovered until the next century.

She was pretty sure they couldn’t wait so long.

“How long do we have?”

“Not long, I’m afraid,” Mathilde answered. “The transfer of prisoners is to begin next Thursday.”

“That’s six days,” Al said. “That should be no problem.”

“Edinburgh is nearly three days of hard riding,” Keir told her.

She cringed. So assuming they wanted to do this under cover of night, they had only two to three days to get this done. It wasn’t long enough to get creative.

No chemicals meant no plastic explosives, so there was really nothing she could make herself. So what else was there? Back home she could have just Googled how to make any number of different bombs on her phone. Barring a handy stick of dynamite to throw at the door, a pipe bomb might do the trick. There were thousands of sites on the internet just waiting to show aspiring terrorists how to do it in a thousand different ways.

Just type, type, click and she could have the answer in the palm of her hand and ultimately use her phone for something more productive than watching cat videos on YouTube.

Not that it mattered, even if the battery in her phone weren’t dead, there was no wi-fi or cell coverage here in the…

Her steps slowed along with her thought process. She scratched at her earlobe as an idea began to take form.

Maybe.

Possibly.

She looked up and found Keir staring at her. His eyes alight with something