Firebrand

I sink down on one knee. The purple and black vines embroidered on my skirts spread elegantly out around me.

"Your Grace of Coranza," I say with a little inclination of my head. "Will you do me the honour of accepting my hand in marriage?"

For a long moment, the Duke doesn't answer me. I'm beginning to think that he's going to throw me in a dungeon after all.

When adventurous widow Kadia Warner inherits the airship Concordia, she finds herself at the eye of a gathering storm. In the one duchy that remains free of the Empire, can she find love with the Emperor's erstwhile best friend? And how far will the Emperor go to get the Concordia - and Kadia - back? An industrial fantasy romance inspired by Charlotte Bronte’s Angria novelettes, featuring castles with dungeons, border fortresses without dungeons, kidnappings, masquerades, railway stranglers, duels with sword and pistol, airships, the opera, shady business practices, love, sex, danger and a mechanical birdcage.

Firebrand was a 2012 Tiptree Honor Book.