The big topic of conversation is exactly what I built and it's use. The staff is of course incredibly curious, and gets a short display, but sejd explains a lot, without actually explaining anything, and everyone should keep my invention a secret for the time being. Those who know about cars and the like from modern Midgård are beginning to understand how they can move, and Jane's enthusiasm has spread to Iselin in particular. Unfortunately for both Jane and Iselin, it will be a while before I build a steam-powered boat or car, but I can now start finishing the machines I have parts for, and use them to make better machines, which in the future can lead to a steamboat, which can lead to a steam truck or steam tractor. I am still most interested in a woodgas-powered car. Which is partly the reason for the gas flasks. I hope to save woodgas or some other burnable gas in them to be able to use it for bunsen burners and the like.

Iselin is working hard on finished parts together with Ciara and Bodil. Iselin really wants to see the machines work. See what the steam engine can do with the other things I've planned. And she is not alone. Together with preparations and cleaning for the upcoming Royal visit, it is anything but quiet in the house, and I need to check work progress on the island, so I combine going on an inspection tour of the island with getting some peace and quiet. I rarely ride a horse, and I still dislike horses, and on foot I can choose other paths or just ignore paths. Kari is radiantly beautiful and proud when she accompanies me, and Caecilia, Alith and Gunhild escorts us.

I feel bad about letting Kari take care of everything, and I know that Iselin feels a little anxious about it and that she is a bad future wife, but Kari likes it when she gets to show what she can, and we all agree that it is better that one person holds the main responsibility. Both I, Iselin and Ciara think Kari is best suited for it, which makes her proud to hear. Kari informs me that the guest rooms are prepared, and the bed in the small guest room has been replaced so there are two beds for the princesses. Rikvi is in a slight panic mode with preparations even though Kari have tried to calm her down with what is expected and needed in the way of food. Kari does an excellent job as the one who organizes everything, and will be an excellent wife, but she has trained all her life for it.

The windows on the ship crew's two houses are fully installed, so tomorrow we will have the pump installed and present the houses to the crew.

We take a small break on the highest mountain north of the mansion where there is a small sheltered slump with a nice view to the east. On a folded blanket we sit on a fallen pine trunk among the moss and rice, looked at the view and enjoy the weather and sun. I have my arm around Kari that is leaning against me, and the rest gives us some privacy. It's lucky that Kari waited until we've sat down, because she whispers that she has persuaded Iselin and Ciara to let Jane have sex with me when we need it in the future. Kari thinks that it is just a matter of time before we have sex, and she knows that Jane really miss intimate body contact like this, and to cuddle up to someone or to crawl close to someone in bed and sleep, and sooner or later it will be more than cuddling or sleeping. It is better for all of us that it happens semi-officially, than that we sneak about with it as something shameful.

Kari thinks that Jane deserves to have sex as long as Jane does not become a concubine, and if she becomes an extra close friend once a month, it is okay for them, and if Jane happens to become pregnant, so much better. Kari informs me that there is an ongoing bet in the household about when sex between me and Jane will happen, and several have already lost, which is a little fun to hear but at the same time tragic; it's less than two months since Jane came to us. How much is happening in the mansion in intrigue and other things I have no idea about? Do I want to know? There are many more women there than just my sambo's.

I choose to tell Kari about Jane's one-sided bet, and smiling but a little disappointed, Kari says that Jane will lose that bet because we don't have a torture rack and will never have it, even though she's already been right about the rest. And a torture rack is hardly suitable for sex. Poor planning by Jane. Without thinking about it, I explain that what Jane meant was not a torture rack, but something like a strong wooden X or just a strong special bed to be tied to. Kari chuckles and says we have no place ... for ... that ... either.

By the way Kari finished that sentence and stares out at the horizon, I think that Kari's mind just made a leap about the secret rooms, and I realise that torture racks are probably usually in the basement of castles. In the way Kari have closed her eyes and is breathing and smiling, I think she's already fantasizing. After a couple of minutes she just stares me in the eyes with that intense hungry look, and I know that the eastern secret room just got a purpose and I need to have it made, and I need to be the one to personally install it and do all other work.

I just responds that Kari needs to inform Iselin and Ciara - because I do not want to do that. Kari's smile widens and her eyes somehow becomes hungrier. She tells Caecilia and Gunhild to go for a walk and check that no one is around, which Gunhild immediately does because she reads the mood just like Caecilia, and takes Caecilia with her.

Damn, Kari or Caecilia is going to be my death some day, but I hope it takes a while because I want to accumulate more memories like this.

On the way home we take a detour to the village. The road down to the village is now completely finished and nice to both walk and drive a carriage on, even if the paving in some places makes it a little more choppy than the finest gravel road. In our summer carriage with its suspension, the road is extra nice, but I'm considering trying to leather-clad the wheels to lessen the metal against stone sounds, and increase the traction. But that also increases friction. They've finished installing windows in Unn's house and the house is completely finished except for the water pump. Unn should have already been here, and I hope that nothing happened to her. It is a couple of days more than a month now and almost five weeks instead of the four she said. But the weather or something else may have delayed her. People tend to underestimate how much time something will take. People tend to underestimate a lot, and that is my expert opinion because I do it a lot.

A small simple greenhouse on the south side would be fun to surprise Unn with. Thick stone sides for greater thermal stability, and two sloping 1x1m windows so it will be maybe 2.5 meters wide and have the same square meter area. Not much, but may be enough for smaller plants, herbs or whatever she wants, and helps overwinter plants that she may have brought along. It also prolongs the growing period or just protects against spring frosts, and means that she can plant small plants come spring instead of seeds or bulbs. It's a good idea, so I can sketch it and send Caecilia with the design to Pedr.

We find master builder Pedr and the carpenters, and they will make a wooden beam cross with many iron loops for attaching stuff, even for the cross itself. I just say it's for a project I'm working on and it has to be strong enough to take some load, so about 15cm wide beams - and no one questions it. I've already built so many weird things and ideas, and not even Caecilia seem to connect it to sex. And her thoughts seems to start at sex and move on from there. It's fun to see Kari's calm controlled neutral face while I discuss with Pedr as he doesn't understand, while Kari tries to avoid showing anything or fantasizing.

We leave and after a short distance, Kari kisses me deeply - at least she remembers her tongue this time. Kari whispers that her dress will soon need to be washed, and she needs to talk to Iselin and Ciara, so she hurries home with Gunhild. Alith is curious because she has understood that something is going on, so when we continue walking and I've sent Caecilia ahead, I explain in a low voice;

"Alith, just like you have come to enjoy sex in special ways, Kari has discovered something she really likes, and it has quickly gone further and more intensely than I thought, especially since Kari methodically made Jane reveal more and more Midgård knowledge about sex. I will of course do my best to fulfill Kari's wishes. We would both appreciate if the guards in the future do not visit the secret library if you don't have to, and the door connecting it to the mezzanine secret room will be blocked so it can only be opened from the secret library. So the only way to the easternmost rooms will be via the library. "

Alith nods and is hardly less curious, but she accepts it. It's hardly the first time I use 'need to know', and sometimes Alith needs to know, and sometimes she doesn't. I also have to check how I will attach the cross down there, and probably more things in the future. I can probably use those iron rings attached to the wall in some way. In any case, we have extra disassembled beds in the basement, that can be moved there and modified with discreet attachment points I can carve out or attach. I think Kari will prefer if it is iron and more visible.

Damn, I need to build a couple of extra doors to dampen sounds better. I'm not so worried about the roof, even though the two easternmost rooms are not stone vaulted roofs like the west, but wooden beams, because they made the same thick insulation over the entire surface to avoid a cold floor. It is birch bark with sand layers and then thick sawdust and planer shavings on top, but the passage is not soundproofed. A library is hardly the loudest place and the same goes for the meeting room. Why did I make the secret path start behind the book shelfs in a library?! It was not for sound considerations, and the main reason is simple; because a bookshelf that hides a secret path is a classic, which is actually kind of stupid since at least Midgård people will expect it. And I wanted the library on the south side for the light. I sure wasn't planned to have a sex dungeon in the basement when I was drawing and designing. It would have been so easy to have crucial things done differently.

The king's proclamation 5 weeks ago, and that we live fairly isolated on an island and not in Borgarsandr, has made my life easier and safer, but I almost miss a little intrigue or something that can distract Kari and make her focus on it. Over the past month, much of her focus has been on sex and our pleasure. I really shouldn't complain, but it's going too fast, and her inheritance doesn't seem to have affect her focus, and I don't know if that is good or bad. It may be that she is trying to avoid thinking about her inheritance and it's circumstances by focusing on her kinky side, and her life here gives her plenty of time for thoughts.

The whole afternoon is just work but a lot gets done with Iselin and Ciara helping me. It is quite fun that Iselin is looking forward to both the King's visit and the Auction, but at the same time wants it to be over so we can continue to work on machines and line shaft system. Because I forgot, I go through the pipes the glazier has made and it's a mix of diameters, lengths and straightness. Many will be useful, but I will ruin some during testing or handling.

When I build on the oil lamps, I realise that the oil lamp burners can be used for a simple laboratory oven because I need a lab oven for various jobs, which probably needs to be able to go up to 600 Celsius or so, and with a bit of control in temperature. I don't know how hot the burners can make it, but it should reach that. When I think of use, such as annealing glass, the lab oven will need to cool down really slowly, so large thermal mass is best, but if I have to heat up and down other things, temperature regulation and faster response is more important, which requires the possibility of faster cooling. So I will probably build two different ovens even if I don't start on them now. I can start planning them, and Iselin likes to sit and discuss and sketch it out while we build.

I design something similar to a microwave oven but with thicker walls. It would probably have been enough for the thickest largest copper plate to be formed into a similar part of an oven, but I think I will cast a bottom plate with fins and channels to more efficiently capture the heat from the burners and conduct the hot gases around. Two oil burners on the underside, and the copper will help to spread the heat nicely and also be a 'clean' fine metal surface for future project. To actually insulate and build up the temperature, the oven is built in brick blocks. The front has a hatch that can be lifted away, or hinged down, and also made of brick blocks or molded cement. The difference between the two ovens is that one gets three or four times thicker brick insulation around it, and the other gets some channels between the ceramic blocks so it is possible to blow in cool air and thus cool down the oven or vary its temperature a little faster. However, I don't want cracks to form. It will probably break, and I will probably make an improved oven in the future anyway.

I need to build a thermometer for each oven, but even in the future I can forget about using mercury for that, as the boiling point of mercury is 357 Celsius, so either a bimetal thermometer, or a gas pressure thermometer needs to be built. I only have a few different calibration points for the thermometer, such as ice, the boiling point of water, the melting point of lead, the boiling point of mercury, etc, but that should be enough for what I am going to use the oven for. If I get a 20 degrees accuracy and scale at the top of the range, I will be happy, because a lot is about what happens at a certain temperature on the gauge, not the exact actual temperature. I've already built manometers so gas thermometers are should be a good and 'easy' solution. The sensing part will be a larger sealed tube connected to the gauge by a narrow tube through the brick insulation. The advantage is that it is possible to use a fairly long thin tube and a large gas container to get a better result, and a larger manometer housing with a longer needle also helps.

The first thing that needs to be built are the manometer gauges, which I use for more projects, and I need to build the thermometer into the ovens and thus they need to be finished first and calibrated so they get the space needed.

Iselin likes that the same manometer construction can be used for several different purposes, and since we learned a lot from the first manometer constructions, it will probably be quite quick and easy. The important thing to know for the scale is that as long as you use the Kelvin scale that starts at absolute zero, the pressure will rise in proportion to the temperature. We literally live just 20m above sea level so the average pressure here is 1 bar and at 22C which is about room temperature here, the 'gas temperature' will be 273K + 22C = 295K x 1 bar, so if the pressure increases to 3 bar then the gas temperature is (295K x 3) - 273K = 612C, so the lab oven needs a manometer with at least 3.5 bar range to have a little margin, slightly lower than the 5 bar manometers we have built so far. I can actually use the existing extra manometer to calibrate the new scales, so if I build four to five temperature manometers, and connect them at the same time on the same block, they can all get the same calibration as they measure the same pressure. As long as the measuring tube at the end is many times more than the volume in the rest of the tube and the meters, the finished system will measure the temperature well enough with a small error. The manometers we made have a diameter of almost 100mm, so if the scale for the needle cover 300 degrees, and the scale has a diameter of 100mm, it will be a 260mm long arc. That means for a scale where every millimeter is 3 degrees Celsius, the range will be 780 Celsius, which is more than accurate enough. The meters will be a bit different because they're a handmade mechanism without any good references. But I can not manufacture something so exact and equal that everyone gets the same scale, and it is actually useful if one have a range of 3 bar and another becomes 5 or 6 bar. And it is possible to change the needle's range by moving the attachment point on the internal lever, and by changing the exact diameter of the scale, I can make it easier to mark the right interval.

The temperature out by the gauge is probably only a little above room temperature and this means that the gauge can have solder etc, but not in the oven. Making a gas tight seal there will be tricky. In order to be reliable, I need to fill with a clean gas that can handle the range, but I don't want to sacrifice my propane-butane mix and it is combustible. Propane can be used as a refrigerant for a possible heat pump and perhaps a refrigerator or freezer, but I don't know how the mix will behave. Ammonia is also used in some cooling systems, and ammonia can be obtained from urine. Other gas thermometers that will never be in really cold or hot could have been filled with drier air on a clear cold winter day that has the lowest humidity, because the humidity in the air becomes a big problem above the boiling point. I can also make a small reservoir in the form of T out by the gauge so that moisture hopefully finds its way to the lowest point there and then never heats up enough to become future problems. I can heat and cool it in a cycle before trying to empty any liquid.

It's nice to sit and have an interesting discussion and design process by explaining it to Iselin and Ciara, and get away from all the mess with the maids who meticulously clean everything so that the mansion and its interior will be in excellent condition before the King's entourage arrives.