“I am not all right!” Immanuel leapt from the bed and stood before the dresser near the closed door. Holding either side of the cabinet, he stared into the mirror as he did every day, but rather than fixing his gaze on his hair or what lay behind him, he lingered on the face he scarcely recognized. “He altered me so wholly. Not only did he fracture my soul but my body too, and neither have healed properly. Look at what he did to me! I don’t even look like me anymore. In one blow, he broke my nose and shattered my eye, leaving me with this!” he cried as he pointed to the crack that passed from forehead to cheek, severing his eye. “He blotted out my vision, and I will never get it back.” Immanuel hung his head, his chest rocking with each ragged sob. “I don’t think I will ever stop being afraid now.”
Adam sprung to his feet and stood beside Immanuel as he dissolved into tears, afraid to touch him. Despite standing where his companion could not see him, he wrapped his arm around his shoulders, and Immanuel relinquished his hold on the dresser, letting his body sag against him. The bones of the German’s shoulders pressed into his companion’s chest as he walked him back to the edge of the bed and lowered him onto the mattress. As his cries tore into coughs and loose hyperventilating, Adam’s lightly patted his back and ran his hand over his shoulder blades and spine until the air finally returned to his lungs.
“I am here to listen, Immanuel. Tell me why you are afraid. Maybe— maybe I can help.”
He shook his head. “You cannot do anything. I thought I was free of him. I thought I would never see that man again, but he was in the house.” Staring up at Adam with pleading eyes, he continued, “Dr. Hawthorne knows him. He knows who he is and let him in the house.”
“Did you tell James?”
“No, I can’t. They are working with him, and Emmeline went to visit him today. If I tell, they will all be in danger. I cannot do that. I will always be under his control even if he never knows I am here. I just want to die. How can I live knowing he could be lurking around every corner?”
“Don’t say that.”
“You don’t understand. I have nothing to live for. I don’t know if I can go back to Oxford and continue my studies, and I can never go back to Germany. I have nothing. No plans, no prospects, nothing. I would be better off dead, but I don’t know if I could die even if I wanted to. He took everything from me. What do I have, Adam? What do I have?”
Without thinking, Adam held him by his arms. Immanuel stiffened in his grasp, but he refused to let go until he raised his gaze to meet his. “You have me. I want to help you. I would do anything to help you, but you will not tell me how.”
Immanuel stared into Adam’s soft, blue eyes as the pent up frustration flowed through his arms and seeped from his fingertips into the aether. He had never had someone care for him like that, but there he was only inches away. One hand released his arm and came up to his face to wipe away the moisture that clung to the point of his scar. Holding Adam’s eyes, the tears stopped flowing, but the heat from his companion’s body radiated out as Immanuel allowed himself to be drawn closer. When he closed his eyes, it was as if they were back on the ice again with the electricity coursing between them, and as he squeezed them shut against the sticky dew still clinging in the corners, Adam pressed his lips to his. A flush of vigor washed over them, infiltrating every cell of their bodies with the ebb and flow of their heartbeats. Drawing a breath in harmony, their bodies enmeshed as they sighed and deepened their hold. The warmth spreading within Immanuel’s breast chased away the fear and grief for his past life as he cupped the back of Adam’s head, lingering in the softness of his hair. With a final tremble of breath, Immanuel drew back with hooded eyes.
Adam Fenice’s eyes flew open, and he froze. His body had acted without his mind’s permission, yet his companion had not pushed him away. What had he done?
“I— I need to go,” he stammered as he ran his thumb and forefinger across his lower lip and dislodged his body from Immanuel’s slack grasp.
“Adam, Adam, wait! I can explain!”
Immanuel bounded down the steps after him, tripping over his feet when tears clouded his vision. “Please, let me explain.”
Adam shook his head, putting on his coat as he slipped out. “I have to go.”
Tears burned the backs of Immanuel’s eyes as he lingered at the threshold, watching Adam disappear into the bitter December gloom. He was about to shut the door when he spotted a pair of dark gloves lying on the side table. Darting back upstairs, he stuffed the slip with the Fenices’s address into his pocket and emerged onto Wimpole Street in one of James’s hand-me-down coats. Immanuel Winter looked toward the direction the redhead had gone when he disappeared and hoped he had headed home. He smoothed the paper on the front of his leg. Where was Baker Street? As he stood at the corner of Wimpole and Weymouth, he wished he had grabbed a map from the study. Studying the houses in either direction, he sighed.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Sir!” he called as he spun, trying to catch a passerby, but the citizens of London paid the man with the cracked face no heed. “I just want to know—”
“Are you in need of assistance?”
“Yes.” Immanuel turned to find a young man on a bicycle and wearing a Norfolk jacket regarding him with grey eyes and a crooked smile. “Do you know how to get to Baker Street?”
“Turn left. When you get to the second major intersection on Weymouth, turn right. You will need to take Paddington Street next, which will be the first intersection on your left. Follow that road until you hit Baker Street.”
He tried to commit the directions to memory but knew he would need to ask at least one more person for help along the way. “Thank you so much, sir.”
“You are welcome. My fiancée lives there, so I am well acquainted with Baker Street,” the stranger grinned as he pedaled away, but as Immanuel’s eyes followed him, he noted that one hand was of flesh while the other was of metal.
***
Standing outside of 124 Baker Street, Immanuel took a deep breath and checked the slip of paper Eliza wrote that morning for the eighth time. His heart pounded as he finally rang the doorbell and waited, hoping his friend wouldn’t slam the door in his face the moment he saw him on the porch. The door creaked open, and Immanuel blinked in disbelief as a female version of Adam stood on the other side. Her hair was cropped short and covering her legs was not a gown but a pair of dusty trousers. She wiped the sweat from her brow with a paint-splotched hand and stared up at him.
“May I help you?”
He opened his mouth but pulled out the pair of black gloves left back at Wimpole Street instead. “Is Mr. Fenice home? He forgot his gloves.”
Hadley studied his face, running her gaze over the smudge of brown in his left eye. “He just arrived home. Come in.” As she stepped out of the doorway to allow him to pass, she added, “You must be Immanuel Winter. Adam has told me so much about you. I’m Hadley, his sister.”
“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Fenice, but I do not want to keep you. I just wanted to drop these off.”
Noting the sag of sadness hanging at the edges of his features, she led him toward the stairs. “Adam is upstairs if you would like to speak to him.”
Her eyes saw past the man’s meager excuses as she ushered the blonde man to her brother’s room. Adam had come home only a few minutes earlier obviously upset, and she knew his friend’s arrival coupled with her brother’s inability to talk to her about what had transpired must have been connected. Hadley’s soft tread tapered away as she headed back to her studio, leaving the men alone. After taking only a few steps into the hallway, he could make out Adam sitting pensively at his desk, staring at the wall. Adam Fenice looked up with a start as his gaze fell upon the thin scientist gripping his best pair of gloves.
“You forgot these.” Immanuel tossed them onto his desk. Adam shifted in his seat before finally looking directly at him. “You kissed me, yet you left like I did something wrong. What did I do?”
&nbs
p; “Nothing. You did not do anything. I should not have— I should not have done that. Let’s not mention it again. It should not have happened.”
“Stop.”
Adam met Immanuel’s gaze as it bore through his eyes again. Tears threatened to spill out again, rattling his form as he fought to hold them in.
“You said I would always have you. Don’t say anything to me you don’t mean. I am tired of being played with! Do you know why I had to leave Germany? I kissed another boy, and he panicked. He told his parents, and they went to the police. My uncle was caught doing the same thing, and he and his lover both went to jail. He died there from typhoid, and my mother couldn’t bear the thought of her only son sharing the same fate as her brother. She sent me to England before they could lock me up, and here I finally met someone who feels the same way I do. You do not see me as some abomination, yet you push me away because you cannot come to terms with your own feelings.” He paused as he thought for a moment. “Does your sister know?”
“Yes, and that is probably why she sent you up here.” Rubbing his wrist, he sighed. “I’m sorry I left so suddenly, but I have never acted on my impulses before.”
“Well, that explains it. Denying who you are is not going to make them go away. Believe me, I have tried.” Immanuel dropped his voice, letting each word come out slow and measured, “Adam, I want us both to be happy, and I believe you and I both feel a certain attraction. I want to be happy again, and I think if you allowed yourself to give in to your feelings, you would be happier, too. What I am saying is, I think a relationship would be good for both of us. That is, if you feel as I think you do.”
He hesitated. Never had he thought it would have been possible. That moment of freedom was the best thing he had felt in so long. Gently taking Immanuel’s hand, he clasped it between his own and brought it to his lips. “It is worth a try.”
Chapter Seventeen:
Tea and Tears
Eliza reclined by the hearth, book in hand and tea at her elbow. The soft flames flickered and reflected off the cabinets of curiosities, illuminating a cylinder housing a complete human spine and pelvis covered in nodules of nervous tissue. She looked up at the specimen fondly before returning to the pages of Frankenstein. Adam had brought it for Emmeline with the rest of the novels she requested, but after twenty pages, she had abandoned it for Austen. The doctor had forgotten the joy of reading fiction, but something about Shelley’s creation was tantalizingly off-putting when combined with her husband’s profession. Her eyes roved over the love-worn pages until the creaking of boards behind the chair roused her from the creature’s journey through the Alps. She expected to find her husband reminding her of the late hour but instead met the copper and blue gaze of Immanuel Winter as he stood in the doorway with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Is everything all right, Immanuel?”
He shook his head silently, but the heaviness of melancholy that clung to him that morning was gone by the time she and Emmeline arrived home. “Emmeline is crying.”
“Do you know why?” she asked as she tucked the book between the cushion and armrest and stiffly rose from her seat.
“I did not ask. I know she would prefer I not speak to her, and I did not want to make things worse.”
What could be wrong now? She sighed, assuming her tears were for some petty thing like a gown without enough lace or a slipper made of satin rather than silk. As Eliza reached the second landing, she caught a faint but tremulous mewl. Tiptoeing down the darkened hall, the girl’s soft, pitiable cries grew clearer. They were not the exaggerated cries of one who wanted to be discovered but those of pain which were stifled by the awareness that others may hear. Emmeline sat with her back to the door and her knees drawn to her chest under the white cotton of her nightgown as she stared into the breathing tinder of the hearth. Eliza Hawthorne paused in the doorway, watching her niece’s back quiver with sobs, and couldn’t help but feel compassion for the wayward girl for the second time in the same day. With a rap of her knuckle on the molding, Emmeline’s red rimmed, owl eyes gaped up at her. Upon seeing her aunt’s form silhouetted in the fire’s dying light, she pawed at her cheeks with balled hands and fought the pull of hiccupped cries that refused to be smothered by pride.
“Emmeline, what is the matter?”
“I’m fine,” she snapped as another wet whimper leapt from her throat.
“You can lie to me,” the redhead said, softening her tone as she sat at the foot of the bed behind the girl, “but your tears can’t. Why not tell me what the matter is instead of keeping it to yourself?”
“I don’t want to. You wouldn’t understand.”
Eliza’s green eyes fell on the glinting surface of blue enamel petals and diamond faces between the orphaned child’s fingers. “I think I would. You know, I lost my mother when I was thirteen. I know how hard it is to lose your best friend. I cried every day for months because I missed her.”
With a sniff, Emmeline raised her head, never taking her eyes off the hearth. “How did you get over it?”
“I didn’t. You never get over losing your mother, but my father helped me a lot. Some people never talk about their loved ones after they die, but my father spoke about her all the time. At first, we would sit and cry together about some memory we shared of her, and it hurt more than anything to think of her. After a few months, I realized I was smiling when I thought about her laughing or singing. I still missed her terribly, but the pain lessened the more I talked about her.”
“Did you like mama?”
“Yes, we did not always see eye to eye, but I think she and I were too much alike. We were both hardheaded women desperately trying to be independent in a society that wants us to be anything but.” The doctor laughed to herself as her mind wandered ten years back to her wedding. “I thought Madeline hated me. The Hawthorne women played by the rules to get some semblance of freedom while I went to a university to become a doctor and inadvertently stole their only brother from the upper class life his father had envisioned for him. At our wedding, your mother was the first one to truly welcome me to the family.”
Squeezing the jewelry and shard of jet in her palms, Emmeline clenched her eyes shut against the image of her mother in flames. “I thought— I thought mama would be there for me forever.”
The words tumbled out as her body shook with sobs. Mama would never be there anymore. She would never come back no matter how hard she wished or prayed, no matter how hard she pretended Samhain never happened. Gentle hands wrapped around her shoulders and enveloped her until her face was pressed into the skirt of her aunt’s gown. Artful fingers as skilled in science as in tenderness combed through her hair and smoothed the inky tendrils away from the wetness around her eyes.
“Mama will never see me presented into society or be there on my wedding day. She won’t be there when I have children. Who will I go to when I need help?” the girl cried, her voice strained and weak under the enormity of her mother’s absence. “It’s all my fault. If she hadn’t gone back into the house to find me, she never would have died!”
Eliza gently shushed her niece. “It’s not your fault, Emmeline. Someone set the fire and kidnapped you, and your mother reacted as any woman who cannot find her child would. Her love for you was incalculable.”
“I wish she didn’t love me so much. Then, she might still be here.” The room fell silent as Emmeline closed her eyes against her aunt’s lap. If she concentrated, she could smell the sweet perfume in her mother’s boudoir and feel the plush Turkish carpet under her naked toes, but she couldn’t picture her alive or peaceful. Her face was already fading. “These bits of treasure are all I have of her now. I have nothing to remember her by, nothing. Why did she have to die? I’m— I’m so afraid I will forget her.”
She gently wiped the tears from her niece’s cheeks and whispered, “I will be right back. I think I have something that may help.”
Dislodging her body from under Emmeline’s head, Eliza Hawth
orne descended to the floor occupied by her bedroom and the study. Through the crack in the door, she could make out her husband fast asleep with his face pressed into his pillow and his glasses resting on the nightstand. The study stood open on the other side of the hall, but as she crept inside, she swore she heard the shriek of a kettle. Eliza dug through the cabinets below the bookshelves until her hands fell upon a bound parcel of photographs varying in size and subject. At the bottom of the pile among the larger pictures was a group of dark-eyed, dark-haired children. She smiled at the boy who sat on the edge of the portrait looking off into the distance as if he did not belong with the four older girls. As she carried it back to Emmeline’s bedroom, she chuckled. Poor little James probably looked so lost because they had taken away his glasses and he had no way of knowing where the camera was. When she came in, the lamps were on and her niece was sitting on her bed blowing her nose and staring at her reddened reflection in the mirror with a deep frown.
Eliza handed her the photograph as she lowered herself onto the edge of the mattress. “Your mother was only twenty in this picture.”
“She was beautiful,” she replied, immediately recognizing her mother’s byzantine eyes and knowing gaze amid the four familiarly featured women. Madeline Hawthorne, the very recent Lady Jardine at the time of the photograph, stared directly at the camera and beyond into her daughter’s eyes. “Uncle James looks so young.”
“He was only twelve at the time.”
Emmeline had only begun mastering her emotions when the sight of her mother’s youthful visage crumbled her resistance again. Dry, sticky tears irritated her eyes as she stared into the face the father she had never known fell in love with. Sweat and the flush of feeling flooded her cheeks as Emmeline drew in a constrained breath. Her mother was the only one in the photograph who would never age. She would be forever frozen in time, never to deteriorate or diminish with age, but at what cost?
The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Box Set Page 39