“Are you all right?”
“Yes, but I will miss them and you.”
“I will miss you too. I bought these for you,” Adam said as he pulled a sprig of forget-me-nots tied with a blue ribbon from his pocket. “They remind me of you, and I thought you could wear them like you did when we went to the theatre.”
“Thank you, Adam, they are beautiful.” Immanuel sniffed and blinked away the tears threatening to come as Adam slipped the boutonniere into the lapel of his coat. “You know, this is the first time I have had something that felt like it was mine since I came here. I feel like family, but I don’t know if I still will be after being away for a few months.”
Adam inched closer and slipped his arm around Immanuel’s shoulders. Lord Sorrell’s driver was too preoccupied with not hitting pedestrians to watch them. “You are family to me and definitely to Hadley. She already has a wedding invitation with your name on it and a contract in the works for you to rent her room once you are settled in town. She would have let you stay there without one, but I said we had to make it look legitimate in case anyone ever asked.”
“You must thank her for me and Lord Sorrell, too. I wish I could have spent more time with you before I left.” Immanuel smiled and rested his head against Adam’s cheek. “Dinner was great last night, but you know what I mean. April seems like an eternity.”
“Well, it just so happens that I decided to take a holiday in February and Oxford seems like a good place to go during the dreary months.”
Immanuel’s eyes lit up. “Really? You will love it. I could take you to the libraries and show you around the museums. You can even see the walrus Professor Martin and I assembled.” He stopped, the fire ebbing as reality surfaced in cruel bursts. “Adam, what if you find you no longer care for me by then?”
How could he say that? Holding Immanuel’s arms, Adam stared into his wetted eyes and whispered, “I have never felt this way about anyone. You have awoken something in me, something I tried very hard to hide, but I can’t anymore. The world is not kind to people like us, yet there is nothing I want more than to be with you. Months ago, I never would have imagined I would be saying this. I hated myself, I hated the façade I put on every day, and then, suddenly, I stumbled across you. You were bruised and battered, barely alive, but I wanted to know you.” He rubbed his wrist and swallowed hard. “When Lord Rose attacked you, I was so afraid you would die. Finally, I realized how much you meant to me. Don’t ever think I won’t care for you, Immanuel. You have irrevocably changed me, and I am looking forward to our future adventures more than anything.”
Sliding behind the driver’s seat, Adam and Immanuel sunk down below where London’s prying eyes could reach. Immanuel drew his companion close and pressed his lips to his, relishing the familiar scent of his lavender cologne and the subtle spice of tea on his breath. These simple moments of intimacy were what he would miss most. The light scratch of Adam’s mustache against his lips or the security of their fingers laced together would be what he longed for during those days where his classes took their toll and all he wanted was Adam’s companionship.
Pulling away, they straightened up and brushed the creases from their coats as the station came into view. That would have to be their good-bye kiss, but pulling off Adam’s glove, he slipped their fingers together. Immanuel pressed his palm to Adam’s as if it were their bodies, flesh on flesh with warmth and the gentle hum of electricity between them. With a smile, Adam brought Immanuel’s hand to his lips before donning his glove and opening the steamer door for him.
Beyond Paddington Station, the future awaited, and while it was as unclear as his mottled eye, at least through the fog, he knew Adam would be waiting for him.
Epilogue
Footsteps echoed in the tile and brick hall of the mortuary. The night porter glanced up from his post at the desk, but the room was empty apart from the sputtering gas lamp in far corner. His pulse quickened. A place like this was bound to be haunted, yet every time he thought it was a ghost, it turned out to be porter from one of the hospitals dropping off more bodies or a janitor making his rounds. Turning his attention back to his copy of The Strand, the porter tried to put the rhythmic clacking of shoes from his mind, and as suddenly as they appeared, they stopped.
“Excuse me.”
The porter lurched back when his eyes met the hard gaze of a woman in black. His heart pounded in his throat, but as she drew back her widow’s veil, he was relieved to find she was as solid as he was.
The woman was like no one he had ever seen. Beneath her hat and veil, her polished bronze hair curled in tight ringlets like spooled wire, and despite the winter cold, her skin was sun-kissed and glowing. Her full lips and high cheekbones rivaled that of his wife, but his amorous musings were cut short by her pale green eyes.
“Ma’am, the morgue is closed.”
As if she didn’t hear him, she said, “I am here claim my husband.”
There was something about her, some force behind her gaze that repelled any rejection or rebuff before he could utter it. The porter fumbled for the ledger, feeling her eyes upon him, and turned to the latest entries. “Name?”
“Lord Alastair Rose.”
“Right this way, Lady Rose.”
Leaving her in the viewing room, the porter shuddered. He wove through the rows of bodies until he reached the one that matched the number in the ledger. The body had been brought in two days ago during his shift. It had been surprising to see Dr. Hawthorne dropping off a body, usually he was collecting one or one was being delivered to him by a policeman for a post-mortem examination. As he rolled the body into the room, he watched as her eyes never left the form beneath the sheet. The porter folded the cloth back to the dead man’s shoulders.
“That is him,” she said, flatter than he expected. “May we have some privacy?”
The porter blinked and back out of the room. “Of course, Lady Rose. If you require anything, I will be right outside the door.”
When the door clicked shut behind her, she grabbed the edge of the sheet and threw it back, revealing her husband’s pale corpse. Even after five years, nothing had changed. His dark blonde hair and muscular form were just as they had been when she left for the continent, but as her eyes trailed lower, they lingered on the purpled, mottled patches on his torso where his flesh was littered with three-pronged wounds. On his breast was an identical wound but unlike the others was surrounded by pristine skin. Tracing her hand across his brow, she brushed his hair from his forehead. She could have loved him once, if he had accepted her. They were so alike, but the ambition that brought them together severed them just as quickly.
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen.” Claudia Rose tugged the glove from her hand and ran her palm over the cold skin of his abdomen. “How curious.”
The hair on her neck rose as a swath of cold air pressed against her. She turned toward the door, thinking the porter had intruded, when she found a shadow blocking her path. The mass undulated, condensing and dissolving until it disappeared.
“Claudia!” hissed a sooty breath at her ear.
Before she could react, the specter shot through her, chilling her and taking her breath away. At the end of her nose, the mass coagulated. The shadows rolled and churned until they formed the nebulous outline of a face. He loomed over her, drawing so close that her breath scattered the particles of his familiar chin and lips. With a wave of her hand, the face drifted apart like smoke. Taking a step into the hall, she found the porter waiting.
“Where would you like us to send the body for burial, ma’am?”
“There will not be a burial.”
“So we should send him to Surrey for cremation?”
Claudia Rose slipped the fine leather glove over her hand, watching the black mass shift at the edge of her vision. “Donate him. Let him be of use for once.”
The porter opened his mouth, but the words deserted him.
Claudia Rose sauntered down the hall, her heels clicking i
n time with the swish of her black silk gown and the whir of her husband’s shade at her side. They had work to do.
The Earl and the Artificer:
Book Three of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices
To my classmates and professors, who helped me take this project from a thesis project to a book, and to Steph, who put up with my whining and helped more than she could know.
ACT ONE
“Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.”
–Jane Austen
Chapter One:
The Ninth Earl
Elbow-deep in steamer engine innards and covered in grease was not how Hadley Sorrell expected her honeymoon to begin. The wedding and journey to Dorset had been surprisingly smooth, but their luck never lasted. She should have expected the steamer to pop and belch smoke in the middle of the road. Glancing over her shoulder, she watched her husband stare off, his grey eyes locked on the rolling waves as they lapped against the piebald coast in the distance.
“Hold my leg, so my dress doesn’t blow up,” she called. “Eilian!”
“Sorry!” He snapped to attention and held her billowing gown, his prosthetic hand resting behind her knee, as she looked into the hood. “Are you certain you don’t need help? I feel bad just watching.”
“It’s fine. I don’t think there is room in here for you, anyway.”
Leaning into the front of the cab, she brought her face close to the boiler as the heat of the kettle stung her cheeks. The metal coils of the heating element had melted into a blackened cake that smelled of burnt hair. Using the sides of the hood for leverage, she pivoted back until her satin boots met the road’s white gravel. Staring down at her cream dress, already streaked with soot and grease, she sighed and wiped her hands across it before smoothing a lock of henna hair behind her ear.
“I can’t fix it. It’s burned out.”
“We could take the bicycles into town. I don’t think it’s that far.”
“Let’s just wait for Patrick to come back. You know he won’t be long.”
As Hadley lingered in the road, reconnecting the pipes and organs from the disemboweled car, Eilian listened to the pastoral silence. Under the waves and the rustling trees, there was a faint noise he couldn’t identify and it was growing louder. Gravel hissed on the other side of the bend. By the time the steamer broke from the tree-line, it was barreling down the narrow lane. Eilian waved his arms to catch the driver’s attention, but he never slowed. Wrapping his arm around Hadley’s waist, he darted and turned, falling back onto the grass in time to watch the car hurtle past in a blur of steel and wood.
“Good Lord, he nearly ran you down!”
Hadley sat in her husband’s lap, arms and legs wrapped around him. As she tried to uncurl her legs from his lap, the muscles of her thighs locked and shook. Resting her head against his collar, she inhaled the sweet, earthy scent of sandalwood that lingered on his skin and let him hold her a little longer. If he had been slower— She shook away the thought.
“It’s no different from London. They would sooner run you over than look at you. Help me up, and I’ll finish before someone else comes.”
“No, let me do it. I’m already part metal. What’s one more limb?” he replied, kissing the top of her head and carefully disentangling himself from her skirts.
Watching Eilian from the grass, Hadley smiled to herself. The mechanized fingers of his right hand flexed at a thought, reattaching the engine’s cords and tubes with ease. It had been a year since they met, when she came knocking on his door with a tape measure and an idea for an electric prosthesis. They had shared a tent in the dusty lunar gorges of Palestine while she was disguised as a man, but there would be no more charades or mutterings from his mother about scandal or imagined impropriety. Now, they could finally be together. A thrill laced through her breast at the thought of such liberty.
“Incoming!” she called as a steamer chugged down the lane, slowing to a stop a few yards away.
Eilian stepped out of the way, his eyes trailing to the black-haired woman in the driver’s seat and beside her, his butler clamoring out the door. Patrick burst from the cab, sputtering apologies and half-formed phrases.
“Pat, slow down. I can’t understand a word you’re saying,” Eilian said as he joined him at the steamer’s hood.
Taking a deep breath, Patrick pushed his glasses up his nose and collected his thoughts. “Sorry, sir. She’s willing to take you and Lady Dorset up to Brasshurst Hall. I’ll stay behind and wait for the mechanic.”
The woman with the full features of a Caravaggian saint climbed out of her cab, her voluminous skirts rustling with each step. Her dark eyes ran between the young man with the wayward hair to the woman in the stained dress at his side. “Sorry to intrude, but your valet said you were headed for Folkesbury? I am headed that way now if you would care to join me.”
“That is very kind of you, Miss—?”
“Mrs. Rhodes,” she replied, walking back toward her steamer while the butler dithered between the trunks and bicycles tethered to the back of the hissing steamer.
Eilian held the passenger door open for Hadley to slide in. “I hope we aren’t inconveniencing you.”
“Not at all, I was heading back home. Brasshurst Hall is on the way.”
A pang of guilt rang in the pit of Eilian’s stomach as he watched Patrick grow smaller behind them.
“I was surprised to hear you were headed for Brasshurst. No one has been up there in ages. I almost didn’t believe Argus—my husband—when he told me the earl’s servants were coming up from London to clean the house. Are you his guests?”
Hadley’s lips twitched into a grin, and she shot her husband a knowing look. “He is the earl.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Rhodes’s eyes left the road long enough to search the nobleman’s face for any sign of offense while her own cheeks burned. “I beg your pardon, Lord and Lady Dorset. I— I was expecting someone… older.”
“No harm done, Mrs. Rhodes. You were probably thinking of my father. I have only been the earl for a few months, and I— Is that the house?”
Over the tops of the closely clumped elms and oaks, the spire of a tower rose. As they cut through the brush, Eilian’s eyes widened. Knowing his father, he had expected a conservative Georgian brick manor with a square roof and a smooth face, but the house was like none he had ever seen.
Brasshurst Hall was an asymmetrical monster. It had a Gothic portal and face on the front, a Palladian annex shooting off the side complete with columns and pediments. Straining his eyes, he could make out the latticed windows of a sultan’s harem floating above another layer of cathedral spires and pointed arches. The weathered grey-brown cloister stone was half-covered with ivy and wisteria. Following the gravel drive across an old stone bridge, the orangery appeared. The greenhouse’s glass and metal body bulged from the side of the manor like a verdurous boil. No wonder his father chose to move them to London.
When the steamer slid to a stop, Mrs. Rhodes swallowed hard, looking between her passengers. “I do hope you will call on us while you are in Folkesbury, Lady Dorset. My cousin is staying with us, and he has been eagerly awaiting your arrival. He lives in London, too, near Bloomsbury. You may have heard of him. Nadir Talbot, the novelist.”
“Yes, I think my brother read his last book, the one about Cleopatra. He enjoyed it very much.” When the woman’s eyes lit up, Hadley continued, “Thank you so much for giving us a lift, Mrs. Rhodes. I will most certainly pay you a visit once we are settled.”
Watching the steamer roll away, Hadley sighed as the grin fell from her cheeks. She would have to pay calls in a few days, drifting from house to house pretending she was the Countess of Dorset and not Hadley Fenice of Fenice Brothers Prosthetics. It was hard enough to pretend she was an aristocrat for a few hours at their wedding. How was she supposed to keep it up the entire time they were in Dorset? At least her etiquette books were packed in her trunk and Folkesbury seemed like a small town.
Maybe no one would notice that she wasn’t a born aristocrat.
Eilian’s metal hand pressed against her palm. “So, what do you make of it?”
“It’s... different,” Hadley replied, her gaze running over the bright blue brace and ledge door set into the deep rings of the Gothic facade.
“I’m beginning to wonder if insanity runs in my family.” Eilian opened the door and turned to her with open arms. “Well, shall we?”
“You’re going to pick me up? Are you sure you can carry me?”
“I have before.”
Slipping his arms around her shoulders and behind her knees, he hoisted Hadley against his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck and braced herself in case his prosthesis couldn’t bear her weight. Whenever he picked her up or held her close, part of her still wanted to look around to ensure no one was watching, yet she didn’t want him to stop.
“This is a silly tradition, Eilian. You don’t have to do this.”
“I want to; it’s good luck.” He kissed her cheek and pushed the door with his back. “The Romans believed carrying a bride over the threshold would protect her from evil spirits...”
Eilian froze in the doorway. The tunneled hall was dark, looming over them and pressing close to his head. While the floor had been swept and the old rug laid out, the ribbed arches were webbed with spider’s silk. As the dust motes danced and surged around them, he tightened his grip on her. Turning toward the sun’s rays, he reached to close the door but left it for fear of the shadows rushing in or what might lie beyond the threshold.
“I think we are a little late if we want to beat the evil spirits.” Hadley’s eyes roamed over the clots of long dead insects and debris spun into the grooves of the stone ceiling as he set her down. “I thought the maids were supposed to come and clean up.”
The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Box Set Page 54