by Jean Rabe
“Mr. Jefferson.” She leaned on her frilly parasol in tacit imitation of him and his cane.
“Colonel.”
“Where are you from? Kentucky, perhaps?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Your manner and speech betray you. Too affected.” A furtive glance. A less attentive gentleman may have missed it. But she tracked the movements of the soldiers. “A hint of accent to your words. They don’t slip out often, but they’re there. You’ve worked hard to hide your roots.”
“Your impertinence begins to irritate me.” By nature he eluded any attempts by others to get to know him. He hated the way she saw through him, knowing him with a glance.
“There’s no shame in it. Or you.”
She locked onto his eyes as if her very being depended on maintaining the intensity of their gaze. More powerful than lust, it was magic. Their world was the train. Here they could pretend they had no outside responsibilities. Distance meant nothing, time meant nothing; even though he was across the table from her, she was probably unaware that he had slipped his fingers between hers.
Winston turned away and sought to master the emotions threatening to distract him from his appointed task. He noticed a gentleman in his early fifties with an athletic build with silver hair and beard. A silver and blue eye patch matched not only the pocket handkerchief tucked into the breast pocket of his black suit, but also his elegant silk tie. He cut a striking figure though wearing perhaps too much toilet water. The man took the moment to saunter over to them. Winston stood and composed his demeanor.
“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Richard St. Ives.” He had a queer lilting resonance to his voice, as if speaking through his nose at a high altitude.
“Pleased to meet your acquaintance, Mr. St. Ives.” Lady Trystan offered her hand.
“Oh, I very much doubt that. You see, I’m an agent of Sir Melbourne.”
“Then whatever business you have is between you and him.”
“Would that it were so, but often the claims of family tread all over our well-intentioned designs.”
“The lady says she has no business with you.” Winston rested both of his palms on his cane. Not even the joggling of the train’s movement budged him.
St. Ives smoothed his gloves, the corresponding gesture in their voiceless dance of intimidation and veiled threat. “But I fear I’ve business with her, as I have been retained to sort out matters. That is what I do.”
“You sort out things. You should know that I am under the employ of Sir Anthony. I, too, sort out things.”
It was a bold maneuver to approach Lady Trystan so openly, especially with the occasional soldier wandering about. Winston scanned the car on the hunch that St. Ives didn’t work alone. The swarthy gentleman feigned attention at his newspaper, making too much effort to appear inconspicuous.
“What is it you want, Mr. St. Ives?” Lady Trystan asked.
“Your father has all manner of secret contraptions, not all of them built through his own ingenuity. Sir Melbourne’s demands are simple. Either go through with the proposed marriage, so that the two families be enjoined . . .”
“Or . . .” Winston asked.
“Or turn over all patents pertaining to his micro-clockwork project.”
“My father would never agree to that.”
“Your father finds himself in a precarious position. At odds with his government, at odds with his business, and at odds with his religion. He is in need of allies, not further enemies.” St. Ives’ eyes grew flat and cold. “Your father should not have meddled with the inventions of others. Only Sir Anthony’s resources could keep the kabbalists from pursuing your family.”
“None of this has anything to do with me,” Lady Trystan protested.
“But it does, I fear. For the sins of the father shall pass on to the next generation. And the next and the next.” St. Ives turned to Winston. “Tell your man he has one day.”
“What was that about?” Winston asked as he watched St. Ives depart the car. He did not acknowledge knowing the man who pressed his nose back into the newspaper.
“I don’t know.”
“I know a few things about the business of fathers, the secrets they keep in the name of building a family’s fortune, and how much children can know. No matter how well their parents guard against their learning . . .”
“. . . secrets win out,” Trystan finished.
“As you say.”
She worried the kerchief in her lap. “I fear Albion rots from its own wealth and bloat. The sun never sets on the Albion empire, yet its very strength is its weakness.”
“How so?”
“Intellectual laziness comes with a lifestyle of ease. We don’t advance as fast as we should.”
“You sound like an insurrectionist. A Jamaican sympathizer.”
“Keep your voice down. You do me an injustice, sir.”
“My apologies, milady. Then the rumors about your father . . .”
“Do you now traffic in rumors, Mr. Jefferson? My father is loyal to the crown.”
“I would hope should I ever become the object of unwarranted speculation that I have so staunch a defender.”
“Do you mock me?”
“I do not.”
“I always speak what I think.”
“That can be a dangerous trait in a lady.”
“Good, because I have dangerous thoughts. All I am saying is that America is the heart that pumps the lifeblood of resources and invention to Albion. It is they who should fear us breaking away.”
Lady Trystan reminded him of a prized flower kept under glass. To be viewed and kept as a piece of living art, but cut off from the world. Never touched. He was careful not to let their hands brush one another.
“We are both playing the role expected of us.”
“Trapped by them, you mean.”
Winston slept for a few hours. His dreams, though unremembered, left him unsettled, his clothes damp with perspiration, and he, curiously, in a state of mild arousal. The pungent scent of bodily exudations filled the air. Yet the thought that something was amiss lingered. He dressed hurriedly to check on his charge. He slipped out of his car, hand steady on his cane as he ambled toward Lady Trystan’s compartment. Once he caught sight of the crumpled bodies of the two unconscious soldiers outside it, he knew what he’d find inside. Her suite—filled with embroidered sofas, an armoire, and stacked trunks of memorabilia—greatly disheveled. Her bed asunder.
Winston ducked out of the car and passed through the other passenger cars as he made his way through the train. His heart raced, pained with anxiety. Winston surveyed each car as he strode, inspecting them for any sign of his charge. He cursed himself for not doubling her guard after their encounter with Mr. St. Ives. He closed his eyes and forced himself to remain calm. Not wanting to alarm the other passengers—nor create greater chaos—he didn’t rouse his soldiers. He had to be the one to find her.
The passengers of the train slept soundly at this late hour. The train rumbled around a bend, throwing off Winston’s gait, then straightened out as it crossed a bridge traversing the Ohio River. He pulled the door to enter the small portico that bookended each car. It allowed the passengers to be undisturbed by the noise of the outside as porters entered and left the car. Winston opened the next to last car. The wind scraped at him. The cacophony of the rush of air, the clangor of the engine, and the rattle along the tracks rose to a near physical assault. He clutched his cane as he leaped from car to car, latching onto the rail with his free hand. Once inside, it took a moment for his ears to adjust to the eerie silence once more. The engine room wasn’t what he expected. He remembered the days of coal-shoveling engine jockeys crying black tears as soot mixed with perspiration around their goggles. This engine room gleamed with polished metal. Two figures struggled at the far end of the car. The swarthy man glanced at pressure gauges, flipping levers like a mad man as he turned a wayward crank. Lady Trystan, in a red silk dressing gown, w
as held fast under one arm. His stomach bottomed out. His heart lurched, so desperately afraid she might be hurt. Or taken away.
“Unhand her, cur,” Winston shouted.
The man turned and revealed a weapon aimed at Lady Trystan: a pistol of some sort with a glass sphere where the cylinder should be. Energy crackled in it like a miniature plasma ball. Winston has seen such weapons before, cognizant of the charred remains to which they could reduce a body.
“I have no wish to harm the young lady. However, my employer does wish her to be delivered to him. So while this train may make a detour so that we may depart, her condition upon arrival was not . . . specified.” The man yanked her, tightening his grip to drive home his point.
Leaning on his cane, Winston raised his left hand to show that he was unarmed and for the man to relax. He caught Lady Trystan’s eye, counting on her intelligence and resourcefulness. “You’ll get no trouble out of me. I actually feel sorry for your client. Lady Trystan is a handful. A vexing woman prone to outburst.”
He nodded.
Lady Trystan bit the man’s arm. In a savage hurl, he flung her into the control panel. He raised his weapon to take aim at her, but Winston drew a bead with his cane first. He squeezed the open mouth of his dragon head handle, and the cane discharged with a sharp report. A wisp of smoke drifted from the tip of Winston’s cane. The bullet pierced the man’s heart, and the man stared at him in mild disbelief. He staggered back one step, touching his vest as if checking the measure of his wound and determining it as fatal. For a moment, he seemed to waver, enough life in him to fire one shot of his weapon. But as Winston scampered to get between the man and Lady Trystan, the weapon fell from his fingertips as if he’d decided it would be unsporting of him.
Winston offered his hand to help Lady Trystan from the ground. She rose to her feet with an awkward dignity.
“I turn my back on you for a moment and you get into all manner of trouble.”
“I find I must ever seek to draw attention to myself to keep the men in my life entertained.”
“But it’s not your job to keep your husband entertained.” Caught up in their droll banter, the ill-considered intimation of spousehood tripped from his tongue before he could stop it. Were he a man prone to blushing, he might have beamed a torrid crimson. As it was, he fumbled at his pocket to find a new cartridge to reload into the breech of his cane.
“Kiss me.” Lady Trystan leaned close to him, her voice husky in his ear. She touched his shoulder.
“God save you. You’re a complete romantic. People like me aren’t meant to be with people like you. It isn’t . . . proper. Our roles . . .”
“Their roles be damned. Our role is to love. There’s not enough of it in our world, so when we find it, no matter how proper society finds it, we must embrace it.”
Winston kissed her tenderly.
Mr. St. Ives’ private car featured a bench of crimson velvet on which he sat reading a book and smoking a briar pipe. Music poured out of a small contraption with a gleaming carapace. At Winston’s entry, St. Ives leaned over to shut off the electro-transmitter device.
“Your agent failed.”
“An agent of an agent? Surely I have no idea what you’re talking about,” St. Ives said. “I will say this: the pursuit won’t cease. Lady Trystan, as she calls herself, is still her father’s daughter. As such, ever the most visible pawn to move.”
“And if she should disappear?”
“It is a complicated world we live in. However, a pawn out of play is of no concern to me. Or my employer.”
Lady Trystan carried herself with the bearing of a woman prone to athletics. With a seductive modesty, her gown was snug enough to reveal every curve of her voluptuous breasts and fitted to show off the flatness of her belly, without exposing any skin. In stark contrast to Winston’s mannered fastidiousness, her eyes sparkled with an arcane fire, a vivaciousness that threatened to consume him. The curious curl of her lips added a certain coquettishness to her manner, a coy edge compounded in her posture. Something about her scent captivated him, rushed straight to his head like a fog settling on his brain. No one should radiate so much sexual energy simply by sitting down.
“I have an acquaintance in Indianapolis I was due to call upon after delivering you to your father,” Winston said.
“I do so wish the men in my world would quit discussing me as if I were a sack of potatoes being shipped somewhere.”
“After some careful consideration, a clear mind would determine that a fortnight of acquaintance is no basis for any claim of intimacy.”
“You’re quite circumspect. I imagine it takes you hours to convey the cleverest of anecdotes.” Lady Trystan leaned closer, running her fingertips along his hand. He jumped, snatching his hand back as if bitten. She smiled. “Do you wish me to go with you?”
“You delight in vexing me.”
“I delight in being me. Perhaps you are too easily vexed. Led by your nose from passion to passion, spending it recklessly on any passing fancy.”
Lord have mercy, the way that woman stared at him, Winston thought. His own eyes drank her in. Large, brown pupils danced in a pool that reflected only her. He attempted not to conspicuously gaze on the curve of her body, her dress barely contained. His mouth grew dry, his tongue a swollen useless thing that choked back any words his brain managed to string together. He couldn’t imagine what to say, not to a woman like that. All woman—confident, unapologetically sexual, and with a devouring seductiveness. Someone who knew the power of her sex and wielded it like an expert martial artist. Winston’s hands labored to remain fixed on his cane handle. Instead, he consulted his pocket watch, and then blew on its pewter finish to polish it with a handkerchief, avoiding the power of her gaze. “I thought perhaps it might be prudent for you to accompany me. Away from the schemes of your father and his enemies. Somewhere you could determine your own course.”
“With you?”
“It would honor me to accompany you.” Most women concerned themselves with the attentions and fortunes of available men and their standing in society. She was a woman of deep reflection. A woman of no discretion, as proud of it as she was difficult. A woman who preoccupied his thoughts.
“Would there be horses? I love to ride.”
“Surely we could find a horse for you.” He donned his top hat, and then tugged at the vest that covered his white shirt left open at the neck.
“You carry on like a brooding old man.”
“I have enough vitality left in me to keep up with you.”
“Come on then.”
The Tejas Express slowed as it pulled into the Indianapolis station. Its gears ground and clanged as the rattletrap box of their car shook. Winston directed his soldiers to carry Lady Trystan’s belongings from the train and gave his number two a message to give to Sir Anthony upon their arrival in Chicago. Lady Trystan also gave him a note to pass along, informing her father of her decision to go her own way. That pursuit of her would only put her in further danger, though he shouldn’t worry. She’d be in touch soon and in the meantime, she was in perfectly safe hands. Winston spied the father who he stopped from beating his son. As they both disembarked at the same stop, he gestured that he would have his eye on him. Finally, he turned to Lady Trystan.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?” she asked.
“Only inasmuch as I believe in the tooth fairy and leprechauns. It is the domain of fanciful schoolgirls and bored housewives.”
“You are quite the romantic.” She crossed her arms and turned her head in a feigned pout.
“Indeed I am. I believe in love, deep and unbridled, not the turn of a pretty phrase, polite gestures, and barely engaged feelings which pass for courtship. I believe in putting in the work for love than contenting myself with the dream of romance.”
“You still manage to turn the pretty phrase, nonetheless.”
“I have my moments.”
CLOCKWORKS
Jody Lynn Nye
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Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as “spoiling cats.” She lives northwest of Chicago with two of the above and her husband, author and packager Bill Fawcett. She has published more than thirty-five books, including six contemporary fantasies, four SF novels, four novels in collaboration with Anne McCaffrey, including The Ship Who Won; edited a humorous anthology about mothers, Don’t Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear!; and written more than a hundred short stories. Her latest books are A Forthcoming Wizard, and Myth-Fortunes, co-written with Robert Asprin.
Rosa sighed as the last man passed her by to dance with another young lady. She knew the chances were slim that any of these handsome gentlemen in black tailcoats and crisp white shirtfronts would reach for her hand and draw her out onto the dance floor—not when doing so meant being followed by a large, whirring, gasping device on wheels. You could have set a timer going as each man cast eyes upon her: how pretty was her shining black hair swept high on her head. How lovely her large brown eyes. Her pert, pointed chin had attracted many a whispered compliment that she was careful not to show she had overheard. Her graceful neck turned into a charming décolletage swathed modestly in her best lace wrapper. Then the large black disk attached just above the bodice of her pale blue dress caught their attention, drew it along the flexible brown umbilical to the bronze and steel machine, and the gentlemen, sometimes blushing at their own fears, would nod politely to her and pass along with somewhat indecent haste. Like the clockwork that kept her alive, the reactions were predictable and unfailing.
She withdrew into the curve of the gold velvet couch, and watched the dozens of couples sweep by her around the high-ceilinged white ballroom. How she wished she had not let her aunt talk her into coming to the dance! Jean Rabenski was aware how few opportunities for socializing that Rosa had. For that kindness, Rosa was grateful. But it was futile to hope that attendance might lead to courtship and matrimony.