“Not necessary, I assure you. My ancestor didn’t keep to the old ways.” That was an understatement, but she hoped the boy would continue.
“The essence of it is that they think there’s an opium house on every corner, and that one dose will render any poor fool an addict, doomed to fall into a spiral of sin. Eventually the opium eater will lose all touch with family, sell his body and soul for the next dose, and the next thing you know, he’s gone west forever. Or, worse still, she has. They save their very finest moments of umbrage for ladies who demonstrate suspect morals, because we all know what happens when they fall into spirals of sin. It’s not indentured service labor camps they wind up in, evidently.”
“Good heavens.” Miss Speck dabbed her mouth with her napkin, every inch the proper spinster, but Eliza could see the corner of her mouth and the smirk she was trying to hide. “What active imaginations those women must have.”
Miss Davis, a native of the California Dominion herself, was less subtle. “What a load of claptrap. Haven’t they got better things to do with their time?”
“Who is it?” Madame Barsteau asked, her piercing gaze never leaving the young man. “The one you know in this society? I can tell by the way you speak, someone close to you must be involved.”
“My mother. My two aunts. And lately my sister, although I don’t think it will take with her.”
“You have my sympathy.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
For Eliza, the boy’s explanation had raised as many questions as it answered. “But are there actually any opium dens here? It seems so unlikely.”
“Not that I know of,” he admitted. “We’ve had a few folks go west, though. You don’t need an opium house to fall into a life of vice and vanish forever.”
“I suppose not. Liquor alone can kill, and I’m sure there are other narcotics that can besides opium.”
“Oh, they don’t die,” he said firmly. “They go west.”
“A euphemism—”
“No. Sometimes they even leave a note, explaining. Like I said, they sell themselves off. Or somebody takes them in lieu of payment, but it’s all the same outcome.”
“William!”
The sharp voice of the maître d’ jolted the lad into swift action, and he scraped a crumb from the table and cleared an empty bread plate as if by reflex before he disappeared back into the kitchen.
In the silence that followed his departure, Eliza heard the muffled chanting from the street beyond the windows. Not the words but the rhythm, primal and hostile. She had thought them silly, but they were in deadly earnest. The incident on the bridge in Harrisburg took on a more sinister cast. To them, this was no euphemism, no theory. As far as they were concerned, people’s lives were at stake. And Eliza, with her unconventional life choices and that suspicious hint of the orient in her eyes, must seem like the embodiment of the dangers they feared. The flashy red car was just fuel for the flame.
Charlotte’s words came back to her, the challenge to see the world outside the privileged life she’d been born into. Now she began to see how many layers there were to that challenge. The provincial attitudes, so unlike those in the wealthier enclaves of the New York Dominion. The casual racism she had heard about but so rarely encountered near home, where so many Chinese merchants had established themselves and fully embraced Western ways. She’d been spoiled enough to think that spending four years in free-thinking Poughkeepsie was a horizon-broadening experience. But Meridian might as well be another world. Everything about Eliza must seem utterly alien and dissipated to these women.
She swirled the last of her tea in its bone china cup, studying the leaves, broody and unsettled. Charlotte had also discussed pleasure in that conversation. Another horizon she might broaden, though Eliza didn’t think Charlotte meant her to combine that experience with the rally in quite such an explicit way.
Even after a night of sleep, a large breakfast and two cups of tea, Eliza could still feel the brush of Matthew’s lips against hers. The mere memory sent a thrill through her, a sensuous thread of possibility that seemed to link all her most sensitive zones into one large, needy bundle. She knew exactly where he sat in the room—two tables behind her and to her right—and had felt his gaze on the back of her head throughout her meal. It was as if she’d become attuned to him, a compass to his lodestar, or perhaps the other kind of compass, bound to turn as he did. Then she realized she was borrowing imagery from John Donne, and rolled her eyes at her own mawkishness.
She had things to do, important things like running the gauntlet of reporters and angry temperance ladies, and ensuring her car hadn’t been tampered with in the night. Taking an early lead. Establishing a pace the others couldn’t hope to match. Remembering to check the only compass that mattered, the one in her car that would keep her heading in the right direction: toward St. Louis and the Victoria Dominion.
This was not a time for poetry. This was a time for action.
• • •
BY THE TIME his breakfast was served, Matthew had nearly convinced himself it was all the fault of the port. Until, that is, Eliza strode into the room. She ignored him completely, too much so to be accidental. It was a very cold shoulder she showed him as she took a seat at another table, with her slender back to him. From the lively babble, she took eager part in conversing with the other ladies and seemed completely unaltered by the incident of the previous evening.
Matthew was altered. When he saw her again he resigned himself to it, because his reaction was unequivocal. His heart beat faster, his palms dampened and he yearned, damn it all. And as if those feelings weren’t enough to manage, he also had to contend with the resentment, the sense of injustice, the sheer improbability of his situation.
He’d made it all the way through Oxford, through his whirlwind apprenticeship and journeyman tenure at Hardison House, fended off several seasons worth of eligible young ladies at balls his mother had forced him to attend, and come through it all unscathed. Heart intact, unencumbered. All that, only to succumb when he least expected it, from a quarter he had never bothered to guard because it was simply not a danger he could have foreseen or even imagined. Never in a million years.
Falling in love with Eliza Hardison. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but now that he’d admitted it to himself he felt like a fool for his previous willful blindness. Eliza, obviously. Eliza, of course. A hundred love poems danced through his brain, attempting to apply themselves despite his efforts to resist.
Eliza, the last woman on earth he needed to be chasing after, the last woman on earth who would want to be chased by him. Or . . .
He pushed the image down as soon as it popped up, but there it was, lurking in the back of his mind where the love poems frolicked. His moment of madness last night. That kiss, her face, his hands engulfing her shoulders, the way he’d seen and felt her breathing start to race, and that telltale gasp she’d let out.
It hit him hard, that one noise, caught and held on something in his soul. Or somewhere less noble, yet still undeniable.
Today she wore a blatantly unwise white walking suit, trimmed in black lace. The road dust would destroy it within minutes, but it looked marvelous at the moment. The coat, modeled in a hunting style, nipped in at her waist before falling in nearly a straight line from her hips to the floor, showing her figure to perfection from the back. But the front . . . might well give Matthew a heart attack. Because the skirt was a sham, the dress more a frock coat than anything else. It split at the waist, allowing her more freedom of movement and showing her long, black-clad legs from hip to toe.
Breeches were still on the cutting edge of fashion on the east coast, thanks in no small part to Charlotte’s trend-setting efforts. Matthew had seen them on women, of course. They were all the rage in England and Europa. But he hadn’t expected them here, in rural Meridian, on Eliza. And fitting like a glove.
; She might as well wave a red flag in front of the bull that was the ladies’ temperance group. He’d seen them picketing the hotel, recognized them by their signs and lapel pins, and finally inquired about them. The concierge, a circumspect gentleman who had clearly seen everything in his long tenure at the Grand Hotel, was not a fan of the El Dorado Foundation Ladies’ Society for Temperance and Moral Fortitude. His daughter, he informed Matthew, had started taking him to task for keeping medicinal brandy in his home shortly after she’d joined the Temperance Society.
“As if her mother and I might fall into a moral decline from taking an occasional fortifying nip,” he said in disgust. “At our age.”
He hadn’t been able to answer Matthew’s other question. He had no idea what the golden poppy lapel pins signified. But he agreed with Matthew that they seemed an odd choice, given that opium was a primary focus of the Temperance Society’s ire, and opium came from poppies.
“They might as well wear bunches of grapes,” the concierge grumbled, before putting his professional face back on to handle the next guest to approach his desk.
When Matthew overheard the young waiter at breakfast discussing the Temperance Society with the ladies’ table, he pricked up his ears and took the next chance to flag the young man down.
“Mum’s told me,” the waiter said of the pins, “but it didn’t make much sense. Something to do with restoring the natural order of things and honoring God’s creations, or some such. Mostly I think they wear them because a bundle of them come with the charter kit for the local chapters. My aunt has a jar of them just waiting for new members. She’s the chapter president. I think the poppy is the foundation’s symbol.”
“The El Dorado Foundation?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
The waiter knew nothing more about the foundation itself, however, leaving Matthew little more edified than before. The poppy motif still tickled something in his brain, though, and he suspected it wouldn’t leave him alone until he’d figured out why. Vexing.
He didn’t need more distractions. Getting Eliza through the mob would take all his attention, he thought. But to his surprise, when he reached the hotel lobby where the rally contestants were supervising the transfer of their luggage back to the vehicle holding area, Eliza had already secured protection. Parnell and Lazaris flanked her, looking full of ego and bravado as they proceeded with her out the hotel door and down the steps.
Matthew had to laugh when he followed them out. Their protection was hardly needed after all. The local police had cordoned off the walkway all the way to the holding area with sawhorses in a double row, and officers on foot and horseback patrolled the resulting corridor in a thick rank. The crowd could barely see the drivers, much less approach them.
It seemed excessive until he glanced back at the front of the hotel and saw the splatters of lurid red paint, the sloppily executed graffiti marring the white marble facade.
YOU WILL ALL BURN IN HELL, the primary one shouted. Others, less prominent, seemed to hint at whoredom and the evils of the steam engine. He couldn’t see much in that quick glance, but what he saw was more than enough to make him wish they’d considered a third row of barricades. And perhaps a few officers with rifle harnesses, just to be on the safe side.
Parnell and Lazaris were both larger men than Matthew, more intimidating, and he was smart enough to be grateful for the added safety their escort provided Eliza. He still wanted to punch both of them in their leering, odious faces, but his logical mind allowed that such was probably uncalled for. It must have shown in his expression, however, as a wry voice beside him remarked that he must be either as ill as Smith-Grenville, or lovesick indeed.
Matthew glowered down at Cantlebury, who grinned even wider than usual in return.
“Lovesick, then. Oh, let me guess. Who, who could the young lady be?”
“Shut up, Cantlebury.”
“She’s really ensnared you, hasn’t she? You’re never snappish in the morning, Pence. Don’t look them in the eye or kiss them on the lips, my boy, haven’t I warned you before? Is all my instruction gone to waste?”
Cantlebury’s instruction had been valuable indeed. Dwarf or no, when it came to debauchery and seduction the man had few equals in their class at Oxford, perhaps because he’d made such a study of it. Or perhaps, Matthew had to admit, it was simply that the women seemed to like him so damn much, and he got under their guard when they weren’t looking. Despite his appalling taste in jokes and general lack of decorum he was never without a female companion, to Matthew’s knowledge. Not even when racing, though people weren’t meant to know about that.
“You’re right, I suppose.” Matthew forced himself to exhale, to adopt a cynical smile. “It’s just a question of finding a distraction, really. Miss Speck is holding up rather well, don’t you think, for a spinster of her age? Perhaps I ought to make a foray in that direction.”
“Shut up, Pence.”
Having scored even points, they shook hands like the gentlemen they were before parting ways to go to their separate cars.
NINE
IT WAS A straight shot from Meridian to St. Louis, rolling hills providing little challenge to the cars. The paved road persisted in some stretches, and the continuing dry weather meant the rougher patches were at least firm and navigable.
Eliza spent the morning playing at follow-the-leader with Van der Grouten and Lazaris. The sleek silver monster and Lazaris’s more understated black steamer were both fine machines, worthy competitors, and she found the game of stealing the front position strangely invigorating. For hours they dueled, Lazaris shooting her a wicked grin whenever she overtook or fell behind him, Van der Grouten awarding her a grave nod at each passing.
The wind whipped through her open window, trying to tug her hair loose from under her hat, and dust flew up behind the car in a giddy whirlwind, blinding whoever came directly after. This was the point, she realized for the first time. What they were here for, the reason the others came back to it. The thrill. The chase. The fun. She was in the middle of it, and almost didn’t mind when she had to give up the lead again to pause in a stream to refill her water tank.
Matthew and the Watchmaker drove up as she primed the pump and saluted one another as they left their vehicles to perform the same duty as Eliza. It was a constant concern, the balance of water and fuel. Eliza felt fortunate that her multi-phased engine, with its hybrid mix of Stirling technology and Dexter’s special blend of spirit fuel, ran cooler and more efficiently than almost any other car in the field. But steam was steam and power was power and physics meant that the relationship between the two had its limits. Ergo, driving into streams when the opportunity presented itself.
She was lucky too that she didn’t need to leave her vehicle to fill the water tank this way. Matthew’s pump primed near the boot of his steamer, and the Watchmaker’s water intake seemed to snake up one of the “legs” of his peculiar spider-car.
They waited in companionable silence, all three seeming to appreciate the moment of respite under the warm sun. With the Watchmaker there, Matthew didn’t dare approach Eliza for the more personal conversation she feared they must have soon. The water pumps chugged along, but quietly enough that Eliza could hear birds in the nearby trees, a cheerful accompaniment to the rustic idyll of the moment.
The birds flew up all at once, and Eliza had just enough time to register that their behavior seemed odd before the sound of the explosion reached her.
Not so much a sound, she though afterward, as a bone-shaking whump, something not just heard but felt. In the moment she knew only panic, the same primal fear that had sent the birds flying. She ducked by instinct, hiding herself below the level of her car windows as she tried to slow her breathing and think.
What in blue blazes just happened? Her mind threw possibilities at her, all of them awful, and she forced herself to sort things out one thing at a time
. Matthew and the Watchmaker? Was it either of their cars? No, because they’d seen the birds when she had; they’d all looked up at once, and just before she ducked she’d seen Matthew shouting and running to his car.
Seen, but not heard, because all she could hear—still—was the reverberation of the blast. Her ears rang with it. But whatever it was, it hadn’t happened close enough to injure her or Matthew. Or the Watchmaker. Her heartbeat began to slow to something like a reasonable pace, though her body still vibrated with the urge to run and hide.
She realized her ears were recovering when she heard another sound. Shouting, from close by.
“Eliza! Eliza!”
Matthew flung the car door open, nearly spilling her out, and stared down at her with a look of frantic relief.
“You’re all right!”
“Yes, I think so. What was that?”
“No idea. It came from somewhere ahead. Were you still in front of the pack?”
“No.” She pushed herself back to a seated position, her scattered wits slowly reassembling themselves. “No, Van der Grouten and Lazaris are both ahead of me. We’ve been passing the lead all morning. They overtook me when I stopped for water. Five minutes ahead, maybe ten? They’d been out of sight a few minutes when you arrived.”
The Watchmaker’s spectacled face appeared behind Matthew’s shoulder.
“Van der Grouten was ahead of you?” When she nodded, he raised one skeletal hand to his mouth, visibly shaken. “Oh, Hans . . .”
“Let’s get moving. We won’t find out anything by staying here. Eliza, you should ride with me.”
Just like that, her good will toward Matthew flew away like a startled bird. “And lose my chance at retaking the lead? I don’t think so, thank you. We have no idea what happened, and this is still a race.”
Scarlet Devices Page 9