Courting Trouble

by Jenny Schwartz

  He’d rushed his fences, shouted at Esme, manhandled her and introduced the idea of marriage at the worst possible moment. Is there a bigger fool under heaven?

  He knew she was having doubts about their courtship—it was this knowledge that made him panic and overreact. He understood her pride. She was a suffragette, intent on proving herself and all womankind as good as any man. He respected her ideals, but it made courting her a tightrope act: he had to fight his natural instinct to protect her.

  “Jackass.” He’d handled her badly. Oh, she was definitely in the wrong. Respectable women drew their skirts away from the Rootail’s dirty doorstep when they walked past. But he shouldn’t have let her rattle him into making her appearance there a showdown.

  I lost my temper. He’d always prided himself on his self-control, but one glance at Esme in that place and his temper had ignited like phosphorus.

  She was just so gosh-darned beautiful, it turned him loony. A blue-eyed, blond-haired Gibson Girl with the sharp intelligence of a seasoned political lobbyist. He’d taken one look at her and known life would never be the same.

  He hadn’t expected to meet a woman like her in Australia. He’d sailed to Swan River in pursuit of kangaroos, wanting to analyze how they jumped so he could replicate those principles in the design of a bounding-vehicle. He was an inventor by trade, a successful one.

  Esme Smith had turned his life as topsy-turvy as the seasons in the antipodes. Here it was, the end of September, and instead of entering into the cool joys of fall, spring was brazenly flaunting itself in bright flowers, birdsong and women’s feather-bedecked hats.

  Spring, the time of year when every animal sought its mate.

  He looked up at the sky. The familiar Big Dipper and Seven Sisters winked back at him along with the Southern Cross, that famous constellation of a southern sky. “I should have kissed her.”

  In the distance, a tomcat yowled. Its frustration and need found an echo in him. Courting a suffragette was a darn tricky—and public—affair. He hadn’t even managed to steal a kiss yet.

  Amy, Patty, Eloise, Winifred, Susanna…he’d kissed girls and women aplenty back in California. Not one of them had mattered. They’d been summer flirtations that faded into half-forgotten memories.

  But Esme mattered.

  She mattered too much.

  His hands fisted. He wanted her, and it ate at him that she had no need for him. Usually when a man courted a woman, he offered her all that he had—wealth, social status, intelligence. But Esme already had these advantages in her own right.

  He felt…vulnerable. Uncertain.

  And he’d just made the whole situation a hundred times worse. How did he convince Esme he didn’t want to tame a shrew? He wanted her exactly as she was—only not mad at him.

  He groaned. She wasn’t likely to let go of her temper anytime soon.

  His feet had carried him home automatically. The scent of a port-wine magnolia drifted on the night wind, mixed with wood smoke from household fires and the harsher tang of coal smoke from the ships at anchor in the harbor. A white picket fence glimmered in the moonlight and gas lighting. Three houses on, he reached Mrs. Hall’s boardinghouse, where he lodged.

  He blinked. A new hall light shone through the stained-glass panel of the front door. A crudely rendered lion—representing the British Empire, as Mrs. Hall had explained—glared, its splendid yellow color tinted orange by the gaslight turned on to show it off. The lion was all snarl and bluster.

  Maybe he, too, was having woman trouble. All that snarl and bluster had to be over-compensation for feelings of inadequacy—and darn those psychoanalytical treatises he’d read. The mind of Sigmund Freud was a strange place.

  “Excuse m-me, Mr. Reeve.”

  Jed swung around. “Good evening, Gupta.”

  The young Indian paused halfway down the front path and adjusted his necktie, craning his neck in an awkward motion of embarrassment. The equally youthful woman standing beside him showed no such bashfulness. She studied Jed boldly, assessing him from his coachman’s hat to his polished boots.

  Jed raised an eyebrow.

  “Good evening, sir. M-may we have a word?”

  “Of course.” Jed turned back to open the door and usher them inside.

  “In p-private.”

  “Oh.” Jed reconsidered the situation. Gupta Singh was only eighteen, but that was not too young to have women problems. The minx beside him looked capable of providing an unending stream of dramas. Slender as a reed, she wore a sari with the unthinking elegance of a maharani, but despite her simply coiled hair, there was nothing demure about her. If Gupta was in trouble, Jed would wager the girl had led him into it.

  He sighed. Having saved the boy’s life three months ago, it seemed he was destined to save him again. If only this situation proved as simple as hauling him out of the river. “My workshop is at the rear of the house. We can talk there.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Jed inclined his head and gestured for the couple to precede him along the well-worn path around the side of the house to where a number of sheds, in varying degrees of repair, huddled together. He rented the largest and most weathertight. Its green-painted door was shut and secured by a sturdy padlock. He fished the key from his pocket and opened it.

  “One moment.” He crossed to his workbench and lit the kerosene lamp that stood there. The sharp, sooty smell stained the air. By the warm orange light, he saw the girl’s nose wrinkle. He nudged forward the sole comfortable chair. “Please, have a seat.”

  She sat. Gupta perched uneasily on a stool.

  Jed leaned against the workbench. “So?”

  “M-Mr. Reeve, this is my cousin, Lajli Joshi.”

  “Evening, Miss Joshi.”

  “Call me Lajli,” she said cheerfully, her gaze darting around the workshop.

  It wouldn’t tell her much. He’d swept the cobwebs from the low roof when he’d taken possession of the shed, but the two high windows remained dim and dusty. A workbench occupied a third of the space, with a few tools hanging above it and the flywheel he’d been refining reclined on it. A squat coal stove sat in the other corner, unlit for weeks now.

  The gears, shafts, pistons and other metal parts scattered about would look like so much junk to most people. To him, they were his thoughts given tangible form. Each was an attempt to understand and express the principles of his bounding-vehicle. Many lay on top of the locked trunk he’d brought with him from London. Inside the trunk were books and journals he’d spent weeks tracking down in the dusty and hidden bookshops of the old city.

  His landlady’s grandson’s bicycle leaned against the trunk. It only needed a couple of hours’ more work and he’d have it modified to accommodate the boy’s handicap. Then the kid could speed through the streets as swiftly as any of his friends who had two legs the same length.

  Finally, a phonograph under a dust cover on a low shelf hinted at frivolity and relaxation—and Esme had provided that.

  “Lajli, Gupta, how may I help you?”

  Gupta swallowed and looked fixedly at the flywheel. “Lajli s-stole a wallet from her last employer.”

  Jed glanced at Lajli, who smiled brilliantly. “I see,” he said neutrally.

  “Not yet, but you will,” she said. “Gupta, he is bad at telling stories.”

  “Whereas I’m sure you’re talented.”

  The ungentlemanly inference that she told lies whistled past her unheeded. She leaned forward. “I stole the wallet, yes. There was much confusion and I thought no one would notice. I thought there would be a little money. Why not it should be mine?”

  Gupta winced.

  “But the wallet was fat not with much money.” She sounded offended, a housewife who’d bought apples and found them rotten. “There were instead papers folded in it.”

  “She was s-stupid. She stole trouble.”

  Lajli hunched an offended shoulder in his direction. “The man I stole the wallet from, he came after m
e. Questions, questions and threats. I thought, this is vexatious. Having to run, to hide. I decided, now is a good time to visit my relations in the Swan River Colony.”

  “M-mother was so pleased to see her,” Gupta contributed dolefully. “Her pretty niece.”

  “Yes, Auntie Abha is very welcoming.”

  “B-but this morning, the man chasing Lajli arrived in the colony.”

  “The man whose wallet you stole?” Jed asked.

  “He is a bad man.” Lajli slapped the wooden arm of the chair she sat in. “Very bad. So are the papers he wants. Me, I know these things.”

  “You don’t,” Gupta contradicted her. “You j-just have feelings.” His tone made feelings a matter of disgust. “I told you. You must give them back to the man and he will stop chasing you. You will be safe.”

  “Never.” She jumped up from her chair. “Never. I tell you, my feelings are that this would be bad. He is bad.”

  Gupta looked at Jed and spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “She must give the p-papers back to the man, but she will not listen to me. I s-say she can listen to you. If you will look at them and tell her the machine is not bad, then we can return them to the man and there will be an end.”

  “Bah.” Lajli folded her arms and turned to face the wall.

  Gupta eyed her warily. “She won’t let me look at the papers, but she has agreed you may, since you are a b-brave man and an inventor. Please, sir, may I beg this favor of you?”

  “I would like to see them,” Jed said. “You’ve stirred my curiosity.”

  “Lajli?” Gupta prompted.

  She whirled and dropped the papers on the workbench beside Jed. “They are bad. Me, I know this. Gupta says you will know what to do with them.”

  “Mr. Reeve will tell you to return them to the man you s-stole them from.”

  “Bleat, bleat. You are a sheep, Gupta Singh. Bleat, bleat, worry, worry. Cluck, cluck, like a chicken.”

  Gupta flushed, rose from the stool and gripped his cousin’s arm. “We will go home now. Thank you, sir.”

  “Thank you. You honor me with your trust.” Jed hid his amusement, not wanting to injure Gupta’s damaged dignity further. He waited till his guests were safely on the path to the front yard, then pocketed the packet of papers, blew out the lamp and locked the shed before returning to the house.

  A grin tugged at his mouth as he considered what mischief Lajli had gotten herself into. Perhaps she had stolen some gentleman’s business papers. He would check them for the man’s direction, then ensure they were returned. Probably that was what she’d intended when she agreed he, but not poor bumbling Gupta, should read them.

  The hallway of the boardinghouse smelled of beeswax, lavender, carbolic soap and tonight’s shepherd’s pie. His landlady had a pattern to her meals. Wednesday nights always used up leftovers. Tomorrow there would be sausages in some form.

  Toad-in-the-hole, probably. Jed shook his head. Swan River was a confusing place for an American. As a British colony, it faithfully reproduced the home country’s dishes. He should be thankful for small mercies—stargazy pie, with fish heads sticking out of the pie crust, was even worse than toad-in-the-hole.

  But Swan River was more than British. It also had a substantial Indian community living north of the river. Bombaytown, much like Chinatown in San Francisco, was a little piece of India transported to west Australian shores. Sometimes, as with Lajli, trouble followed them to the new land.

  He’d been wrong to think Gupta and Lajli were young lovers. They were more like sister and long-suffering brother. It just went to show that when a man became lovesick, he saw romance everywhere.

  Or maybe he wanted to see romance everywhere because he was mishandling his own?

  Darn it. Gupta’s earnest youthfulness amused him, but there was much he could learn from the boy. At least Gupta hadn’t made the mistake of trying to manhandle his feminine handful into behaving sensibly.

  He’d send Esme flowers, tomorrow. Roses, perhaps. They were the gift of determined suitors and errant men everywhere.

  A scornful voice in his mind hooted derision. Yeah, as if flowers are going to make up for what you did. Esme doesn’t want to be wooed as a woman. She wants to be respected as a person.

  Don’t we all. Couldn’t Esme see his side of the situation? It was damnably difficult, courting her. All his instincts were to be her knight in tarnished armor. But would she let him slay her dragons? No. If he faced a dragon, she’d insist on being there, fighting beside him.

  Maybe I should challenge her to court me? He grinned and began unbuttoning his coat as he climbed the stairs.

  The buttons were the clever creation of a Polish inventor living in exile in France. Each contained a useful gadget hidden beneath the smooth birchwood facing. The top button contained a tiny mirror that could be used to catch the light and signal a message in Morse code. Then there were a couple of picklocks, a magnifying glass, a compass and a small container designed to hold snuff or something less socially acceptable—sleeping powders, drugs or poison.

  He hung his coat on the hook at the back of the door and tossed the packet of papers onto his desk. The locked top drawer of the desk held his pistol and old design notebooks. He carried the current notebook in his coat pocket to record ideas and progress. The second desk drawer, unlocked, held correspondence with inventors from around the word. An unfinished letter to his mother lay on the top. He’d been writing her about Esme’s latest political adventures. Esme crept into every letter he wrote.

  He took a firelighter from the mantelpiece, crouched and lit the waiting kindling. The fire caught. Returning the firelighter to the mantel, his hand knocked the goggles lying there. He caught them as they fell and weighed them in his hand.

  The goggles were made of brass and smoked glass. They represented a dream, a promise he’d made to himself—that one day he’d travel fast enough in his kangaroo-inspired bounding-vehicle to require protection from the high-speed wind of his journey. He turned them over in his hands. He really ought to see about getting Esme a matching pair.

  Would goggles make a better forgive-me gift than flowers? Would Esme even care that he wanted her to share his dreams?

  He replaced the goggles on the mantelpiece beside the replica brass model of Dayenne’s groundbreaking mechanical analysis of speed and motion in the animal world. Gears and pistons worked as muscles. It was the inspiration for Jed’s own work.

  Not that his work was proceeding as quickly as he’d hoped. First there had been the distraction of becoming acquainted with Esme. She’d mistaken him for a smooth-talking scoundrel and offered him employment to front her Women’s Advancement League and speak for her in the men’s clubs. He’d accepted because he’d seen it was his best chance to get to know her.

  But now, the governor had agreed that discussions on the political future of the Swan River Colony would be held in settings where women could also participate, and Esme had released him from his spokesman’s role.

  He ought to have been using his freedom to focus on his work, but he’d discovered love and concentration didn’t mix. He kept wondering what the heck Esme would get up to next.

  Just last week she’d signed up to take dirigible pilot lessons. No respectable woman flew a dirigible. Those dangerous aircraft were purely for sky pirates.

  Esme just kept pushing the boundaries.

  Women! Who could understand them?

  He picked up the packet of papers he’d thrown on the desk. Poor Gupta. Jed suspected he well knew that Lajli’s pursuer wanted back the money she’d stolen—and that she was likely to be highly resistant to that idea. She’d probably spent most of the money buying passage to the Swan River Colony. The papers were a diversion while Lajli worked on her evasion techniques.

  Still, he’d promised to look at them, and he was curious why Gupta had sought his advice. He laughed under his breath. It would be ironic if Gupta expected him to know how to handle women.

  Was Esme ri
ght? Were the townsfolk waiting to see a performance of The Taming of the Shrew?

  Darn interfering busybodies. Their interest was making her more skittish.

  He sat in the room’s sole armchair drawn up to the fire. The oxblood leather of its right arm was cracked, and Mrs. Hall hid the deficiency with matching antimacassars crocheted in vile orange and brown wool. But the chair was comfortable.

  Jed unfolded the papers, blinked and angled them to catch the firelight. At first he thought the writing was in a foreign language, but one or two words popped out at him, waves and tone. He squinted and recognized vibrations.

  It was difficult writing, a cramped fist that a graphologist would label secretive. Even the diagrams were odd. He turned one page sideways. They looked to be made up of a random collection of parts from musical devices. An elongated phonograph trumpet lay near a side-section view of a music-box reel.

  He deciphered two more words, Kali’s Scream, and then, with increasing interest, The British Raj shall dance, crashing to its knees, when Kali screams.

  “Surely it isn’t possible.” But he switched on the gas lighting and moved to his desk, pushing aside the unfinished letter to his mother and lining up a fresh sheet of paper and a sharp pencil. Slowly, disbelievingly, he deciphered the blueprints and notes, while the grandfather clock in the hall below gravely chimed the hours.

  Fascinating. Since he was an inventor, the science of the device laid out in the blueprints intrigued him. As a man…he smiled. Lajli’s stolen papers held definite possibilities.

  A yawn caught him by surprise. He stood and stretched cramped muscles. Bending, he added another log to the fire, then leaned against the mantelpiece and watched the flames greedily embrace it.

  The sap crackled and snapped. All through history, fire had been the symbol of hell, a force of terrible destruction and suffering. But if these papers weren’t the ravings of a lunatic, then there existed the potential for a new hell, an inferno—no, a volcano—of sound. There existed the means and the will to devastate lives.