“Disgusting? You?” He took her shoulders in his hands and held her both too closely and not closely enough. “Are you mad?”
“I do not believe so. Are you?”
For a long, charged moment, they glared at each other. They had paused in front of a clockwork tiger, which roared at them fiercely, but neither of them so much as turned a head.
“Very well, madam. You wish to talk? We will talk. But I won’t be responsible for the consequences.”
He walked directly toward the tiger, diverting his path at the last possible moment to clamber over its great back. It turned its copper and silver head, and he rapped it on the nose and said, “Quadrangle obtuse perambulator. Bugger off, Garflax.” The tiger froze, the light in its eyes extinguished and the grinding within its metal body cut off. Turning, Henry helped her step up onto the pedestal and over the tiger’s back, releasing her hand quickly. A velvet curtain the color of midnight hung behind the clockwork like a solid wall, and he held it aside and leaped to the squashy ground. Without looking beyond, she landed lightly beside him.
And Imogen saw for the first time what occurred under the tent in the empty circle of space within the ring of wagons.
11
“What is this place?” Imogen asked, and he chuckled.
“Inquisitive as you are, you never thought to look past the clockworks’ curtains? I’m surprised.”
“I’m inquisitive but not foolish. I suspected there was a mechanism to prevent one from doing so.” She tried to soften her snippy tone before he picked up on her qualms regarding the safety of his large clockworks, adding, “And of course, I’ve spent most of my time here in your wagon, as you may recall.”
The space was covered by a patchwork tent cobbled together of silks, skins, sheets, and distracting bits of costume. A long line of lights was strung between the poles underneath, the orbs glowing a warm golden orange and giving off a slight, charming buzz. Underneath the tent, areas for working or relaxing were set up with props and furniture in various states of disrepair.
“Is this a portable attic?” She ran a hand along a velvet fainting couch. It was missing a leg, and it wobbled under her touch. With a huff of annoyance, she dragged a wooden crate over to prop up the corner of the couch and pressed a hand against it, testing her fix. Satisfied, she turned back to him with an expectant air.
“When the caravan stays for longer than a week outside a big city, we put up the tent.” Hands in pockets, he rocked back on his heels. “It was Lady Letitia’s idea. Where she comes from, there are no Bludmen, and their circuses put up a huge tent to contain both the performers and the audience. So bit by bit, we built one, but only for ourselves. Now the carnivalleros can practice their acts or gather out of the rain and away from their living quarters, about which they can get quite tetchy. The Bludmen, I believe, especially appreciate it here. No one trusts them in close quarters, and in bad weather, they start to feel a bit downtrodden. And cagey.”
“But all this . . . junk?” She picked up an umbrella that had turned inside out and struggled to put it back the right way, but the stubborn thing resisted.
“It’s a bit like a free market.” He shrugged. “People bring their broken and unwanted things to share. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, as they say.”
“I always thought that sentiment a bit cruel.”
“I myself have a soft spot for things discarded by men who think themselves great,” he said gently. “My work is to see the masterpiece hiding underneath. To fix what has been broken.”
“What if the object in question isn’t broken at all?”
She kept her back to him, and she was aware of his closeness as he stepped under the tent and stood close enough to touch her. But something held him back.
“Then I think perhaps it’s a case of finding the right mechanism to bring it alive.”
She sighed and spun around to face him, brow drawn down. “Perhaps you expect me to simper around the truth and trade dainty metaphors, but that is not my temperament. I am a scientist, and I find that the data are not adding up. You woo me with words, sir, and you dance with true passion. Why, then, do you turn away from me? You say I’m not disgusting, and yet every time we draw together, you storm away. Is it my naiveté, my lack of polish? The price on my head? Explain your behavior at once.”
“I’m not a scientist, Imogen. I’m an artificer.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’m better with my hands than my words.”
He wrapped his arms around her and drew her close, one hand cupping the back of her neck in a way that made her gasp. With his other hand, he ripped off his mask, goggles, and hat in one motion and stared into her eyes with a fervor and passion that nearly made her knees collapse. When she opened her mouth to protest, he kissed her.
Pressed against him from lips to thighs, she swooned as if they still danced to the frantic music of the hurdy-gurdy. His lips were hot against hers and soft, compared with the rasp of his beard. His mouth moved against hers, his tongue parting her lips and questing intimately within. She answered as best she could, her scientific mind finally silenced by her body’s sudden hunger. She gripped his shoulders through the layers of his jacket, thrilling at the muscular strength and power of the man.
Her limited experience had not prepared her for this hot fury, for Henry’s grasping hands and claiming mouth and their shared, feverish desperation. For the strange sensation of his breath on her cheek, his hands tracing her jaw, his tongue probing with an ancient rhythm that she found she already understood. They were like a closed circuit, thrumming with electricity.
He pulled back to look at her, breathing hard and eyes wide. “Damn the consequences,” he muttered, and he shoved back her hat to let her hair tumble free, kissing her hard enough to make her rock unsteadily on her heels and grab for his jacket. She fell backward onto the couch, and he managed to catch her waist and lower her gently. He knelt beside her, stripping off his gloves and drawing long brown curls the color of cinnamon sticks over her shoulders and running his fingers through them.
“You did not answer my question,” she said when she remembered how to talk again.
“That was possibly the most arousing question I’ve ever been asked.” He twirled her curls around his bare fingers, sending shivers all over her scalp. “I would hope my response would communicate my feelings, but as you’ve asked for me to corroborate your findings linguistically, I can only say that when I turn from you, it’s not due to any lack of feeling on my part or any lack of perfection on yours. I am a dangerous man, and I’m hiding more than boyish good looks under this godforsakenly scruffy beard. I don’t wish to hurt you, Imogen, and that’s the truth of it. But I’m weak. I can’t help falling under your spell.”
“Oh,” was all she could manage.
He was so disturbingly close, with his elbow on the divan’s arm and his chest pressed to her hip.
“Your knees must be very damp, Henry,” she said.
He smiled and kissed her softly. “I haven’t heard anyone say my name in years. I probably shouldn’t have told you. But I couldn’t stand hearing another man’s name on your lips when you looked at me. Say it again.”
“Henry.”
He rewarded her with a kiss, the warm electricity of his fingers trailing over her jaw.
“Are you married?” she asked abruptly.
“No.”
“Do you have a mistress? A fiancée?”
“No and no.”
“Then I fail to see any impediments.”
He chuckled, one fingertip stroking a slow path down the tip of her nose and over her lips. “Then you’re not very imaginative, although I think you quite extraordinary just the same.”
“So kiss me again.”
“So long as you understand that this experiment of yours is not without consequences. A bu
tterfly’s wings flapping in Ceylon can bring a hurricane twirling to your door in London. Everything I do is done with intention and cannot be undone.”
Shocked at her own impropriety, she murmured, “So undo me.”
He leaned forward to kiss her gently, as if giving her one last chance to renege. But she was stubborn and knew well how to get what she wanted. Imogen’s tongue darted out to lick his lip, and he deepened the kiss, his hand slipping around her neck to flick the buttons one by one and release her dangling collar and hat. The thick lace and leather fell to the damp ground, and she sighed in satisfaction at the freeing, devil-may-care feel of it all. With three quick flicks, her jacket fell aside, the red of a monarch’s wings spread open around her. His nimble fingers next found the front of her blouse and began likewise exposing skin too often held hostage. When his lips moved to her throat, she stopped breathing, dizzy with the sensation of thrumming nerves and heat trailing down the tender hollow where her pulse beat like a watch wound too tight.
Without knowing it, her hands curled in his hair, pulling him closer.
“Take off your gloves,” he murmured into the sensitive shell of her ear. “I want to feel the flesh of you.” She obeyed, glad to be rid of them.
She had never felt so wanton, never known what it was to touch another person with such desperate hunger. She couldn’t stop herself from roving her fingertips all over him—the softness of the freed golden hair brushing his shoulders, the wiry rasp of his beard, the firm cut of his jaw, the heat rolling off his neck. His tongue ran up and down the pulse in her throat, her collarbone, down the white plane of her shoulder and under the lacy edge of her unbuttoned blouse.
Imogen panted under his lips, feeling like a specimen pinned down and laid bare for study. When his lips found hers again, she moaned into his kiss, her tongue seeking and feeling as he released another button on her blouse. Down and down he went, button after button springing free, until her blouse was open completely. She shrugged out of the jacket and blouse, leaving only an overbust corset and skirts between them. The night air was cool on her skin and his tongue was hot and frenzied in her mouth. With a growl, he turned her to face him head-on, sprawled on her back on the small couch. Breaking the kiss for only a heartbeat, he grasped her ankle and hitched her body until he pressed close between her open thighs, the layers and layers of skirts pressed tight between them and her knees trapping his hips.
“Oh, my,” she murmured into his mouth. Beauregard had only met her from the back, and she was surprised and pleased and just the perfect bit scandalized to be pressed, front to front, to the mysterious mechanist. His hands never stopped their roaming, skimming down her corset and over the swells of her hips to settle firmly there, slipping into the creases where her corset met the tender skin of her haunches. His thumbs ran along underneath the thick stays, making her squirm to press more firmly against him.
“Shall we try a little experiment?” he whispered in her ear.
“You claim you are not a scientist.”
“I dabble.” He ran his fingers gently over her hips.
“Then consider me a willing subject.”
“Very good. Let’s test cause and effect. What happens when I do this?”
His hands found the sides of her corset, pressing in and up as he ran his tongue over the tops of her breasts, dipping briefly into the hollow between them. She cried out and threw her head back, squeezing him tightly with her thighs.
“Subject’s reaction was positive. What about this?”
He squeezed her corset again, this time licking just under the line of heavy satin until he found her nipple. Curling his tongue around it, he suckled, a long, lazy pull that made her tense against him, wrapping her legs around his waist and digging her bare fingers into the lapels of his coat.
“And this?”
He flicked her nipple with his tongue before releasing it, wet and taut, to float over the corset.
She whimpered, arching up off the sofa, desperate for him to lavish her other breast with the same attentions. He obliged, taking the other nipple into his mouth as he plucked and rubbed the still-wet one with clever fingers.
Eyes closed, she was exquisitely aware of his mustache and beard brushing over her skin in stark contrast with the softness and warmth of his mouth. She longed to be kissed again, but she couldn’t stand the thought of his tongue anywhere but where it was, working between her breasts, alternately teasing and aggressive.
With a grunt, he pressed closer against her, and she felt his eagerness through the folds of her skirts, a hard ridge that she couldn’t ignore. So many layers of cloth stood between them still, and yet the intimacy of firm flesh set with wicked intent against her open thighs made her feel as if she were laid completely bare. Her crossed legs pulled him closer, and she lifted herself off the couch to move against him, feeling an enticing breeze against tender skin still wet with his kisses.
“What about the blud creatures?” she murmured.
“Clockworks will stop the small ones; Criminy will stop the larger. You’re safe here. Forget them. Forget everything but this.”
He teased her nipple with his tongue and reached to unhook her legs from behind his back. His leaf-green eyes found hers as he leaned away, unbuttoned his long coat, and dropped it onto a trunk. She was caught in his gaze, wild and starving and desperate, screaming inside every second that he wasn’t touching her. With infinite slowness, he unbuttoned his vest and untucked his shirt, and she watched, scandalized and eager, for the next stage of his experiment.
Finally, he smiled, slow and lazy. “Let’s refine the idea, shall we?”
His hands found her ankles, still clad in their leather boots, and shivers raced up her legs. Slowly, his fingertips skimmed up her calves, heating her skin through thin stockings. When he found the ribbon ties above her knees, he pulled them at the same time, and she gasped as his callused palms ran up and down the tender skin on the insides of her calves. Her breasts were bared above her corset, the breeze tickling her nipples and making her pant just as much as his hands moving under her skirts. Imogen threw back her head, feeling as dizzy as the crazy quilt of fabrics above her, a lone rip in the tent showing the stars aglitter in the midnight sky.
Palms moved steadily up her thighs. His thumbs hooked under her corset in that ticklish, tender crease of her hips, and she whimpered and slid down lower, urging his fingers to seek further under her petticoats.
Sliding his hands under the tight press of her stays, his thumbs pressing into the folds of her thighs, he leaned forward to kiss her again. It was sloppy, wild, desperate, delicious, the wetness of his mouth and the firm pressure of his hands leaving her breathless.
Finally, Imogen could take no more. She caught his hair in her fists, holding him close to whisper in his ear, “This experiment demands a final conclusion, sir.” With unexpected boldness, she ran a hand down his chest to cup the hardness below, her eyebrows raised in question.
“A woman who knows what she wants.” He ran one finger down the crease of her thigh to stroke gently upward along her cleft, right where she wanted it most. “The only thing rarer than butterflies.” In answer, she let out an animal cry and whimpered against his mouth.
She slid trembling fingers up his chest to unbutton his shirt as they kissed. Below, buried in the ruffles of her petticoats and skirts, his fingers rubbed and pressed, circled and teased. Slumped against the divan and moving in time with him, she was dizzy and breathless and wet, back arched and corset digging into her ribs in the most delicious way.
As she slipped the shirt and vest from his shoulders and ran her palms down his chest, she pulled back to gasp at the white scars tracing across his skin.
“What happened to you?”
“I was careless with my clockworks once,” he said, voice husky. “A mistake I’ve not made again. Does it trouble you?”
She ran a f
inger along the longest scar, which was thin and raised. The others were shorter, and a few were just twists of flesh, like burns. She ended her exploration with a thumb gently tracing the white strip in his beard.
“Not if it doesn’t trouble you. It gives you a deliciously rakish air, actually.”
Leaning into him, she ran her tongue upward, following the long white line that scarred him from ribs to throat as if he’d been slashed with a knife. With a groan, he caught her under her knees and spun her so that she reclined lengthwise along the green velvet divan in a waterfall of ruffles and shed cloth and tumbled hair and creamy white skin.
“So beautiful, Imogen. I’m almost scared to touch you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a biological imperative. An ancient dance.” She swallowed hard and pulled him forward by the waistband of his trousers. He followed willingly, fitting himself over her and brushing back her hair with one hand. “So stop stalling, and let’s dance.”
“I don’t think we need a daimon to teach us the right steps this time.”
He took her lips again, grinding his hips against her. Moaning, she ran her fingernails down his back, urging him closer. He licked down her throat to her breasts, and she writhed against him and struggled to unbutton his trousers and push them down past his hips. He lapped at her nipples, teased her, rubbing against her further down, making her as dizzy as she had been when they danced under the starlight. His clever fingers found her again, the softly slick core of her buried in petticoats, and she moaned and hooked a boot around his back. When she pulled him closer, he moaned, too, pushing up her skirts and fitting himself against her to rub so deliciously that she squirmed and whimpered, all words forgotten in the frenzy of warm flesh.
He was there and ready, easing into her with an agonizing slowness that drove her mad, and she dug her boot in and rose to meet him, taking all of him and making him gasp against her neck. He found her nipple, suckling and licking as he worked against her in a gentle rhythm driven by her bare calf and sharp boot heel. She met him with every thrust, dancing skin to skin, her hands clutching his hair, his neck, his back with desperate wonder and wild abandon.
The Mysterious Madam Morpho Page 7