“Irish reprobate,” Brendan corrected, lifting his glass of whiskey. “Don’t forget the Irish—it saved our skins this night.”
“Nearly morning, now.” Georgina glanced at the windows, where a faint radiance gathered. “Come on, lads—finish your drinks. You need to go to bed.”
They all needed to go to bed, Liam thought, desire racing through his blood.
Theodore looked at Georgina. “You do recall this is our wedding day? That is, if you still mean to marry me now you don’t need a roof over your head.”
She gazed into his eyes, and Theodore returned her look with a seriousness that stopped every tongue in the room. “Of course I mean to marry you,” Georgina told him. “Unless you’ve reconsidered our perilous position.”
“Perilous?” Theodore waved a hand at the rest of them. “The term pales, in light of what’s occurred tonight. All you and I do, sweet love, is take a step into a future I hope will one day become commonplace, wherein people judge each other not by the color of their skin but by what lies beneath.” He shot an ironic look at his listeners, and smiled. “And the spirit within. Even if that spirit’s trapped in the framework of an automaton.”
“Amen,” Fagan agreed, and they all drank again.
Chapter Forty-Two
“Alone at last,” Liam breathed into Clara’s ear, making her quiver with incipient delight. “I thought they’d never leave. And Nancy, by a miracle, is quiet. Come upstairs with me, Mrs. McMahon. I don’t think I can bear it if you deny me.”
Clara turned her face so her lips brushed his tenderly. They still sat in her father’s armchair, but the others had departed, citing various duties and exhaustion. Brendan and Ruella had gone off in the direction of the jail, hand in hand, Brendan eager to lay charges against Maynard.
Theodore, wearing the stunned look of a man in love, had stumbled off, and Georgina had gone upstairs to check on Nancy. Fred and Woodrow had ostensibly gone to their rest, but they’d taken their whiskey glasses with them, and Clara doubted they slept.
“We’ve a few things to settle before we go to bed,” Clara said.
“Have we?” His lips returned her caress with lingering sweetness. Desire leaped inside Clara, raw and fierce. She seized his shoulders in an attempt to hold him—or herself—down.
“Yes.” Clara gazed into her husband’s eyes and lost her breath. She fought to think clearly. “What’s to be done about Nancy? She may not be your wife, but we clearly have a duty to her, if only in your brother’s memory.”
Liam’s eyes clouded. “I wish I could remember him, but don’t know as I ever will. You say he took his own life?”
“Out of guilt and remorse. He blamed himself for the fire and little Tommy’s suffering, even as did Nancy.”
“No wonder the poor lass was raving. Still—suicide. It’s a terrible sin.” Liam’s black lashes dropped and concealed the depth of his sorrow. “I do feel I have a sacred obligation to her, Clara, if only for his sake.”
“Of course. I’d love to have her live here, once she’s well enough. But I do think she needs some intensive care first. If we budget my allowance carefully and you keep earning, we should be able to afford a private hospital for her.”
Liam smiled slowly. “Your grandfather will not be best pleased that you’re getting the house and money after all.”
“My grandfather will be furious. He’d better take care apoplexy does not carry him off, old and frail as he is.”
“You’ve a nasty streak, Mrs. McMahon.”
He would have kissed her again, but she held him off, sudden doubt possessing her.
“Yes, Liam, there’s that to speak of, as well.”
“Eh?”
“Look at me,” she urged. “Tell me what you see.”
The black lashes swept up, revealing eyes deep and blue like sapphires. “I see a beautiful lass, a warrior pixie with magic in her—old magic—and a giving, compassionate heart. I see the woman I love. I see my whole world.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I beg pardon?” He crooked an eyebrow.
“I’m serious, Liam. Before we go any further, this must be aired between us. Those men—Mason and Charles, you called them—they did some terrible things: had men murdered. Harvested parts of them for their creations. They were ruthless and without conscience.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed. And I am not so very unlike them.”
“Eh?” Liam exclaimed again. “You? Tell me how! You spend your concern on everyone you meet—take in abused children like stray cats, worry yourself into a frazzle over them. You’ve even offered a home to Nancy. How are you anything like those bastards at the Cuttery?”
“They had men killed for their own purposes. I waited for a man—you—to be killed, and did the very same. As I’ve said before, there was little compassion in my raising you from the dead, Liam. I did a dreadful thing. I’m ashamed to say it, but I truly am more like my grandfather than I care to think.”
“You did a dreadful thing, did you?” Very gently he tipped up her chin so she once more had to meet his gaze. “Bringing me back to life. Giving me an opportunity to live again as a finer man. Would I really have been better off cut up into one of Mason’s automatons?”
“No. Not that. But I fear it’s the motivation that matters, Liam—not so much the what as the why. It scares me to think Roderick Van Hamelin’s blood runs in my veins.” And Liam did not even know about the battle she’d fought over her temptation to end Nancy’s misery…
“Yet it does, as does that of your father, who was clearly a merciful man. If this terrible night’s work has taught us anything, Clara, it’s that we can’t deny our blood—it will out. Thank God! Blood colors the spirit, Clara, but the spirit’s our own. And,” he told her devoutly, “your spirit is beautiful.”
She said, with tears in her eyes, “I’ll never be perfect, I fear.”
“Nor will I. Do you think I want you perfect? No, Mrs. McMahon, I want you complete with all your faults—impatient, bossy, enraged, and ruthless. I want you wild in my bed, crazed with desire, and very, very naughty.”
Clara told him, her heart bursting, “I think I can manage that—if only because you’re so dead handsome.”
“Then,” he whispered seductively, “come upstairs to bed and prove that you love me.”
And, most gladly, Clara did.
A word about the author...
Born in Buffalo and raised on the Niagara Frontier, Laura Strickland has been an avid reader and writer since childhood. To her the spunky, tenacious, undefeatable ethnic mix that is Buffalo spells the perfect setting for a little Steampunk, so she created her own Victorian world there. She knows the people of Buffalo are stronger, tougher, and smarter than those who haven't survived the muggy summers and frigid blasts found on the shores of the mighty Niagara. Tough enough to survive a squad of automatons? Well, just maybe.
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