A Dance Like Flame (Of Magic & Machine Book 1)

by Tammy Blackwell

  The carriage slid sideways and raised up on one wheel when it became dislodged from the horses, but luckily did not topple over.

  “Bits—”

  “Shhh! Stay down! There are lunatics shooting arrows at us.”

  He was on the floor of the carriage, wedged beneath her body. Her knees were on either side of his hips. Her stomach pressed into his, and mere inches separated their faces, so close she could feel his breath tickling the hair that escaped their pins.

  Proper ladies did not straddle men on the floors of carriages, and they certainly didn’t wish to press the soft, secret part of themselves even more firmly against the hard ridge of the male in question.

  “That lunatic is my patient,” Ezra said, his voice strained. Bits pushed herself into a sitting position, momentarily putting more friction just where she desired it most. The movement, however, was decidedly less delicious for him. He sucked in a breath and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

  “Oh dear. I’ve injured you.” Her hands flew to his chest, shoulders, and arms, barely lighting in one place before moving to the next. “Where does it hurt?”

  “I assure you I am quite well, my lady. Perhaps if you could…?” He tilted his head, and it was then she remembered she was pinning him to the floor with her body.

  “The lunatic with the arrows,” she reminded him.

  “Vani,” he called out, his voice echoing off the hills. “I am sorely tempted not to give you any of the pasties Mrs. Green has sent.”

  A head poked over the top of the carriage. It belonged to a very beautiful girl with sun-kissed skin, golden eyes, and brown hair that fell in a straight, shiny, unbound sheet. “They’re my pasties,” the girl said, snatching the basket which had overturn, but miraculously stayed inside the carriage. “It’s not my fault you don’t know how to properly drive a carriage.”

  The sun glinted off something just above the girl’s shoulder. A stick of some sort. A stick with a string.

  No, not a stick. A bow.

  “You shot at us!” Bits pulled herself up onto the seat of the carriage. “You shot at us with arrows! Are you insane?”

  The girl blinked her overly large eyes at Bits as if she was the lunatic. “I wasn’t going to hit you.”

  Below her, Ezra, who was finally free from the weight of her body, sat up. “Lady Elizabeth,” he said, “may I present to you Vani, one of my more trying patients. Vani, this is Lady Elizabeth. She has joined me on my rounds today.”

  Vani rocked back on her heels, clutching the basket to her chest.

  Her chest that was encased in a corset.

  A corset worn on the outside of a man’s lawn shirt.

  Which was paired with a pair of men’s buff britches.

  She really was a lunatic.

  “Lady Elizabeth? A nob? An Untouched nob?”

  She was also barely more than a girl. Her finely-angled face and reedy build made it difficult to determine her exact age, although Bits thought if she was from a family of consequence she would probably be enjoying her debut.

  “Lady Elizabeth has been gracious enough to play companion to Lily for a short time,” Ezra said, standing and brushing the dust from his trousers. Although his legs were inconspicuously encased in the poorly fitted material, Bits had felt their muscled length beneath her just moments before and knew they were not as ordinary as they now appeared. She wondered what they looked like. She’d never before seen a grown man’s legs, nor had she ever found them particularly fascinating, but at the moment the thought of Ezra’s legs captured nearly all of her attention. “You do recall, Vani, that it is proper to curtsy to a lady of genteel breeding upon introduction?”

  Vani rolled her eyes before dipping into a rather sardonic bow.

  Despite the whole arrow debacle, Bits thought she might rather like the girl.

  With a final chiding glance at Vani, Ezra let himself down from the carriage and then offered Bits his hand. The feeling of gloved hand on gloved hand shouldn’t have been able to rob her of breath, yet it did.

  “Vani is a beautiful name,” Bits found herself saying in an attempt to hide the way her skin flushed and fingers trembled. “Italian?”

  “Sì, donna intelligente. Inoltre, il cielo è azzurro.”

  “Yes, and I have also noticed that the grass is green here,” she said.

  There was a beat of silence where Vani and Bits sized each other up while Ezra stared at them as if they were both outfitted in men’s britches. Bits felt no small amount of accomplishment when Vani broke first.

  “She knows Italian,” she said to Ezra, her accent a bit more pronounced now.

  “She’s a lady,” Ezra reminded her. “I would imagine she knows a great many things.”

  Bits could feel the younger woman’s perusal as it went from the top of her head to the pointed tip of her boot.

  “Well, she certainly knows how to grow rather impressive breasts.” Vani looked down at her own chest, where her small breasts were practically swallowed by the corset. “I don’t suppose you can teach me how to do that?” she asked. “I tried a potion Calliope Miller said was sure to work, but I’m horrid at potions. It ended up just making them itch like the blazes. I thought I would claw what little bit I have to pieces before it wore off.”

  Ezra covered his eyes as if blocking his sight could somehow retroactively make his ears stop working. “Vani, what have I told you about taking potions?”

  Vani curled her nose as she sat down on a large rock and opened her basket. “You said not to mix up a bunch of stuff and then drink it. I didn’t drink it. Calliope Miller mixed it up and said I was to rub it on my bubbies.”

  Bits thought Ezra would lecture the poor girl on how using potions of dubious origins was a bad idea all around, but either he, like Bits, realized how pointless that would be, or he deemed other matters more pressing.

  “You’re injured,” he said as Vani bit into her pastie with a very unladylike sigh of pleasure.

  From Bits’s point of view, the entire conversation was bizarre and disjointed. It wasn’t how conversations were typically conducted around the sitting rooms of London. No one had mentioned lace, ribbons, the weather, or the latest bit of gossip even once.

  Bits absolutely loved it.

  “It’s nothing,” Vani said around a mouthful of pasty. “Just a little bruise.”

  Ezra stepped back to the carriage and grabbed his leather bag, which had managed to stay with Vani’s basket inside the gig. Vani watched him warily as he made his way to where she sat.

  “I don’t need medicine,” she said, staring at the bag as if she would like to shoot some arrows through the worn leather. “And no leeches. I will run if you bring out leeches.”

  Bits tried not to stare as Ezra started undoing the laces at the front of Vani’s corset.

  “I don’t use leeches,” Ezra said, his fingers making quick work of the garment. Bits didn’t want to think about how he might know how to do such a thing so efficiently.

  “You trained at that fancy Untouched doctor school in Edinburgh, and Calliope Miller said Untouched doctors use leeches to heal their patients. Something about bad blood.”

  “Untouched doctors are not always correct in their methods.” Ezra laid the corset beside Vani on the rock and inclined his head to indicate she should dispose of the shirt. “And I think it’s time you started listening more to me and less to Calliope Miller.”

  With a few quick tugs, Vani’s shirt, obviously too big for her once the corset was gone, cleared her head. Bits knew she should turn her head for modesty’s sake, and she almost did, but then she saw the colorful pattern marring the otherwise perfect skin covering her ribs.

  “Good God,” she said, rushing forward as if it wasn’t too late to prevent whatever caused such a bruise. “What happened?”

  Vani tried to shrug, but winced when the movement jarred her ribs. “It’s nothing,” she said, taking another bite of the pasty she held in the hand not raised above her head as
Ezra inspected her wound. “This is fresh,” he said, pressing his finger into a spot of purple so deep it appeared almost black. Vani sucked in a breath, and Bits had to clench her hands to keep from jerking him away from the poor girl.

  “Yesterday morning.”

  Ezra pulled back and peered down his nose at the girl. “Neit?”

  “It’s my fault. He’d slept poorly, and I woke him up with all of my clanging about.”

  Ezra didn’t say anything more as he finished his examination, nor did he speak as he placed some crystals around Vani, pulled a stone from a cord of leather hanging around his neck, and spoke an incantation as he poured a concoction that smelled of rosemary and rue on her wounds. By the time the bruise had completely disappeared, Bits couldn’t take Ezra’s unwillingness to speak out a moment longer.

  “Who is he?” she bit out as Vani reached for her shirt. The young girl paused and blinked up at Bits. “Who is who?”

  “Who is the monster who did this to you?” Bits had been very fortunate in that she’d never suffered physical harm at the hand of a man. Her father had loved her beyond reason, and while Keaton wasn’t exactly loving, he was indifferent, which meant she never had to worry about him taking out his frustrations on her person. However, despite never having been the victim of such behavior herself, she knew of the scars other women carried. She’d often wondered growing up why Mrs. Pitt, the cook in her father’s house, sometimes walked with a limp or found it hard to wrestle with the large pots she normally threw around as if they weighed nothing. Then one night she’d snuck from her room for a snack and heard a commotion coming from the kitchens. Being the curious type, she’d peeked in and saw the cook and Mr. Pitt having a fight.

  No, fight wasn’t the right word for it. Fight indicated both parties were participating, and that was hardly the case. Instead, Mr. Pitt was yelling at his wife, calling her all sorts of names Bits had never heard before, and striking her with a great wooden spoon. Bits had intervened then, and her efforts cost her a busted lip and Mr. Pitt his job as stable master.

  That night, as she sat curled up drinking warm milk and honey, her father told her power wasn’t the ability to put others down, but the ability to pick them back up. He said she had shown she was much more powerful than Mr. Pitt. She never forgot his words or the pride in his voice as he said them.

  “No one has a right to do you harm,” she said, advancing on Vani. “You are more than an object for some man to treat as he pleases.”

  Vani shrunk back from Bits. “What is she going on about?”

  The skin around Ezra’s eyes had gone tight and his hand visibly shook. The magic he’d used to heal Vani had been too much. Bits had seen him do small spells and incantations earlier in the day with no obvious physical effect, but the strain of using the aether was now evident. She wanted to comment on it, to suggest he do the strange trance-like thing he and Lily did after working difficult spells, but it wasn’t her place, so she held her tongue.

  “I think it’s time you introduced Lady Elizabeth to Neit,” he said, and even his voice sounded fatigued.

  Vani laughed, a deep, musical sound that made her seem much older. When she realized no one else joined in on her merriment, she stopped and looked at Ezra with wide eyes. “You’re serious.”

  “The Duchess of Sidhe has asked me to acquaint Lady Elizabeth with Corrigan’s inhabitants. I believe she would agree that an introduction to Neit would be well served.”

  Bits rubbed at the sudden ache in her chest.

  The Duchess of Sidhe had asked him to take her around and make introductions? That was the reason he had asked her to accompany him?

  Of course it was. Why else would he have asked her to come along? It wasn’t as if she had anything to offer him. She wasn’t the type of lady a gentlemen took about merely because she was pleasant to look at and worthy of showing off to anyone in his acquaintance. And it certainly wasn’t because she was a thrilling conversationalist. Years of glass-eyed stares and hasty departures had taught her that engaging in conversation with Lady Elizabeth Warner ranked somewhere below having their feet stomped on by one of the giggling Harrington girls for most gentlemen.

  Yet, when Ezra had asked her the night before if she would be so kind as to spend the day with him as he made his rounds, Bits had actually thought he might be the exception. That he might enjoy her company and wish to spend his time with her.

  She was a fool, especially where Ezra was concerned. She so badly wanted him to feel the same connection she did she had spun the most ridiculous of fantasies. She’d even known what she was doing as she constructed the thing in her head, yet it still hurt for those fragile walls to come crashing down so abruptly.

  “He’s more than a mile from here,” Vani was saying, oblivious to Bits’s pain. “And in case you haven’t noticed, your carriage is missing its horses.”

  Chapter 17

  Bits was no longer a stranger to magic. She'd been in Corrigan for three weeks and knew the everyday kinds of magic one used, like the way Mrs. Green heated water or how Alice placed a protection spell around Robert before she left him with the nurse. She'd seen bigger spells, like the one Ezra used to heal Vani. She'd seen spells done with crystals, candles, incantations, and potions that smelled of flowers and herbs. Yet, she'd never seen anything like what Vani did.

  The wind was fierce this high on the mountain. It whipped about, flinging Bits's skirts against her legs and pulling strands of hair from her twist. Yet it wasn't the wind causing Vani's hair to fly out in ribbons behind her as if she was putting a prized Thoroughbred through its paces, and it wasn't the sun causing the girl's golden eyes to flash silver and green.

  "Come on back, now." Vani said, her voice even more musical than before. In fact, it sounded as if more than one voice came from her throat, blending together in the most perfect of melodies. "The excitement is over, and your services are needed once again."

  "What is she?" The words were out of Bits mouth before she could stop them.

  “Ladon,” Ezra said. "It's one of the rarest subsets of the Touched."

  A Ladon. Bits had heard of them, of course. All Untouched children had. The ability to speak to animals made Ladons popular characters in bedtime stories.

  "Yes, I know you're enjoying the pond," Vani was saying, "but you're needed here. Come along now, and I'll share my apple with you." Vani continued to stare off into the distance for a few moments, and then her hair settled once again around her shoulders and her eyes regained their golden hue.

  "Well, they certainly ran far enough," she said and then promptly swooned.

  Vani wasn't the delicate, carefully rehearsed swooning type. No, she went down in much the same way a great oak succumbs in the forest. Ezra, who was still himself unsteady despite his little breathing trick, managed to catch her when an uncomfortable amount of air remained between her head and the stony earth.

  "Where were they?" He asked, concern making his voice gruff. “Staffordshire?”

  Instead of answering, Vani turned her head, threaded the fingers of one hand through Ezra's hair, and pulled his mouth down to hers. There was a moment when he stood frozen and Bits knew he was going to pull back and admonish the girl for her boldness, but then the angle of his head changed and his jaw began to move.

  He was kissing her. Here. Out in the open.

  In front of her.

  Bits felt a pain unlike any she'd ever experienced before. It was as if her chest was being cleaved in two.

  "Thank you, Mr. Nash," Vani said, pulling away from Ezra and dragging the back of her hand over her mouth. "Much better." Then, as if nothing at all had happened, she swept up her basket in one arm, extracted an apple, and took a large bite. "The horses will be along shortly. They managed to run quite a distance before realizing there was nothing to run from, so you should take it easy on them this afternoon. Mr. Frazier would surely be willing to lend you another pair if you have many more visits this afternoon."

  Ezra smo
othed down is hair, adjusted his cravat, and straightened the cuffs of his jacket, putting his appearance back to right as if wiping away the evidence of the passionate embrace could erase it from existence. "This is actually our last stop of the day," he said, his gaze never leaving his attire. "I will personally ensure they are well cared for this evening."

  Once every wrinkle and speck of dust on his person was assessed, Ezra began inspecting the contents of his bag while Vani returned to her perch on the rock. Bits felt as if she should say or do something, other than just stand about as if she was another of the large stones scattered across the hillside, but she could not think of a single thing to repair the situation, so her impersonation of a boulder continued. Eventually, the sound of horses approaching could be heard, and moments later two horses, one a deep brown and the other tan marked with white, appeared over the hill.

  It only took Ezra a few moments to hook the horses back to the carriage. Bits wanted to do it, especially when he remarked on how he couldn't understand how the animals could have come unhooked without breaking the shaft. But ladies weren't supposed to do such things, so she stood rooted to the same spot she'd been in for what seemed an eternity and watched Ezra work with the reigns while Vani petted and shared her meal with the horses.

  There was scarcely room on the bench of the carriage for the three of them. If Vani had been wearing skirts they would have never managed, but as it was, they were able to wedge themselves together. Ezra was at the reigns, Vani was in the middle, and Bits sat on the outside edge, carefully contemplating whether or not she was brave enough to jump off the moving carriage just to extract herself from the situation and the unpleasant sensations it was causing.

  "Is Mr. Nash especially skilled at kissing, Lady Elizabeth?" Vani knitted her eyebrows together and screwed up her mouth to one side. She was even less polished than Bits, but somehow she managed to make her lack of manners seem whimsical and fetching instead of oafish. It probably had something to do with her tiny waist and flawless skin. “I’ve not kissed many people. Just Elmer Potts, who licked half my face, and Calliope Miller, who pecked around like a chicken. They were both rather unpleasant and took forever to work. Ezra's kiss was much nicer and more efficient. Is he exceptionally skilled or can all old men accomplish such a feat?”