Beauty and the Clockwork Beast

by Nancy Allen Campbell

  Lucy needed Sam, needed him desperately. She couldn’t even be sure if the outer hookups on Miles’s chest were still connected to the mechanism inside. She attached the wires anyway, carefully securing them to their corresponding receivers. Stretching around to the other side of the charger, she quickly twisted the crank several times and then threw the switch that set the cogs and gears in motion.

  Before long, a gentle whirring filled the space, and as she watched, the chest panel moved infinitesimally with the charge that she hoped was making its way to the heartclock housed inside Miles. Finding a stack of clean white towels in a small drawer in the table, she snapped one open and gently placed it under the wires and around the wound where blood pooled and seeped.

  She had to retrieve the anti-venom from her supplies, but she first glanced around the room and was relieved to find the telescribing connector not far from the bed. She pulled her telescriber from her pocket and, with shaking fingers, sent a message to her brother.

  Daniel, if you are in London,

  you must bring Sam MacInnes

  to Blackwell immediately.

  Air travel was much faster than ground.

  Miles squinted against the bright light as he slowly opened his eyes. The light was actually nothing more than the glow of a bedside lamp—his bedside lamp, he realized as he looked around and recognized his bedchamber. A warm fire crackled in the hearth, and he felt surprisingly rested.

  He winced at a pain in his chest as he shifted in bed. One of the large sitting room chairs had been dragged next to the bed, and in it, Lucy lay curled up, asleep. He studied her as memories flooded his brain. Something had attacked them while they were attempting to examine Clara. He had chased after the thing . . . and that was the last he could remember.

  Lucy’s dark hair was unbound and hung over the arm of the chair in long, curled waves. She was partially covered with a light blanket and wore a dress that looked as though she’d spend more than a few hours sleeping in it. His mouth lifted at the corner, and he slid to the edge of the bed to reach for a pitcher of water and a glass. He poured himself a drink and wondered how long he’d been out of commission.

  He took stock of himself, noting the fresh bandage across his heart and the light trousers someone had dressed him in. He doubted very much Lucy could have managed it on her own, although he would have liked to have seen her inevitable blush. Placing his hand on his chest, he noted significant soreness but otherwise enjoyed a surprising sense of well-being. When he tried to define it more fully, he realized he couldn’t feel the mechanism clicking. He was also breathing easily, effortlessly. It had been a very long time since he’d felt . . . normal.

  With a frown, he held still. What on earth had happened? He slid from the bed and walked to the windows, where he lifted the drapes aside and looked out at the darkness beyond. Cold rain hit the glass in a steady thrum, and, as he watched, turned to snow. The clock on the mantel showed the hour at ten. He returned to the bedside, where he knelt beside Lucy’s chair.

  He reached for a lock of hair and rubbed it between his fingers. She awoke and looked at him with a moment of confusion before her expression cleared. Her eyes filmed over, and slowly, gently, she reached around his shoulders with her arm and drew closer to him. She rested her face against his neck, and he felt the hot trail of her tears slide down his skin.

  “Shhh,” he whispered and cradled her head with his hand. When had he developed such a tender streak? It would ruin his reputation for certain.

  Lucy eventually pulled back and sat up in the chair, wiping her face with a handkerchief she withdrew from the sleeve of her dress. She laughed a little, flushing. “I’ve made good use of this over the last three days. Think I’ve cried more since being here than I have in years.”

  “I did tell you to leave,” he said and lightly pinched her foot. “Three days?”

  She nodded and sniffed, wiping at her nose. “The Charlesworths have even postponed the ball for your sake.”

  “What happened?”

  “The long and short of it is that Sam got his hands on the new heartclock. And not a moment too soon.”

  He stared at her, stunned. “He performed the transplant? Here?”

  She nodded. “Upstairs. Daniel flew him in.”

  “Are they both still here? Have you had some time with your brother, then?”

  Lucy nodded. “We talked at some length while you were upstairs with Sam.” She smiled. “Poor Daniel. I do believe he was trying to keep me distracted with tales of piracy in the high skies.” She then told Miles everything that had happened from the time of the attack in the graveyard.

  He shook his head. “I don’t remember anything beyond running after the thing into the fog.”

  “It was a vampire—the thing tried to rip out your heartclock. I had to use anti-venom on the wound before Sam even arrived. The vamp knocked me into the coffin, sent you sprawling, and took out two of the groundsboys.”

  “Knocked you into . . .” His mouth dropped open. “I didn’t realize.” He shook his head. “Lucy, I am sorry—I do not know what to say.”

  “It was hardly your fault,” she said and rubbed an eye. “I will say, however, that it isn’t an experience I wish to repeat.”

  Miles stifled a groan and rested his forehead on her knee. He felt her fingers in his hair and closed his eyes. “I would assume you were correct in your supposition about Clara?”

  She was silent for a long moment, and Miles lifted his head. Sorrow creased her brow, and she nodded. “I’m so sorry. She was most definitely poisoned.”

  Miles took her hand and placed his lips on her knuckles for a kiss before he lay his head against her knee again. “What a wretched end,” he said, his heart heavy. “And although I wouldn’t wish it on an enemy, I cannot even say there was any love lost.” He looked up at Lucy. “I am truly the beast others believe of me.”

  “You did not kill her, Miles.”

  “I brought her here. I married her for her money.”

  “I agree, it is a tragic ending to a young life. You cannot, however, pretend that alliances between families aren’t forged every day for money and titles. Because yours was not a love match does not make a beast of you.”

  Miles shrugged, and they sat in silence for a time. “This must end,” he finally said. “All of the madness. It has been a pall over this house long enough.”

  Lucy turned the heavy key in the lock on Marie’s garden gate and slipped inside, hoping Mr. Clancy wouldn’t somehow know she was there without him. The man had an uncanny ability to know what was going on even when he was nowhere near the place. She regretted the necessity of deceit but knew he would never allow her access to the gazebo otherwise.

  She was absolutely exhausted. In the past month, she had been infected with vampire venom, suffered broken ribs, a badly sprained ankle and wrist, and had been shoved into a casket with a decomposing corpse. The fact that she temporarily needed a cane to walk should be the least of her complaints, although she felt positively ancient each time she moved around with it. Thankfully, breathing was less painful than before, a good sign that her ribs were on the mend.

  The air was cold—painfully so—and tendrils of fog clung to the ground and obscured the far corners of the garden, the gazebo included. She hadn’t told Miles what she was doing—she hadn’t told anyone. He was at the manor preparing to head north for the Charlesworths’ ball, and Lucy had figured she might never get another opportunity to examine the gazebo by herself.

  There was something that pulled her to the gazebo time and again, though she had respected Clancy’s wishes to leave it alone. There hadn’t been a single instance that she’d been inside the walls of Marie’s garden when Lucy hadn’t felt a very real impression to enter the place. And at the lodge, Miles had mentioned that he saw Marie in the gazebo itself.

  It was as though Mr. Clancy igno
red its existence and noticed it only when Lucy pointed it out to him. She had pieced together that it had been Marie’s favorite spot in the whole world, but as it was also where she’d been found butchered, Mr. Clancy was torn. He wanted to get rid of it, but it had been her refuge; destroying it would destroy the memory of her.

  The air around her felt charged, eerie, and trying to tell herself that there was nobody else in the garden was proving difficult. A glance over her shoulder gave her little reassurance. The gate was completely obscured by the fog, which seemed an entity unto its own.

  “Nonsense,” she murmured and continued on her way, the frozen ground crunching under her boots. The gazebo finally materialized before her, and she eyed the thick tendrils and twisted sticks of dormant ivy that made for an impenetrable enclosure, the once-green leaves now brown and crumbling.

  Silence hummed in her ears as she carefully picked her way to the entrance. Despite the lack of healthy foliage, the interior was still substantially darker than the outside world. Placing one foot at the bottom step, she navigated the stairs on an ankle that was beginning to throb.

  Taking a deep breath, Lucy looked into the gazebo and squinted as her eyes adjusted. There was something there, something toward the center. Frowning, she fumbled in her pocket for the small Tesla torch she’d brought from the house and looked up at the canopy of densely packed vines that closed out the light.

  She switched on the torch and cast the beam across the stone floor where it caught on a bright red dress that had become altogether too familiar. Her heart in her throat, Lucy inched closer, only to stumble back in horror at the graphic scene.

  The vision was of Marie, prostrate on the ground, with huge gashes across her midsection and face. Her blood seeped with sickening speed across the fabric of her dress, and Lucy felt light-headed at the brutal sight of Marie’s torn throat and chest, the blood across her face obscuring her once-beautiful features.

  Lucy’s stomach lurched, and she felt her eyes burn with the sting of tears. “Why?” she whispered and inched her way backward until she came up against the wall of vines and tendrils encircling the gazebo. “Won’t you please tell me what you need?”

  To her horror, Marie’s fingers twitched, her outstretched arm pointing at something on the floor. The open, sightless eyes flickered, following the line of her arm. She moved her forefinger fractionally at something only she could see.

  Lucy, the torch in her hand wobbling so severely she feared she’d drop it, moved forward slowly, gripping her cane. Perhaps she could use it to defend herself. But defend herself against what? A ghost? The victim of a violent crime? Marie was not the problem.

  Lucy kept the beam of light focused on the twitching fingers and fought a wave of nausea. The vision of Marie didn’t look like a ghost—the sight of her seemed so incredibly real that Lucy doubted her sanity. As she neared the delicate hand, she crouched down close enough to examine the floor but far enough away to at least give herself the impression that she could leap out of the way if need be.

  Marie’s hand was slender, her fingers graceful, and she had clearly not succumbed to death without a fight. Her forearm was a mass of cuts and blood, her fingernails chipped and broken. Marie clenched her fist, all but her forefinger, which pointed directly at Lucy’s boot. Shining the light carefully around her own foot, Lucy set down her cane and brushed aside the dead twigs and leaves that covered the marble floor.

  One tense minute became two, and just as Lucy was about to cry out in despair, her fingers brushed across something that caught the light and shone dully against the debris. As she pulled it from the leaves and settled it into her gloved palm, her heart thumped in recognition.

  It was a button belonging to a stable boy’s ’ton uniform, clearly engraved with the Blackwell crest. Marie must have ripped it from her attacker during the struggle.

  “Oh, Marie,” Lucy breathed, feeling a chill settle deep into her bones. “It wasn’t Miles or even a vampire. A programmed ’ton did this to you.”

  Thoughts tumbled in her head, and she glanced at the dead woman, only to find the marble floor empty, as if Marie had never been there.

  Miles stood in the wheelhouse and looked out over the darkening countryside as Daniel’s personal airship carried the small entourage to the Charlesworths’ country home near the Scottish border. While it had been good to see his friend again, Miles realized Lucy definitely had the right of it—Daniel was harboring a heavy heart beneath a practiced and casual façade. Miles never had been one to pry, however, and after stewing for some time about Daniel’s welfare, he finally decided the man would come to him if he needed help.

  “I should tell you,” Miles said to Daniel as his friend consulted an instrument and made a course correction, “I plan to seek your sister’s hand.”

  Daniel looked at Miles, his face impassive. “I was hoping you’d do the honorable thing, especially after ensconcing her in your personal suite.”

  Miles frowned and opened his mouth, searching for the right words with which to defend himself.

  “Never seen you speechless, Blackwell,” Daniel said, chuckling. “And you may as well know that I’ve already told Lucy I approve of you as a suitor, should that be the direction you decide to take.” He looked out at the darkening sky. “She is very . . . Lucy is exceptionally bright. You are aware of the work she does for the Botanical Aid Society?”

  Miles nodded. “I have hope she will continue in that vein. She is valuable to their efforts of late, though I know her work puts her at great personal risk.” He shook his head. “She is obliged to carry her own supply of anti-venom.”

  “Which is why I am comforted at the thought of her being with someone who can provide adequate protection, keep her safe.”

  Miles shook his head. “She has come to more harm in the past month than I believe she ever has. Nevertheless, I intend to employ any measures necessary to protect her.”

  Daniel glanced at Miles, one brow raised. “Including trying to keep her from her work? I’m afraid that would not end well.”

  Miles ran a hand through his hair. “I would not try to keep her from it. She may, however, have to subject herself to the inconvenience of an armed guard.”

  Daniel’s mouth twitched. “I wish you good luck.”

  Miles cast his friend a caustic glance as Daniel laughed.

  Reaching into his pocket, Miles closed his fingers around the ’ton uniform button Lucy had handed him earlier that afternoon. It exonerated him, true, but it also meant that someone in his household had programmed one of the stable boys to kill Marie. The button was the last thing her mortal fingers had touched, and he couldn’t decide if he wanted to keep the thing or hurl it far into the ocean.

  He resented the Charlesworths and their blasted ball and all that went with it. He felt more than ever that he ought to be at Blackwell Manor, scouring programming tins and interrogating the staff. Lucy had convinced him that it would look extremely suspect if he not only didn’t attend his only brother’s wedding celebration—which had been postponed for his sake—but also went on a rampage, accusing all and sundry of killing his sister. There was wisdom to her suggestion that they act as though they hadn’t discovered anything at all, that their chances of finding evidence against those responsible would be possible only if the guilty party didn’t know they were looking.

  Her words before they left echoed in his head: I think we can safely say that there is a vampire among us, and it is someone we know. But as much as he tried, he couldn’t make sense of the riddle. Who would program ’tons to poison Clara and Kate and kill Marie in such a way as to suggest an animal attack? And could it be the same person who was aware of his status as a predatory shifter? Who knew his secret? Who was insisting he step aside and hand the earldom to Jonathan?

  Miles rubbed his hand along his face, feeling the familiar ridges of the scar that had made his life at ti
mes unbearably hard and yet seemed to have no adverse impact on Lucy, who sat in the passenger section of the airship with Sam. Miles was as baffled by her affection for him as he was by the odd questions that seemed to arise every day—questions he was afraid might keep eluding him until it was too late.

  Of one thing he was certain: the only person who would benefit from the earldom passing to Jonathan would be Jonathan himself, and Miles would exhaust every last possibility before allowing himself to even begin suspecting his brother of plotting against him. He was afraid that would prove more than his heart could handle—newly transplanted or no.

  Lucy took in her surroundings with an eye for detail. Charlesworth House, while not as grand as Blackwell Manor, was certainly beautiful in its own right. The building, situated in a hamlet near the border that nestled along the coastline, spoke of an understated charm, from the wide windows that graced the main level to the widow’s walk against the third-floor turrets.

  A flurry of activity flowed from the conveyances that had driven them from the airfield to the front steps where ’tons made quick work of delivering the guests’ travel trunks to their respective rooms.

  “Welcome!” Aunt Eustace filled the doorway, temporarily blocking the warm light that spilled from within the house and lit the darkening night. “I am so glad to see you’ve arrived intact! When you telescribed that you would be arriving by airship, why I nearly suffered a fit of vapors!”

  Lucy leaned forward to receive Eustace’s kisses, which were delivered to the air on either side of her cheeks. “I daresay airships are safer than ground travel. Wouldn’t you agree, Lord Blackwell?” Lucy said when Miles didn’t seem inclined to answer his aunt.

  Miles flicked a flat glance at Lucy before turning his attention to Eustace. “Most certainly,” he said as Eustace clasped him to her ample bosom. “And we arrived hours before we would have, otherwise,” he finished as he broke away and flared his nostrils slightly in Lucy’s direction.