Sheer Madness

by Laura Strickland

  Topaz! Rom’s voice screamed in her mind. He could feel her peril through their connection. Would he be forced to feel her die?

  No. Instead her spirit rose up in a wall of brightness to confront Clifford’s intense darkness. Like a golden shield, she raised and battered him with it, bright and savage, finding at last the might that had always dwelt within.

  His eyes widened and his fingers slackened. His head struck the stone floor one last time before his spirit—dark as foul smoke—left his body and hovered above it.

  Topaz, still gasping, recoiled as from the stench of decay. On her feet, she backed toward the stairs even as his foul spirit reached for her with tendrils like fingers. Her mind, working now without her intent, caught up her own brightness and made of it armor—that not of a flesh-and-blood warrior but a spiritual one. Clifford’s darkness rebounded from it, arose like a hive of bees, and streamed away through the ceiling.

  Topaz drew a breath—hot from the encroaching flames—and scampered for the stairs. The flames would take Clifford’s body even as they must consume her father’s. She felt a twinge of loss but dismissed it even as she dragged herself up the stairs and ducked through the door into the kitchen. Time later to sort out her complicated feelings for her father. Not now.

  Abovestairs she found chaos and a great deal of smoke. Steamies stood everywhere in various states of shutdown. In the grand foyer she found Rom ushering out the last of the human servants while Sapphire, much recovered, held their mother caught in his arms.

  “Topaz!” Dahlia called. “What’s happening? Where’s your father?”

  Where, indeed? Topaz fancied she could feel his spirit all around her, just as she felt Rom’s relief when he turned and saw her. Impossible to imagine the spirit master could be destroyed.

  “Get outside,” she told her mother and cast a look at Rom. “The house is going to come down. Is that everyone?”

  He nodded, reached out, and threaded his fingers through hers. They exited together with Sapphire carrying Dahlia, to find confusion in the street, as well.

  The first person she saw—Patrick Kelly—gave orders to the fire wagon that had just arrived. Two more steamed up the Parkway. Sleet fell from an ink-black sky like needles, pelting everyone. Neighbors and their servants poured from other houses to observe the spectacle.

  Topaz, with Rom’s arm now wrapped around her, turned to look also.

  The house, flames soaring upward from the cellar, looked like a candle-lit jack-o-lantern, the windows ghostly carved orifices. Topaz watched the last of the spirits—those always attracted to Frederick Hathor—stream away as might bats from a cave, into the deeper darkness of the sky.

  Did that mean he was gone, his spirit also driven away? Did they follow him even yet?

  “Frederick!” Dahlia screamed desperately as the flames leaped higher, into the second and third floors. She fought against Sapphire, who still held her. “Let me go to him.”

  “Mother, no.” Sapphire wrapped his arms around her more tightly, and she dissolved into sobs against his chest.

  Patrick Kelly approached, clad in his police uniform, his face expressionless.

  “Miss Topaz, I am glad to see you safe. Do you know if anyone remains inside? I would not wish to risk members of my squad needlessly, but will send them in if there is a chance of saving human life.”

  “Steam units,” she replied. “My father—dead. Clifford—dead.”

  “Dead?” Rom repeated in wonder.

  “I finished him myself.” She looked at Pat. “Self-defense.”

  He nodded.

  She asked, “Has this become an official investigation?”

  “Indeed. I will need to take statements from everyone involved. But that can wait.” He looked at the building, already well beyond salvage. The fire wagons concentrated on keeping the neighboring homes dampened down. “Meanwhile, let it burn. There is, I believe, such a thing as cleansing fire.”

  Topaz reached out and clasped Pat’s hand. He looked startled and even more so when tears came to her eyes.

  “Thank you, Pat. You are an extraordinary friend, and it’s an honor to know you.”

  He smiled, pure Irish. “Likewise. I can only say you are a woman of great courage.”

  “My woman of great courage.” Rom’s arms tightened. He inquired of Pat, “Is Rose safe?”

  “I left her under the protection of some friends.”

  Topaz looked at Pat seriously. “Now that this is over, she won’t do anything…dangerous to herself, will she?”

  “I assure you, Miss Topaz, I will not allow that.” Pat exhaled steam into the hot air. “I believe if anyone can persuade her to exist in a body she finds repugnant, it is I.”

  He walked away before Topaz could speak the words that sprang to mind: Rose is a lucky woman. She relaxed back against Rom. But not so lucky as me. “Is it over?” she murmured. “Please tell me it’s over.”

  “I believe so,” Rom whispered in her ear, and sent a frisson of delight through her weary body. “Just the pieces left to pick up.”

  A terrible, great number of pieces, Topaz acknowledged. But for now she could only stand and watch her family home burn.

  Chapter Forty

  “You’ll be anxious to get back to England,” Topaz said, gazing into the bottomless blue depths of Romney Gideon’s eyes. She could feel the longing for home simmering inside him just as she could feel everything else: the healing of his body and spirit and his love for her, steady and bright. “To your marshes, your ancient fens—that place you love so well.”

  Rom’s only reply came as he pressed his mouth to hers in a warm, languorous kiss. They’d spent the last two days and nights in bed, back at the Kilters’, with only brief intervals otherwise, to make statements to Pat Kelly and various members of the Buffalo police force. Topaz didn’t even need to eat, not food anyway. All her cravings centered upon this man within her reach.

  But now restlessness stirred inside her. Things between them needed to be settled, questions answered.

  “That always was the plan, to solve the Undertaker problem and go home.” He stretched his naked body beneath hers and palmed one breast. “Come with me, Topaz. Embrace the roving gypsy you are inside.”

  “Is that what I am?” She tossed her hair over her back. She’d lost track of how many times she’d ridden Rom in the last two days—tasted him, given herself to him so completely she barely knew who or what she was anymore. Her identity hadn’t mattered much because every time they made love she could feel him grow stronger, and that in turn restored her strength. One thing seemed evident: it would not be healthy for them to part.

  “Kiss me again,” he requested, and she did, open-mouthed, even as his fingers, still at her breast, coaxed a maximum response. “My wild gypsy.” His eyes smiled into hers. Did her future lie in that smile?

  “I’m not sure I can face making any plans just yet,” she confessed. “I can’t imagine what the Kilters must think of us, shut away here together all this time.”

  “I can.” The smile in his eyes deepened. “Haven’t you noticed the way they look at each other? Just what do you suppose goes on in their room, eh?”

  Topaz laughed softly, and some of her tension eased.

  Rom kissed one corner of her mouth and then the other. “I should return to England, love, if only to accept my commendation from the Queen. She wishes to congratulate me on my success in defeating the dread Undertaker who threatened to besmirch her nation’s reputation. You really should come along, if only because you’re the one who actually defeated him.”

  “We did it together, everything together.”

  “Then what’s this doubt I see in your eyes?”

  Topaz didn’t know; she couldn’t understand why she felt so torn. She lifted herself from atop him and sat on the edge of the bed. His spirit protested for an instant before it became acquiescent. Was this how it had been for her father—living in essence two lives, one in the physical world and
one parallel to it, always seeing and sensing? No wonder he’d lost all perspective.

  She’d worked hard all her life to keep her barriers raised, to build a protective shell around herself made of equal parts terror and confidence. But the barriers between her and Rom had long since fallen, and she knew he could feel her emotions just as she could feel his. Lucky for her he was sensitive and decent enough to allow her space when she required it—like now.

  She experienced his desire to touch her, to tangle his fingers in her hair and smooth his palm down her naked back. This shared experience made the sex outrageously good. It also put a dent in her long-standing and hard-earned autonomy.

  “Perhaps,” she said slowly, testing the waters, “you should go on your own, give us a chance to see if we can manage to exist apart.”

  He drew a breath that she felt, but he said nothing.

  “Perhaps,” she pressed, “we need that before we make the decisions we must.”

  He said, sounding very casual for all the turmoil she felt inside him, “Decisions are easy enough to make.”

  “Are they?”

  “People make them right and left. Your brother and Carly have decided to get married as soon as possible and try for another child.”

  “So they have.”

  “Your mother has decided to go live with her sister in Boston.”

  “Yes.”

  “Rose has decided to choose life—and to share it with Pat.”

  Foolish tears rose to clog Topaz’s throat. She had never seen Pat Kelly so happy. As for Rose, she’d found love without strings, belonging without demand.

  “James and Cat,” Rom went on softly, “have decided to have the first of what will no doubt be a brood of happy children, affirming their faith in the future. And Greta,” he indicated the big dog now lying at Topaz’s feet, “has decided to trust again.”

  Tears—which Topaz so seldom shed—began trickling down her cheeks.

  Rom laid his palm against her back. “Go ahead, love—weep for him. He was your father.”

  She turned in a rush to face him and saw only loving sympathy in his eyes. “He’s not gone, you know. Oh, his spirit is—I felt it go, stream away. But he lives here in me—in my heart and my head.” She clasped her hands to her breasts. “That’s the awful thing.”

  “The wonderful thing,” he corrected gently. “It makes you the woman you are, the spirit you are. I fell in love with that spirit first—with its strength, its recklessness, its beauty, many-faceted like a jewel. Your father was right. You are his gems, the things of beauty he created.”

  “I should want to run away, to go with you to England and escape all the memories. I should jump at the chance. But this city is part of me—the light and the dark of it, the place where I grew. Maybe this gypsy has put down roots after all.”

  “Then,” he said affectionately, “far be it from me to pull them up.”

  “You’ll go without me and accept your commendation from the Queen?”

  “If I did, I imagine I’d still be able to feel you in spirit. Just as Sapphire feels Carly and recalls a past they shared, as Rose feels the humanity trapped in Pat’s steel shell. We can’t really part, can we?”

  Topaz closed her eyes, trying to imagine what it would mean to send him away from her, to feel the cord forged that first night in her bedroom stretch all the way across an ocean. To reach for him and not feel him there beneath her fingers.

  She asked, trying mightily to hide her dread, “When does the Queen expect you?”

  “The ceremony’s set for February second.”

  She opened her eyes, startled. “But that means you’d have to leave almost at once.”

  “I don’t have to do anything.” He caught her fingers and raised them to his lips. “Tell me, Topaz Hathor, what you want from your future.”

  Her answer surprised her. “To use this new ability that’s come alive inside me—but not as my father did. I want to help not harm, to call upon the spirit that inhabits everyone from streetwalkers to automatons.”

  “A noble intention.”

  “Is it? Because I’m thinking it could be a battle fought down and dirty. Speaking of streetwalkers—I’d like to do more to help those girls and provide them with choices. I could open a refuge, a safe house like this place, only for women.”

  The smile in Rom’s eyes intensified, reaching to Topaz’s heart. “That’s my girl. You should have the money to accomplish it, when all’s said and done and your father’s estate is settled.”

  “I suppose I will. I’ll be a woman of independent means at last.”

  As if he couldn’t help himself, he ran his fingers through her hair. “And I should let you be just that.”

  Topaz protested, “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know, but our bonding came swift and hard. You may need some time on your own.”

  “No.” Tears filled her eyes, but she lifted her chin. “Is that how it seemed when I gave myself to you there in Forest Lawn? When we pledged our lives to each other? In truth, we need no marriage ceremony, Romney Gideon. And I need no time away from you.”

  “Your decision to make, my love.” He raised her fingers once more to his lips. “But, at the very least, you need someone to put you first for a while.” His gaze kindled. “Let that be me.”

  “What about England?”

  “Forget England.” He drew her down upon him, full body contact.

  “What about the Queen?”

  “Let her wait. She can postpone the ceremony or hold it without me. If and when we go to England, it will be together. Together, love. Do you understand?”

  “I do,” she agreed, as her body eased onto his and their spirits mingled with a delicious sense of belonging.

  “Because parting from you,” he whispered a moment before he kissed her, “would be sheer madness.”

  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. She believes 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 blizzard blasts found on the shores of the mighty Niagara. Tough enough to survive a squad of automatons? Well, just maybe.

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  this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.