Wild & Steamy

by Carolyn Crane

  But Edward Newberry had been waiting, too. For a farewell look, she’d thought, and her pleasure had been so great that she’d been unable to stop her smile—the same smile that had always been her invitation when she turned to find him waiting near her bench.

  She had not cared that he approached her now. How lovely was it, that she would see him a final time, that she had an opportunity to say good-bye? It was a blessing. An improper one, perhaps, but she had been short on blessings of late, and she would not turn away from this one.

  Except that day, he didn’t pause at all. With his eyes locked on hers, he’d advanced swiftly, cupped her face in his giant hands, and kissed her.

  He kissed her though Baron Shiplan struck him across the back with his cane, shouting that he was a filthy cur. He kissed her though two footmen tried to wrestle him away from her—and though she regained her senses halfway through, and began to struggle, too. He kissed her until the Shiplan girls were pulled away from the scene by their mother; as they went the elder one said, “That is only the man she speaks with in the park every day,” and the focus of everyone’s outrage shifted to include Temperance.

  Newberry had been dragged away, Temperance sent to her father’s home. In tearstained letters, her sisters confessed that they’d known how she’d encouraged the constable, and they hadn’t done enough to warn her against it. The sanatorium’s directors heard rumors of her wanton behavior, and suggested another location for Temperance to spend her remaining years. No one would have her, no one wanted her, and suddenly it mattered little that Edward Newberry didn’t know who his father was, and his late mother had been an actress who’d entertained a string of men throughout her career, and that he was three years younger than she. Her grandfather’s solicitor met with Newberry—now unemployed as well, dismissed from the police force for his unbecoming conduct—and it was agreed that he would have her inheritance if they married and moved to London.

  He’d immediately agreed; Temperance had taken a day longer. When she’d seen him again, moments before they were wed, she’d asked him—still hoping that he was her friend who’d simply been swept up by an impulse—whether he’d planned all of this to happen when he’d kissed her: the marriage, the inheritance, and London?

  Yes, he’d said, and his answer had shattered that hope.

  She’d been sick on the airship journey from Manhattan City to Bath. She’d been sick on the locomotive to London, on the steamcoach from the station to their flat—and feeling sick again, listening to him pause outside the door, and remembering how deceived she’d been, how stupid she’d been, for smiling every time he’d paused before.

  Nothing left of her heart allowed a smile now. She closed her eyes when the gentle knock sounded, followed by the creaking hinges. Light spilling in from the small parlor warmed the darkness behind her eyelids.

  His voice came, low and gruff. “Forgive the disturbance—I saw your lamp through the window as I was coming in, and hoped you hadn’t yet fallen asleep.”

  Drat. “I’m awake.”

  “How did Miss Lockstitch work out?”

  She was vulgar and wore a disturbing contraption in place of her hand. “Very well,” Temperance said, and because it was ridiculous, she opened her eyes.

  His big body filled the doorway, nothing but a silhouette. He’d removed his domed hat and the shape of his shoulders seemed less stiff than usual. He must have also taken off his uniform jacket…which meant he stood at her door in his shirtsleeves. Oh. She closed her eyes again, trying not to remember the night when she had woken in a sweat, not only from the sickness but the sweltering summer night, and he’d heard her walking about and had come to the door of his room. He had been very solid, her husband, as if he spent many hours in a pugilist’s ring rather than simply patrolling a quiet park.

  “Have you thought more on the infection?”

  The memory of his bare chest dissolved easily. “I have told you, I will not end up…a thing. And you know I will. You’ve heard of the zombies as well.” Ravenous, mindless—consuming other humans, filled with bugs. It was unthinkable. Only a horrid man could think a short lifetime could be worth an eternity of that. “I do not understand why you pursue this. You have my money. Is that not enough?”

  “It’s not hardly enough. You must risk—” he began, but the exertion of her anger had squeezed at her lungs, caught at her throat, and the cough had ruptured up, cutting him off. Then another, and another, until her throat was raw and her muscles aching and blood spotted her handkerchief. She curled up on her side, bracing herself against each wracking cough, tears slipping into the pillow. He crossed the room during her fit, and as the coughing eased his hand made warm circles on her back. But she could not bear his touch, not when she had wanted it for so long and now it came like this.

  “Leave me be,” she whispered. “Let me sleep.”

  He paused, then, and she thought he might refuse. But he turned away, quietly closing the door behind him, and she struggled up in her bed and fixed her draught of laudanum. The bitter medicine coated her tongue, her throat, and was all that she could taste as she lay back again, listening to her husband move about the flat, retrieving his cold dinner from the stone slab in the larder. Chair legs scraped lightly against the floor in their small dining area, then there was only quiet as he settled in to eat.

  The laudanum warmed her chest, weighed down her limbs. She closed her heavy eyelids, and it was so easy to imagine him sitting at their table in his shirtsleeves, at the table that was so similar to the one she’d once imagined for her own flat. A cozy combination of rooms converted from an old mews, she wouldn’t have wanted anything more—except that this was in London, and she shared the flat with a deceitful man, and she was dying in it.

  2

  The nightmare came, and she saw herself emaciated and pale and ravenous. Temperance opened her eyes to the dark, heart pounding, her linen shift twisted and clinging with sweat. As always, the laudanum weighed on her chest, pressed her into the bed, and she had a moment of terror that she wouldn’t be able to get up, that she was already dead.

  But her legs moved, and she swung her feet to the wooden floor. From the other room, she heard a deep coughing. Newberry, but he didn’t suffer as she did. His cough was of his own making.

  Desperate for air, she opened the window to the warm night, but it wouldn’t be fresh air—not in London. The gray haze of smoke that hung over the city during the day was still visible at night, the glow of the gas streetlamps casting a dirty yellow into the dark sky. She breathed it in, though the filthy air would kill her faster and was already clawing at her husband’s lungs, air that she could hear being made dirtier in the distance, on the busier streets of London, the never-ending rumble of the steamcoaches and lorries and carts belching their exhaust.

  Their second-level flat overlooked the cobblestone alley between the mews and the lockstitch guild’s great stone house—an aristocrat’s house, perhaps, before the Horde had come and most of the nobles had fled to the New World. She looked to the end of the alley. Miss Lockstitch had told her that a park lay not far away, the Embankment alongside the River Thames. From there, she would be able to see the bridges, the colorful tents over the Temple Fair, and the crumbling tower that had once broadcasted the radio signal the Horde had used to control the bugs.

  She would like that—the tower was only a curiosity, but the Embankment’s gardens sounded like heaven, and the strange amusements of the Temple Fair diverting. Perhaps she and Miss Lockstitch could hire a cab this week, and if Temperance could not manage a walk through the gardens, at least she could sit.

  Feeling light, lighter than she usually did after a draught of laudanum, Temperance idly glanced to the other end of the alley, and realized that she was still in her nightmare. What else could that man have sprung from?

  Tall, so tall that the blond woman he faced only came up to his middle, his eyes burning orange like the bowels of a furnace. His legs were long, thin compared
to the bulk of his torso, and deeply jointed, bent far over at the knees though he stood upright—almost like the front legs of a mantis, but these were his only legs, and she saw the glint of metal instead of green.

  And he was rumbling, too. It was not only the distant traffic. Wisps of steam wafted from the back of his head. Was it even a man? Temperance could not tell anymore, and it looked as through her nightmare was ending, because the blond woman had turned away from the rattling man, as if they were leaving the alley. But, no—not over yet. The man’s metal hand flicked out to his side, then back around, and came down over the woman’s head.

  The woman crumpled to the ground.

  Temperance screamed. And screamed again, scrambling away from the window as the man suddenly rose up in a great hiss of steam, bounding toward her, springing as high as their second-level flat, his orange eyes glowing with the fires of hell. Her next scream caught in her throat, became a cough, and another. Her bedroom door crashed open, Newberry shouting her name, and she flung herself toward him, because he was horrid but also so big that even a nightmare could not get through him. Strong arms hauled her up against a wide chest, and he demanded to know what had happened, but she could not tell him, she could only cough and point to the window.

  Cradled against him, Temperance fought not to hide her face in his shoulder as he carried her over to look—but the man wasn’t there. The alley was empty but for the figure still crumpled on the stones. Newberry’s body stiffened slightly when he saw her, his arms holding Temperance a little tighter.

  “I’ll send for the inspector,” he said.

  *** *** ***

  Newberry knew better than to move a dead body before the inspector came—she had said so very firmly when they had met that morning, and she’d laid out her expectations for him. He was not to call her ‘lady,’ even if it chafed his bounder sensibilities to refer to an earl’s daughter as anything else. She would be called ‘sir,’ following the precedent set by Superintendent Hale, who had come to London from Manhattan City after being denied a position on the police force because of her sex. While she conducted an investigation, he was to keep his eyes open and his mouth closed, unless she asked for his opinion; if he could prove himself with sensible replies, she would eventually allow him to offer his opinion unsolicited. And if someone spat at her, if a passerby tried to hit her, if it looked as though a mob might come after her, she would appreciate very much if he stepped in.

  He hadn’t needed to as of yet. And though she’d also instructed him to leave any body alone, he bent her rules to verify that the woman didn’t have a pulse, and that he wasn’t leaving her injured on a cobblestone street while he waited for the inspector to arrive.

  No pulse. And considering that a gash in her skull exposed smashed brains, the reason for it was clear.

  Newberry glanced up to the well-lit window on the mews’ second-level. Temperance stood there, her fingers pressed to the glass. She’d demanded that he leave her alone, that he go perform his duties.

  She still did not understand. Above all else, his duty was protecting her, keeping her safe, keeping her alive. And he would do it, no matter how she hated him. So he watched her now, and though pain stabbed through his chest when she deliberately turned away, at least he knew she was well. He would bear anything to know she was well.

  And he would bear anything to see her get better. The shredding of his heart was the price he’d paid, the choice he’d made when he’d kissed her, when he’d offered to marry her and move her to London. But it would be worth it to see her strong again.

  If only she weren’t so all-fired stubborn.

  The huffing engine of a steamcoach announced the inspector’s arrival—a cab, Newberry noted, and she was accompanied by a young man and a boy or twelve or thirteen, one brown-haired and the other light, and both of them looking hastily dressed. Buttoned up in her inspector’s jacket and trousers, the inspector appeared irritated with them, but in a familiar sort of way. Brothers, perhaps, though they shared none of the inspector’s Horde features.

  She left them behind to pay the driver, her gaze sweeping the length of the alley before coming to rest on the woman’s body. “Constable Newberry.” She gave him a nod before crouching next to the woman. “I suppose you have none of your equipment.”

  “No, sir. I am to be issued my equipment and a police cart tomorrow.”

  “All right. I’ve called for the body wagon. We’ll ride back to the station with it.” Bending over the head wound, she drew in a sharp breath. “He was either very angry, or very strong.”

  Strong, by Temperance’s description. But the inspector hadn’t asked for his opinion or a report yet. “Yes, sir.”

  She sat back on her heels, and her gaze lifted to the lighted window. “You have a witness?”

  “Yes, sir. My—”

  “First tell me what you see, constable.” She gestured to the woman’s body. “Pretend that you have not heard anything at all. What do you see here?”

  A test, he realized. She looked up at him, her expression inscrutable, but he felt that her eyes were taking in his every thought, every emotion, looking to see whether he’d cheat and use the information he already knew. Swallowing, he studied the body.

  “She’s female, blonde, thirty or thirty-five years of age,” he said, and felt his face heat at the obviousness of that, but the inspector only nodded, as if telling him to go on. “She was likely born in a crèche, because thirty years was before the revolution, and the apparatus on her arm suggests that they altered her, as well.”

  “Not always, but go on.”

  “It’s a cutting tool. A cleaver? We might find a guild mark on her arm, and that will help us identify her.”

  “You know of the guilds and their marks already? How long have you been in London, constable?”

  “A few weeks. But we live next to the lockstitch house.” He gestured to the building. “It would be difficult not to see.”

  “You’d be surprised how many people see very little in this city, constable.”

  “Or hear very little,” he said. Though Temperance had screamed in terror through an open window, no other windows were lit. No one had come out to the alley to help or to see what had happened.

  “And most say very little, too. What else?”

  Was there more? He studied the cobblestones around the body, noted a broken brick, the smear of blood and hair on the corner. Temperance had not mentioned a brick. In the dark, she probably hadn’t seen it. “He used that to hit her with. But why? If it was a machine, the metal of his arm would be just as efficient—if not more efficient.”

  “Just as she would have used her cleaver to defend herself, yes? It would be natural, instinctive, to use a weapon in your arsenal that you are intimately familiar with. But he must not have given her the opportunity, struck her from behind.”

  “Yes, sir. And if he grabbed a brick close at hand, this probably wasn’t planned, but something done in the heat of the moment.”

  “Very good, constable. You’ll find that most of the murders we investigate are the same—for many of us, controlling our more extreme emotions after the Horde’s tower was destroyed became a difficult exercise. Most likely, he became angry, and reacted—but of course we will try to find him and ask.” She paused. “You will not irritate me if you offer your opinion now and again. Now let us go and talk to your witness.”

  She stood and looked to the man and the boy, who had been standing quietly at the mouth of the alley. They were both sizing him up, Newberry realized, and he suddenly felt like a lumbering giant next to the petite inspector.

  “Henry,” she said. “Please watch over her until the wagon arrives.”

  The man nodded. “We’ll be here. Shout if you have any trouble.”

  “I think I shall be all right with the constable here.” Turning on her heel, she gestured for Newberry to follow, telling him, “Those are my brothers, Henry and Andrew. You outweigh them both together, and already
nag at me less. I think this shall work out very well. Now, tell me of this witness.”

  “My wife, sir.”

  “She saw the body from your window?”

  “She witnessed the murder itself, sir.”

  “I am fond of your wife already, constable. Was she able to describe this person?”

  “Yes, sir. She said he looked like Spring-Heel Jack.”

  The inspector frowned, looked at him. “Who?”

  *** *** ***

  Detective Inspector Wentworth didn’t look anything like the caricatures of the Mongol officials that Temperance had seen in the newssheets. She did not have bulbous lips or slitted eyes that barely opened, and her body was not misshapen, fat-bottomed, and slope-shouldered, with a curving spine. Indeed, she was rather pretty, with smooth black hair wound into a knot at her nape, emphasizing the roundness of her face and the delicacy of her features rather than concealing them…though Temperance wasn’t certain she would ever become used to seeing a woman in trousers, particularly snug ones. At least Miss Lockstitch’s had been wide and loose, like the bottoms to a Lusitanian hunter’s habit, so that when she stood it looked as though she wore a long, tailored skirt.

  But trousers or no, it was good to see her, to see a face that wasn’t pale. Although none were of Horde blood as the inspector was, men and women of every color walked the Manhattan City streets, and this woman’s presence suddenly made London feel a little more like home.

  The inspector’s gaze swept the rooms once and Temperance twice. The straight line of her mouth curved slightly when Temperance gave her the sketch.

  “This is what you saw?”

  “Yes.” Temperance pointed to the second sketch, where the man’s legs were no longer deeply bent, but almost straight. “And this is how he looked as he sprang toward my window.”

  “Will you show me the view?”

  “Of course.” Winded by the time she reached her room, Temperance had to slow and catch her breath. “It…is here.”