Wild & Steamy

by Carolyn Crane

  “But you’d like to visit that, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we will.” He extended his arm to her. “Let me help you up, and you can make yourself ready.”

  Her gaze fell to his hand. She tried to remind herself that he was horrid, horrid…but either she didn’t care, or she wasn’t convinced of it anymore. Slowly, she slid her fingers against his, felt his warm clasp. When he pulled her up, his head was bent, and she was looking up at him—and tall Temperance, plain Temperance, she would only have to keep going, to rise up on her toes to meet his lips.

  She did not, but for a long, breathless moment she waited, recalling how his eyes had locked on hers as she was running away to her death. She recalled his strong hands against her cheeks, his firm mouth. She recalled the joy she’d felt then, her first kiss—her only kiss—and it had come from her constable. She recalled the wonder of it before the baron had begun to beat him, before she’d remembered herself and fought to get away.

  Now, letting go of his hand, she started for her room. But she could not stop thinking: What harm would it do if she forgot herself again?

  4

  The spider rickshaw was either an absolutely terrifying contraption or an exhilarating one—or perhaps both, but after five minutes, Temperance couldn’t even determine whether terrifying or exhilarating were any different. She had laughed and shrieked from almost the very beginning of their ride, hiding her face against Newberry’s arm as their small cart darted between lumbering lorries, as they were nearly flattened by oncoming steamcoaches, and daring another look again as they passed men and women riding in their slower—and perhaps safer—pedal buggies.

  At the front of their cart, their gray-haired driver pumped his sturdy legs against two long hydraulic levers, and beneath his feet was a flurry of spinning wheels, clanking gears, and the clickity-clack of segmented metal legs that carried them at speed.

  Newberry laughed as often as she, though he didn’t hide his head even once, and as the arched stone gate marking the entrance to Temple Fair appeared at the end of the Strand, he said, “I don’t know why I didn’t think to do this earlier.”

  Temperance knew why. It was because, before today, she’d never invited him to sit beside her—and now, all but squished on a small bench between his solid body and the side of the cart, she’d had more fun than she could recall since…

  Ever.

  That was horrid. And she ought to have thought of it earlier, too.

  The spider rickshaw finally slowed as they came out of traffic and passed through the gate and beneath the first giant, striped tent. The scents of roasted meats filled the air, barkers calling out their goods from all sides. The stalls were widely spaced, with many more rickshaws and buggies rolling through. Temperance realized she wouldn’t have to walk at all, and was glad of it—her illness would not put a damp rag over their time here today.

  Newberry called to the driver over the noise of the rickshaw and the crowds. The rickshaw stopped, and Newberry hopped out, holding up his hand in a gesture for her to stay. She did, watching acrobats in colorful pajamas perform their tricks on a rope hanging between two large balloons. A boy with a stack of magazines announced the release of the latest Archimedes Fox adventure. Two women bounced past the rickshaw, wearing nothing but corsets and sheer skirts. Temperance’s cheeks flushed, but she turned to watch them—as did almost everyone else, and she laughed as heads rotated with the predictability of an automaton’s as the women walked along.

  Within a few minutes, Newberry returned carrying three foaming mugs of bark beer—one for the driver, she realized, which made her love him all the more.

  She loved him.

  And because she did, Temperance smiled at him as he climbed back into the cart. His face reddened, and he took a long gulp, while she sipped hers, suddenly and inexplicably shy and embarrassed.

  The rickshaw began clicking along again, but she barely saw the amusements they passed. Should she hold his hand? Rest her fingers on his arm? Or dare more, and rest them on his leg? Should she let it fall casually between them, where his thigh was pressed against hers?

  This was agony.

  “Are you well? Has this been too much?”

  Startled, she met his concerned gaze. “No. I’m well. But you, sir, have foam on your lip. No, let me.”

  She stopped his wiping fingers and swept her thumb against the corner of his mouth—and then there was only his mouth, and the tightening of her thighs, the deep hollow ache that she’d known before. Temperance knew what would fill it, that her constable could make that ache disappear, but she could not now, not yet.

  Not when she couldn’t even cross a room.

  She let her fingers fall from his lips, and slipped her hand into his. Holding her gaze, he lifted her palm to his mouth, pressed a kiss into the center—and the ache eased, a little, and yet somehow dug ever deeper.

  “Edward,” she said, and rested her head against his shoulder.

  He didn’t let go of her hand. He held it through the blue tent’s twisting maze of stalls, where she tossed a coin to the twirling, dancing men with rollers for feet, who spun so fast that she dizzied simply watching them. He held her hand through the yellow tent, where a woman with a small furnace beneath her belly roasted chestnuts. He offered to buy a bag for her, and she laughed until her head was as light as the floating lady, who somehow lived within the hydrogen-filled bubble of her balloon.

  And he was still holding her hand as they passed into the orange tent, where he stiffened ever-so-slightly at her side—as if sitting up straighter, though his posture was already quite tall. Near the center of the tent, she saw the inspector in her uniform and hat, flanked by the man and boy who’d accompanied her the previous night. The inspector stopped a woman, showed her a paper—the sketch of the machine, Temperance realized.

  “Are they here looking for him?” she wondered.

  “They must be.” He nodded. “It is the right place for such a machine, isn’t it?”

  Temperance supposed there was no other place for it. The inspector spotted them, and a slight smile curved her mouth, her hand lifted in acknowledgment, before stepping into the path of another man, showing him the sketch.

  A thorough woman, Temperance thought. “Do you suppose— Oh, dear God!”

  In horror, she watched the inspector’s head snap to the side, her hand flying to her mouth. The man had struck her. Temperance shouted, rising from her seat. Her brothers started after her assailant, who turned and ran from them. The rickshaw jolted as Newberry bounded from the side—Good Lord, he was quick—straight into the path of the running man, and Newberry did not even stagger as the man barreled into him. He simply gripped the smaller man’s shoulders and lifted him up, a foot above the ground, and shook him until Temperance heard the man’s teeth repeatedly snap together.

  “Never again!” he roared, and in his rage his face was as red as his hair, all of him terrifying and huge.

  And yet she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t afraid at all.

  The inspector came up, her lip dripping blood over her chin. Newberry set the man down, grabbed him by the scruff.

  “What do you want done with him, sir?”

  “Just let him go.” She sounded incredibly weary, and Newberry did. The man immediately began to run. “He’s not worth the time, or dragging you away from your wife.” The elder brother started after the man scampering away, and her voice sharpened. “Henry! Just let it go. And thank you, constable. You see now why your presence is needed during my investigations.”

  “I do, sir.”

  The inspector nodded. “All right, boys. Let’s move on.”

  Newberry climbed into the cart again, still stiff with anger—and Temperance was shaking, too. Her hand found his, and she clenched it tight.

  Such a man he was. Such a man, to immediately leap to a woman’s defense.

  Yet she had believed, she’d truly let herself believe that he had forced a kiss upon her for
money? “I am so sorry, Edward,” she said. “I am so sorry.”

  His brows drew together. “For what?”

  “When we were married, you said that you’d planned the kiss, you’d planned it all. But it wasn’t for the money, was it? It was so that I could come here and perhaps be healed.”

  “Yes.” His voice was gruff.

  His face blurred in front of her. Oh, why tears now? “Thank you,” she said.

  Big hands cupped her face, but he didn’t respond. Perhaps, like her, his throat had closed and wouldn’t allow even another word.

  But she struggled through the pain in her chest, because she had to know— “Do you love me, Edward?”

  “More than my own life.”

  She laughed, and threw herself into his lap, and there—in the center of the yellow tent at Temple Fair—pressed her lips to his, and kissed him until she could no longer breathe.

  Which wasn’t nearly long enough.

  His thumbs brushed away her tears. She settled in next to him again, and though she wasn’t physically closer—they’d been crushed together all this time—she felt closer, as if the press of their sides and their legs were not just where they touched, but where they were joined, connected.

  She took his hand. “I have loved you for years. And I— Oh.” Her fingers tightened on his thigh. “Edward, look.”

  Beyond his shoulder, walking down one of the twisting side paths through the stalls, a man was wearing a huffing machine suit. Temperance’s heart began to pound, and she saw now why the legs seemed deeply jointed—they were like stilts with springs and hydraulics, with his natural feet standing on pegs at the suit’s upper thighs. The boiler had been strapped to his back and rose high over his own head, yet shaped at the top like a face with eyes—glowing orange from the reflected light in the furnace.

  Newberry let go of her hand, climbed out. “Go quickly, and find the inspector. I’ll keep near him, and wait for her. Find the Horde woman who was just hit!” he called to the driver.

  “All right,” she said, but the man in the suit had already stopped, was peering down the path toward her. “Oh. Oh, he recognizes me.”

  “I didn’t mean to!” came a desperate shout. “Let me be! I didn’t mean to!”

  “Go!” Newberry turned, just as the machine suit spun and the man began to run. “Go!”

  She watched Newberry sprint down the twisting path after the man, and then the rickshaw lurched into motion, a rapid clickity-clack darting through the crowd, and this time Newberry wasn’t there to keep her from bouncing around. She gripped the side of the cart, her heart fluttering painfully, and this was not exhilarating at all, but simply terrifying.

  Just as she was about to be sick all over her feet, the rickshaw stopped. Temperance shouted out, “Inspector Wentworth! Newberry is after him!” and the woman took off at a run, brothers close behind, but Temperance was already coughing, coughing, and could not run at all.

  “Follow them, please!” she managed to tell the driver, who gave her a wild grin and pumped his legs, and they had almost caught up to the inspector when she darted down a side path, and the cart tilted wildly as the spidery legs all seemed to shift about in one great heave, and Temperance was suddenly facing the same way, tasting bark beer in her mouth.

  Ahead of them, she saw the springing machine, bounding, bounding, bounding beneath the roof of the striped tent. The crowd grew heavier as everyone came into the middle of the path to see, and soon even the driver’s honks and shouts wouldn’t move them ahead any farther.

  It was not that far. Not that far. Temperance couldn’t speak for coughing, but she gave the driver a heavy coin and gestured for him to wait.

  He nodded, and she began to weave her way through the crowd, pain stabbing her lungs with every cough, and blood in drops on her handkerchief. The machine had stopped bounding, but people in the crowd ahead had begun pushing back, as if trying to get away. Temperance clung to a stall post, legs almost too weak to keep her upright, and she would stay here, she decided, so that she wouldn’t be trampled and because Newberry could find her on his way.

  Rising above the shouts came another noise, a high-pitched whistling. Oh, and she knew that sound. A boiler with its vents blocked and its pressure rising to the point of explosion. And as the crowd cleared, she saw it: the man trapped in his suit, with Newberry and the inspector frantically working to get him out. The inspector seemed to be shouting at him, and Newberry shook his head, and Temperance wanted to scream at him to run! run! but she couldn’t even breathe. And finally, the man came away, Newberry staggering back as a buckle suddenly broke free, and then the inspector was running, and Newberry running and carrying a murderer.

  The explosion knocked Temperance down, knocked almost everyone else down—and those left standing ducked to escape the flying shrapnel. Shaking the ringing from her ears, she looked up. The inspector was standing, her brothers were standing…and Newberry was not getting up.

  She couldn’t hear the inspector over the shouts, but as she staggered to her feet the brothers were lifting Newberry between them, carrying him at a run—too fast, and they were past her, and she could not even call out.

  A hand touched her shoulder. She looked round, and the inspector frowned at her, shook her head. “Newberry’s lucky. The man we pulled out wasn’t.”

  How lucky?

  The inspector seemed to read her face. “He’ll be all right. They’re taking him to my father,” she said, and suddenly swept Temperance up in her arms—carrying her easily, even when she began to run.

  Good Lord. The bugs did this?

  Ahead, she saw the brothers flag down a steamcoach, but they didn’t wait for Temperance and the inspector. With a great bellow, it started off, and the inspector tossed her into the waiting spider rickshaw and shouted a direction to the driver as she climbed in.

  They scuttled off at speed. Temperance gripped the side of the cart to keep from jostling into the inspector. Her breathing had eased, a little, but she saw the inspector’s gaze fall to her bloody handkerchief, saw the hardening of the other woman’s eyes.

  “They’re taking him to my father,” she said, “but with this sort of abdominal wound, he’s likely to become septic after the surgery, do you understand? Without the bugs he’ll probably die. He needs the transfusion.”

  Was she asking the wife’s permission? Yes, yes. Temperance nodded wildly.

  “Newberry told me last night that he wouldn’t do it unless you did first.”

  Oh. There was no question, then. She would waffle about saving her own life. She wouldn’t do the same with his.

  “I will,” she said.

  *** *** ***

  It was simple for her. Temperance lay on a sofa, while the inspector’s father with his brown beard and sharp eyes gave her an injection of his own blood through a small hollow needle. Then he gave her a sleeping draught, and when she woke in an unfamiliar room, it was the next day, and her chest did not hurt, and her legs were not weak, and she walked down a stair without needing to cling to the banister.

  The boy—Andrew—met her at the bottom of the stair, and led her to the back of the house where Newberry lay upon a table, a blanket over his hips, his chest bare and his stomach covered in a bandage. He lifted his head and saw her, but the red stubble on his cheeks had darkened his skin, concealing most of his blush.

  She took his hand. “Good morning, constable.”

  “Good morning, wife.” His eyes searched her face. “How do you feel?”

  “Wonderful. And you?” She looked to his bandages.

  “His lordship says that I’ll be completely healed by this evening. He’ll let me leave after dinner.”

  “So all is well, husband?”

  “Yes.”

  For her, too. Temperance rested her cheek on his shoulder and wept.

  5

  It was not the first time Temperance had dined at an earl’s house, but it was the most pleasant. No one cared that her husband sat at h
er side, and she did a very good job of not staring at the countess’s strange mirrored eyes.

  But though it was pleasant, she did not want to sit. For months now, it seemed that she had always been sitting, or sleeping, or in her bed. She wanted to walk and run all the way home, and then dance with Newberry around the rooms of their cozy, perfect little flat.

  Perhaps they noticed her impatience. After dinner, the inspector wore an amused expression as she walked with them to the waiting steamcoach. Newberry assisted Temperance inside the carriage, then turned to the inspector, gave a nod.

  The inspector closed the door after he climbed in, and said through the open window, “It has been quite the day, and this is the first night that you are both in full health since your marriage began. I won’t expect you early tomorrow morning, Newberry.”

  She rapped on the carriage’s side. It jolted forward, and in the dark Temperance didn’t know if Newberry’s face was as hot as hers, but she guessed that it likely was.

  “Is she always so bold?” Temperance wondered.

  He sounded as if he were choking. “I believe so.”

  Temperance could not be. She took his hand, and that was enough as the steamcoach traveled the short distance down Whitehall, then west to their mews.

  Newberry seemed satisfied as well, though when they reached their flat and lit the lamps, it seemed his blush had not yet faded. Still he was, as he’d always been, the perfect gentleman. Her heart pounded as she readied for bed. She climbed beneath the sheets and then she waited.

  And waited.

  She heard his bedroom door close. Ah. Retrieving his things to move into here, no doubt.

  Still, he was taking a very long time. She passed it by remembering how his chest had looked. How his lips had felt. Her shift grew uncomfortably hot, and she wanted to tear it away, so that she would be nude when he finally came to her.

  Burning with frustration, she sat up and called, “Edward?”

  He appeared at her door a moment later, hair wild, gaze darting to the window. “Yes?”