Eros Element (22 page)

Lucille threw up her hands with stage-ready flair. “The important question, which you need to consider, is whether searching for a solution is the best course of action. Perhaps you should return to England and resume your life there. To continue this path is madness, and as I said, you endanger others, not just yourself.”

Iris recalled her unintentional reading of Marie's brooch, the peridot one with the stylized C. “Is this about me or about thwarting Parnaby Cobb? Whatever he did to or with your daughter is not my concern.”

“If you, too, are caught in his net, it is your concern. He will be a kind benefactor as long as you cooperate, but if you do not… Believe me, Mademoiselle, he is pulling your strings, and I am your most powerful ally against him.”

“Then tell me what you can do to help me!” Now Iris stood. “I've had enough riddles and hints and secrets to last a lifetime. If you have something for me, give it to me. If not, don't confuse an already convoluted situation. No, I don't like it that we're dependent on Cobb, but you don't seem to understand that I'm doing what I need to survive.”

“I sense you will need my help before another day passes. All I ask in return is that you remember that others' lives are at stake. There are many kinds of survival and many more ways of dying. You walk where the dead dance with the living and try to pull them across.”

“Another riddle.” Iris sighed emphatically. “I will do my best to take care of Marie, but keep in mind she is more than capable.”

“She is more vulnerable than you think. That is why I had to ensure you would stay close—she is strong where you are weak and vice versa.”

“Right.” Iris suppressed another sigh.
At least Marie has a parent who cares for her, whereas I am dreadfully alone.
“Well, I appreciate any help you can give me, but I should be going. Big night tonight.”

“Yes, do not go without Marie. Remember servants are invisible and often overhear valuable information.”

Finally, a helpful tidbit!
Iris smiled and curtsied. “I will do what I can. I'm afraid our itinerary is up to Maestro Bledsoe.”

Lucille smiled with the grin of a woman who knew more than most when it came to the male species. “Most men are easy to manipulate. I have faith you can arrange it.”

Iris walked out of the apartment and exhaled with relief once she reached the sunny street outside. The stifling feeling of the marital trap Jeremy Scott laid for her increased with the sense something bigger than she led and pushed her to an end she didn't understand. She'd thought the expedition would give her the means to live independently, but would it instead keep her stuck in a cat-and-mouse game with only glimpses of the predatory feline? Lucille's words confirmed her intuition about Cobb—that he worked from less than honorable motives.

But we won't know until we get to the end of this journey.

A flash of gold caught Iris's attention, and she spied a clockwork bug climbing down from Lucille's window. She checked the angle of the sun and reached into her reticule for a mirror. She didn't know if it would be enough to melt the wax cylinder, but perhaps the heat from the reflection would be enough to at least warp whatever information had been collected. She ducked behind a parked carriage and managed to aim a bright spot at the thing when it crawled into a sunny place. She hoped the already bright sunlight on the gray stone masked her intervention. It stopped and quivered. Iris counted to twenty before it fell from the building and into the hands of a waiting street urchin, a rag picker Iris hadn't noticed.

Servants are often invisible. So are the poor.

She watched the boy dart into an alley. Unfortunately she was not quick enough to follow him, not that she could without attracting attention.

Voices raised in argument drew her attention to the front of the theatre, where Bledsoe and Marie emerged.

“The pit is more than sufficient for the music that is needed,” Marie said.

“Not if you want to have large productions.”

A musician who's being blackmailed, a maid who isn't a maid and who is working for Cobb, a doctor with secrets of his own, and an Irish tinkerer who doesn't seem to know what place he wants in the world… And an injured professor who is the only one with clear motives in the whole bunch. And as much as I want to tell him about my father, the fewer of us who know about this, the better, especially since he is being given the painkillers and may say something out of turn. So that leaves these two.

Iris stepped into the sunshine to greet her erstwhile allies, but a chill passed over her at the thought of the enormity of the task ahead and the tangled threads around it.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Hôtel Auberge, 13 June 1870

Edward looked at the clockwork worm he'd fashioned. It was more of a snake with a visible head and tail, but it was close enough. His niece's treatise on what worms did, how they dug, allowed him to remake one of the wax cylinders into a coating that would allow it to navigate tight spaces. The other would continue to record sounds, including echoes. Patrick had shown him how to rework the distress calling device into a noise-emitting tool that the worm would pause and use every so often depending on how they set the winding mechanism.

“You have a knack for this,” the Irishman told him as they sat and admired their work. “You're wasted with sitting in that stuffy university office all day.”

“Ah, but aether will always have a beloved place in my heart,” Edward told him. “Think of how we could use that power potential combined with things like this—we could have machines that do complex calculations faster than the human mind, even mine, could. Perhaps they would learn to act on their own on a grander scale than the little clockworks.”

“Now you're being irrational. What would we use them for?”

Edward opened his mouth to answer, but the sound of the door to Iris's room opening and closing made him pause. This was the conversation they'd had on the train, about the purpose of science and his scientific work. Perhaps he could invent a mechanism to help him understand women. But did he want to understand her? She had, after all, kept the secret of Lord Jeremy Scott's pursuit from him. Not that he had a right to know about it, but he thought they had something approaching an agreement. But he didn't want to have understanding with women, or at least he hadn't before meeting one as intelligent as she.

“This isn't helping,” he said out loud, and Patrick looked at him quizzically. “Sorry,” Edward told him, “my mouth skipped a few steps my mind made. My sister-in-law says this is a particular problem of mine.”

“I can see that. What isn't helping?”

“Wondering about her.” Edward inclined his head toward Iris's room. “I should speak to her. Would you invite her to come talk to me? If you don't mind acting as her chaperon.”

“Of course.” He rose, opened the door, and stepped back. “Come in, Miss McTavish.”

Iris nearly jumped back when the tall Irishman opened the door. She'd forgotten how brawny he was, and his bulk filled the doorway.

“I'd like to speak with Professor Bailey,” she said.

“O'course.” He stepped back so she could pass by.
I'm glad he's with us even if I don't know what his motives are beyond helping Doctor Radcliffe.

Edward sat by the window, the afternoon sun picking up the red highlights in his chestnut hair. The golden thing on the table in front of him caught her attention first, and he smiled at her.

“Miss McTavish!” He rose, and she was relieved he seemed to do so with little effort. “I'm glad you came to see me.” He had shadows under his eyes, although not as deep as the day before, but tightness around his mouth told her he experienced pain. It reminded her of the expression on her father's face in the latter days of his illness when he tried to put on a good front, but she could tell he hurt. And he hadn't called her Iris.

“I came as soon as I could,” she said. “I understand that there's been some question of whether I'm engaged.”

Now his lips curled into a genuine smile. “And you get right to the point, one of the best things about you. Please have a seat.”

She sat across the table from him. The sun warmed her left cheek and hand like a couple of kisses.
Kisses? Where did that come from?
She closed the curtain. “Don't want to get freckles on one side of my face,” she said.

“Understandably. Freckles on both sides would make more sense.” He settled into his chair.

O'Connell stood on the other side of the room, and Iris understood he was there as chaperon and possibly as bodyguard for the injured professor. Not that Edward needed one, at least not more than she did. Her hands slicked with sweat inside the stiff kid, so she removed her gloves and stretched her fingers in the sun. The words she wanted to say, that her father was dead and that they were all in danger from all sides, blocked the ones she needed to reassure him about the non-seriousness of her intentions regarding Jeremy Scott. Even though the lordling held the mortgage on her house now and would make it impossible for her to return to Huntington Village, the situation now held a much more trivial place in her mind. But she had to address it.

“I haven't been entirely honest with you.” There, that was a good start. “And I know how much you value honesty because you've been lied to before, and it hurt, and hurting you is the last thing I want to do.”
Please believe me.

“I'm glad to hear that.”

“Good.” Iris leaned forward, but a sunbeam smacked her across the face, so she had to sit back. “Before we left England, I received a marriage proposal from one of my father's students. He's not so much interested in me as in having access to my father and his library, all the discoveries he's not been able to publish yet.”
And never will, but I can't cry about that now.
“I turned him down, but he was determined. His footman seduced my maid Sophie into marrying him, and he sent his coach after me the morning we left.”

“So your adventure started before we reached the airship. That's why you looked so disheveled on the train—he must have chased you.”

“Yes, and since I had to do my own hair, it wasn't up securely or well to begin with.”

Iris hoped the look on Edward's face was of admiration, not horror at what must seem like wanton circumstances. It all sounded so ridiculous when said out loud. But she had no control over any of it, as she couldn't determine his reaction. Whatever he felt, he appeared to be calculating, well, something.

“Do my circumstances fit any of your physics or aetherics models?” she asked after the silence stretched for several minutes.

“No, I'm trying to calculate what we need to do to keep you safe.” He gazed at her with eyes that matched the color of the summer sky outside. “This was not supposed to be a risky adventure, but we didn't have all the variables, like Lord Scott's interest in you. It hardly seems fair that you, the woman, would face more inconvenience.”

His expression softened, and he took one of her hands in both of his, which enveloped hers. It occurred to her that his hands had both strength and dexterity, and the heat that came to her cheeks wasn't from the errant sunbeam that found her again. What would it be like to entrust herself to them, to him?

“I don't mind. I'm happy to be on this adventure with you even if we've had our misadventures.” She leaned forward, her eyes on his lips, and a cough from across the room reminded her they had a chaperon.

Edward started like he'd forgotten too, and sat back, leaving her hands in the false-seeming warmth of the sun on the table. “Now tell me, Iris,” he said. “Are there any other variables I need to be aware of?”

Meaning, have I kept anything else from you?
She glanced at the bedside table, where small apothecary bottles lay along with what looked like a child's manuscript complete with scrawled writing on the cover. “Are you in pain?” she asked.

“Not enough to count as a variable in our risk equation. Doctor Radcliffe keeps it under control with laudanum, and I'm taking a smaller dose every day.”

Father always refused to take laudanum for his pain. He said it made his lips too loose, and he didn't need the world to have his secrets.
“I see. I have nothing else to tell you at the moment.” She rose. “If you'll excuse me, I need to prepare for this evening's gala.”

He rose. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

Iris nodded. Her tongue hurt from biting it to keep herself from telling him everything, but her father's words plus Bledsoe's description of how Edward had spilled the intent of their mission to Radcliffe under the influence of the French wine made her only nod in reply.

“You're upset, Miss,” Marie said after she opened the door.

Iris entered and sat on the chaise by the window, which had the shears pulled to so the sunlight didn't pour in like in Edward's room. She squeezed her lips and eyelids shut, but tears escaped anyway. Marie sat beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. It must be her imagination, but Iris thought she felt soothing warmth coming from her maid. Whatever it was, she brought herself under control.

“Thank you,” she said, although she wasn't sure what for other than calming her.
But that's impossible. Emotions can't be transmitted through touch or the air.

“
De Rien
,” Marie said, and the French words,
It's nothing
, seemed more appropriate than the odd English response of
You're welcome.
“What happened?”

“I had to lie to Edward. I told him about Lord Jeremy, but I didn't let him know about my father. He won't be stuck in his room much longer, and I'm concerned about the effects of the pain medication.”

Marie nodded. “We had a girl at the theatre who broke her leg during a performance. The doctors gave her laudanum for her pain, and everything that went through her head came out of her mouth.”

“But he hates it when people lie, and he held my hand.” Iris hiccupped, and it felt like a prelude to sobs, so she clenched her teeth.
I will not cry, I will not cry.

“Oooh la la,” Marie said. “And does the Professor have nice hands?”

“I believe so. They seem strong and flexible. He had something on the table beside him, but I couldn't tell exactly what it was, only that he made the clockwork butterflies into something else that looks like a snake.”

Marie squeezed Iris's shoulder and laughed.

“What's funny?”

“Oh, the combination of what you said.”

Iris gave her a quizzical look. “I'm missing something.”

“
Bien sur.
You are a proper English miss, after all. Don't worry about it.”

“I won't.” Irritation and the sense of being mocked replaced distress, and Iris stood. “Now please leave me be. I have to do some things I need privacy for.”

Marie rose from the chaise and curtsied, all traces of levity gone and replaced by a properly deferential manner. “I'm sorry, and yes, Miss.”

Iris moved to the bed after the door closed behind Marie. Her room was smaller than Edward's, so it was difficult to find the right spot to do what she needed, something away from the window but also not near the wall between the room and the hallway in case she accidentally said something and one of the little listening devices picked it up. She tossed her reticule and valise on the bed, removed her shoes, hopped in, and crawled toward the headboard. She pulled the curtains so she sat in a little room inside the room. A check under the covers and pillows revealed no hidden recorders, and the rebellious part of her smiled at the dishevelment of the bed Marie had so carefully made.
Not that there's any reason to rebel against her.
But she resented the implication she didn't belong to the world of sophisticated women or possess necessary but secret knowledge.

Iris pulled her father's pipe and pocket watch from her reticule and the poison hiding container from her valise. She laid them out on the bed in front of her and added the photograph of her father asleep—she couldn't accept he was dead in that picture—to the mix.

Is this what we come to, a collection of small things for a great man's life?

This time she allowed the tears to flow freely, and a memory nudged the edge of her consciousness.