The Lamplighter's Love

The Lamplighter’s Love

By Delphine Dryden

Delphine Dryden

http://www.delphinedryden.com

This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Lamplighter’s
Love

Copyright © 2011 by Delphine
Dryden

Editor: Kelli
Collins

Cover art by Delphine
Dryden

All rights reserved. No part
of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system without the
written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law.
Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request
permission and all other inquiries, contact the author at
www.delphinedryden.com/contact.

Second edition

December, 2014

(This book was previously
published by Ellora’s Cave in September 2011).

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Mary has trained for years
to become the next Lamplighter of London. When her chance comes,
however, she realizes the massive difference engines of the
Lampworkers' guild would be a cold substitute indeed for the
passion she's begun to explore with the current Lamplighter,
Nicholas.

But Fate, it seems, is
determined to separate them. A rival threatens to upset all Mary's
hopes and dreams within the guild, and with her newfound love. Even
as snow blankets London in readiness for Christmas, intrigue blazes
in the secret labyrinths of the Lampworkers’ guild
below.

Through bitter deception
and scorching erotic discovery, Mary and Nicholas must find a way
to shine a light on a new future—one they can spend
together.

It was not quite cold enough at the bottom
of the shaft for her breath to show as vapor, and that was the best
Mary could say for the climate in the Lamplighter’s domain. But it
had to be cold. That was the point, why it must be buried so deep
below the streets of London. Because the engines ran so hot, down
in the cavern where the Lamplighter plied his trade.

So familiar, after so many years. The
chatter of keys and gears, the constant motion of rods moving up
and down over the exposed workings of the four great engines. The
soft hiss of steam and hydraulics as the machines dispersed their
printed messages up the tubes that ran throughout the Lampworks.
The crisp, acrid odor of lubricant.

And in the center of it all there stood the
Chair, and in it sat the Lamplighter. Both of his hands were
secured in a framework of leather and metal, fingers extended to
multiple tiny, felted hammers that stayed in constant motion,
tapping over a dizzying array of ivory keys more rapidly than any
mere human could ever do unaided. She had seen the Lamplighter work
so fast those hammers blurred into invisibility.

“I’m here,” she announced, knowing he could
not see her from within the framework of mirrored viewing panels
surrounding his head.

“Two minutes,” he replied softly, haltingly.
“The bridge is up at Northampton.” He was still distracted by the
work around him, all the various calculations for which he was
responsible. Not just the lamps, although initially the post was
created for that purpose. The first engine had run the city’s gas
lamps, but had worked strictly on a timing mechanism.

The first true Lamplighter had been needed
when the traffic lights were added, when it became clear that more
precise calculations and oversight were needed throughout the
course of each day to avoid accidents between carriages and the new
steamcars.

“I’ll just set out the food.”

“It’ll only get cold. Leave it covered.”

Now there were the street and traffic
lights, the synchronized chiming of the city’s great clock towers,
the drawbridges and factory whistles and endless other systems. And
all this was overseen by the Lamplighter. There were others who
performed similar tasks throughout the country, of course. But only
the one in London was
the
Lamplighter.

Nicholas
, she reminded herself. He
liked to be called by his name. So few used it, so few even knew
it.

“And with that, the noontide is upon us,
Mary.”

She grinned, flushing with anticipation as
she rushed to his side. The sound continued all around them, the
engines still ran and marked time and did impossible calculations
at inhuman speed and sent missives that would be relayed to the
farthest reaches of the city within minutes. But for this hour, the
Lamplighter took his ease. It would be one of only two rest periods
for him between dawn and midnight, one of his few chances to speak
with another human being in person. For years, Mary had been that
person. And what had started as a relationship between master and
apprentice had transformed, over the years, into a rare
friendship.

“Are you sore?” she asked. She had already
started on the straps that held his arms in place, whipping the
tails free of their buckles with practiced efficiency. She could do
this part blindfolded, if she had to.

“Not today. It must not be too cold
outside.” Even as deep as they were, the

Lamplighter often found himself reacting to
the weather outside, particularly finding that his joints ached
more readily during the winter months.

Mary laughed, the sound quickly lost among
the machinery. “It’s freezing. It snowed yesterday.”

“Snow, really? I can’t remember the last
time I saw snow.”

Probably close to the last time he’d seen
the sun, Mary thought. The Lamplighter’s skin was almost as white
as the snow he couldn’t recall. His schedule, over the years of his
tenure, hadn’t even allowed him time to see the sun. He worked all
through the daylight hours, each and every day. For almost a third
of his life, he had immersed himself in this unique service to his
guild, his city and his country.

Mary had never asked him if he thought the
rewards of the position were worth the sacrifice. At nineteen, she
was still learning to imagine her own life ten years into the
future. She might come to regret her choices, she might not. Today,
she only wondered whether she would miss the snow if she went so
long without seeing it or feeling it on her face.

A trip to the privy, a lengthy stretch of
his limbs, usually restored the Lamplighter to something like
himself. Mary stood at the table awaiting his return, fingers
drumming a pattern that echoed the clatter of the engines.

“Are you ready?” His voice made her jump. He
was standing right at her shoulder.

She looked at him, surprised she was nearly
on eye level with him now. When she had started at the guild hall
she had been so young, just twelve. He had seemed old beyond years
to her then, his face youthful but his knowledge infinite.

Now she knew his limits, and his age too.
Twenty-nine. His career was almost at an end. No Lamplighter worked
longer than ten years, it was impossible.

“Of course. Don’t you want me to lay the
table for you?” She enjoyed that small domesticity, a pretty
reminder of the life she had not chosen. Her mother had taught her
to set a table, of course. But she’d had little use for the
knowledge at the Lampworks.

“Leave it.” He pressed his fingers to the
small of her back, gesturing toward the Chair, and Mary felt a
shiver run through her from that point of contact. “I’ll get it
this time.”

Nicholas seated her and stepped in close,
but stood in front of the Chair instead of beside it as Mary
usually did. He seemed in a contemplative mood. Mary tried to read
his expression, but the sharp light from the bulb hanging over the
mirrored viewing array cast a shadow over his eyes. His hair, she
noted, was getting too long again. It fell in his face, black as
night and limp from the dankness of the cavern, stark against his
pallor. Her own light-brown locks would never be so striking, she
knew, even if she were to grow that pale over the years of her
service.

“Coat, please. You know the gloves won’t fit
properly otherwise.”

Sighing, Mary unbuttoned the short, fitted
canvas coat that all guild masters wore when not in coveralls, and
handed it to Nicholas. She remembered, as always, the first time
she had removed it for him after taking her master’s pin several
months earlier.

The first time instead of the usual coarse
shirt and vest, Nicholas saw the lace-edged chemise and corset
beneath her newly adult, newly feminine uniform.

The established convention was that
apprentices and journeymen were as good as genderless. They might
live in separate dormitories but, on the job, all were equal and
the only currencies were hard work and merit. All wore the same
uniform; all were given the same opportunities. If it was an
artificial environment, it was at least a ruthlessly fair one. That
stopped, however, at the door of the guild hall for the girls and
it ended when they graduated from apprentice to master. Masters
went out in public as representatives of the Guild of Lampworkers,
after all, some of them even resuming their inherited places in
society upon earning their masters’ pins. Though the guild liked to
style itself as progressive, the world at large was still far less
so. People might tolerate the sight of an occasional young girl in
trousers and tunic, but a woman grown must bow to propriety outside
the hall. For the female masters, that meant corsets and skirts at
the very least.

Mary had found, to her surprise, that she
rather enjoyed her new wardrobe. The unexpected touches of luxury,
the whisper of soft fabrics against her skin, were delightful after
years of harsh broadcloth, canvas and woolen. And she found she
also rather enjoyed the look on the Lamplighter’s face when she
took off her jacket each day.

They had shared a moment, upon that first
unveiling. A palpable thickening of time and possibility as she
considered explaining herself but did not, and he seemed to ponder
remarking upon the situation but did not. And then the air had
cleared, he had moved to secure her within the Chair as usual while
he took his lunch, and neither of them had said a word about
it.

It was then she realized, for the first
time, her assignment as the Lamplighter’s dinner server and
noontime relief was not an accident of her youth or standing. The
guild might be progressive, but they would never have allowed her
to come down to the engine room unchaperoned all this time without
a good reason. Her world shifted with the realization of what it
meant to be left alone with the Lamplighter, receiving the
specialized training only he could deliver.

She was being groomed as his potential
replacement. Must have been designated so from almost the very
beginning. Because she was different from the others, had been even
as a child. Something in her mind let her think in ways most others
couldn’t, to follow all the threads of activity the city’s engines
directed. From the first time she had sat in the Chair―five minutes
of being overwhelmed by possibility―to the day she had shucked her
new uniform coat to take a full hour’s shift, she had not been just
an apprentice and journeyman to the guild. She had been the
Lamplighter’s apprentice, the Lamplighter’s journeyman. She had
become a master with the potential to be the next Lamplighter of
London.

He had still seen her as a child until that
moment with the jacket, Mary suspected.

But since then, everything had changed. Not
the particulars, of course. She still brought the tray and
monitored the difference engines while he ate. She did such small
tasks as he directed, learning the ways of the machines. But after
Corset Day, there were new meanings to every look, every touch,
every word that passed between them. Her increasing drive to learn
all she could, the sudden surge of unfamiliar ambition upon
realizing the job of Lamplighter might actually become hers, was
matched by the swell of strange emotions and sensations surrounding
the Lamplighter himself. At times she wasn’t sure which she craved
more, the position or the man.