The Blushing Bounder (An Iron Seas Short Novella) (5 page)

Newberry had left before Temperance rose the next morning, late, after hours of being unable to sleep. Miss Lockstitch came, and their conversation was filled with the murder. Several of her guild mates had woken at the sound of Temperance’s scream, and a few had seen glimpses of the machine—though, of course, no one had come out while the inspector was there and reported what they’d seen.

Temperance drew another sketch, and Miss Lockstitch pulled her embroidery from her large pelisse, but before she could fit the frame over her knee, Temperance stopped her, gasping, and left her sofa for a closer look.

It was astounding work. A delicate, intricate design of flowers and leaves, the stitches so tiny they were all but invisible. “This is
beautiful
, Miss Lockstitch. I’ve never seen the equal.”

Smiling and pink cheeked, the young woman said, “Thank you.”

“Do you create the design yourself, or only embroider it?”

“I create it.”

“It’s stunning.” Temperance could not have said whether it was worth losing a hand over, but she wasn’t blind to the pride and joy the woman was feeling now. Perhaps those feelings
were
worth some pain, some loss. She returned to her sofa. “As part of my governess duties, I used to teach two girls how to stitch small items, and I barely had the patience for it. To see this, to know it was done in one day…it is simply amazing. Your clients must be spoiled.”

Miss Lockstitch flashed a grin. “I make them pay for it.”

Temperance had to laugh. “As you should.”

Setting the frame over her knee, and her hand over the frame, the needles began clicking away. “Mrs. Newberry, the other girls in the house and I had wondered…you were a governess. Did you also teach reading?”

“In several languages, yes.”

“Do you think—when your illness passes—you might agree to teach us?”

When her illness passed.
Not since her second decline had that been a hope. But even if she was infected, even if the bugs cured her, would she stay in this flat with Newberry?

Temperance didn’t know. But she could make a promise. “If I am here, I will,” she said.

Newberry returned earlier than she expected. It was only just after noon when he came into the flat, scooping his domed hat from his head. He gave a polite greeting to Miss Lockstitch, and when his gaze met Temperance’s, she rose to speak with him.

“Have you discovered who she was? Have you discovered who he was?”

“We know who she was, yes—she was with the butcher’s guild. We still don’t know who he is, but we’re looking for him.”

But her husband wasn’t looking for him, he was here—
Ah.
“The inspector worries that he’ll come back for me.”

“Not only the inspector,” he said, and she couldn’t speak for a moment, until she noticed that Miss Lockstitch had been gathering her things.

“Abigail,” she said, “perhaps we will take that walk tomorrow.”

“I look forward to it.” She gave Newberry a nod as she passed. “Good day, constable.”

Temperance returned to her sofa while Newberry went to the window, watching the alley until Miss Lockstitch made it back to her home. After a few moments, he hooked his hat beside the door, unbuckled his uniform jacket. “A walk?”

“A cab, in truth—at least for most of the distance. She said the Embankment is lovely, and I don’t think I could manage the Temple Fair, unless they have a great many benches throughout.”

“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?

Chapter Four

T
HE 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.