Aether Rising

Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

When the door at the top of the stairs opened, Patrick expected the person who descended to be one of his captors or perhaps Parnaby Cobb himself. He didn’t anticipate Louisa to appear with Patrick’s old professor, Artemus Malloy. The professor’s presence kept Patrick from saying what he wanted to Louisa, something about how she wasn’t any better than her stepfather, and he’d never forget how she betrayed him and led the guards right to the escape compartment he had been only moments away from launching.

Or how he’d hoped the rap on the door was her wanting to come with him, and he’d kicked himself for a fool ever since.

Or how he would never be able to forget the feel of her body under his hands and lips.

No, he’d learned to just stay the hell away from people with the last name of Cobb, even if he was being haunted by one.

“What are you doing here?” Patrick asked, although not as harshly as he would have. Then his tinkerer’s curiosity got the best of him. “And how did you get past the guard?”

Louisa shrugged with a smile, and Artemus looked away.

“You still have the mechanical flower that spits swoon spray, don’t you?” Patrick asked Artemus. The man had been employed by various governments for a while until he’d realized his inventions were being used for nefarious purposes, such as rendering ladies helpless and fainting in the arms of government clerks who were more interested in matters of stealing virginity than of national security. Artemus had left Washington and taken his inventions with him, feeling academia at least provided some protection for his genius. He’d never liked some of what he’d invented, but his practicality allowed him to make use of them.

“I work for a greater good, Patrick. You know that. I haven’t used the stuff in years.”

“And there’s nothing like a little bribery,” Louisa added. “He said we have ten minutes.”

His former—not old, Patrick recalled, Artemus being barely older than he—teacher’s voice brought Patrick back to a less complicated time, when the lasses who’d caught his eye were servant girls who only wanted a momentary reprieve from their daytime drudgery, not spoiled capitalist princesses who used him for a lark and then went back to their papas.

“Then what are you doing with this one?” Patrick jerked a thumb at Louisa, then turned away to his aether device. “I’m busy.”

The left side of his body grew cold, and he knew Louisa’s mother stood beside him. “She’s such a grown young woman now.” Her voice made for a chill-tongued whisper in his ear. “So beautiful, but look, so sad.”

“Not my problem,” Patrick muttered.

“But she looks at you with such hunger.”

Now that piqued his curiosity. He tried to rub the cold from his ear and turned to see Louisa and Artemus conferring with low voices. The color in her cheeks told Patrick Artemus had asked about their history, and every time she cut her eyes at him, her blush deepened.

Aye, let her try to explain her innocence to that one.

“What do you want, Miss Cobb?” Patrick asked. “Unless you’re here to help me escape, I’m not interested in talking with you.”

Her chest heaved with her sigh, and he couldn’t help but wish she’d do so again.

Don’t be a fool, O’Connell. That’s how she pulled you in the last time.

“I wanted to apologize and explain. I didn’t lead Morlock to your escape hatch. I was trying to join you, to escape with you.”

He crossed his arms and arched an eyebrow. “Were you, now? I’d given you the chance beforehand, and you refused.”

She straightened her spine more, somehow, as if that were possible. He couldn’t help but picture them as two opponents in a contest to convince him of her innocence.

“I was frightened.” Her simple statement could only be true, but Patrick recalled how Cobb said she couldn’t be lied to. That didn’t mean she couldn’t give falsehood.

“And then…?”

“And then my father came in, confronted me about what we’d been doing, and slapped me.”

Patrick’s lungs sucked in air of their own accord, and his fists tightened. “Where?” he asked.

“My face.” She walked to stand by one of the three-tubed lights, and Patrick saw the bruise, cleverly concealed by cosmetics but evident when he looked closely. She flinched, and he suspected her mother’s ghost—whom Patrick couldn’t see but knew was there due to the temperature—had caressed her daughter’s cheek.

“The bastard,” Patrick growled. Artemus’s jaw had also tensed.

“So I decided I couldn’t stay there anymore. I looked to make sure it was clear, I swear I did.” The sky blue of her eyes splintered into tears, bright like rain on a sunny day. “But then Morlock appeared from one of the other rooms and caught me. I’m sorry I wasn’t careful enough.”

Patrick wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss away the tears, but as pretty as her story was, she was still free—in a sense—and he was still stuck in the dungeon. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth, lass?”

“Isn’t the bruise on my face enough?”

“Yes.” Her special ability pulled the statement from him.

She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to force you. I have less control when I’m upset. What else do I need to do to convince you I’m trustworthy?”

There was less of a pull on his mind that time, and Patrick appreciated how she tried to give him some freedom, but it wasn’t the kind he wanted. “Help me escape.”

“How?” She looked up, her eyes wide. “I don’t have enough money to bribe the guard that much, and even if I did, I can’t get you past all the guards on the main floor. And there are a lot.”

“Then figure something out.” He’d almost asked for a kiss, and the honorable part of him chided the rest of him for using her. “Artemus, can you help me?”

Artemus stopped edging closer to the aether isolator. “I’ve had some of my lads working on an escape plan for you, but no luck so far. Cobb knows what he’s doing.”

Patrick didn’t blame his former mentor for his curiosity. “Aye, he does. And even if I escape, there’s the problem of Chad and Claire.” He rubbed his upper arms. “They’ll be punished.”

Artemus’s glasses moved with his smile. “Chadwick Radcliffe, your doctor friend?”

“Aye, the one languishing in a Southern prison in Terminus, and his bride-to-be stuck with her evil aunt here. Cobb made sure to guarantee my cooperation.”

Louisa clapped her hands. “Claire’s back? Ah, right, I’m to have tea with her this afternoon.” She put a gloved finger to her lip. “I can speak with her. And my father is going to be hosting a dinner party on Saturday night, and he said you are to come and demonstrate your aether work.” She walked to the table on which the aether isolating device stood. “Is this it?”

Patrick caught his breath. What if it responded to her like it had to Claire? Worse, what if strange golden creatures started appearing to Louisa and generally wreaking havoc again?

“Don’t worry about Chadwick,” Artemus told him. “I’ve got friends down there, and you have more friends than you realize here. We can stage a grand rescue of both you and Claire from the party. With Miss Cobb’s cooperation, of course.”

The fond look he gave Louisa made Patrick want to punch him.

“Then Saturday,” Patrick said. “Or before if you have word that my friends are safe.”

“Do you know what my father wants you to do?” Louisa asked. She put a finger on the globe. The aether flashed but otherwise did nothing.

“He wants me to do something with the aether. You heard him.”

“Right. I suggest you do just enough to be convincing but not enough to be effective.”

Patrick nodded. “I’d been thinking of that, but it’s not that simple.” He took Louisa’s arm and guided her to the other end of the dungeon, away from the pulsating aether biscuit. “It sometimes has a mind of its own,” he whispered.

“What? How?”

“We don’t know yet. But I saw some strange things at Fort Daniels. Yer stepfather doesn’t know what he’s toying with.”

“Then you need to convince it to help you.”

Patrick couldn’t determine whether she was serious or not, but her words gave him an idea. “I’ll see what I can do.” He glanced at Artemus, who now studied the aether, enthralled as all were upon their first meeting. Except Louisa, but Patrick hoped she was as fascinated by him as he was of her. He leaned toward her, and she didn’t move away. At first he just brushed her lips.

The smell of smoke reminded him of home, of easier times before life became complicated with problems beyond most peoples’ nightmares. She pressed into him, and he was so startled he almost broke the contact, but his hands found her waist, where they belonged, he reminded himself, not higher or lower. The dance of their tongues made him wish she wore as little as she had the last time they’d been in this position.

He moved his hand to the back of her head to tangle his fingers in her hair, and one of her hairpins plinked on the ground. Then a cold hand on his ear made him break from her. The ghost’s fingers were almost solid enough to drag his face away from Louisa’s, but he got the message if not the motion.

“That will be quite enough, young man.”

Patrick looked over to see Louisa’s mother, more solid than he’d seen her yet, scowling at him with hands on hips.

“Mama?” Louisa asked. Now embarrassed pink joined the blush already in her cheeks.

“Yes, and I raised you better than this. What do you think you’re doing, kissing him? Do you know him?”

“Yes, I do.” Louisa took Patrick’s hand in hers. “And he’s going to help me escape from Parnaby Cobb.”

“Then you should wait until you can see if he follows through on his promise before you give way your virtue.”

“Mama!”

Patrick hid a laugh by coughing to the side. He caught Artemus leaving a wire on the workbench by the tuning forks and nodded thanks. Artemus tipped his hat.

“You should go,” Patrick told Louisa with regret. “I don’t want you getting in trouble. At least not yet,” he added with a wink. He clasped her to him for one last kiss and heard a hairpin hit the floor.

“Be careful,” she said when they came up for air.

“I’ve got nowhere to go but here.”

“We’ll see about that.”

When Iris and Marie arrived in the lobby, Lieutenant Crow smiled and reached out to shake Marie’s hand like a man would.

“Madame Bledsoe, it’s a pleasure to see you again.”

Marie, taking on the air of a French noblewoman, limply offered her own hand. “I would say likewise, but we both know this is merely a business transaction. Our attendance for the telegram you’ve stolen from us.”

Crow’s smile held but a hint of regret. “I’m sure Mrs. Bailey will find our trip to the museum most enlightening. I don’t expect you to trust me, but I am trying to help.” With that she turned, and Marie and Iris followed flanked by the two guards. Before they left, Iris insisted upon stopping by the front desk to leave a note for Edward and Johann that she and Marie had gone to the Museum of Ancient Cultures and would be back by mid-afternoon.

The snow of the previous day had given way to a bitter cold, and Iris pulled her cloak more tightly around her. She glanced up at Marie, who seemed only to walk along with a disdainful air and not feel the wind that scraped across Iris’s cheeks.

“My carriage is at the corner,” Crow said. “These old streets are too narrow for it.”

Or you prefer to have more maneuverability for a quick getaway. Iris didn’t say the words out loud but used the thought as a reminder to be cautious. She wanted to find something of Crow’s to hold so she could delve more into the woman’s emotions and motivation, but there wasn’t anything on the outside of the carriage, obviously. Before she got in, Iris noted the scrape on the front passenger side.

“Any more word on what that was last night?”

Crow shook her head. “I’ve put out feelers—the government here has a rule that one must register their automatons and keep them under control at all times—but you know as well as I that government agencies move slowly.”

Iris nodded and wished she could talk to Marie’s Uncle Zokar, an expert inventor. It wasn’t common for automatons to move about independently, was it?

If it was, well, that was a chilling thought.

The inside of the carriage was as spare as it had been the previous night. One of the burly men handed Lieutenant Crow up, and her hand lingered too long in his. Iris more closely examined the youth, or tried to as her eyes adjusted to the gloom of the carriage. The person whom she’d assumed was an unshaven young man lacked the prominent brow line of men, and there was a softness to the jaw. Iris couldn’t get an idea of body shape under the person’s overcoat, but she suspected that without a corset to narrow the waist and flare the bosom, many women could pass as men, especially if they used bandages or something else to bind their breasts.

Could Lieutenant Crow be an invert? She made a mental note to ask Marie her opinion later.

The person who had handed Lieutenant Crow in closed the door, and the steamcart moved as he/she mounted the driver’s seat. One of the other guards sat up front as well, leaving Crow and the third in the back facing Iris and Marie.

“It’s not that long of a ride,” Crow told them. “I’m taking you to meet Bernard Langlois, one of your countrymen, Madame Bledsoe. He studied with Monsieur Firmin in Paris, but they had a falling out, so he came here to start the museum.”

“Imagine that,” Iris murmured. She shifted in her seat to dispel the panic that had made her spine straighten at the mention of Firmin. He’d been yet another man who wanted to use her father’s reputation as a great archaeologist to his own advantage and take credit for Iris’s discoveries. She didn’t know what had happened to him during the Prussian siege of Paris, and she was glad she’d escaped with the ancient manuscript that had given her the clues to how the ancients had perceived and worked with the mysterious element of aether. Firmin didn’t deserve her knowledge, and she had so much more now that she’d excavated. The question was, did Langlois?

“And is he part of your organization?” Iris asked. She didn’t want to say neo-Pythagoreans out loud.

“No, but he is friendly to it. He, too, believes that some secrets are best left buried. But he is an academic and cannot contain his curiosity, so he is more moderate.”

“And what is the purpose of my meeting him, then?”

“He may surprise you, Mrs. Bailey. As I’ve said before, we are working toward the same aim—keeping dangerous knowledge and power out of the hands of a madman.”

“Cobb doesn’t strike me as mad,” Marie said. She’d been playing the bored aristocrat’s wife to that point, a strategy Iris applauded because it would make the others underestimate Marie’s vast and potentially dangerous abilities. Or did they have a dossier on her, too?

“He’s mad to the point of wanting to concentrate power in his hands.”

“As most men do.” Marie inclined her head. “And women, if the truth is to be told.”

“All right,” Crow conceded. “His motivations are not uncommon. But his ambitions, as I’ve been informed by someone who was until recently in his employ, extend beyond what any sane person would tolerate.”

“Oh?” Now Iris’s curiosity really was piqued. “What are his ambitions? And who gave you this information?”

“Parnaby Cobb wants to control the other men of his stature, but not through the typical machinations of industry. He wants to hold power over their minds. He also wishes to have automatons with enough will to do his bidding without direct supervision. To that end, he is engaged in some experiments you ladies would find horrifying.”

“Oh, do tell,” Marie said. “We’ve seen and heard more than you realize.”

Crow shook her head. “Not now. Let’s just say that what he’s seen and has been forced to do has driven Paul Farrell from a little mad to truly insane. I expect him to kill himself any day.”