Eros Element (14 page)

“Best keep moving and not say much,” Patrick murmured to her. “We're being followed, and the English and Americans aren't well-liked here.”

Chapter Sixteen

Paris, 12 June 1870

Marie led Iris and O'Connell down the main boulevard past the front of the hotel with its sandstone-colored walls and crystal windows in which every pane was beveled. They walked past shops tempting Sunday afternoon strollers with brightly colored displays, and French spoken too fast to understand wrapped Iris in a shawl of whispers threaded together with the hissing of steamcarts and punctuated by the clopping hooves of horse-drawn coaches. The soft odors of steam and perfume warred with the acrid smells of coal and sweat, all of it over the freshness of the summer breeze and almost-baked scent of sunshine-warmed brick.

But Iris couldn't enjoy it because she sensed someone watching her. When she glanced behind her, she saw a familiar-looking young man, but he disappeared into the crowd so quickly she couldn't place him.

They turned onto a side street so narrow Iris wouldn't have noticed it otherwise. The light-colored brick and wide stone gave way to cobblestones and the weathered gray walls of a medieval neighborhood. Iris blinked to clear her vision from the after-images of the wide, sunny boulevard. The darkness of the stone emphasized the gloom, and the close walls concentrated the formerly pleasant breeze into a gusty chill.

“Is this safe?” Iris whispered and pulled the fichu higher around her shoulders. Noises seemed muted in the false dusk.
If the air were still, I could believe this was a tomb.

“No one will bother me here,” Marie said. Now she walked beside Iris with Patrick behind them. “This is an old neighborhood, one of the few that escaped the reforms of Monsieur Haussman. Is our shadow gone, Mister O'Connell?”

“Aye, although it won't surprise me if he's waiting for us when we return to civilization.”

“There are many exits to this area, including underground. I will find one for us. And appearances can be deceiving—in spite of the architecture, this neighborhood has its modern conveniences, and we are safer here than we were on the main Rue. Ah, here we are.” She stopped at a wooden door set in a wall. It appeared to be the same as all the other doors in the area without a house number to distinguish it, and gaslight flickered in the small windows.

Marie knocked in a complicated pattern on the door, and it opened wide enough to admit them.

Are we here for dresses or for a secret society meeting?

Iris didn't voice her thoughts, however, for fear of being left. This was certainly the strangest shopping trip she'd ever been on, but somehow also the most enjoyable.

A young woman about Iris's age greeted Marie with kisses on each cheek and spoke French to her. “
Fantastique.
What a surprise!” She switched to English. “Madame will be so 'appy to see you.”

“Is she here?” Marie lowered her voice and used rapid-fire French that Iris could barely follow. “And don't call me that. I don't do that anymore.”

“Ah, and what character are you today?”

Marie sighed with French flair. “Someone for Cobb
.
”

The young woman nodded and turned her attention to Iris. “Ah,” she said in a thick French accent, “you dressed her in the Juliet. That's suitable
.
”

“Yes,” Marie turned to Iris with a smile that made her next words an insult. “She does have the look of a virginal heroine, does she not?”

O'Connell coughed to hide a laugh.

“Oh, and this is our escort, Mister O'Connell.”

“And will you need clothing for both of them?”

“For her and me. We lost ours in an airship incident.”

The shopgirl wrote something on a pad of paper and went behind a narrow desk. “Madame is at the theatre. She is bringing samples to your mother and hoped to 'ave returned before you came. I'll send her a message to see how she would like me to start.”

The sound of a drawer opening and closing was followed by a whoosh and thunk.

“Is that the pneumatic tube system?” Iris asked. Her fingers itched to test it out. Of course she knew Paris had such a thing—installed with the new sewers, which must run under the neighborhood—but she wanted to see and try it.

“Thank you, Claudia.” Marie stripped her gloves. “Do you mind if I make something to drink? I suspect these two have never had Spanish coffee. Meanwhile, you can start. The budget is generous, as it always is with
Monsieur
Cobb.” Her mouth twisted around the title.

When Claudia went into the back of the shop, Iris noted, “Your accent has become more French since being here. And Mister O'Connell's Irish brogue is thicker.”

Marie didn't look up from where she boiled water on a small burner behind the desk. “I can't help it—it always happens when I'm in Paris, especially in this part of the city. It's just as well. As Mister O'Connell mentioned, the English and Americans aren't loved here.”

“Yes, would you tell me why?” Iris asked. “I'm embarrassed to say that I've not kept up with world events as I should have with my mother's death and my father's illness and work to preoccupy me.”

“Well, you know the States are at war with each other,” O'Connell said. “The Northern ones thought they had the Southern ones beat, but France jumped in. They wanted the cotton in the South for their mills here to compete with what England is importing from India. Plus a fight with England was too tempting.”

“So the war between the states is a proxy war between England and France,” Iris said.

“Aye, but the French people don't care much this time around. They're more concerned with how it's draining their treasury even if they do get good quality cotton for their clothing and the supply has allowed their manufacturing to keep pace with England's.”

“What it means for you, Miss McTavish, is that you need to say as little as possible and not draw attention to yourself,” Marie said. “The French will always take a tourist's money but will easily take offense, and the people have been in a mobbing mood. They say the Empire is in trouble again and the Prussians pushing at the border.”

Another whoosh and thunk made Iris bite her tongue over the retort she wanted to make, that she could handle herself, but she also had to remember she was in a tomb-like neighborhood in a strange city where she barely spoke the language, and it was potentially dangerous.

And I thought France was safe.

Claudia returned with her arms full of dresses. “I am afraid this is all I have. Did I hear the tube?”

“Yes, it sounds like you got a response.”

Claudia opened the drawer, extracted the message tube, and shook out the roll of paper. “Ah, Mademoiselle Marie, I am sorry, but your mother wants you to come to the theatre, and Madame says I am not to help you until you visit your poor
mère
and bring the English stranger with you for dinner. She will fit you both there.”

Marie said a word that sounded like
mère—
French for mother—but Iris was pretty sure it meant something else entirely. “You directed the message to Madame, right?”

“Yes, of course, but you know 'ow your mother works. She knew you were in the city as soon as you left the carriage. She has eyes and ears everywhere.”

“Well, Miss McTavish, you're about to get an education,” Marie said. “My mother is one of the most feared women in Paris, and for good reason.”

“Lovely.” But Iris couldn't miss that Marie paled a couple of shades under her rouge, and that, above all, troubled her. What sort of woman could intimidate the indomitable maid?

“Can we take the tunnel, Claudia, or are the corps working on the sewers?”

“They should be clear.
Au revoir
, or should I say
adieu
?”

Marie laughed and kissed the girl on both cheeks. “If you're going to invoke gods, find me some good ones. We're going to need all the help we can get. I had hoped to avoid this, but I should have known it was impossible.”

“You will be fine. Remember, you are
Fantastique
. You can handle anything.”

“We'll see. Would you send a message to Doctor Radcliffe at the Hôtel Auberge that we will not be joining him, the professor and the maestro for dinner?”

“You do keep the most interesting company.” Claudia led Marie, Patrick and Iris through the shop and opened a trap door underneath the dressing room. The gas lights provided intriguing glimpses of rich fabrics and trimmings, but Iris barely got a look before Patrick handed her down into a narrow staircase that creaked under her walking shoes. She had to tuck her skirts, which were more voluminous than she was accustomed to, around her so they wouldn't brush the walls and put her other hand over her nose and mouth against the smell.

“So this is what you meant when you said you knew ways out of the neighborhood,” Patrick whispered when they were all in a large egg-shaped tunnel. His tone was admiring, and Iris once again felt how useless she was in all of this. Sure, she had wished for adventure, but she'd always imagined herself leading it, not being a passive follower. And all this in the service of acquiring dresses—how ridiculous. They should be looking for clues as Cobb was paying them for, not going on a quest for silk and lace through a sewer, of all places, and having to be careful to avoid walking into the stream of filth that flowed down a shallow gutter in the bottom. Pipes ran along the sides and top of the passage. Streams of dirty water emerged intermittently from them, and Marie showed Iris and O'Connell how to listen for incoming showers. Thus conversation was forestalled in favor of clothing preservation, although Iris was sure her attire and hair would reek for days after this. Plus, her right hip, sore from their tumble from the sky, twinged with each step along the uneven surface.

Intermittent grates above them illuminated the tan stone interspersed with brick where the tunnels had been shored up. Their footsteps echoed along the path, and the whole place had an air of violated sacredness. Iris wondered how much of Paris's history had been carted away without anyone realizing it. Or had they taken care to sift through the dirt and find clues to their own past? Not likely, at least from what she'd heard about Haussman and his henchmen, whose attitude was that of improvement as quickly as possible and thoughtful exploration be damned. She recalled something about how some of these passages were leftovers from limestone quarries dating back to Roman times, and her fingers itched to touch the walls, to search for echoes of past objects crying out for discovery. But propriety and good sense kept her from taking her gloves off down there or removing her hand from her face. Besides, what would Marie and Mister O'Connell think?

After what seemed like hours and a gradual descent during which they had to hold on to each other in the dark, they stopped at a stone staircase, and Marie indicated that she would lead the way up it. The smell of the sewers retreated in a blast of comparatively fresh air carrying the smells of old wood and candle smoke. They emerged into a store-room filled with set pieces and props that appeared to have some sort of organization to them but not one Iris could fathom. After her daydreams of Roman coins and tools, the two-dimensional wooden bushes and swords seemed an insulting reminder of what she had become—a liar and faker—and she again felt that this must not all be real, that she would soon awaken from this nightmare of sewers and false skies.

“Here we are,” Marie said, “at the
Théâtre Bohème
.” She pulled a perfume bottle off a shelf with others and spritzed herself all over with it. “Lemon-orange water,” she explained. “It helps freshen up some of the sewer smell.
Ma mère
isn't a fan of that mode of travel.”

Iris and Patrick allowed themselves to be sprayed in turn, and Iris admitted it helped somewhat. With that done, Marie straightened her spine, put her shoulders back, and gestured for them to follow her toward the stairs.

“Come, one doesn't keep one of the most powerful women in Paris waiting.”

Chapter Seventeen

Hôtel Auberge, Sunday 12 June 1870

“Tube for you,
Monsieur
.”

“Thank you.”

The hushed voices roused Edward from his fragmented dreams.
Where am I?
He expected to open his eyes to his room at Haywood House, where he had taken a brief nap after returning from the University and a successful day of running experiments…

And no, late afternoon sunlight streamed through the holes in the lace curtains over the window, but they weren't his curtains, and that wasn't English sunlight, which no matter how close it got to midsummer, never looked that bright in the late afternoon. He tried to roll away from the wrong curtains and strange light, and his body reminded him he'd been the bottom man in a pile in an airship escape compartment crash, and he could only make it to his back. His groan brought Chadwick Radcliffe the deceitful doctor to his side.

“Did you have a good nap?” the doctor asked as though he hadn't injected Edward with a substance against his will.

Edward glared at him.

Radcliffe ran a hand through his dark hair. “I'm sorry. You were so focused and intent on dissecting the clockwork you didn't hear me when I tried to get your attention, and I could tell you were pushing yourself too hard.”

“You need to talk to Johann,” Edward told him. “He's good at getting my attention whether I want him to have it or not.”

“Or to Miss McTavish?”

Edward turned his face away. He wasn't going to talk about his mixed feelings toward the young woman with anyone, least of all someone who wielded mind-fogging pharmaceutical means. He couldn't help but smile at the thought of Iris—she'd known studying the clockwork would be the perfect thing to entertain him, after all—and he hoped she would be back in time for dinner. The French ate late, didn't they?

“Is he sulking?” Johann walked to the side of the bed Edward tried to turn to. “Come on, Edward. We need you up and healthy for this adventure.”

“Like that's under my control.”

“The mind is a powerful thing,” Radcliffe said, his voice resigned. “It can block the body from doing certain things and motivate it to do others.”

“You sound as though you speak from experience,” Edward told him. He struggled to sit, and the two men helped prop him up with the pillows. He thought he hurt less.

The doctor took a seat by the window, and Edward relaxed at the knowledge he wasn't going to get stuck again, at least not for the foreseeable future. He glanced at Johann, whose normal neutral to insolent expression had been replaced by one of concern and…fear? He'd never known his friend to fear anything. When Johann's gaze met Edward's, the musician smoothed his expression so quickly Edward wondered if he'd seen what he thought. Edward found himself picking at a knot on the blanket, and he squirmed.

“Do you need something?” Johann asked.

“No. Well, yes. I'll take care of it.”

They allowed him to go to the water closet alone, although he was panting by the time he got there and had to rest before attempting to cross the room back to the bed. Radcliffe listened to his chest again.

“I don't like how that left lung sounds,” he told Edward. “It could be internal bruising, but it doesn't make sense considering where your other injuries are.”

“And how would you know?” asked Johann. “Aside from the fact you're a doctor, but I've met some quacks.”

“I'm a
military
doctor,” Radcliffe told them. “I was the balloon corps physician for a year, so I've treated men after nasty landings before. Your friend's injuries don't fit the usual pattern.”

“And what brings you to Europe?” Edward asked, tired of talking about his physical state. He recalled Iris talking about the doctor, but his memories of the inn were hazy at best. Probably because the doctor medicated him without asking.

“I was visiting a friend in Vienna along with Mister O'Connell, and our return trip was diverted with the fighting along the French/Prussian border.” He shrugged. “Then we were robbed, forcing us to rely on others to get us back to the States.”

“And your friend couldn't help you? Communication isn't totally suspended,” Johann said.

“My friend isn't able to help us.”

“But surely—”

“The topic is closed, Maestro. Unfortunately, my friend's position isn't such that she…” He trailed off, his cheeks darkening.

Johann's mouth twisted into a smile of solidarity Edward recognized but once again couldn't take part in. “Ah, now I understand. Don't worry, I've gone out of my way for a woman before, and it never ends well. Might as well stick with what's in front of you.”

“And sometimes that doesn't work out, no matter how hard you try,” Edward pitched in. He hated being stuck in the bed and having to crane his neck to see the others and participate in the conversation, but he wasn't going to be ignored. Even if discussing women problems bored him.

Unpredictable creatures.

“Right,” Radcliffe said. “That reminds me. One of the front desk staff brought me a message from Miss St. Jean. She, Miss McTavish and Patrick will be having dinner out, so it'll be the three of us. Do you feel up to the dining room, Professor?”

Edward shifted his weight forward, but he moaned when a spasm seized his lower back. “Not tonight, but I feel I am improving.”

“I'll order room service,” Johann said. “And a bottle of wine or two. This is all on Cobb's dime, so we may as well enjoy it.”

Edward studied Radcliffe. He had the air of a man with secrets, and Edward sensed that Radcliffe's slip indicated more than the usual affair of the heart gone wrong. Of course he defined “usual affair” as what Johann got himself into with the inherent frequent breaking off and getting back together with various women with less than stellar reputations, in other words, the dissolution and reconnection of bonds that weren't tight to begin with. Perhaps Radcliffe had experienced something more akin to Edward's tragedy, or since he was in Paris, he mused, his
trag
é
die du coeur
.

“What is the patient able to eat, doctor?” Johann asked.

“Perhaps you should ask the patient. He seems to have a good sense of what his stomach can and cannot handle.”

“Oh, you've figured that out about him?”

“It's obvious from watching him eat.”

There was that feeling of being observed and talked around again. “I'm fine to eat whatever you order as long as it's not too rich.”

Johann looked at him. “We're in Paris. Butter is the national food here. Then again, you eat more cream puffs without getting sick than anyone else I know. I'll do my best.” He walked out of the room, leaving Edward with the doctor.

“You may feel better with more back support,” Radcliffe said. He helped Edward to sit in the chair by the window, where the partially dismantled clockwork laid on the table.

By the time Johann returned, Edward had found the winding mechanism and disassembled the whistle Marie had warned him about. He'd also observed the doctor looking out of the window with a melancholy expression on his face.

“The chef says he has had the
plaisir
of serving many a picky stomach and convalescing traveler, so he will accommodate your request,” Johann told them. “And the sommelier sent these two bottles. I love the French—they feel a good wine will fix everything. Doctor, would you like to do the honors?”

“I'm not much of a wine drinker,” Radcliffe said and gestured to the bottle Johann proffered. “Please.”

The musician opened the first bottle and poured the straw-colored liquid into three glasses. He handed the glasses around and said, “À
votre sant
é, literally and in every sense. Edward, try it. Perhaps it will relax you into healing.”

Edward sipped the liquid and noticed it tasted like alcohol, but also fruity and with a flavor his mind labeled as rocky. It warmed his throat and esophagus all the way down to his stomach.

“So you don't drink much, either?” Edward asked the doctor when he finished his glass and held it out for a refill. Now the soft, warm feeling extended to his limbs and muted some of his aches and pains.

“No.” Radcliffe gazed into his half-full glass. “The last time I had wine was at a party, and it didn't end well.”

“Oh, that sounds like a story,” Johann said. He lounged on a small couch against the wall under the other window. “Do tell.”

“There's not a lot to say about it. It was supposed to have been an engagement party, but it didn't turn out that way.”

“Whose engagement?” Edward asked. His cheeks felt warm, and his tongue loose. The words, “Almost had one of those myself,” slipped out before he could stop them.

“Mine.”

Before they could ask for further details, some of the hotel footmen arrived with a rolling table full of trays giving off incredible smells of butter and cream, but also tarragon and vegetables. They moved with clockwork precision to set the table—Edward had to move his project to the windowsill—whisk the covers off the dishes, and with a bow, disappeared.

“This looks incredible,” Radcliffe said and took the seat across from Edward. Johann pulled up a third chair so he sat between them at the empty place that had been set. Edward inhaled the smells of the roast chicken, potatoes fixed with some sort of cheese and of course butter, and green beans with tarragon and other herbs. There was also more of the crusty bread he remembered from the inn.

“Wait 'til Edward is better. Then we'll get a real French feast. Now about your engagement, Doctor?”

Radcliffe helped himself to some potatoes. “It didn't work out for various reasons. What about yours, Professor?”

Edward paused in his reach for a chicken leg and thigh. “The same, I suppose. Women are too unpredictable.”

“What happened?” The doctor's gray eyes fixed on Edward's face with scientific intensity.

“It's not important,” Johann said. “Let's say that it too, didn't work out for various reasons.”

Edward gave his friend a thankful smile. “Yes, that's all we need to say about it.” And more words than he intended tumbled out. “And that's when I chose to live my life with scientific precision. It's the best thing, really. Minimize the variability and whatnot.”

“And that's what you've done since your heartbreak? How has it worked?”

Johann nudged Edward's foot under the table, but here it seemed he finally had someone he could convince of the rightness of his lifestyle, so he pressed on. “It's been brilliant. Well, at least until we had to undertake this sodding adventure and go looking for some bloody clues to some bloody ancient formula.” It felt good to swear, to get some of his frustration out. “I had everything regulated from the time I slept to how my body responded to when I would eat. I was never sick, and I didn't sustain any injuries. Best of all, my mind has never been clearer than when it didn't have to worry about the mundane life decisions such as mealtimes.”

“I see.” Radcliffe cut his beans into perfect halves, which Edward approved of. “Some of your continued pain mystifies me although much of it is to be expected from your fall. Perhaps if you were to return to your schedule, it would help your healing along.”

“Oh, that would be splendid!” Edward raised his glass. “To the genius of the doctor.”

Johann shook his head. “Do you think that's wise? It seems to me that one of the benefits of this trip was getting Edward to loosen up.”

“Yet you objected to my impulsive moment with Miss McTavish,” Edward told him. The sensation of a taut string vibrating in his chest accompanied his thought that his schedule didn't permit time for female friendship—he had deliberately designed it that way.

“You're right,” Johann said. “Well, then, starting this evening you shall have your schedule back. Bedtime is nine o'clock, correct?”

“Yes.”

“You had better eat up. It's eight thirty now.”

“Oh. What about dessert? I imagine they have lovely cream puffs here.”

“They do. I've seen them. But you need to heal, so they can wait until tomorrow. I'll also inform Miss McTavish that she is to visit you at certain times. When were your student visiting hours, again?”

Edward thought back to his life at the university, which seemed ages, not days, ago. “Eleven to eleven thirty.”

“Oh, that's a pity. We're scheduled to meet the curator of Classics at the Louvre for breakfast and to peruse their collections of classical art and classically inspired works. That will probably take us through lunch, and we're attending a dinner party at the Marquis de Monceau's house in the evening.”

“So you're saying I shan't see her.” Edward looked down at his now-empty wine glass and couldn't ignore the little green stab through his heart at the thought of Johann spending all day with her and him not seeing her at all.

“I don't know that the schedule needs to be that strict,” Radcliffe said. “And friends can be a healing force as well.”

“Oh, no, Doctor. We're going to be scientific,” Johann told him. “And that means changing one variable at a time. I've heard that enough from Edward to know how true it must be. He is a brilliant scientist, after all.”

“Is this acceptable to you?” Radcliffe asked Edward.

“I suppose.” But whereas it should have thrilled him to have some order return to his life, Edward couldn't help but feel restricted. In spite of the bit of laudanum he accepted from the doctor to help him sleep on schedule, he lay awake for quite a while listening for the ladies' return.