Eros Element (7 page)

“Is Miss Smythe right behind you?” Bledsoe asked.

“No, she has decided not to accompany me. I will have to manage without her.”

“That explains your hair and dress,” he said.

Iris lifted her hand to find her hair had fallen, and when she shifted her shoulders, she felt she had not, after all, buttoned her dress straight behind her. No wonder the driver had been laughing—he'd been amused at the gradual dishevelment of her person.

“You don't have to mock me,” she said.

“And with each time I meet you, I become more convinced you're not a common criminal or liar. If you were, you would have planned better. By the way, who was chasing you?”

“That is none of your business.”

“Oh, I suspect we'll become intimately familiar with each other's business by the time this journey is over.”

Chapter Eight

South of Huntington Station, 10 June 1870

Edward looked up when the compartment door opened and saw a white-blond fairy with a reticule and valise followed by Johann carrying a trunk.
No, it's not a fairy, it's Miss McTavish with her hair down. Why are her eyes so bright and her cheeks flushed?
He looked down when an answering blush bloomed hot in his own cheeks.
It's not proper to see her so disheveled.

“Look what I found,” Johann said. “This young lady arrived in Parnaby Cobb's personal racing steamcart.”

“That's remarkable,” Edward said. “How did he bring a racing steamcart into town without my knowing? What model is it?” He twisted around, but the station and the vehicle had long disappeared from view, and now they rolled through the south part of town.

“Didn't get a chance to check the number. But even stranger—Miss McTavish was being chased by a handsome coach and four perfectly matched chestnuts. Do you have any idea who that might be?”

“I don't pay attention to horses,” Edward said. “I imagine it was one of the gentry. You almost missed the train,” he told her. “We wouldn't have waited for you. But how did you enjoy the racer? My brother only has a standard steamcart.”

“I'm afraid I didn't have much time to take notes on the experience,” she told him, and he wondered if she would have taken notes if given the opportunity. Perhaps he had underestimated her. “But I believe it was the Prancer 457. That's the only explanation for how fast it went. I didn't know they had them outside the States.” She twisted her hair in her fingers, and a few metal objects fell out with pings. The hairpins seemed to disappear into the variegated surface of the coach floor. “Oh, no, now I'll never find them.”

Edward couldn't stop looking at her. Was this the same prim and proper miss he'd met a few days ago, the one who hadn't been cowed by the dean or that strange American? And a Prancer. He'd often dreamed of seeing one in person and wanted to examine its engine to see if he could adapt it to run on aether someday, once they'd discovered the crucial steps to stabilize and harness the energy of the substance. He twisted around again like he could wish the rumbling miles between him and the steam-engine driven coach away.

“Don't you have something in your bag that could help the young lady find her hairpins?” Johann asked, bringing Edward back to the disappointing present.

“I might,” he said. He rooted around in his valise, pulled out a cloth, set the cloth on his lap and the valise on top of it, and with the case now stable, felt around in the reinforced pockets along the side. His fingers closed around a hard rectangular object, which he handed to Johann.

“What is it?” Johann asked.

“Surely you musicians aren't that dense. Don't you recognize a magnet?” Edward asked. “If the hairpins are metal, this should attract them. Just be sure you clean it off after. No telling what's on this floor. And you're not going to put those dirty pins in your hair, are you?”

Miss McTavish looked at him with a similar expression the duchess used when he said something that demonstrated how little of children he knew. “I have to put my hair up, and I don't have any other options.”

“Oh, wait a minute,” Johann said and reached into his trousers pocket. He drew out a handful of women's hairpins. “Will these work?”

Now Miss McTavish looked wide-eyed at the musician. “Dare I ask why you're carrying those?”

“I spent yesterday evening with an actress of my acquaintance. She prefers her hairpins to not end up in the bed—they prick you at the most inopportune times—and she was, well, she forgot to ask for them back this morning.”

Now Edward felt his face flush, but he wasn't sure if it was darker or lighter than Miss McTavish's blush. “Really, Johann, there's no need to be crude. And how clean could those hairpins be?”

“They're fine, I'm sure,” Miss McTavish said and held out her hand.

“Allow me,” Johann told her. “I've done this for my friends. It's part of a musician's life, having to step in at performances when a singer's coif goes askew.”

The thought of his friend's fingers tangling in Miss McTavish's hair made Edward's cheeks heat again and an uncomfortable tension come to his chest. His mind wanted to interpret the sensations and attach a label to them, but he stopped it. He'd long ago given up that part of him, the piece in the middle that wanted to connect with the piece in the middle of someone else like two complementary elements that combined to form something new and exciting. No, his was an existence best left to himself. Relationship-driven change hurt, particularly if the other person wasn't interested in the results.

A tunnel plunged the car into blackness, and the small lamps along the walls sputtered to life but without the gas smell Iris expected. She stood, gathered her skirts, and climbed onto the cushioned bench to take a closer look. If she happened to accidentally kick Bledsoe's leg, it was the fault of the train's lurching.

“Ingenious,” she said.

“What is?” Professor Bailey asked and blinked with the air of a man emerging from a dream. He stood and steadied himself on the compartment wall behind him.

“What are you doing?” Bledsoe hissed. His eyes had become red-rimmed, and he kept scrubbing at his face. He reminded Iris of a cranky child in need of a nap.

Ignoring him, Iris said, “The lamps are enclosed in glass. One pipe brings in the gas, and another removes the fumes. I'm not sure what the third does.”

“Probably provides air to feed the flame,” Bailey said. “Very clever. A train car fire would be disastrous in a tunnel. That arrangement ensures everything is in balance and contained.”

Iris looked around. “This is not a typical railway car.”

“It's Cobb's personal one,” Bledsoe said without opening his eyes. “He's letting us leave Albion in style.”

Iris ran her finger over the polished wood and made note of the unworn red cushions on the benches. The fastenings and accents were of gleaming brass. “I didn't notice much of it when I entered due to my hair being in my face.”

“Well, perhaps you should stop talking and explore.”

Iris put her hand on top of his head and not-so-gently leaned on him to stabilize herself as she stepped down from the bench.

“Would you care to join me, Professor Bailey?” she asked to tweak Bledsoe.

“No, I shall remain here.” He alighted from the bench he stood upon, resumed his seat, and leaned back with a pained expression. “Too much moving about in these things makes me ill.”

“Right. I shall leave the two of you to your suffering.” Neither man stood when she left, so she closed the door more firmly than necessary, taking pleasure in Bledsoe's wince. Apparently he'd celebrated on his last night in town.

The compartment they sat in took up the bulk of the width of the car, so Iris found herself in a small corridor banked with windows that showed they had exited the tunnel and now moved through sheep-grazing lands. She grabbed a vertical handle for balance and gazed out at the bucolic scene of little farmhouses and fields full of animals that seemed uninterested in the train.

A motion against the unbroken blue of the sky made Iris squint, but all she could make out was some sort of bird. She shook her head at her folly, but she couldn't help but notice it flew in a line so straight as to be unnatural. Didn't birds swoop and turn? The train outpaced it, and a trickle of sweat dripped between her breasts.

Although the sitting compartment had some sort of ventilation, the corridor didn't, so Iris moved along and found the next room was a water closet—thankfully. Having taken care of her personal needs, she moved along and found a small kitchen, where a dark-haired maid set out tea service on a cart with indentations so the cups wouldn't slide about with the motion of the train.

“Can I help you, Miss?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” Iris said. “Are we about to have tea? Do you know how long the journey will be?” She had glanced at the itinerary Cobb's messenger had delivered to the house, but with all the excitement over the hidden golden case—secured in her pocket—and the morning's chase to the station, the details slid from Iris's memory.

“We'll be meeting Mister Cobb's ship in Winchester, but we have to go through London first, which always slows us down. I'd say about two and a half hours, three to four if there's a delay on the tracks.”

“Thank you.” Indeed, when Iris walked back into the corridor, she noticed the sky had taken on a lighter hue, and a dark smudge appeared on the horizon to the south, heralding the smoke from the factories. She hoped the train car had some sort of solution to filter out the worst of the smells.

If we can succeed and find a way to harness the power of aether, it will help those poor wretches in the city who have to breathe that horrid air.

“We're about to have tea,” Iris announced in as bright a tone as possible when she re-entered the passenger compartment. She had to step over Bledsoe's legs, which he'd stretched out.

Professor Bailey checked his watch. “Of course we are,” he said in a tone that indicated it was not ideal.

“Is it not a good time?” Iris asked.

“It is as long as I will be able to…” He shook his head. “My usual teatime is at eight thirty in the morning. It is only eight o'clock.”

A dark shape swooped down outside the window and disappeared before Iris could get a good look. It distracted her from the professor's ridiculous adherence to schedule.

“Did you see that?” she asked.

“See what?” The professor looked outside.

“Something came down out of the sky and looped past the window.”

“You mean a bird?” Bledsoe didn't open his eyes. “They have those here.”

“No.” Iris glared at him although he couldn't see her. “It didn't move like one.” She listened for the scrape of metal on glass, but the noise of the train filled her ears. And Bledsoe's resumed snoring.

Good.
She glanced at Professor Bailey, who watched the compartment door with a frown.
The devil take them both.
They deserve each other.

Edward shifted in his seat, determined not to run to the water closet while they went through London. He'd tried after their morning tea, which came complete with the berry-lemon scones he liked, but the pressure to perform outside his usual time frame was too much for him. Now he was stuck and uncomfortable. He suspected the toilet flushed onto the tracks, and he didn't want to add to the filth and smells of the city, which crept into the compartment in spite of the ventilation system having switched to a recirculation of the air. At least that was what he could surmise from the facts that London didn't smell as bad as he remembered, and the air in their car increased in heat and humidity, indicating an extra steam engine at work somewhere. He would have to ask Cobb if he could look at it sometime because he'd never encountered a machine like that.

God bless the Americans and their ingenuity.

The train slowed to move through London, although it didn't stop at any of the stations. The smoke and fog hung thick in the air, and the residents of the city drifted through it like wraiths. From what Edward could determine, the ratio of steam carts to horse-drawn carriages was about one to three, but it was also difficult to tell from brief glimpses through the gloom.

“They look so pitifully thin,” Miss McTavish said and gestured to a woman holding a child by the hand. Even with a short look, Edward saw how gaunt their faces were, how bony their wrists. Then they were gone, replaced by the smoke-stained wall of a factory, possibly the employer of both mother and child, assuming they had work at all.

Edward shifted again, this time from soul-discomfort. Of course he was aware of the conditions in the city, how the coal- and steam-driven factories burned through their workers, children and adults alike, and spit them out to a life of poverty. No one could last with twelve-hour days of intense work, and injuries that broke minds and bodies forever were common. He had the same thought everyone did—what could he do about it?—but it was uncomfortable to be faced with the result of his indifference.

“How could harnessing the power of aether help them?” Miss McTavish asked.

Edward looked up to see her dark blue eyes fixed on his face, her gloved hands folded in her lap like a good student. Dear god, her question was serious.

“What do you mean?”

“You're a scientist. Surely you don't work just to discover things. You must do so to develop things that will help people, make their lives better.”

Edward looked outside at a cluster of factories all huddled close to the rail line. Random bits of debris swirled between the train and the blackened brick walls. “I'm more of a theoretical scientist. I discover things and leave it to the engineers and inventors to transform my discoveries into practical applications.”

“But don't you think about the end result?” she pressed. “Otherwise, what keeps you motivated to persist in spite of repeated failures?”

“I focus on my part, to figure out what aether is and how it can be harnessed and contained. The other chaps are the ones who build their machines around it,” he said. “If I were to think too much on what they might do with it, I would lose my own direction. I'm not in it for the patents or the money.”

“So you don't think about how to make it useful for everyone, or at least for those who might benefit from it,” Iris said. “You're focused on things like publications and tenure, not the mother and child we saw or these poor wretches breathing in coal smoke and getting steam burns when their engines explode from being as poorly maintained and overworked as the people who use them.”