Steamlust (14 page)

They all spent more and more time with little bespectacled Doc, who was transfixed by the ship. He absorbed knowledge like a sponge and it wasn’t long before they found out why. One day, in fun, Elana pulled off Doc’s hat. A great mass of dirty blonde hair tumbled out around the little grubby face, and Elana gasped. Not only was Doc a girl, but underneath the spectacles that had come askew gleamed a prosthetic lens. It fixed invisibly onto the child’s smooth skin, gold frames held in place without hint of scar or stitch. It was a work of beauty, that prosthesis, but alarming too, against the child’s face it inhabited. A sudden hush fell.

“Where’d you get the eyepiece, Doc?” Darien asked.

“From a friend.” The girl looked fearful, as if guarding a secret. Will held up his right hand, to reveal a silver and gold pinkie finger. He wriggled his fingers and the metal finger moved in synch.

“I think your friend might be our friend too, Doc. Can you tell us where to find him?”

Doc relaxed, visibly. “Nah, he’s gone away. Long trip. Said
he’d be back sometime, but he didn’t know when. I fink ’e went to Africa or summink.” Ah. The friends looked at each other. The Egypt trip. That’s where the professor was then. They’d been gone for a good six months that time.

And so for now, that end was dead.

Yet Darien seemed happy to be stranded. Hannah had spotted him standing on a street corner, chatting with a rat-faced individual who couldn’t have been more shifty if he’d been hopping from foot to foot. She was mildly alarmed to learn later that Rat Face was a new contact of Darien’s, a fence.

“Darien, did you run a job today?”

“Just a little one, my dearest, only a little one. But it means we have steak pie and ale tonight!” And he opened a small sack and trickled a rain of coins into her hands, which had been outstretched in appeal, not for rewards. Hannah put the coins back in the bag without speaking. She looked at her man leaning back on their makeshift bed, content with his small-time robbery, and she felt a pang of worry tug at her chest.

“We can’t get away, if they catch you,” she warned in a hushed voice. “No escape off the roof this time.”

“Oh, Hannah. Why would you worry about that? You know I’m bullet proof.” He winked and left her even less convinced. The broken ship, the dark of their home, the scurrying past of the children. It was all expanding into a ball of disquiet and she felt that some action was necessary to dispel it. Perhaps that was why she’d gone to see her parents.

Hannah’s nightdress swirled around her as she paced. She’d been listening for footsteps, and finally they came, too fast. Darien and Elana burst into the room, breathless and laughing. The laugh faded in his voice as he looked up and saw what she
was wearing. Midnight blue silk clung to her breasts and fell in waves toward the floor. He could see her toes peeping out, a rare sight of them, so often boot-clad. The pink and white vulnerability of her naked feet made Darien all the more conscious of the softness of her stomach, freed of its usual bindings. Her breasts were looser than usual also, and the wider valley between them was captivating. Hannah caught his eye, let him know what she could read in his gaze. Her hair spread out like fire around her, crackling with static from the brushing it had recently received.

Hannah whispered in Darien’s ear, “I found something today.”

“You found this? I like it.”

“No, Darien. I had an idea. I’ve been talking to my parents.”

“What?”

Darien reared away from her, a familiar, stung expression on his face. “Why? You said you didn’t need to do that, not anymore!” Hannah shook her head, put her hand on his arm.

“Darien. Listen, a minute, calm. I haven’t changed my mind about telling her where to find me. I know the same rules hold true. I stayed with you. But I’ve been meeting my mother.”

“What are you
doing
? You know if she finds you, we’re all over, all changed.”

“I promised you! Will you listen to what I have to say?” Hannah fought down the familiar frustration as it rose at the sight of her lover’s compressed lips. Stubborn, unlistening man. “I’m not going to tell her who I am. She thinks I’m two, remember? I don’t want to send the poor woman doolally. I know I can’t help her find me.” Hannah’s eyes misted. Her heart was full of lost children and grieving parents. Darien’s insistence that she stay away seemed more unreasonable every day.
“Let’s give them Doc. Give her a chance. Help them too.”

It was the perfect solution, she thought. A safe home for Doc and someone to fill her mother’s empty arms. She had seen the heartbreak in the eyes of the woman who was so like her, whose arms she longed to fall into.
If I could just fix this
, she thought.

Darien frowned. “She’s all right down here. She doesn’t want people telling her what to do, whipping her arse for not minding her
P
s and
Q
s. It’s not so bad. She’d hate it the other way.”

“Darien, are you serious? She’s filthy and lousy, half starved and desperate for some light and stimulus! Don’t you want to see her warm and fed? What future does she have down here?” Her voice rose. Darien looked at her chest flush with the passion of her speech.

“She does all right,” he muttered and turned and stalked into the ship. She followed.

“What is wrong with you? You cannot for a minute think this is all right? For children? This pitiful existence?”

“It was fine for me!” Darien’s aggrieved roar startled her. “I came out of it all right! And you—you said it was good enough when we met. And now you’re running to Mama and Papa and their money the minute my coffers dry up! So, great, go, good luck!” He turned and stalked into their cabin, slamming the door behind him.

“Darien!”

But no answer came.

Will and Elana found her rooted to the spot, staring at the door to her cabin. They cooed and shushed and pushed and pulled until she was out of her nightgown and corseted and booted again.

“Elana, have you been doing jobs with Darien again?” Hanna’s voice was quiet. Elana’s fingertips lingered over the
buckles at Hannah’s breasts until Hannah gripped them affectionately and held them at her side.

“Oh, well, a little bit. You know how I like to keep myself entertained, darling. And Darien likes to feel useful.”

“What’s he so angry about? He was like this when I wanted to go find them before. But there was more at stake then. And he knows which way I chose. Why is he being so, so…”

“Fear, Hannah, fear makes arseholes out of the best men, sometimes. There’s things he hasn’t told you yet, and your nobby background brings it out in him. You’re trying to bring the kids out of here, into your parents’ world, and he hasn’t had the nutmegs to tell you that’s where he…”

“Elana!” Will broke in. “Leave it to Darien, surely.”

Elana ducked her head, but said no more. Will gestured to the outsized copper tank in the corner.

“Help us, I have a project in mind.”

Elana handed Hannah a spanner, picked up the metal-saw and pulled her goggles down. The rest of the night passed in noisy hard work and quiet advice, and the door to the ship stayed resolutely closed.

In a very different area of London, tall houses bordered a leafy park. Birds sang, and the flowerbeds were bright and well tended. Hannah looked back at the shining red door to Doc’s new home. She walked into the park and stepped onto the grass, seeking out the refuge of the trees before she crouched down, a hand pressed to her breast, the other to her mouth. She gasped back tears, breathed in the smell of soil and spring. She looked up to see Darien leaning against a tree, a torn expression on his face.

“You did it anyway.”

She nodded, hand still held to her chest.

“You wish it was you.”

“Well, who wouldn’t? For god’s sake, Darien! I thought you knew enough to understand this isn’t about you! Look at me! I’m right here!” She gouged out a handful of the damp loam they stood on and threw it at his feet in frustration.

“Nice, Hannah, nice form. I can hear someone coming, you’d better stop throwing things at me and start acting like a normal woman again.” Bristling, Hannah brushed off her hands and strode out of the park. Darien started to follow her, but turned and walked in the other direction.

The tub was a sight to behold. A giant copper tank, it was big enough for a child to swim in. Portholes gleamed on its scrubbed and buffed sides. Round wheels turned on jets of steamy hot water and nozzles bubbled foam into the center of the bath. The heating mechanism sent streams of bubbles fizzing through the tub.

Hannah’s mouth fell open. She’d helped build it, but she hadn’t seen it at work. The air was full of steam and candlelight. She could hear the gush and hiss of the steam heater that ran the bathtub. The smell of perfume hung in the moist air. Elana encouraged her forward.

“You need to relax, darling, relieve some tension.” She pulled the pins from Hannah’s hair, pulled at her dressing gown and unlaced her corset. “It’s terribly uncomfortable, playing the lady, isn’t it?” She smiled charmingly, making Hannah suspicious. The lure of the bath called her, though, and she rubbed at the red marks left by the whalebone on her white skin.

“Thanks, Elana.” A titter came in response.

“You can thank me later!”

Hannah left her dressing gown where it lay and a trail of hairpins and underthings in her wake and nimbly scaled the ladder to the tank. She stepped down the rungs on the other side into a dim world of steam and bubbles. The hot water embraced her, she slipped up to her neck in it, felt the day’s tensions beginning to ebb. Will and Elana were so clever, she thought idly. Perhaps they could fix her conflict with Darien too.

A grinding shrieking noise made her jump and splash and she turned to see the ladder disappear from the high sides of the tub. Will and Elana’s faces appeared at a gleaming copper porthole, sporting gleeful grins.

“Enjoy, you silly children! We’ll let you out when you’ve made up. Resolved your differences. There’s plenty of hot water, don’t worry!”

The steam cleared and revealed her lover at the other end of the tank, looking sheepish.

“Were you in on this?”

He held up his hands and shook his head. “No, this is all their doing, and I plan to have my sweet revenge at a later date. But I don’t see them letting us out of here unless we make amends. So maybe you should come down to my end of the bath and we should talk, before my whirligigs get pruney.”

Hannah rolled her eyes. “Whirligigs, is it? We may be naked and captive in a giant bathtub, but I’m not so sure it’s time for talk of your whirligigs just yet. I don’t know who you were, in that park today. Watching my pain and walking away from it. They offered me a job, Darien! And the way things are going, yes, I’m this close to taking it. If that’s how you want to push me.” She splashed water at him in frustration and turned away.

Darien dipped under the water and surfaced at her shoulder. His voice was rough when he spoke in her ear.

“I’m sorry. Can I…? I need to touch you.” She sighed, and
without turning round, leaned back against him. He sank his forehead into the crook of her shoulder. He was quiet for a moment, lips still on her neck. When he spoke, his answer was so low she had to turn to hear.

“I’m not part of that world, the one your parents move in. And you could be, if you chose. I was scared I’d lose you. That I’m not good enough, and once you’re out of the bubble of the ship, and the three of us misfits, you might see that.” Hannah shook her head, mystified.

“I didn’t grow up in that world either. I’m Miss Lowly Background too—an orphanage and a seamstress apprenticeship. That’s me.”

“Yeah, but Hannah, you didn’t grow up down here. If the professor hadn’t saved me the way he did Doc, I’d be…I don’t know what I’d be right now.”

“Oh. I didn’t know. You could have told me about that, Darien. You know that.”

“I wish I could offer you more. More than theft and moving and running away all the time. You never asked if we could take Doc with us. Maybe you think this is no life we live either.”

Hannah turned to him then.

“I love our life, Darien, when we do it properly. I just don’t feel safe right now, especially when you’re not on my side. And my parents…that was something I needed to do. I thought you’d understand. I thought you’d support me.” She finished in a whisper. He ducked his head and nodded into her breasts.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her chest. “I wanted to. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. It hurt to see you so upset.” He gently put his mouth to her skin, placed kisses along the slope of her breast as it floated in front of him. Bravely, he started nuzzling her nipples, distracting her.

“Shh.” She petted his tightly shorn hair, ran her fingers down
his neck as he suckled her. The water lifted her, let her wind her legs around his hips and hold him as he licked her stiff nipples as they peeped out of the foamy water. Steam wreathed them, the pipes groaned and clanked, the water bubbled.

“You gave me a whole new life, Darien. Don’t mess it up. Don’t get arrested, or bring the police here, or slip away from me into the company of some rodent-man. I need you here, with me.”

“Rodent-man?” He laughed. “Oh, you saw me with Clive! Ah, Hannah, it was just a little business; he doesn’t have much to offer me. Not like you do, you give me so much.”

“I can give you more.” It had been a long separation for them, and they were naked together in the hot water and steam. Water beaded Darien’s shoulders and lips, and she longed for the feeling of his body against hers again. She slipped from his grasp and dived in, her hair spreading around her like a heavy cloud. Its seaweed wreathing worked the tension from her sore neck and scalp.

In front of her was Darien’s cock, standing proud, and she took its slippery length into her mouth and moved up and down it until she ran out of air. She surfaced for breath and a glimpse of his transported face before returning to the task, letting the heat of the water in her mouth do much of the work, then sucking him until his knees buckled and he pulled her back onto him. Darien turned her so her back was resting against the wall of the tank and eased her legs around his waist again. He crushed his erection against her clit and thrust and she bucked and moaned and pushed back at him. The pressure was always a sweet, delicious pain that she loved. He tipped her mouth up toward his, and kissed her, deep and intense, claiming her again. At the same time, his cock worked to unfurl her labia, nudging its way in. Hannah felt herself slip onto him, hot and slick, different from the heat of the
bath. Darien’s thrusts were slow and deep and she felt dreamy, floating on his cock and held up by the water. His hands found her breasts again, reached for her nipples, slippery in the water. Everything was heated and swollen, every touch magnified. She squeezed him closer and he groaned and pumped harder, sliding his hand between them to press and circle her clit.